A sneaky stalker

Inactivity: that beast which follows me around, seeking to conquer and destroy.

I don't mean beast in a good way, like when my friend Rey says with admiration, "Kate, you're a beast!" but in a scary monster sort of way, with sharp fangs, giant stomping feet, and a surprisingly agile spiky tail that will whip me in the face! Once you're in its clutches, that's pretty much it for you! Inactivity suddenly seems synonymous with the Jabberwocky. Stay away from me, please!

I'm having a hard time being motivated to get back to the gym right now. I feel the need to go, and I'm already sick of being this size 18 that I was so excited to be a few months ago. I've been here too long! My friend just gave me some new motivational pants that are size 12, and it's so crazy to think that I may actually be able to fit into those soon if I just get going! Part of me is like "WOOHOO!!! 12 is only three sizes away!! Let's DO THIS!!!" while another part of me is still stuck in the "I'm fat and always will be" mentality. Sometimes I think there's no way I will ever fit into those pants. Because I haven't been very disciplined in my exercise and eating recently, I have this irrational fear that I'm gonna wake up one morning and weigh over 300 pounds again. Then I weigh myself and see that the number hasn't increased even though I feel like it should have, and I calm down. I have to remember that even if I eat a crap ton of junk one day, I may gain a few pounds, but I won't automatically shoot back up to ginormokate weight. It's not even bad to indulge every once in a while, as long as I'm not eating like that all the time, like I used to.

Regardless of how I'm eating, there is no excuse for staying away from the gym, especially now that school is out and I'm not overly busy. So no matter what, I'm going back tomorrow. Elliptical machine, please go easy on me! You know, once I'm back on track with the exercise, the eating discipline should follow suit pretty quickly, because I don't like to undo any of the hard work I put in at the gym by making poor food choices.

Though I am mostly lamenting my current lack of motivation in this post, I would like to add a nice cheerful note and end it with a picture that makes me happy. Cheerful note first: this morning I was at my cousin's house, and her very-nearly-12-year-old daughter and I were standing with our arms around each other. I was struck with the realization that Abby's arms went around my waist with her hands clasped on the other side!! While that has been the case for a while now, stuff like that still makes me really happy!


I have reached the point where I actually LIKE side shots! I never would have thought that was possible!

It's time to push past this inactivity monster. I'll take some advice from Nike, and just do it.

Time Flies

I haven't written a post in an entire month. May came and went, and I lost all of three pounds and barely exercised at all. However, as long as I get at least a C on my math final, on Monday I will have my AA and be able to breath again. Or be out of breath again, as the case may be. Because I plan to hit the gym like a madwoman! And madwomen generally don't breath. Trust me! It's a fact I just made up!

The month of June brings a weight loss competition that I plan to win, not only for the lovely stack of presidential flashcards presented to the winner, but because my body is starting to feel fat to me again. It's strange, really, because I haven't gained anything, but it makes sense in my mind. You know how they always say, "Lose just ten percent of your body weight, and your health will improve, and your chances for Diabetes will go down drastically."?? Well, how long do those health benefits last? I have lost close to 35% of my body weight, but it has been a while since I've lost a good amount, so I think my body has just gotten used to this new level of weight, and this is now the new normal. And I still need to lose about 55 pounds. So now I'm sort of back at the beginning... "Lose just ten percent of your body weight, and your health will improve, and your chances for Diabetes will go down drastically." Sounds like a plan.

Ten percent of my body weight right now would be 21.5 pounds. That will be my goal for the month, but I'll be happy if I just reach the 100s again. Maybe I'm not strict enough with my goals, but I've come this far, right? So something's working. Maybe it's the lack of strict goals that works for me. Maybe I don't get along with strict goals. Maybe I want to punch strict goals in the face! Hint... I do.

Side note: I totally just poured water on myself because apparently I don't know how to drink out of a water bottle. Classy!

You know what's fantastic? When I started at Pierce College, I had to really squeeze into the desks and I was always uncomfortable and self-conscious about how I looked to those around me. Now, not only do I fit just fine in the desks, but I cross my legs underneath, which was physically impossible before! I'm almost a normal-sized person now!

So now that I will no longer be at Pierce College, I must take a moment of silence for the ginormostairs... That monstrous beast that was the initial kick in the butt I needed to get in shape. I will miss those stairs, and the burn in my buttocks and thighs as I neared the top every day. The feeling that my legs have turned to noodles will be missed. Or achieved in other ways. But I deeply appreciate the simplicity of the stairs and their contribution to my new health and happiness.



Thanks, stairs. None of this would have been possible without you.

