I'm 31 today. I've been on The Plan for a year and a month, I've lost 140 pounds, we live in Louisville, I'm applying for a grant to partially fund a photography project that I've already been working on for a couple months (anyone want to write me a letter of recommendation?), B loves her job, I have a new cute significantly shorter haircut and I love my new MacBook beyond words. Things are good. It's scary to say that, but of course I freely say when things are bad so I should step up to the plate and say when things are good. Things are good right now.
I'm sure it's a combination of factors (significant weight loss, aging, happiness quotient, etc) but my taste in clothes has changed quite a bit of the last year or so. It's hard for big girls to find cute clothes, much less really big girls. Starting this spring though I fell into a comfortable shopping routine that revolved mostly around a store called Avenue. I only like about, oh 35% of the stuff they sell, but I really like that 35%. I've gotten several really, really cute peasant style tops, floral skirts, a few blouses and a couple other things there. Turns out I'm kind of hippie chick when it comes to clothes. Who knew? The problem is that soon I'll be too small (such an insane statement, I'm going to be too small for something, insanity I tell you) to shop there. I'm already in the smallest size they carry in both shirts and skirts. I've still got a couple pant sizes to go (thanks hips!) but soon enough even that's going to be an issue. As I said it's a challenge to find cute clothes as a very large woman but if you're a large woman who doesn't really like to shop it's actually liberating in some regards. Basically you have the Misses or Women's Departments in department stores which carry plus size clothes that your grandmother might wear or you have shops that cater only to plus size women like Lane Bryant and Avenue. So if you're like me your shopping consists of going to either Lane Bryant or Avenue and if you're really desperate then maybe both. Now though most of the clothes in those stores are too large for me. This puts me in an uncomfortable situation, namely I have to find new places to buy clothes. B has always been smaller than me so her exceptionally impressive weight loss put her in the "find new clothes stores" position a while ago. So I've now been in to several of the stores I never even glanced at before. B has found J Jill to be her mecca. It's a bit expensive but it's the exact kind of clothes that B loves, it's a match made in clothes heaven. She and I are also liking a small percentage of things at Cold Water Creek (though that store tends to skew toward a more middle aged demographic). So that's two stores to go to but neither have the hippieish-wear I'm digging of late. Now clearly I can't wear flowing hippie skirts and peasant tops all the time so not only do I need a supplier of those things but I also need to find more clothes in general. Suggestions anyone? I guess I'm going to have start looking in department stores and all the other stores in the mall I've never been in before. Seriously, any suggestions would be great, online stores would be good too. Thanks in advance for any help. Also feel free to recommend any young, hip clothes and very cool t-shirts. I need clothes people.
I'm writing this to you from my brand new MacBook. I decided many months ago that my next computer would be a Mac. I'd grown tired of Microsoft products for many. many reasons and wanted to make a switch to Apple products. I'd planned to buy a MacBook a couple months ago but money grew tight so I decided I would wait until the holidays to buy a MacBook. Because I have the very best baby in the world I don't have to wait. I turn 31 on Friday and for my birthday B bought me a MacBook. She gave it to me early because it came early and she couldn't help herself. First impressions:
- Insanely quick and simple setup. I was up and running almost instantly.
- Beautiful packaging and a beautiful machine. The operating system is beautiful as well and everything from applications to websites is much more beautiful than on Windows machines.
- It's going to take some getting used to some of the different things and more importantly I think I'm going to have to buy a book to help me learn some stuff. Normally I just figure things out on my own but some things are very, very different from Windows and I'd like to decrease my learning time as much as possible. Jason recommended The Missing Manual series of books so I think I'll check them out.
- I got an Airport Extreme Base Station. Setting up a new wireless network with including wireless printing from the MacBook and wireless printing from the Dell laptop was entirely painless. It was about 6 million times easier than setting up a wireless network with Windows. It was so easy I'd like to send flowers to the Apple Corporate offices.
