Trouble with the Curvy

If I am not writing, I am probably busy eating something that would make Shaggy and Scooby jealous... Not writing makes it easier to ignore that I am not living up to a commitment that I've made to myself. Writing reminds me how often I have taught others how to treat me by how I treat myself. Writing exposes me to exactly how uncomfortable I am when I am vulnerable. Vulnerability is why I eat like cartoon characters and pretend I won't gain weight like a human being.  I am certain that I am not unique in this dance with vulnerability. The world is a briar patch full of thorny shit and long ago we humans learned how to armor up to protect ourselves from being stuck around every corner. When we are kids, fresh into this chronologically excursion through the pricklies, we are just trying to figure out the world, it doesn't take an immense amount of brains to realize that getting poked hurts, hurting sucks, and protecting yourself from getting poked means you will hurt less. T...

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 ...

I haven't written since July. It is almost November and the last thing I spoke about was making it to 165lbs by my birthday. I did it a week early and then just kind of coasted right through the rest of the month and the next one too. Now I'm back to planning for winter and how not to gain it all back and I realized that I need the one tool that actually works: this blog. Of everything I've done this blog feels like the biggest change to my life because it keeps me accountable. I felt like I made a lot of progress this summer but looking back at this time last year I've only lost about 8lbs in the whole year. That feels like nothing when I see it "on paper" but it feels big and real in person. Those were the heaviest 8lbs I think I've ever encountered... Regardless about the stats, I'm feeling really great about this and I'm ready to make more headway this winter. I've reworked my goal from 155 to 145 because I had no idea where my target...

I haven't written a lot about weight loss or the endeavor thereof this week and truth be told I haven't really been paying much attention to it. I haven't been splurge eating and I have been walking so it isn't a slack week but I have been going through the motions while my mind lingers on other things. These things include but are not limited to planning a wedding, work, Stephen King, and how awesome Brutus has recovered from his accident. This week we walked every day. On Monday we took it slow and only did about two miles. Toward the end of it he seemed to be favoring the hurt leg so Tuesday we did the same route and he didn't have a problem. On Wednesday I asked Ben to come pick Brutus up when he got tired so I could still do our regular 5 mile route. We made it to 3 and a half miles though and he was still going strong so he didn't need the ride and we did the whole 5 miles. Yesterday we did about 4 miles. I don't want to push him too far too fast but...

For all the preaching I do about points systems and how awesome they work and blah blah blah I also do a fair amount of preaching how "fad" diets are a whole bunch of bullshit. Why are they bullshit? Because they are not sustainable. I'm finding that power weeks and points systems are also hard to sustain. When work and other things put demands on my time all of that extra time exercising just doesn't seem worth killing myself to do it. I'm not a very happy person when I'm stressed. I didn't know it then but that's why I struggled with a lot of things when I worked at my previous job. I loved the work and the people and but the stress and mismanagement of tasks and resources always had me on edge. So much so that I developed the phrase "embrace the chaos" and that was my mantra and it worked... for a while but I see now that stress is not something that makes me thrive. It flusters me and then I feel like a failure and then it all just goes d...

I grew up in a really small town and while I cherish the friendships I developed as a kid and as a teen there is something uniquely circumstantial about them. The things we had in common back then were age and proximity to one another. I think this is especially true when I was a kid and the things I liked were TLC, the Spice Girls, Hanson and rollerblading. When you're 10 in a small town, the world is simple because the choices are rarely overwhelming. The older I got the more that changed to a degree and I started friendships with the few people in town that were around my age that liked music, writing, and creativity. I think the first time this concept dawned on me was when I started to gravitate to the director Kevin Smith and his brand of comedy and storytelling. He released a DVD of a live Q&A he did and I invited all my friends over to watch it. My closest friend since Kindergarten made a comment in passing after it was over to the effect of "Please don't mak...

I guess when I say "Slacker Week" I friggin' mean it. Guess how many miles I walked last week.... If you guessed a big ol' goose egg then you'd be right! I am not even going to offer up any excuses. It simply wasn't a priority for me last week and that's why nothing happened. This week I'm longing for it and now Brutus can start coming out with me a little at a time! The kind of week I have when I have a power week is awesome but it feels like the burnout rate is pretty high. If that's all I do all the time I'm going to get bored. Having a week when its not the top of mind all the time was nice just for the sake of keeping things feeling fresh. I think my muscles and my body appreciates it too. If I plateau then all the effort is wasted anyway right?  Did I just descend into excuses? This week though I'm looking forward to getting out and logging some miles especially with Brutus. We have had him for almost a year and he has never chewe...

Two weeks ago I started my first "power week" where I walked on my lunch break, after work, and did a muscle building routine in the mornings. Almost every spare minute I had was used to do something that burned calories. This week is completely the opposite and I'm wondering what to call that. I can't call it a lazy week because that feels like giving myself permission to go rogue. Today I came to work armed with a smoothie in my belly, carrots and celery sticks for snacks and some string cheese and crackers to keep me from eating my arm off. All was well until lunchtime came and I just wanted a break. I went to do a little shopping for a little event I'm helping to plan for the weekend and treated myself to some lunch that didn't include many veggies... It also didn't include french fries so there is still hope for me yet... I am looking forward to a nice long walk tonight and pretty soon Brutus will be able to join me again! His splint came off yest...

