Out with the old

Just to be cliche: Out with the old, in with the new! And also pretty soon it will be: Out with the old, in with the really old.

Let me explain. I have this thin pink sweatshirt that I used to wear constantly. It's perfect for cool weather, it's not too bulky to shove in my purse, and hey... it's pink. I'm not gonna lie, I love pink. A lot of my friends make fun of me for it, but I'm embracing my girlyness and there's not really much that anyone can do about it. I also like to cook and bake and watch extremely girly movies, through which I will most likely cry while I endure more mocking by my friends. Tonight I was with my friend Rocio and I mentioned something about a guy that I think is particularly cool and Jesus-loving, and also cute, and I could physically hear her rolling her eyes. I also happen to be wearing pink today, so I'm sure that added to the element of disgust for her. Oh yeah, pink! That was what I was talking about!

So anyway, this sweatshirt has sort of been through the ringer, and my mom has been trying to get me to get rid of it for years. She hates that it looks perpetually dirty, and that it's all stretched out. It doesn't even really look pink anymore, but I have been putting off throwing it away until I could find something similar with which to replace it. I never wear it anywhere except the gym anyway.

I was at Target recently, and found one I was gonna buy until I saw the $30 price tag. I am quite marvelous at finding good deals and not spending a lot of money, and in my mind, $30 can get a whole lot more than one sweatshirt. A few years ago, I bought an entire summer wardrobe for about $120, and I still wear those ten dresses. So I continued on my quest for a replacement sweatshirt, and found the perfect one at Walmart the other night for only ten dollars! I tried on the 16-18, which fit, but I didn't want to buy something that would fit now and be big in another few months, so I tried on the 12-14, and although it was a little snug, it looked fine, and I decided to get it. I also found a pair of size 18 jeans for $15, so I got those, and I'm super ecstatic to be in a size 18!! I haven't been able to wear an 18 since I WAS 18! In fact, this was the first time I have been able to shop in the regular section of a store in a really long time. I almost cried.

Here's the old sad dull pink stretched out sweatshirt:


And the new one. I totally feel thin when I wear it:


The size 18 jeans:


And there you have the "in with the new" segment. As far as the "in with the really old", perhaps you remember the post with all the pictures of how fat I used to be, which you can read here if you haven't seen it. I claimed there that my goal was to fit nicely into my high school prom dress again, and while it still doesn't zip, it does sit on the right place on my waist, which is a huge improvement over the last time I tried it on.

Here's what it looks like now:


So there you go! I'll try that dress on again in a couple months. In the meantime, I'll keep claiming "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13), because I know that it is only by His strength that I have come as far as I have. I could never do it on my own! Believe me, I tried.

Ribcage

I was inspecting myself in the mirror the other day to see what new changes have occurred. My waist is smaller, my collar bones are more defined, my chin is just a chin and not a chinny chin chin (like that of the little piggies. It totally used to be), and my pants are continually getting looser. These are all things of which I was already aware, but I was pleasantly surprised when I sucked in my stomach as far as it could go and found something I had not seen in probably twelve years:

I actually saw the shape of my ribcage! Not that I could see the individual bones, like on my cousin Jack who I am convinced could go as a skeleton for Halloween with no costume whatsoever, but my stomach was actually concave in the middle up by my ribs! Definitely not lower down, but that flab will be a lot harder to get rid of. I think I'm just gonna have to cut it off with a chainsaw. :/

There is no way I'm posting a picture of my bare stomach on here so that you all can see my ribs. I'm definitely not ready for that. However, I did take a sideways shot while sucking in, so I'll post that.

First, here's one where I'm not sucking in:


And then the sucking-in one:


And one from the other day of my profile, which I usually hate because of all my chin fat, but that's almost completely gone!!


I currently weigh the same amount I did when I got home from Germany on this very day twelve years ago, and that fact feels amazing! I'm down 108 pounds from my heaviest weight, and I would still like to lose 62 to reach my ultimate goal. My next mini-goal, however, is to be in the 100s again, which I plan to accomplish by the end of April. I was 18 the last time I weighed less than 200, and the other night when I saw my friend Rebecca who has known me since I was eight, she said I look like I'm 18 again, so I guess it truly isn't that far off!

It's time for new pants again.

Diet Shmiet

I don't believe in diets.