I wish I could be magically thin

I love when people find out that I've lost 112 pounds and they ask, "What's your secret?" There is no secret. Trust me, if there was some magic way to get skinny and stay that way, I'd jump on that train in a heartbeat! But radical diets and pills and all that other hoopla just doesn't work. Or it doesn't work in the long run at least. Nope... you have to put in some good old fashioned hard work.

I used to think about how I was a normally-weighted child with no effort, and then I would wonder why that can't be the case today. But then I remember that, although it may have felt effortless, I was always running around, playing soccer, riding my bike, climbing trees, swinging around on monkey bars, jumping on a pogo ball, karate chopping my brother... oh wait, no. That last one was just in my mind. But all the others are accurate. And also my mom made sure that I ate healthfully. Also exotically, because sometimes she thought she was from Africa and would make crazy dishes that I liked to refer to as monkey brains. I'm not even kidding. We have a friend who married a girl named Amina from Kenya, and Amina taught my mom some pretty crizazee recipes. And as a child, it's not that I was picky so much as that I just didn't like ANYTHING. One time, it was my turn to pray before dinner, and I started off with head bowed and eyes closed: "Dear God, thank you for today. Thank you for Mommy and Daddy and Amanda and me and Brian. Thank you for the..." eyes open, quick glance around the table, eyes closed again, "...milk. In Jesus name, amen." True story. Just ask my mom.

Anyway, so one day it hit me that the reason I wasn't overweight as a child is because I was super active. Moral of the story: you can't be physically fit if you're sitting around on your butt all day. Sometimes I get frustrated (aka: right now) because while I'm in school I'm too busy to go to the gym as much as I would like to, so I'm not losing weight as quickly as I think I should, but as long as I throw in some good activity each day, I won't start backsliding to my old couch potato ways. I hate couch potato ways. They make me miserable.

So activity it is!! I'm not opposed to, let's say... jumping into a game of frisbee golf when in the past I would have sat by and watched, even if I'm wearing a cute dress that probably prohibits normal movement. That's just how I roll.

Collarbone check and that jacket again

I need to talk about my collarbones again. I love them. It has been so much fun watching the definition increase over the last several months, and I constantly catch myself touching them. I just did a side-by-side comparison picture with the picture I posted back in November:



And maybe I went a little crazy on the picture taking and the goofy faces:



Excuse my insanity.

Another thing I would like to revisit is my post entitled Why do I want to eat crap?, in which I lament the craving of sugary items and other healthfully detrimental habits. I was re-reading this post recently, and I suddenly became aware of just how far I have come. While I definitely still have a desire for sweet things now and then, it is no longer something I think about all the time, and beyond that, if it is sitting in front of me and I am not hungry, I don't automatically start to eat it anymore! I also stop eating before I am full, every single time. I know when I have had enough, and I no longer have an irrepressible urge to keep eating. I also now tend to favor the taste of more healthful foods.

This is a GIANT breakthrough!!! Food has become a non-issue for me! I can't even remember when that was the case before, and it doesn't make sense to me why it was the case for so long. Why, when there were issues to deal with on the inside, did I turn to food? I don't get it, and yet, it ruled my life for the last ten years or so. But food always masked whatever problem arose for a short time before just adding the misery of being fat and self-conscious, and not being able to control my eating. How could I have let that deceptive "comfort" be what I ran to instead of relying on God to bring me through? As I have deepened my relationship with Him, I have come to depend on His comfort and grace to get me through life. Not that all of life is hard... a lot of the time it is quite fantastic! But there are always difficult times to deal with, and they will continue to occur.

For instance, my biggest struggle is the fact that I am still single. More than anything else in this world, I have wanted to be married and have a family since I was a little girl, and I never imagined that I would still be single at 31. And I also don't understand how I hear from a large majority of the people I know how awesome I am and what a great wife and mom I'll be, and yet, here I am, alone. That was a huge driving force in my eating in the past, and not only did it not help, but it made the situation worse as I became incredibly unattractive and miserable. Nobody wants to be with a miserable person! At some point, I started turning to God instead of the food, and that has made all the difference in my contentedness. I know that He has an amazing plan for my life, and as He is the one that made me the way I am, with this incredible desire for a husband and family, I believe that He will bless me with that in the future. And I'm guessing, since God has been filling my heart with a desire to go visit different countries to work with orphans, that the man God has for me will have a similar passion, and that is so exciting to me! I wonder how much of my life I have wasted, when I could have being working in that field already, all because I was focused on myself and food! Being miserable really sucks the life out of a person. So now when I start to get overwhelmed with sadness that I am not married yet, instead of having a pity party complete with a mound of junk food, I pour my heart out to God and let Him deal with it. And I have peace. And visible collarbones.