You are never going to win all the days all the time. That is simply not a realistic expectation and if you try to achieve that you'll always just be frustrated at your own inability to meet your goals. It takes so much preparation to be on top of your weight loss game. Some days I just don't have it. Yesterday for example. I had the whole day and had big plans on what I was going to accomplish and then I got bogged down in doing a whole lot of relaxing and not much else. Days like that are good for me too though and I'm just not going to feel guilty about that. Today holds grocery shopping, laundry, and hopefully a walk this evening as well as this afternoon. I really don't feel very profound today and I think the moral of today's blog is that sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you... <3 Katie Y2D26 176lbs

I have been in an extremely good mood since last Saturday. There is something about feeling this ring on my finger that has changed something in me. It is a validation of love that I knew was there but never had a tangible reminder other than the swelling of my heart and sometimes that can be drowned out with other more immediate emotions like irritation, frustration, and being overwhelmed. Today is the first day though that anything else has cut through. Several other little things have happened since Saturday that are now starting to culminate in hopes of killing this amazing high I've been on. The first of these things was that my computer crashed. The one that has the only version of Photoshop on it that I own that also happens to be so far out of date that I can't even load Chrome onto it. Second, on Monday I realized that one of my contacts had a hole in it. I had a back up pair so I wasn't too frazzled about it but it definitely made the list. This was the second...

Power week 1 started off pretty terribly with some rain but ended awesomely with several "10" days in a row. Power week 2 doesn't seem to hold the same magic in terms of results but this week is quite magical for another reason. Ben and I are getting married! After almost 8 years together we decided to take the plunge. I remember a night, early in our relationship, when I had fallen asleep while watching a movie with him and I muttered in my sleep, "of course I'll marry you." This is before we dropped the L bombs and after being together through so many awesome and crappy times we felt like it was the right time to make it official. We went in to a jewelery store that was going out of business last Saturday in hopes that a ring I saw Friday would still be there and it was! He made a cash offer and we made out with the deal of the century on the most beautiful ring I have ever seen.We got to the car and he proposed right there in the parking lot... the sa...

Today is an amazing historic day. If you're thinking that I'm referring to making it into the 60's, well, you'd be wrong. I did not make it into the 60s last night. I weighed in at 170.8lbs. I was a little disappointed but when I thought back to where I started how can I really be disappointed with that? Its coming soon and when it does it will be its own historic day. I'm referring to the Supreme Court making it legal for any American couple to get married. I don't intend for this blog to spiral into a political blog but this is something that really means something to me and I felt compelled to mark the day because this blog is somewhat of a journal as well as a weight loss tool. I can't help but be elated when love wins. I'm a hopeless romantic and it brings tears to my eyes that love prevailed in the face of fierce opposition. So many people have fought for so long for the right to marry the person they love and today they can celebrate. This is ...

It is going to happen today! Tonight when I get home and I get back from my walk and I step on that scale I will see a 6 in the middle!! This is not to say that when I wake up tomorrow morning that it will still be there because that's unlikely. I weigh myself twice per day; once in the morning and once after my walk. There is usually a 3-4lb difference in the readings and helps me to determine what things I do in a day really work. Yesterday morning I weighed in at 174lbs. Last night after my walk the reading was 171.8. It was so close I could taste it... no pun intended... This morning I was at 173.8 and I am certain I can see a 6 tonight if I walk on my lunch break and walk tonight after work. I need this a lot because it will make progress feel real. Yesterday was a nearly perfect day and would have been perfect if I had remembered my FitBit yesterday morning and I feel so great. This power week thing is kind of awesome. I even put on a tshirt this morning I haven't worn ...

Yesterday was pretty much a bust. I got rained out on both walks and when I got home Ben had washed and dried an entire mountain of clothes that needed folding. Excuse? Probably, but there is something about a rainy day that zaps me. My food choices were great yesterday though and today the sun is shining and its another chance for a do-over! I've also added a bonus point to my 10 things to achieve each day (I had to crank it to 11...). Brutus loves training now that he can't walk. He loved it before but now he has all kinds of energy that is most constructively applied to training. I felt so helpless that day but training is something I can actively do and if I'm being honest its my own laziness that we don't do it more often. While I don't think the extra point helps my fitness in any way, it does help me not be lazy which is also a goal that does matter to my fitness. Laziness is a big part of losing weight both as a hindrance and as an aid. I know that sound...

The first day of Power Week went great! I only earned 9 points though because I should have drank more water but that is an easy fix. Today is not going as swimmingly because the rain is washing out my walks. I clearly didn't consider weather in planning my two weeks of "gettin' skinny." Instead I'm going to be forced to check out one of those YouTube routines I found but exercising for an hour at home is nearly impossible for me because there is a handsome boy and adorable dog that compete for my attention. I would always rather hang out with them than do anything else and it distracts me and sucks all my ambition out of me. I suppose I could say to Ben "Honey would you mind leaving your home and bringing our dog (you know, the crippled one that needs to have a boot he hates applied every time he goes out in the rain) for about an hour so I can exercise at the house in peace." That, to me, seems pretty selfish and a bit ridiculous. If I asked I think ...