Eat. Pray. Love.

I have officially gained 10 pounds since my lowest weight. Today I weighed in at 193.5. Now, that’s not horrible, considering I reached my lowest weight a year ago. So only gaining 10 pounds over the course of a year is a feat for me. I’m actually pretty good at maintaining, so there’s that.

However, this is not the weight I want to maintain. I am nowhere near being finished. So a new friend and I have made goals together to both reach our fitness goals. The first goal is to lose just 5 pounds. I’m trying out a system he’s had success with before, but may have to moderate it a little bit. Essentially, I’m cutting out carbs - or at least drastically cutting them in my intake. I normally preach to not restrict yourself of anything, but I found I was using that as an excuse. I was honestly intaking way too many carbs. Even though they were complex and albeit healthier than processed, refined carbs - I was still eating too much bread. I found that I was basing almost every meal around a carbohydrate or supplementing everything with a piece of bread. And I can’t do that anymore. So buh bye carbs, hello protein. If I do have the occasional piece of whole wheat bread of something, it will be for breakfast in the morning. Lunch and dinner will revolve around protein and will be supplemented with lots and lots of veggies. Snacks will be fruits and veggies or greek yogurt. 

I’m excited to really test out my willpower. The first 50 pounds came off so easily, and when I wasn’t seeing the same kind of success these last two years, I got discouraged and fooled myself into becoming comfortable with staying in the 180s-190s. I need to really challenge myself if I want to continue seeing success. Now is the time to change things up.

So after talking to my roommates about blogspot, I decided to read through my old one and take a peek into how I was a few years back. My, how things have changed.

I’m one of those people who always seeks for a change, yet never seems to find it. I always want change, always start to implement the change, but never follow through. Lack of motivation? Maybe. Lazy? Quite possibly. Afraid of change? Idk. I don’t think I’m afraid to change, I think it’s more that I don’t want to have to do the work involved. I don’t want to get frustrated when things don’t work. I don’t want to get upset when things don’t turn out how I planned. I just want to have things happen easily for me, like they do for everyone else. BUT THEY DON’T. I don’t understand. why is it that I can’t get things the way other people do? Why does everyone else have it soooo easy, and they take it for granted, but if I want happy things in my life, I have to go the extra 10,000 miles to get it. I have to work for happiness. It doesn’t just come to me. And i’m sick of it. I’m tired. I don’t want to work for it anymore. I‘m tired.

Sounds like a totally different person, right? This was only 3 years (almost exactly). I was 19, just started college, and had this idea in my mind that life would change dramatically and instantly when I went away. Then it didn’t. It took me two and a half years to realize that I had to make the change I wanted to see. I had to go out and get what I wanted. I was tired of being overweight, tired of being insecure, and tired of being ignored. Then I realized if I wanted to change all that, I had to do something about it myself, not sit on my butt and complain about how I wasn’t one of “the lucky ones.”

It’s always nice to look back and see just how far you’ve come.

STOP.

You need to stop with the excess eating. You need to stop with the junk food eating. You need to stop with the excess drinking. You need to stop slacking on the workouts. You need to stop thinking “well I’m good at maintaining my weight, maybe I can just coast here for awhile.” You need to stop thinking “I already ate horribly earlier today, I’ll just continue that streak with a brownie or two…” You need to stop worrying about that boy who doesn’t seem to want the same thing you do. You need to stop thinking you can eat and do everything your friends eat and do. 

You need to gain control of your life again. You need to find yourself again. You need to focus on your own well being again. You need to start making changes, because you’re going to end up right back where you started: 240 pounds, unhealthy, unhappy, and delusional. 

I know you’ve been stressed with school, and the break from focusing on your weight loss has paid off, because you got a 3.85 and made the Dean’s Honor Roll again. That’s phenomenal, and it was okay to be in vacation mode for awhile, but now you need to get into productive mode. You need to get back on track. You need to start making yourself proud again. You need to not let the fear of failing keep you from reaching your goals. You need to get going.

And you really needed to hear this. Now let’s get this summer REALLY started.

Yours truly,

Yourself.

So I finally have a weekend that will be low-stress and 4 days long. My original plan was to go out every night with my friends, but after last night, I’m rethinking what this whole weekend will be about. I went out last night. I went to dinner for my friend’s birthday, made some pretty good choices in food (it was at Benihana and there were very limited options, so I split chicken teriyaki with my friend and got it with brown rice instead of the fried), but I got a cocktail because they were supposed to be really amazing. So I got one. Super delicious, but SUGAR OVERLOAD. The plan was to go out afterwards, but instead of wasting away money at a bar, we just got some vodka at Safeway and played drinking games until 1130 or so, then went out to the bars and didn’t have to buy a single drink.

All that was fine and dandy, until I went home and binged on drunchies of mini cheddar rice cakes, cashews, and a couple pieces of easter candy. Not good. And I started beating myself up about it this morning. I always seem to do that. Whenever I get drunk, I get this “when in Rome” mentality and figure “well I already drank my weight in alcohol and calories, so may as well satisfy my drunk cravings.” NO. I cannot keep doing that. And the only way I can think to stop doing that is to stop drinking for awhile.

And I’m fine with going out to dinner and having one glass of wine, that’s not what I mean. I think I need to stop going out to bars and getting drunk with my friends for a bit, until I can really buckle down on this journey and get my act straightened out. I work hard during the week, trying to eat right, going to the gym, and then I blow it all by consuming enough calories in alcohol and food to counteract the weight I would have lost. And now, that’s not every weekend, but it happens enough to where I think that’s why I’ve hit this road block in my weight loss. I feel like that’s why I’m stuck, lingering around 185, and never entering the 170s. So I just need to cool down on the drinking for awhile. I’ll still go out and have fun with my friends, but I won’t drink. I can do other things with my friends than drink, I know that. It’s just hard when we’re all newly 21 (well they are all starting to turn 21, and I’m closer to 22 and partied out haha) and want to take full advantage of that. 

I also realized how low my self-confidence and self-esteem drops when I’m out at bars. I was at this bar last night that is “the place to be” on a Thursday, and I hated it. It was all the same people I see at school all the time (even for a University, my school is very small) and I see these girls in these short skirts picking up guys so easily, and I just can’t do that. I’m not really that kind of girl anyway, but it still kinda sucks when you go out to a bar with your girlfriends and every one of them had a guy dancing with them and you’re in the circle by yourself looking like a weirdo haha. I’m just tired of the bar scene near my place I guess. I’ve always been someone who has more fun in a small group of people than a big crowded party, so bars have never really been my thing when they’re packed.

And so I think I want to spend this weekend and most of the upcoming weekends working on myself. I need to spend more time self-reflecting. I always have all these plans to go to cafes by myself or go study outside, but I never do because I get caught up in all the social stuff of the weekend. I go out til 2am, then don’t wake up till noon, then don’t go workout because my legs are like jello from the alcohol, and then I do it all over again. So if I use the daylight to go out and do fun things not only with my friends, but by myself also, then I’ll feel like I’m making use of the small amount of time I have left here. Then at night, I’ll do the work I usually save for Sunday, or watch a movie with a friend, or maybe go out if my friends are going somewhere new, but don’t drink. I think I really just need to remind myself of the person I am and why I’m doing all this to kickstart everything again.

So I’m off to go ice skating with a friend. And most definitely not going out tonight. Then I’m going to run tomorrow. Then go to a cafe I’ve been wanting to check out forever. Then Sunday I may go to a friend’s house (since it is Easter), and just not drink and enjoy everyone’s company :)