No weight gained or lost means it's time for a cleanse...

Hey fools,

Well, I thought about not blogging at all today, but for some reason I feel like it makes me feel better about maintaining my weight (aka not losing any) when I write about it at least.

So...if you hadn't guessed already, I'm still at 191. Fucking a.

I go back to Memphis a week from tomorrow, so this calls for desperate measures. I'm going to do a cleanse.

If I could afford one of the pre-made juice cleanses from TJ's or Whole Foods, I would absolutely do one of those. But um....$80-150 per day? No thank you! We also don't have a juicer...so................ Master Cleanse it is!!! I want to make one last-ditch effort to drop some lbs and feel refreshed before I head back to Memphis, for multiple reasons. One of the biggest ones is that I know I'll be eating crap (but DELICIOUS) food the entire time I'm there, so I kind of want to start with as clean of a slate as possible.

I find it funny that for as controversial as this particular cleanse is, it's pretty much the only one that's SO well-known. Basically, you do a salt-flush every morning (gross), drink 6-12 glasses of lemon juice, maple syrup (grade b), and cayenne pepper throughout the day, and an herbal laxative tea at night. I was originally going to do it for 5 days, Saturday-Wednesday, since you need to "ease into it" for 3 days before, but my dad talked me down to 3 because I'll be flying on Thursday and, well, I don't really feel like spending an entire flight in the bathroom.

I've been doing a LOT of research on it because there's so many things I've found that contradict each other. For example, some say you're supposed to mix the juice with purified water, others say filtered, and others say distilled. Wtf? I didn't even realize there was a difference between the 3!

Also, some say to pre-make your juice, while others say that pre-mixing it causes the cayenne to "steep" like tea and get extremely spicy. I think I'll err on the side of caution with that one, because I'm super-sensitive to heat already, and just pre-mix the lemon juice and maple syrup and mix with the water and cayenne as I go.

This is one of the better resources I've found so far.

Anyhoo, at least the majority of the time on the cleanse will be on the weekend and I'll be home. Hopefully by Monday when I go to work I'll be used to it enough.

Have any of you ever done the Master Cleanse??? How did it go? Can you offer any words of wisdom for me? Also, distilled, purified, or filtered? I'm thinking I'll just get jugs of the distilled water, but want to make sure I'm doing it right!

Anyway, that's all I got today. I hope you're all having a great week!

2 pounds down (again)

Happy hump day everyone :)

I'm in a GREAT mood today because I found out I've lost 2 pounds since the last time I linked up for weigh-in Wednesday 2 weeks ago. I know that's nothing to write home about, but I was really disappointed in myself when I saw how much weight I had gained.

Let me recap this for you....

1 year and a few months ago I started my fitness/weight loss journey. In about 6 months, I had lost 20 pounds (from 203 to 183). I maintained that--give or take a couple of pounds--for a long while, but at some point recently I gained 10 pounds back.

Now I'm at 191. I want to get back into the 180s by this time next week, and never ever get back into the 190s again. I was able to do that with the 200s, so why shouldn't I be able to do that with the 190s? Baby steps.

Here's some pictures of what I looked like before I started caring about what I was eating and how much I was working out:

 

I was about 200 pounds and a size 14.

 

By April-May of last year I had gotten down to 183 and a size 12:

 

 

 

Now I'm at 191. Still fitting into my size 12s (thank God), but not necessarily comfortably.

 

 



 



I've tried to be better about my eating, but I'm still not tracking it. It's just not my thing. I think I do a pretty decent amount on most days of being balanced, and I've cut way back on the drinking (this weekend was an exception because of Klarisa being here, so we went wine-tasting). I've also been doing 30 minutes and about 2.8-3 miles on the elliptical at the gym, followed by weights. So hopefully it's all smooth sailing from here.

 

 

YEAH RIGHT.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a completely unrelated note, I made the decision to put down my sweet kitty Jewel this weekend. I know i wrote about her before, because we were struggling with deciding what to do with her for a while. It finally got to the point where it was obvious she was miserable, and had no idea when she was going to the bathroom. She was 16 years old, and I know she missed my dog Buddy who she literally grew up with. It was honestly the hardest thing I've ever had to do so far in my life, which I guess is a blessing because in the grand scheme of things it's not that bad, and everyone has to do it at some point. But still. It's been a struggle the last few days and I'm sure it will continue to be one, dealing with the decision I made.

 

 

Anyhoo, i'll stop at that. Hope y'all have a great week!

Storytime.

Happy Friday!!!

I know, I'm not getting much better about blogging regularly. Slow and steady, people. Slow and steady.

But I do have some things to be happy about today, so I figured I'd go ahead and link up for 5 on Friday.

1. One of my long-lost best friends from high school is in town!!! She moved to Houston after we graduated, but we kept in touch all through my time in college. She's still in school, and she's only been back one time since high school, and that was a year and a half ago. In college, though, we met up in New Orleans one weekend, and while this picture isn't your typical NOLA photo, it's one of my favorites:

At that time, my dad was working on a barge out of Houma (about an hour from New Orleans). So we went to visit him. And we had to wear hard-hats the entire time on the Barge. Good times!