People probably think, "No wonder you're fat!" but I say to them: you are clearly oblivious to the fact that I have lost 105 pounds without cutting a single thing completely out of my diet. Go right ahead eating your twigs and berries, and while I admire your discipline, I'm gonna go eat that cake. And some macaroni and cheese. Because it's delicious and I love it and I would miss it too much if I never got to eat it, and then I would go crazy one day and go buy a giant amount and eat too much of it and gain 10 pounds in one sitting, and then it will have been so delicious and I will have been deprived for so long that I'll continue to eat that way until I'm orbiting the sun as a mini planet because I will have gotten so ginormously fat and we can just start calling me Pluto and I can replace the sadly de-planeted Pluto because I will be larger than the orginal and classify as an actual planet. I can keep going with that run-on sentence scenario if you'd like, but I think you get the point.

That's not to say I eat that stuff all the time. And I definitely don't eat as much as I think I want. That's how I DID get fat in the beginning. It was like, "Oh look! A giant bag of delicious candy! I think I'll eat the whole thing today and buy another one tomorrow!" Ew. How did I not continually make myself physically ill? I suppose I did, just not in the barfing my guts out way. Instead, I more than doubled my size and drowned myself in misery all in the name of my taste buds and a lack of self control. Also it was a defense mechanism to cover up stuff going on inside me that I finally learned to deal with as I gave God control of my life. Aaaah. Can you hear the relief? I feel so much better!

So yes, if there is a big family meal or a birthday celebration, or a day where I just really want some ice cream, I eat that stuff without a second thought! I just eat a small portion, and make sure I have lots of healthful options to go along with it!

Some food routines I follow: (I almost called them rules, but they're not. I don't like to break rules, and I need to be able to break out of these habits every once in a while)

*I drink a ton of water. I used to have at least one soda per day, but when I got serious about becoming healthy, I decided not to drink my calories. I'll still have a soda now and then, if it's part of a meal that I buy somewhere, or if I really want one, but I usually just stick to water. This cuts down hugely on sugar and calories, and even if I had done nothing else different in my diet, I believe that change alone would have brought about some weight loss. I carry a water bottle with me everywhere, and try to fill it four times a day. When I don't drink enough water, I feel very bloated.

*I make sure to eat breakfast. I hate getting up any earlier than I have to, so for about ten years I completely skipped breakfast, but that is detrimental to a metabolism. In order for your metabolism to work as intended during the day, it must be awoken with a good breakfast. I often eat 1/2 cup of oatmeal with raisins for breakfast (and I add a little brown sugar and milk), or some scrambled eggs, or a grapefruit and some string cheese. None of those things are difficult to make, although eating a grapefruit is ridiculously time consuming. I always lose more weight when I'm on a grapefruit kick, though, although I'm really not sure if it's because it's a great weight loss tool, or because it just takes so long to eat and I burn more calories cutting the stupid thing up! Either way, though, awesome breakfast.

*I don't really have a set lunch, but I try to be smart about it. I love getting a $5 footlong sub at Subway and eating half for lunch one day and the other half either for the next day's lunch or for dinner that night if I'm gonna be gone all day. I load it with spinach, tomatoes, pickles and olives, and just a little mayo. So many people cut out all condiments and salad dressings when trying to lose weight, but it's important to eat your greens with some element of fat. You need fat in your diet!

*I always try to start my dinner off with a salad, and I stay away from iceberg lettuce, which has absolutely no nutritional value. Dark leafy greens are the best for you! And eating your salad first aids in digestion. I never use diet dressings, because they taste horrible, but I don't use a lot of whatever I decide to have. It does not need to be saturated in flavor for me to enjoy my salad, and I am very thankful for that fact. I know there are lots of people out there who hate salad!

*I stay away from white flour. It is really bad for you, and wheat options are pretty good! Maybe not at first, but it doesn't take that long to get used to them. I was actually raised on whole grains, so it's a natural choice for me. But again, if there's a food with white flour that someone is serving me, or that I want to eat, I'll have it every once in a while. No big deal.

*I consciously take smaller portions than I think I want. If you have more on your plate than you are hungry for, you'll probably end up eating it anyway, but if you don't take enough to begin with and you're still hungry after eating what you've taken, you can always get more. My stomach has shrunk a LOT, and it took me a while to get used to taking smaller portions, but now I do it automatically, and I almost never go back for seconds.

*It is so important to eat small snacks during the day to keep your body from freaking out and going into starvation mode (storing your food as fat just in case you don't get enough calories), so I like to keep a bag of almonds with me at all times. A serving size is 21-22 almonds, and while that seems like such a small amount, it is actually the perfect thing to tide you over until your next meal. I also like to have a string cheese or an orange as a snack. Or some popcorn, popped on the stove with just some salt.

