Life...

Life isn't all roses and ice cream and cake when you get home. Not surprisingly, that's when the real work starts. You're no longer in a controlled environment and you no longer have anyone holding your hand. Add to that, that not only do you no longer have anyone helping you out but life throws wrenches and grenades and bowling balls at you while you're trying to plod along. Life likes to b*tch slap you in the face sometimes.

I, and of course everyone else, have the best intentions when returning home. You feel fabulous and you want that feeling to continue and you think, oh, since I'm all fit and sh*t now, I'll be fine. No no no no. A million times no! Your mind sadly can be your weakest link. Like I said in the past, it likes to LIE to you.

When I got home, I had lots of stuff to catch up on with work and other life things that fell by the wayside. I intended to go to the gym daily and eat right like everyone else does. However, for the first 3 weeks I went to the gym sporadically but moreso than I had gone in the past. I told myself, something is better than nothing and soon, once I catch up, I'll have more time to go. By the way, you can never catch up because things are always coming at you. That's life!

Because I had become accustomed to smaller portions, I no longer ate the massive amounts of food that I used to. Also, after having a few celebratory meals when I first got home, I also realized that I could no longer eat the food I used to love because all the oil and grease just didn't sit well with my stomach. It had gotten used to eating cleaner, healthier foods. Not only that, but whenever I did eat too much, the acid reflux that I hadn't experienced in over a month at FR, came right back. So by the way of healthy eating and sporadic workouts, I dropped another 5 pounds without too much effort once I got home.

Then... I stopped going to the gym completely. It also did NOT help that I was addicted to watching the World Cup, which came around right at that time. I work from home, so I would literally watch 2 matches a day at 90 minutes a pop... not including 15 minutes of half time. That right there is 3.5 hours of sitting on your bum. (Looking back, I should've gone to the gym to watch the matches while I exercised... hmph) I would eat and watch and then be tired from just sitting and eating and the weight started creeping up again. Not by very much but it most certainly was no longer going down.

As the weight began to slowly creep up, I started feeling hopeless again. For my readers out there, NEVER succumb to that feeling. You CAN always turn things around. I wasn't thinking clearly. I just stopped caring and figured, oh, I'm just meant to be fat forever. By the time the World Cup was over, I had gained back the 5 pounds I had lost when I first got home. My body was kind to me, it should have been more.

Then I just kind of moseyed along for the next month and a half. Going up a little, going down a little but generally staying around the same weight. I had given up. I still cared but I had totally lost the drive and hope that I had gained. I stopped THINKING about what I wanted. I just lived without thinking, doing the daily life shuffle.

A friend of mine suddenly approached me towards the middle of August about going on a short vacation at the end of August. I hemmed and hawed but finally agreed to go. I had all those free TRAIN miles from going back and forth to Utah, after all! lol. We were going somewhere hot, so I needed some clothes. I had been living in my workout wear for the past few months.

Did I diet for the vacation? Nope. I did go shopping however and was still disappointed at what I could wear. I was still shopping for XLs and even visited the Plus Size stores that I used to frequent for special occasions before FR. (I had pretty much lived in my uniform of giant fleece hoodie and fleece pants for ages) Happily enough for me, nothing at the Plus Size stores fit me BUT I was still the largest size at all of the 'normal' stores. Well, either I fit in the largest size or I didn't fit at all. I was sort of in the in between stage of 'smallest at the fat girl stores/fattest girl at the normal girl stores' stage.

So I didn't expect much from my vacation. I just wanted to relax and not think about anything for awhile. I'm not a drinker and I had thought my days of dancing all night long were long gone. I'm no spring chicken after all! Anyhow, I was really stressed out and just wanted to get away from everything.

This was my first vacation alone with a girlfriend EVER. (strict parents you know) I did get to relax... AND I ended up having an absolutely fabulous time. We spent a lot of time relaxing, walking around, hitting the beach (nope, never got into a bathing suit, I would sit under an umbrella with spf up the wazoo covering every inch of my body in a sun dress, don't believe me? Here's proof of me WALKING around town with an umbrella)

Yes, Asians like to walk around holding umbrellas in the sun.

and when we did go out at night, (not every night mind you) we would spend an hour or two getting ready. Frankly, we always had more fun getting ready than actually being out. lol.

What was nice about going out was the fact that though I still felt fat, I felt pretty fat. Vanity had been the least of my concerns for a long time. I just simply no longer felt attractive. In fact, my self esteem had said adios to me a long time ago. When I got all gussied up to go out, for the first time in a long long long time, I felt like I looked pretty good. Still hefty but a cute hefty. I was no supermodel that's for sure, but just the fact that I felt that I had the potential to be pretty, really boosted up my self-esteem... which had been in the gutter for a long time.

When I got back from my relaxing vacation, I felt revived. I immediately set a specific goal. I had a sort of general goal before hand but nothing specific. I vowed that if I wanted to go on another fun, girly vacation, I would need to lose 25 pounds AND I would need to do it by the end of December. So for those of you keeping count, when I got home from my vacation, I weighed 175. (I had lost weight during my vacation. I'm one of those odd ones that tend to eat less when I'm out. Being at home, nothing is more comfortable to me than just stuffing my face and vegging out when I'm bored. When I'm out, I want to do stuff) Which means that my goal was to weigh 150 pounds by the New Year. 43 pounds less than when I had started this journey at my heaviest.

Did I manage to do it?!!

This is a picture of me with Seth Word from The Biggest Loser on my second day at FR. I'm around 193 here. Ugh.

This is a picture from when I was on vacation in August :) I'm about 175 here and I got tan! Even with my umbrella!

Here's a random phrase that's helped me a lot. It's a la Yoda/Nike. "Don't think. Just do it."

(When you think, you can think yourself out of doing lots of things, including hitting the gym. Don't think. Just get in the d*mn car and go. Just do it!)