Trouble with the Curvy

Friday night I got to attend a paint night that I will never forget. This is not your wine sippin' paint by numbers kind of paint night.. It's the kind of paint night you don't shut up about all week to anyone who will listen.. the kind of paint night where you light shit on FIRE! I implore you to top that.  I am super grateful to a new group of friends who invited me into their night for this incredible activity. I had the MOST fun.... I did bring cakepops and macroons to ingratiate myself (I mentioned how I love to spread love through food right?!) and came away with some memories that will always mark the first weekend living in Connecticut where I felt genuine belonging. It was awesome.  Feast your eyes on these puppies....  <3Katie 209

James Clear wrote an incredible book called "Atomic Habits." His own experience after a tragic accident helped him to identify how teeny, tiny, little changes can add up to remarkable progress. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to make a change and writing today is one of my first atomic changes. While I chose to eat an apple today when I could have grabbed carbs, today wasn't a day where started going to the gym or made any sort of substantive change but it is a tiny change to write a post and log a check-in with my accountability tool. If I keep writing every day eventually it will help motivate me to do the things I want to write about. At least that is how this tool worked last time and it made a big difference.  It is also reminding me again that since the last time I wrote consistently, so much has changed. My address, job title, marital status, and other pillars of a life are most obvious but I live inside this eccentric head of mine and the change that

6 years and 10 months ago I posted the last entry on this blog. When I reread it this morning it kind of floored me because all of the things I wrote in that post were a foreshadowing of what was to come and back then I couldn't have possibly recognized it for the storm it truly was.  I worked hard over the 3 years that I kept "Trouble with the Curvy" but the things that made it hard to stick to a healthy routine of good habits were left completely unaddressed. With the luxury of almost 7 years of hindsight it is completely clear to me that the addiction to food that I mentioned in that last entry was a pattern of numbing things I didn't know how to fix. Food still brings me happiness and is a way I like to bring happiness to others and has been a dominant coping skill for everything I have experienced since posting that last entry.  All those years ago I was about to get married and thought that Skowhegan, Maine would always be my home. I loved my house, my fiance, a

To say "The End" is so final isn't it? THE end implies there is one finite finish but this Trouble with the Curvy is something I don't think is ever going to actually end. In the weeks since I wanted to make the transition to wedding planning and making my wedding dress I've struggled to "just do" what I have identified over the past 3 years help me achieve my weight goals. I can't seem to get myself out of bed in the morning and then work has early morning demands, then I'm sick and who knows what will be the next obstacle. I have gone completely off the rails since the holidays. At my doctor's appointment yesterday I weighed in at 173lbs fully winter bundled. Not bad but certainly not great. I'm moving in the wrong direction. I recognize this. I acknowledge this. Now I need to do something about it. What I can't figure out is why I can't seem to make the good decision and how easy it is to talk myself out of doing the things I

I suppose it is no secret that I've been finding it difficult to find the motivation to write within the last few... several... months. I have officially lost 47 of the 57 pounds I hoped to lose when I started this blog and I think that is an awesome accomplishment! Over my time with this blog I have built some great habits that are now ingrained in my daily life including making better food choices and walking a lot. I actually feel the physical changes in my body.. my contours are different and my overall body image I had in my head now, more or less, matches the image I see in the mirror. I know this doesn't happen for everyone who loses weight but for me, I'm truly happy with who I am and where I am in my life. I'm a much healthier person than I was 2 and a half years ago. There is still room for some improvements and I look forward to working off the last 10lbs of my original goal. The difference is that I am no longer constantly focused on taking off the weight.

I think I have hit a true turning point in my journey. When I stopped writing in July I knew that I needed to lighten my load because work was starting to get busier and most of my free time was spent walking with Brutus once his cast came off. He is back in good health now but, slowly, from July to September I made some killer progress. I got down to my lowest weight and I had good habits both with eating and with exercise. As the days began to get shorter though and my job moved me to a warehouse (temporarily) where its just me a whole bunch of old stuff, I started to make some questionable decisions that I did not, in fact, question at all. Examples of this include staying home from a walk to bake and ordering a chicken burger and french fries just about every day for a good week and a half just so I could see another human being... Well that's what I said but they serve salads and I didn't order a single one of those so.... When I hopped back on the scale only to see I