Anyhoo, I'm super excited to see her. Obviously I'm taking her wine tasting.

2. I know I brag about my sweet Winnie-pooh all the time, but she's just been extra cute lately.

Obviously Scout's a little jealous of Winnie's cute new dress.

Correction: 2 new dresses.

Her favorite sleeping position

3. I finally found an online store that sells CND Vinylux--and it's legit! Remember back when I used to be obsessed with getting my nails done every 2 weeks? I always got CND Shellac manicures. Toward the end of my obsession (aka toward the end of me being able to afford getting shellac mani's every 2 weeks), my nail girl showed me this new product CND came out with called Vinylux. It's actual nail polish, not shellac, that's made to last a week without chipping. Back then they only had a few colors and I was her first guinea pig for it. She painted my toes with it and it last, no lie, 2 weeks without chipping. ON MY TOES.

Needless to say I've thought about it ever since. I found it on beauty.com a couple of weeks ago. I tried to contain myself and start with just 3 colors (they've probably produced 7 times as many colors as they had when I tried it a year ago).

Powder My Nose, Lobster Roll, and Romantique (used to be my go-to color)

Here's what Lobster Roll looks like on my nails 2 days after being painted (usually when my nails have at least 1 chip already with normal polish):

I do wish it was a little thicker-looking, like Shellac, but I don't think that's possible without a UV-lamp, honestly. So I'm gonna go on-record and say I love it. And I will definitely be getting more.

4. Ummmm less than one month till MEMPHIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

5. This is kind of more of a story than anything, but it made me happy, and it made me think about some things.

I've been going to the gym with the friend-boy, and he's all about lifting. I think he needs to do some cardio, but whatever. I know the value of lifting, so I've been trying to let him show me some stuff. The first time I tried squats with a bar was at my gym, and it was on a controlled machine, not a free-weight. I didn't do perfect, but I wasn't struggling too bad. Well yesterday I went to the boy's gym, which made me uncomfortable to begin with. It's a HUGE gym and the weight room was literally full of men. There was 1 other girl besides me. 1. And I'll get to her in a moment.

I was doing pretty well until we got to do squats. Like I said, it was a free-weight, and the bar felt super wonky and I couldn't control it, let alone focus on having decent form in a squat. The boy isn't very patient and probably should have thought about the fact that I've never done a freaking free-weighted squat before, and I got frustrated. So I sat down and played on my phone while he continued his stupid squats. After a couple of minutes, that one other girl that was in the weight room--who was in exceptionally great shape and working out with her boy thing--came up to me. She was super-friendly and asked if that was the first time I've ever done squats before. I told her I'd done them before but on a machine, not with a free-weight, and she offered to help me from a girl's point-of-view. Not gonna lie, at first I was a little embarrassed. But then I figured...it's a gym, everyone's there for the same thing, and she and I were, like I said, the only girls in that part of the gym, and girls are way more judgmental than guys, so I really didn't have too much to be embarrassed over. She helped me for a good 5 minutes and then went and got something called an "easy-bar" or something like that...it's a curved bar that's not nearly as wide as the one we were using, that contours to the shape of your shoulders. We started with just a 10-pound bar to get the form down, and eventually I got it. Obviously my squats weren't perfect, but I wasn't pissed off about doing them or embarrassed. I guess the point of this whole story is, I'm glad that girl came over and offered to help. Gyms can be really intimidating. And I know there's a fine-line you have to walk when it comes to determining if you should go say something to a stranger about either something they're doing, to offer them help, or to commend them or tell them you've been where they're at and they should be proud of themselves. Well in this case I'm glad she did.

Alright, that's all I got. I hope everyone has a great weekend!!!

Worst weigh-in Wednesday of all time.

Gooooood morning fools.

Well I weighed myself this morning to find I've gained almost 10 pounds over the last few weeks and I'm back up to 193. I almost cried.

I haven't completely been eating like crap, but I've been drinking too much. I can admit that. It all kind of came to a head on Sunday when I day-drank to such an extreme that I got sick and burst a blood vessel in my eye. SO that looks cool. I also felt hungover for pretty much 2 whole days. I also spent ALL OF MY MONEY. What came over me, I'm not sure.

So now that that 2 day hangover is over, I'm starting fresh. I'm going to eat well, I'm going to work out diligently, and I'm not going to drink until I get back to Memphis the first week of May.

I'm really feeling down on myself and I don't know what's going on. I have these yo-yo fluctuations with not only my diet and exercise habits, but also with my self-esteem.

Sorry this post has been extremely depressing and not exciting at all. Praying that by next week I'll have magically dropped the 10 pounds I seem to have gained. Womppp wommmmmmp.

 

I'll leave you all with this GIF :)

 

 



5 on Friday again!

