weight loss

Looking Back on 2013

In just a few short days we will be embracing a brand new year! It seems like it was just January 2013 a few moments ago.  It is amazing how the years are just flying past, one moment you feel like you have months ahead of you and then you realize it is just days before 2014 shows up! I wanted to take some time out to reflect back on 2013 since it has just flown by and talk a bit about what I hope for 2014.

I will start with what I hope will be a bigger success in 2014 an update out on my Weight Watchers journey; 2013 didn’t go as planned for me at all.  I hoped I would be about 70 pounds down by time we got to the 31st of December but instead I am only down 29.5 pounds.  It was 30 but I gained weight a few weeks ago and I am slowly taking it off again.  Which really has been the typical story of this journey.  I spent a lot of the year doing this roller coaster of gain a pound, lose a pound, gain a pound, lose one, so on and so on.  It was/is very frustrating.  I would be doing everything right but still stay on that coaster which then after so many weeks of that it lead me to fall back into old habits.  I started ordering a lot of meals that start with a number, eating unhealthy snacks or not eating regularly at all. I also did the whole I still have X amount of months/weeks/days left of the year to get back on track.  Then bam it was the end of the year and here I am 40 pounds away from the goal. I am trying to not be too hard on myself about it, I mean we are all human and this wasn’t going to happen over night by any means and 30 pounds is still a nice chunk of weight to be gone.  I know that the journey wasn’t going to be easy no matter how much I wished it was which does make it easier for me to hopefully get back on track.  Even though it is not officially 2014 I have already started to get myself back on track, stocked up my fridge and pantry with all my favorite things.  Like Belvita breakfast biscuits in cinnamon brown sugar (tastes like graham crackers) and blueberry (tastes like a blueberry muffin in cookie form); the whole packet is 6 points which is great for a quick breakfast or hearty snack.  I have also been buying whole pineapples and cutting them up to fulfill that something sweet craving, keeping lemons & limes in my fruit basket at home to add to water so I avoid soda and actually getting at least 30 mins of exercise in a min of 3 times a week.  I hope to increase the workout time back to an hour a day but right now I am going into my busy season at work so I am starting small so hopefully I wont stop once work gets crazy.

I jumped back into this blog in 2013 officially and while many moons have passed I am still working out the kinks on making time for the blog and what content to put on it.  So I hope in this coming year I will become more regular at posting and get things more organized.  I really do enjoy blogging and sharing my life, crafts & food with everyone and want to make this a more regular thing.  I think I am my own worse enemy when it comes to it, because I have grand ideas and then I talk myself out of them and I need to learn that blogging is about being bold and I should really starting going with my gut no matter what!

In 2013 I took up screen printing and have really enjoyed it.  I don’t get to be too creative at work dealing with taxes and bookkeeping all day so it is nice to have an art hobby to do on the weekends.  I have been wanting to sell some of my screen printing items under the Blurred Lines name on Etsy, but for some reason I have been holding back and finding reasons to wait.  Here I am again being my own worst enemy.  I need to stop holding myself back, so hopefully in 2014 you will see some of the fun geeky items I have planned for purchase! Doctor Who fans need to defiantly watch out because they are going to love my Moleskine notebooks & t-shirts!

My next big crazy plan is to get my cupcake business up and running officially by the end of next year.  In 2013 Clark County finally adopted Cottage Law which allows people to make and sale items from their home.  Before this was illegal and everything had to be done in a commercial kitchen.  Which of course has always held me back, I don’t have enough clientele to warrant paying for space in a commercial kitchen. I am hoping that I can get things in order so that I can schedule a meeting and get my official license after this coming tax season so that I have the spring/summer time to get the marketing up and running officially.  This is something I want to do on the side and do not plan for it to be full time work, at least not right now. Who knows what will happen in the future.

