Cake is Awesome!

"Eating a big slice of cake is totally fine as long as it's my whole lunch."

When my best friend said this to me on Saturday, despite all the changes in my relationship with food, my response was:



"That's an awesome plan!"



And then we went for a long walk around the lake!

Go figure....

To my credit mine was a small slice of cake, which I baked using the can of diet soda trick, and I didn't eat the frosting, so the calories certainly weren't anything to be concerned about...

But cake is NOT nutritious. Especially when you don't use the eggs and oil and can't even kind of sort of claim the nutritive properties of those...

And I have half the produce section PRE washed and sliced and as convenient as possible for salad fixing.

Oh well, I'm not worried about it, just goes to show that there is ALWAYS more positive change to be made, which means there's always something more to work toward, and always a reason to keep learning and moving and doing and changing and all that fun stuff!

Terror in the Cereal Aisle

Sometimes trying to be health conscious makes me look like a crazy person.

Especially in the grocery store.

Last night, for example, I terrified at least 3 strangers in the cereal aisle.

They were just going about their business, trying to buy breakfast items and tea, and were forced to share the isle with a large, sweaty, probably smelly woman in her rumpled gym attire picking up cereal item after cereal item, angrily yelling "sugar!" in a disgusted tone, and then throwing them back in a serious pout.

This was occassionally interrupted by glaring at them and shouting "how can you call yourself a health food and put sugar as your second ingredient!" in the granola section with hands on hips.

I'm sure dear bf's attitude of gruding acceptance, and occassional apologetic glances toward the startled strangers helped aleviate some of the fear. At least the crazy person seemed to have a warden of some kind.

And the person who I'd visibly startled when shouting "I LIKE A GRAPES!" and then darting in front of them to pick the best bag was somewhat prepared when they entered the dairy isle to find me with my whole upper body between the yogurt shelves to get the last few Fago 0% greek yogurts while they were on sale and simultaneously singing a song I made up as I went along about finding one that only contained milk and active yogurt cultures.


Active yogurt cultures is made up song GOLD, by the way.

At least I make a trip to the grocery store a little more interesting, right?

Blobulous Monster Face, Apparently...

Compliments on my weight loss have been a bit of a two edged sword lately.

Mostly the dreaded "you can really see it in your face!"

While this is great, and makes me feel good, I can't help but panic on the inside and wonder what kind of blobulous monster face I was walking around with!!

How did I not notice I had a giant fat face?

I mean, I'm pretty sure my double chin is gone, and that that's what they're talking about, but in case you haven't noticed by now I have a pretty active imagination. I mean, need I remind you of when I first felt an ab under my flab and was pretty sure that it was one of the face-sucker offspring from the Alien movies and was going to burst out of my body and prance down a diner counter singing showtunes?


And if I still have so much to lose do I just have a regular fat face now as opposed to the giant one?

And when people say "you look good" and I thank them, and then they go "no, really good" like they're arguing with me, and I also know I have so far to go...

What does THAT mean?


'Cause if just kind of average fat is 'really good' as compares to how I looked a few months ago... I don't wanna think about it!!!

I know this is all just being overly critical of myself, but I had to vent about it a little!

Just imagine the weird things I'll think when I'm in a single digit pant size and get THOSE compliments...

Uh oh, there goes my imagination again!

Please F@*% Off? Pretty Please?

1) Denial

2) Anger

3) Bargaining

4) Depression

5) Acceptance

Right now I'm somewhere between anger and bargaining, but I just thought I'd share my USUAL path to having the plague...

I'm gonna try and kill it with vitamin C, cough drops, water, and sweating it out at the gym tonight and hopefully avoid the self-pittying snot-pile phase.

I Generally Don't Make Out With My Friends...

I find it incredibly awkward to try and make new friends now that I'm a grown-up.
It came so naturally when I was younger, but now it's almost like dating or something...

And none of my old dating tricks work because:
1) I've been with dear bf since I was 18, so what little experience I've had with dating was forever ago
and
2) I typically am interested in making friends with other girls, so it's not like they're going to be impressed with a push-up water bra combined with a lot of hair tossing and a bit of eyelash batting action.



Well they might be, but that's not exactly what I'm going for here...

I'm sure I'm not alone in this. My best friend recently went out to lunch with another new mom from a mom and baby class she's been going to for a while (something she's had the goal of doing for at least 6 months now), and at the end of the lunch the girl said "I would like to see you again, we seem to have similar interests and values," in an almost formal way. It cracked me up but I SO RELATE!!!

I mean, it's not like at the end of a romantic date where you can judge whether or not there will be a second date by the hug or kiss or whatever.

I guess you could try that, but I generally don't make out with any of my friends. But that's me.