Happy Friday, homeskilletz.

It's been a long time since I've participated in 5 on Friday--hell, it's been a long time since I've done much of anything blog-related--so today, I'm linking up.



1. This week I completed my 2nd and final application for grad school!!!

I have officially applied for the MBA Programs at Arizona State and the University of Nebraska (online, of course).





Please feel free to send some prayers up that I get accepted into one of them!



2. I've been trying really hard to be more dilligent about working out and eating better. I even let my marine friend-boy kick my ass in the gym the last 2 days. Literally, he kicked my ass. My ass hurts. My legs hurt. My arms hurt. I was mad. But I need to start lifting and doing cardio if I want to see results.

3. Some exciting news...I'm hopefully going to be moving out soon! Like a real grownup!!! I need to get 2 small credit card debts paid off which I think I can do in 2 months, and I'm going to have to stick to a super-tight budget...but I think I can do it.

Generally my attitude toward being frugal and sticking to a budget goes something like this...



But I know I can do it if I put my mind to it, and I know that it's time for me to get on my feet as much as possible.

4. I got an iPhone 5S this weekend!!!



Yes I got a lifeproof pink camo case. It's not terribly different from the 4S (most of the big differences like the faster processor and the touch ID really don't matter at all to me), but the internet speed is MUCH faster since it's 4G not 3G.

5. I have to give a shoutout to the amazing weather San Diego has been having. In 2 weeks I've probably gotten 5 or 6 shages tanner. I'm not complaining.




This is my cousin we call Tooty.

Alright. I guess that's all I got. Hope y'all have a great weekend!

What? A blog post? What's that?

Holy s&*$ fools!!! It's been a hot minute since I've posted anything on here.



If anyone is even still slightly interested in my mostly-boring life, I apologize. I really want to get back into blogging regularly again. I'm still struggling to get into a real groove/schedule with working out/dieting, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it.

As far as things at work go, everything is great! I'm happy with my job for the first time since I graduated college. It's a weird feeling, actually. I'm still broke as a joke, but isn't everyone my age?

I re-joined my gym and have been going and doing circuits. Now that the time has changed I want to start doing 1 or 2 runs after week each week, since it stays light for so long here. I'm sure I'm basically going to be starting at square 1 with running again, because it's been so long since I've done it for longer than a mile...but oh well.

I did see this girl working out in the circuit room last week though who literally had the exact body I would love to have. She wasn't skinny at all. She was probably a size 8 or 10. Her legs were actually probably as big as mine, but they were SOLID MUSCLE. It made me think about all the attention thigh gaps have been getting lately...



So anyway. I'd like to have her body. Good luck with that, right!?



So I wish i had more to update y'all on but I really don't. Other than this one little thing....


I'M GOING BACK TO MEMPHIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks to my tax return, I was able to buy a roundtri ticket back to Memphis for one of my best friend's weddings. I'll be there May 1st-6th, which isn't nearly long enough, but I'm excited either way :)



I'm literally counting down the days. The next 47 days cannot go by fast enough.



That's all I got today. Sorry I suck so bad.

Life lately?

Hey fools. I hate that I'm averaging 1 post a week. I promise once I get on a normal schedule (see below) and get my gym membership I'll be a regular blogger oncemore!

Things at work have been great. I'm finally almost caught up on everything, I just have to get certified with some software and I'll be good to go. However, I'm still working my old schedule until my replacement starts working and gets fully trained--so probably until the end of next week. This is annoying because coming in at noon when my job now involves communicating with demanding meeting planners from all over the country means that when I do come in, I have about 40 emails from earlier on in the day wondering why I'm not answering them. And by the time I do finally get caught up on everything, that meeting planner may be out of their office for the rest of the day and I won't hear back from them until the next morning. And the cycle continues.

Sorry for the rant.

Moving on...

This will be the first ever Valentine's Day where I actually have a Valentine. OK, there was one year in college, but he worked til like 10 o'clock so we 'celebrated' by going to Red Lobster the night before. Class act, right here, y'all! This year the friendboy and I will be staying at a nice hotel in downtown and going to a Spanish restaurant that has a pre-fixe menu and a flamenco dinner show. I'm pretty excited!!!

And then on Sunday I'm hosting a Valentine's Day girls night. Basically just a girls night / dessert potluck, where the desserts are themed around pink and hearts. I'll try my darndest to be a good lil blogger and take pics (because I'm alwys so good at that...)

I'll definitely be making this Sangria:



It seems pretty simple--pomegranate juice, 7 up, strawberries and white wine (although I've never had the Apothic white blend, only red....can anyone attest to that being good???).

I also like the idea of making this red velvet sheet cake:



We shall see how it all turns out!

I wanna try and get crafty with some cutey little straw thing or something, but sometimes I wait til the last minute and just say eff it.

Anyhoo. I know this was all just a jumbled mess of nothing really important, so I'll stop now.

Happy Valentine's Day!