So to lighten up this suddenly heavy post, I will end with a fun story and my new favorite picture. You know my green jacket that I wrote about here? Last Friday it was pouring rain, so I wore it. I was at my brother Brian and his wife Sarah's house, and when I put the jacket on to leave, I zipped it up and pulled it away from my body to demonstrate how much extra room there was. I said, "I feel like Sarah could almost fit in here with me!" so she tried. At first she wanted to see if she could get in while it was on me and closed, but she shimmied up as far as my waist before there was a pause followed by, "Oh. I forgot about your boobs." We all cracked up and we tried again, this time by opening the jacket. I believe there was only a space of about four inches that prohibited the closing of the jacket, and it used to fit me perfectly. Now that's what I call progress!

Sitting pretty

The other day I was sitting on my bed doing who the heck knows what... probably playing Draw Something or contemplating the delicious Pineapple Stuffing I would be making for Easter, or thinking about all the guys that I think are cute and would make good husbands someday, and wondering who will be mine... when I realized that I had my knees drawn up to my chest.

So what, right? Yeah, not so much. More like, WOOHOO!!! My giant belly used to get in the way of my legs coming anywhere CLOSE to my chest! So, as you may have suspected, I took a picture of myself that way. Welcome to the way I look in the morning (although I totally have mascara on from the day before) and the awesome fuzzy warm pajama pants my mom bought for me when it was 40 degrees in my room at night. I know a certain Jennifer who will be super jelvis (yes, jelvis. Definition: a) Jealous of Elvis, or b) Jealous of something Elvis would have liked. He clearly would have mistaken my pants for blue suede, and therefore would have liked them.) because the pants have ladybugs on them.



So that's all I wanted to say. It's exciting every time I find something new that I couldn't previously do!

Move it or lose it!

Nothing motivates quite as well as a little friendly competition, especially when money is involved. Since January 1st, I have been part of a weight loss competition group on Facebook, which has been a great source of motivation, with weigh ins every week, and a buy in of $5, to be paid to the winner at the end.

Our first 90 day challenge just ended on Sunday, and I didn't meet the goal I set at the beginning, which was to lose 40 pounds. I did, however, lose 21 pounds in that time, which was the same amount the winner lost, but since she started out 72 pounds lighter than me, her percentage lost was obviously higher. I didn't mind losing to her, though, because she's really great! That was one of the best parts of this group: I met some really awesome girls who are now my friends, and I'm excited to hang out with them again soon!

Part of the reason I didn't lose as much as I wanted to during the last challenge is that I didn't go to the gym very often in that time. School is keeping me extra busy this semester, but starting now I will be making more of an effort to work out several times a week. I just reconnected with an old friend from Tucson who now lives ten minutes away from me, and she also happens to already have a membership at 24 Hour Fitness, where I go. She has a lot of experience with personal trainers and she's gonna help me whip myself into shape! I love having someone to go to the gym with, and I'm happy to be able to spend time with this friend again. When we got together on Saturday night, we hadn't seen each other in ten years! We have gym plans every day this week while I'm on Spring Break, and that should be a really great jump start for the next challenge, which started on Sunday when the last one ended.

The goal I set for this challenge was to lose 31 pounds. I know that with the help of my group and my new gym buddy, this should be a breeze! I'm even gonna try to beat my own goal and lose more than 31 pounds, but it won't bother me if I don't. I know that all of this extra weight will be gone soon, and the most important thing is that I'm getting healthy and that I feel amazing! My life has changed so much in the last six months, and I go around with a perpetual smile on my face. I have always been a pretty happy person, but the joy I feel now that I've broken free from this stronghold that my weight had over my life is incredible!

A few extra things:

1. I'm taking a friend to get his driver's license in a few weeks, and at the same time, I think I'll get a new license picture and change my listed weight. When I got my license, I weighed 60 pounds more than I said I did, and now I weigh 19 pounds less than what is listed! So I'm gonna lie again and say I weigh 180, because pretty soon, I really will!

2. I put on the red dress again a few days ago, and I think I need to officially retire the dress. I had to hold onto a handful of material at the back to make it tight.



Compare that picture to this one of me wearing the dress on Christmas day. Alex and I decided that we needed to dress formally for Christmas last year. Haha!



I think I should go try on beautiful dresses this week. I can't afford to buy one, but it will be fantastic to try on dresses that they have in the store because now I'm actually a size that they carry! I love that I still like to play dress up as much as I did when I was a little girl. Some things never change. Wanting to feel beautiful is something that is built into girls, and that desire will never go away, no matter how old I get.

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.