*I stop eating three hours before going to bed.

These eating routines are easy to follow, and bring excellent results without much effort. In losing weight, it is actually more important to watch your food intake than it is to exercise a lot. Exercise is still important, but if you want to start making life changes and you currently don't eat well AND don't exercise, just start to make changes in your diet, and add the exercise in a few weeks down the line. Too many changes at once can be overwhelming. I know people who have made major food and diet changes all at once, and admire their self control, but it never stuck when I tried to do it that way. I stepped up my activity level when I started eating healthfully, but I didn't go to the gym and become the Hard Core Fitness K8 (you're right, Nicky, K8 is way more tough!) that I am now until I had already lost some weight and I was ready to step up my game.

Speaking of games, today I'm wearing the sweatshirt from my 8th grade AYSO soccer team, and it fits normally. Not that I was this size when I was 13... It was big on me back then.

Pep-talk

I took some pictures of my progress the other day, and among them was a dreaded sideways shot. Those are usually the ones that make me want to curl up and die, but I was shocked at how grossed out I was not! To show how much my body has changed, I put the new side view picture next to one from mid-September:



And a front view:



I feel like I'm not losing weight fast enough though. I lost forty pounds so quickly, and then it has been sort of slow going since November. I did give in to the Christmas Fats, and then re-lost those twelve pounds, and I have lost another five pounds since then, but I am a little discouraged, to be honest. I want it to always be easy and quick, and when it's not, I feel like I'm letting myself down. So here's a pep talk for myself:

Self. You're not gaining. You're not even at a plateau! You've just slowed down a little because you're SO BUSY this semester and you can't go to the gym every day. And that's okay, because it's just for a season. You're very active now, and after you ran across that field yesterday you were breathing almost completely normally! You're STILL MAKING PROGRESS!!! It's actually better to lose weight slowly and keep it off than to drop a giant subcutaneous chunk all at once and then regain because you can't maintain your crazy methods of loss. Trust me (or you, we're the same person), you're still doing a good job, and you look FANTASTIC!!! Also, although your weight is only down 5 pounds more than it was before Christmas, with the gaining and re-loss of the Christmas Fats, you have actually lost seventeen pounds since January 1st. So that's not as slow as it seems!!! Oh, but you need to drink more water. You're totally slacking there. End Pep-talk.

Okay, I feel better.

To the top!!

This weekend, my nephew Jackson turned one, and his grandparents threw him a big Chinese shindig in celebration. Yes, my tall blonde Scandinavian sister has a son who is 1/4 Chinese, so he had a traditional Red Egg and Ginger party. (Sidenote: I took home a bunch of red eggs, and after making a giant amount of egg salad yesterday, my fingers are still pink from the dye.) My parents/Jackson's non-shindig-throwing grandparents came out from Arizona for the occasion, and as they always do when visiting in San Luis Obispo, they are staying at my brother-in-law's grandma's house. We all, including my mom, just call her Grandma. Grandma owns llamas, who roam the hill on which her house sits, and graciously deliver an unequaled landscaping service simply by doing what llamas are made to do... eating the grass.

I have been to Grandma's house several times and have always enjoyed seeing the llamas, but in the past I wouldn't even try to climb the hill. On Saturday, however, without thinking twice, I went straight to the top of the property with ease and would have continued if the fence wasn't there to stop me. Apparently, it's time to start hiking again! A few years ago, my friend Diana and I went a couple times to a great trail not far from my school, and it always left me breathless. Not just from the gorgeous views, although they were quite nice. See?



I would be panting and sweaty after a climb that seemed like it should have been much easier for me, even at the time. I am suddenly very curious to see how much easier it would be now! Who wants to go hiking this weekend??

Some pictures from the llama hill:


This one shows the steepness of the hill.


Here's the fence that stopped me from climbing to the top.


Me at the top, with a llama. My cousin Jack named it Tina, and called it a fat lard and told it to eat some ham.


Halfway up, with my cousins Abby and Vicki.

At the red egg and ginger party, my sister's mother-in-law complimented me regarding my weight loss, and gave me permission to go off my diet for the day to partake in the very delicious party food. I explained that I'm not actually on a diet, as I don't believe in them. I'll be writing a food post very soon, and addressing that controversial issue... the "diet". Or the "non-diet". Or "why I won't say no to cake."

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A special shout out to two of my good friends: Tessa and Laura... Happy birthday, girls!!! And congrats to Tessa on the birth yesterday of her perfect baby boy Seth!

