2013, I'm gonna own you, I swear to god.

That's me on the left, chubbin' it up at around 212 lbs. (My beardy boyfriend, Ethan, next to me)

Oh, dear, is that camel toe? It might be, sorry. Also, why didn't I put my hands on my hips? (I think disguising myself in pictures is second nature...) Anyway, this is me earlier today, at 188.8 lbs.

It was so hard to not suck in my belly automatically, I really had to think about it.

So I'm 31 and I've been trying to lose weight since I was 17. Technically, before that, I think around 12 or 13 my sister (older by 9 years) went on a low fat diet so I was basically on it with her since she was in charge of feeding me. We went bike riding and rollerblading a lot and somewhere in there I went from an awkward tween to a teenage girl with a pretty smokin' bod. SO much of my self esteem was tied to that hot body. I didn't think I was very pretty or had much else going for me, so when I started gaining weight around 17, I was devastated. 

I've tried SO MANY things. I've never stuck with any of them. Just vague "eating healthier", counting calories, trying to work out every day (and getting pissed off at myself and giving up for missing a day), Slim Fast. I could never stick to anything because I wasn't changing my habits. I wanted it to be quick and easy, just like everyone does.

There was one diet that worked; I managed to stick to it for three months and lost 35 lbs. One day I noticed a couple friends of mine had lost weight, at this point I was at 212 lbs and I demanded to know what they were doing. Turned out it was Dr. Cohen's First Personal Diet. It's this crazy thing where you take a blood test, mail the results to South Africa and for about $250 they send you a personalized plan where basically you can have meat and vegetables in exact weighed portions, 3 pieces of fruit, yogurt, 1 egg, cheese, diet soda, 6 saltines and I think a tbsp of mayo. In only certain combinations, in certain amounts of grams and they actually discourage exercise. But we were all desperate at this point. (I also couldn't afford it, so my friend gave me her meal plan.) It's about 700-800 calories a day and after losing 35 pounds, I felt really great and started loosening the reigns on this crazy diet until I was back to my old habits and gained almost all the weight back.

I decided I just couldn't get back to 212, or more than that. In October 2010, I started a new, really stressful, but decent paying job and I decided with my first paycheck I would join Weight Watchers Online. I didn't get paid until the end of November and in that month I gained nearly 20 pounds and was up to 209. I really didn't want to get back to 212! I lost 15 pounds by around February and then NOTHING for about 8 months. Staying consistent has always been really hard for me. I always seem to cancel a great week out with one or two bad weeks. I also SEVERELY hated my job. I think I could have handled the stress and hard work of the job if it weren't for my AWFUL coworker. Ugh, can I just rant about her for a couple sentences? She was not my supervisor or boss in any way, but treated me like an underling. She was crazy, would yell at me, would go on and on about her (weird) personal life or conspiracy theories or actually racist crap, then get pissed off if I would waste any time having a chat with other people, everything had to be her way and any suggestions I made were treated as an argument or that I was "undermining her authority" (authority she never had). ARG. God, super crazy, horrible woman. Anyway. She made my life at work hell for almost a year. (I did talk to my boss about her a few times, she talked about me too and in the end I think he thought both of us were crazy bitches.) When I got laid off, I was worried, but also incredibly relieved. I thought I'd have tons of time and a lot less stress and be able to concentrate more on weight loss.

Let's start a new paragraph, that one is getting huge. So I got laid off, my weight loss still stalled, I decided to start going to Weight Watchers meetings in November 2011. I lost about 5 more pounds, but in 2012 I literally only lost 3 pounds. That's better than gaining, of course, but not where I want to be. I started running more seriously in 2012, completed the Couch-to-5k app and am on week 7 of 5k-to-10k. My workouts and tracking are much ore consistent and I met some wonderfully inspiration ladies in my meetings (especially See Cupcake Run, whom I am most creepily copying her LIFE, so I can hopefully be as successful as her), so 2012 wasn't a total wash.

Something my awesome WW leader said helped change my perspective: "If you focus on the results, you'll never change. If you focus on changes, you'll see results" (Jack Dixon) That really hit home. I need to be consistent with healthy habits. If the changes become part of my routine, results will happen.

Last month was great and awful. It started with being really consistent and losing 3.8 lbs one week (that was with going negative in my points, but also doing lots of activity). Then PMS, winter depression, holidays, travelling and a cold knocked me on my ass. I managed to make it through all that to today only gaining .8 lbs. I'm almost over my cold and looking forward to/slightly dreading getting back to running. I'm SO close to beating this plateau. I want to finally get a weight watchers charm! (I have the sticking-with-it clapping hands, but that's it.)

So here I am. Starting a blog so I can ramble away about weight, food, why I am the way I am, without boring the pants off everyone I know. I want to stay accountable, I want to post here with real progress pictures and I want that to motivate me to make real progress! 

I don't look as awful as the above pictures all the time! Just wanted you to know that. I'm vain.