Something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is how I'm seen now that I've lost 132 pounds. How I see myself, how strangers see me, how my family who saw me at my heaviest now see me, how my family who saw me heavy but not nearly my heaviest see me now. Used to be, save very, very few exceptions, I was always the fattest person in the room. There was a certain...comfort isn't the right word but almost a feeling of comfortable acceptance. "I am the fattest person in this room. I don't have to compare myself to anyone else, I don't have to do anything. I am what I am and this is what it is." Now, I'm mostly not the fattest person in the room. A lot of times I'm the person in the room who can bench press the most, knows what vegetables are currently in season, and walked anywhere from 1-4 miles before the other people in the room got out of bed. Clearly that's different from being the fattest person in the room. Clearly I don't miss being the fattest person in the room but I do somehow miss knowing where I am in relation to people. I can't look at myself and see how I look in the context of other people. Would strangers describe me as fat, heavyset, thick, healthy, strong? It doesn't really matter. I guess I'm just curious.
All of this coincides with moving back to Louisville, where I'm so much happier, so much more content and so much more confident. So do people treat me better because I'm 130 pounds lighter or because I treat them better because I'm happier? Are people more friendly because they aren't repulsed by my appearance or because people are just nicer here. Many questions but not so many answers when it comes to strangers. Family is a little clearer.
At my brother's wedding I saw a lot of family members I hadn't seen for a long time. There are very varying degrees of long time though. So I hadn't seen in 8 months, some I hadn't seen in 4 years, some I hadn't seen in 9 years, some I hadn't seen in over 15 years. Some of these people have been present in my life at moments where I was getting bigger and bigger. The ones who saw me at my heaviest and hadn't seen me since I started my healthy lifestyle last year seemed to only want to talk about my weight. I had an aunt who repeatedly demanded I tell her the number of pounds I'd lost. As we've discussed I'm not comfortable with that (though I tell you people freely enough don't I?) so I repeated my stock answer of "a little" over and over to her. She wasn't terribly amused. She didn't ask anything else about my life, our new house, my photography career, nothing. This massive weight loss is apparently the only thing about me that interests her at all.
Family members and family friends who hadn't seen me in 15 years didn't ask about it at all. They commented that I looked wonderful but I chalked that up to the terribly cute outfits I was wearing for all wedding related hoopla including fantastic accessories. Family members who saw me when I was 130 pounds heavier said I looked great but the only meaning I took from that is that "you look so much better 130 pounds lighter" instead of "you look pretty in that skirt." Did they mean either of those things? I don't know, that's just how I instantly took it.
Perhaps the most interesting exchange at the wedding was with a male cousin I hadn't seen since my grandmother's funeral many years ago. I was quite heavy at my grandmother's funeral maybe 30 or 40 pounds less than my heaviest weight. So let's say a hundred pounds more than I weigh now. Since I last saw him this cousin has gone completely bald and gained a significant amount of weight. The baldness threw me. I didn't pay much attention to the weight, until he brought it up. He came up to me and said something about he didn't know I would recognize him. I said well yeah the bald head threw me off for a minute. He sighed and said "yeah there's that and the extra 30 pounds" in an almost apologetic manner. It was a short exchange but one that never would have happened a year ago. No one apologizes to the really fat girl about their extra 30 pounds.
Some family friends told me I looked like I did in high school, others said they would never have known me if we passed on the street. The interactions I liked best were the ones where my weight didn't come up at all.
I've now lost 132 pounds. This summer has been an interesting time for my weight loss/healthy journey. At the beginning of summer I was losing a crazy amount of weight a week (like 5-7 pounds a week) because I was doing so much work around the house and particularly the yard but not eating anymore than normal. Then came family visits, friend visits, headfirst diving into the Louisville dining scene, a couple Maker's Mark nights, and the hot sign being on at the Krispy Kreme. So then the scales stopped moving. Even when the number on the scale wouldn't budge I knew I was making good progress in my health goals. My upper body strength has grown significantly (bags of mulch are heavy), my overall fitness level is higher, and I'm just really active on a daily basis. So though I can't say I wasn't frustrated when the scales wouldn't budge I knew it was just a plateau that I could work through and not the end or the beginning of anything. Now the scales are moving again, our eating out is back to a normal level and our healthy eating habits are right back on track. I should mention that earlier in spring I had set a min-goal of reaching the 130 pounds lost mark by my birthday. Clearly I've exceeded that and I couldn't be happier about it.
Speaking of birthdays, it is that time of year again. On 27 July I turn 31. Hmmm. I don't have a lot of thoughts or emotions on turning 31. This time last year I was in such a depressed, miserable place emotionally, physically, psychologically, it's good to now just be back to "yay a birthday. Presents, dinners with loved ones, cake, good times." instead of "my god I'm 30 years old and a complete and total failure." Definitely an upgrade.