Maybe it's better that nobody loves me

Valentine's Day just passed, and I heard people talking about having all this candy lying around and being tempted by it. I didn't have that problem because nobody loves me.

I suppose that's not entirely true, but I like to pretend I'm all sad and lonely to get attention. Hahaha just kidding. I know that so many people love me, it's not even funny. I have the best family ever, and they all love me a ton. And as my mother once said, "Katie has more friends than a rich man giving out free breakfast at IHOP." It's true. The difference between the rich man and me, though, is that I'm not buying anyone breakfast at IHOP or anywhere, because I'm as broke as they come! No one could ever accuse me of buying my friends. People just love me because I'm so pretty. Hahahahaha!!! Just kidding again. But really, I have a million friends, and I know they love me, and I love them. The people who love me are a huge part of why my life is so great.

But somehow I have never been on the receiving end of the chocolate, roses, and general mushiness that make February 14th what it is. I think that for the longest time, it was because I was so uncomfortable with my body, that my identity was wrapped up in being fat and I didn't think any guy could ever like me... like THAT. So I put up the friend persona and then lamented yearly that I was alone and nobody loved me on Valentine's Day.

This year was different, though. While I still have a lot of weight to lose (68 pounds to be exact), I have realized that "the fat girl" is not who I am. I have a TON to offer somebody, and besides all my inner qualities that rock, I'm looking pretty good on the outside these days too! I feel conceited because I look in the mirror so much, but I can't help it: I look like a new person and I'm not used to seeing this pretty girl. My sweet friends tell me that I was always pretty, but when I looked in the mirror, all I could see was the fat. It's hard to ignore, and incredibly painful.

On Valentine's Day, there was a knock on the door as I was getting ready for school in the morning. I was in the middle of putting on deodorant, so I went to the door with the stick still in my hand. It was my cousin Alex, her arms full of all those things a girl could ask for on a day devoted to love, and while the words that came out of my mouth were, "Nice. You're holding flowers and a balloon, and I'm holding deodorant," there were actually no bitter thoughts in my mind. It was a funny scenario, and I said the obvious joke, but immediately, I was aware that I was thankful to be single this year. I couldn't be happier to have escaped the guy I thought I would be with, and I'm not afraid that I will be alone for the rest of my life, so a Valentine's Day on which I am single is no longer a source of pain. It's just another day, and one that I am confident I will get to celebrate with an amazing man in the future. And the fact that I have never been able to celebrate one before will make it all the better when I finally have someone. And we'll go out on a date, and I will look amazing and thin. But just like the fat, those things will not be what define me. First and foremost, I am a child of God, and I am fearfully and wonderfully made. God has gifted me with a lot of talent, a fantastic sense of humor, and a big heart capable of loving unconditionally. And that's just a little bit of who I am.

So at the end of that day, I didn't have any candy lying around tempting me. I did, however, go to a church service where all the ladies were given roses. I had my flowers after all!

The return of The Ginormostairs

I have decided that The Ginormostairs is the official name of the large set of stairs at school. They need a title that presents them to the public as the formidable foe of the out-of-shape that they are, and a name like The Ginormostairs demands a certain amount of respect and awe that one does not automatically grant at the mention of mere stairs.

Upon my return to school this Monday, I was glad to be greeted by this friendly giant that kicked my butt into gear last September and inspired the exit of the forty pounds I have since lost. I smiled knowingly and with compassion at those out-of-breathers lugging themselves up as I descended gracefully and swiftly down the 185 stairs (I used to park at the lot at the top of only 138 of the stairs, but now I park at the very top). I knew I wouldn't be quite so swift on the way back.

I haven't been at school since mid-December, so the trek up the stairs would be a good indication of my fitness level. It's not like I climb that many stairs anywhere else, so there hasn't been a whole lot of stair climbing since school ended. I was pleased with how easy it was. I was still breathing heavily at the top, but I was thinking about that first day last semester and how I had to stop halfway up and drink a bunch of water. It was also over 100 degrees that day, but still. I was horribly out of shape. This week, I DID have to the stop at stair 132, but only to take a picture of this sign that made me laugh rather loudly:



Today, as I neared the top of The Ginormostairs, a skinny girl was only a few steps behind me, breathing quite heavily, and when I flashed her the "these stairs are NUTS!" look (it's a universally understood look at Pierce College), she said, "This is a workout!" I agreed, and decided not to tell her how much I appreciate said workout and how it changed my life. Not everyone wants to hear my story, even though I want everyone to heed my message: LET'S ALL BE HEALTHY!!!! If I can do it, so can you!