2013 was also the year of change for me, I let some friendships go officially; which was a hard thing for me to come to terms with and I even struggle with it today.  Which is funny considering I know it was the right decision to walk away but at the same time it is never easy to lose someone you care about.  I can say that luckily while I was struggling with the loss of one friend an old friend who I had lost touch with came out of the woodwork which I am grateful for because she was a good friend and it great to see that we can overcome the past and reconnect.  So here’s to 2014 bringing in new friendships, fostering old friendships, and maybe a boyfriend or two.  😉

No matter how much change went on in 2013 the year itself was pretty good; I got to go to Cozumel Mexico for the first time, saw my first whole dinosaur skeleton, saw a space shuttle up close (it’s smaller than I thought), and even managed to move a step up within my job.  So it certainly was a good year for me but I am very ready for the New Year!  Leave me a comment below telling me about your 2013 and what do you have planned for 2014? Or tell me what did you plan to do in 2013 that you just didn’t get finished, that now you are determined to do in 2014?  I can’t wait to hear from you! Happy New Year everyone!!

The Odd Side of Weight Loss

I have been dieting for just around 6 months now, and have lost a respectable 24 and half pounds.  Who would have ever that that half a pound or even a tenth of a pound would matter but wow does it.  Especially on weeks where you only lose two tenths of a pound, but hey at least you didn’t gain.  This becomes your mantra and any decrease is good, even though in reality you are cursing yourself that you didn’t loose more.  Which leads me to why I call this post the odd side of weight loss; it is because even though I have lost over 20 pounds to me I look exactly the same.  So I see on the scale the change but physically I am still all there, except in my wrists and feet.  This to me just seems so random, I have dieted before even on this exact same diet which by they way is Weight Watchers but the weight is coming off in very different ways than the first time I did it.

Now I don’t have some obscurely tiny wrist or anything but all of a sudden the bracelet I have worn for almost three years can easily be slipped off which it never did before, it use to fit just a little loose around the wrist and I would have to unclasp it to get it on and off.  It was made to fit my wrist specifically and is made out of white gold, so it isn’t like over two years it stretched.  I had the bracelet made for me because I could never find anything in the store that fit.  So it just baffles me that I need to have it made smaller by just over an inch.  It seems so odd that this is where my body decided to loose weight.

I am sure this is totally normal and it is a good change especially for the feet side, I am not a size smaller or anything but I do notice that things fit either looser or just better overall.  This too me is a really good thing, because shoes are my enemy, I hate shopping for them because they never come in my size.  I wear a size 11 normally but I can wear 10s or 12s depending all on the shoe and designer.  So I try not to let it define me but it drastically limits what I can comfortably put on my feet because most stores only care up to a 10 in anything that is fashionable.  Once you hit the 11 – 12 mark you start wearing orthopedic looking shoes that are thick and have velcro.  Just typing that description makes by brow furrow.  So I am looking forward to just maybe getting into a size 10 at some point as my starting size instead of an 11.  I should also note that if I have my foot measured it always comes up at a 10, but 10s rarely fit right.  So this has more to do with the industry than my body personally.

Because this process has been going on for 6 months and I would say I have at least 10 more months before I reach my ultimate goal but I can’t help but wish I showed a greater physical change than I do, while having smaller wrists and feet is nice it doesn’t really alter me visually.  Which ultimately is a nice side effect of loosing weight.  While most of us choose to loose weight mainly for health benefits no one can deny that really it is to look better in clothing.  We are just programmed that way.  Or if you are me it is just to get out of the plus size boxy section and into misses sized clothing where they define curves.  I don’t want to even get started on the drastic difference in clothing between misses and plus size because I can talk for days about how designers think plus size needs to be square that is a whole other post.  As well as the fact that women’s section in department stores is actually plus size clothing, they just don’t call it plus size.

I just decided that I was not focusing on me and it was starting to show physically and then I reached back to my highest weight ever in 2012 and knew that it was time to make a change.  I hope to post more about my journey I am on a goal of loosing 100 lbs and when I look at it that way being almost a quarter of the way there it doesn’t seem that big of a goal.