I usually just end up smiling way too much, I'm pretty sure my eyes get really large and creepy in my attempts to look attentive, and I get so paranoid that I'll talk about myself too much and scare them off that it probably feels a bit more like an interrogation than a conversation on there end, which I make up for with more smiling.



So let's just suffice it to say I don't have many friends...

Well I finally invited someone new over to our apartment to play boardgames!!
No cleavage or eyelash waggling required, and she even seems excited to come over!

I figure something as nerdy as boardgame night is the perfect non-threatening way to have someone over in a setting where we can get to know eachother, there are things that automatically make conversation do right, and it kind of puts it out there up front that we are giant dorks who do things like have weekly board game night.

Big, Pink, Jersey Knit Tent. With a Pocket!

Thanks to climate change my area has actually lived up to its placement in 'sunny California' for the last several summers.

Lame.

It may sound silly, but I miss the pea-soup-fog-all-day summers of my youth!!! To me, I guess because it's what I grew up with, that's what summer is supposed to be like. Cozy under a thick blanket of fog with the occasional hour or two of gorgeous sunlight around 2 or 3 (just after the tourists have given up on the beach!)

Anyway, since it's actually been hot this summer (well hot by my standards anyway, which most of you would probably laugh at.... you know... anything over 68), I've been wearing a lot of tank tops.



It doesn't hurt that I discovered early in the summer months that thanks to all my efforts in the gym I actually LIKE the way my torso looks in a ribbed tank for the first time in... well... ever! So pretty much every day for the last few months has had me in a tank top with a light cardigan.

Well over the weekend we actually had a classic Monterey foggy summer day!! Just because it's foggy doesn't mean it's cold though, in fact, foggy days are often our warmest because they trap the heat in and tend to have less ocean breezes, so I didn't feel like wearing a cardigan, but I'm not yet comfortable enough to go with bare arms out in public.

I went into the closet and pulled out one of my bajillion (which is an actual word in the oxford dictionary as of 2011, btw) solid color deep V t-shirts from the shelf. These T-shirts have been my staple for about 2 years now. You can buy them just about anywhere inexpensively all year long, I thought the deep V was fairly flattering, and just buying that in every available color and wearing it under sweatshirts or cardigans eliminated the need to try on clothes and get depressed about not fitting in any of them.



I pulled out a pale pink one that was a favorite last summer and realized it now looks like a big, easter-colored, jersey, knit tent. With a pocket!
It was HUGE!! I had to put it on for a second of course, and gloat at the mirror I'm now brave enough to have in my room (a full- length mirror no less) and MIGHT have said something a bit confrontational to the cat about telling her so or some such thing... maybe... not that I'd admit to it.

But then I got confused! I just bought a couple of those shirts in April or May and they were snug on me. I know I've lost a significant amount of weight since then, but not THAT much weight.... So I went back into the t-shirt stack to investigate.

Now, I THOUGHT that all of the t-shirts were the same size, and know that almost all of them are from Target in the same brand... Well it ends up they actually spanned sizes L - XXL!!!

How did I not even notice that I was buying smaller sizes?!?!?!

So really, before I even consciously realized I was buying smaller sizes, and was sitting here doing all that whining about how my progress was so slow and my clothes weren't fitting any differently, I was just being dumb!!!

I proudly went through that stack yesterday at lunch and put all the XXL and XL shirts from the 'day' shirts shelf to the 'gym' shirts shelf, and packed that pale pink one into my gym bag.

Every time class got especially challenging last night and I wanted to modify the moves, or take a break, or was whining inside that I was tired and just wanted to go home, I thought about how BIG that pink shirt was on me.

I even braved a couple glances in the mirrors at the front of the room and for the first time ever wasn't horrified by what I saw (well, other than my wild half sweaty hair and how incredibly red someone as pastey as myself can get when exerting themselves).

This is an especially big deal because the 2 girls that always stand at the front on that side of the room are BEAUTIFUL. And I don't mean beautiful the way I tend to believe just about everyone is beautiful; these girls are unarguably gorgeous and fit. Some of the thinnest, most in shape, naturally pretty people I've ever seen (and super nice too, so you can't even secretly judge them and go 'well they may look great but they're sucky people' or whatever like I like to do while watching reality tv). So that means I was glimpsing my reflection between the two of them and theirs...

Which may have a lot to do with why I found it SO horrifying in the past when at the gym, now that I think about it... Duh!!

That big pink shirt was just about the most motivating thing I've ever worn in my life. Far more than any goal pant fitting or too-small favorite clothing item making me want to be able to wear it again.

I think I'll keep that big pink shirt forever!!

And wear those other too-big shirts from the gym every day from now on.

Heck, if I'm having a tough day and haven't done laundry in a while maybe I'll even wear an old sweater or button-down just for the motivation!