Adjusted Reality

Sometimes all it takes is a visual reminder smacking you in the face to make you wake up and stop being a grump.  I was approximately the same scale weight here (February yelp party, pre-half marathon training)…

as I am here (just last week, July yelp elite party).

This last few months may not have been great for weight loss, but I look completely different, imo (in a good way, and I’m not just talking about the horrible hair day vs good hair day).  I used these pictures simply because it was the same professional-ish photographer using the same camera.  Zliten looks a lot smaller too and he hasn’t lost much weight either (but has been building muscle for sure).

I’m also thrilled because I weighed in at 152.0 today – lowest in a while.  I also feel like el piggy with how I’m eating, so I’m glad it’s working.  I also, also went for a nice 5k fartlek (hehe I said fartlek) run outside this morning (it was a tinge under 80 and humid when I started out – much nicer than it’s been for a while) and made a promise to myself to do at LEAST 1 – 5k distance or longer run per week.  I can’t go a month without that again.  It’s been nice to recover from my race but it’s been long enough.  If we are what we repeatedly do, I am no longer a runner.  And I don’t like that.  I’m ok being a short distance/inside runner for the summer, but as horrible as pushing through those 3.1 miles was, and how beat I felt after, I feel WONDERFUL now (yay runner’s high) and I need to work on improving my short times for the relay in Sept (and I’m GOING to beat 25 minutes for my 5k SOMEDAY).

I said I wasn’t going to yak about the new diet tweaks but this is my blog, so I can make (and break) the rules.  I’ll be brief though (maybe).  I just want to share how weird it is.  I feel like I’m eating constantly and at the end of the day, what would make my ratios perfect is a shotglass full of oil.  So incredibly odd.  I’ve already gotten rid of diet bread, the next thing to go is diet dressings and diet cheese.  Instead of turkey no cheese I’m eating italians with salami, pepperoni, and proscuito and jalapeno muenster.  I’m mowing down on nuts before and after dinner.  I’m eating 300 calorie builders bars for breakfast without any alteration to my day.  And I’m at the lowest weight I’ve been in at least a month.

Keeping the carbs where they’re at is no problem.  I’d be rebelling if I had to reduce, but eating my normal 1300 calories of carbs in a 1700 calorie diet is fine.  More protien is sorta a challenge, but I’m doing ok with my 1 lb bag of jerky and greek yogurts and protien bars and such.  Fat, people?  Why is it so hard to eat fat?  I trained myself to stay away from fat because it had so many calories and I wanted the calories I had to count.  Now – I just keep telling Zliten, “I need more fat” and going around the kitchen reading labels and squealing, “Ooh, look this has a lot of fat, that’s awesome!” and shoving it in my mouth.  It’s rather bizarre.  Yesterday was the closest I came to perfect at 45/30/25 and 1702 calories.  I’m just going to have to ease into it.

For the first time in 4 years, someone has asked me to do my job.  I’ve held the Associate Producer title for that long, but it’s been in name only.  I’m always been pinch hitter for something else.  Other hats I’ve worn have included Lead Designer, Community Manager, Audio Lead, Writer, and I’ve done my fair share of marketing/PR stuff, I’ve done grunt design work, and I’ve done some minor photoshop image editing work.  What I’ve never been asked to do is make a gigantic all encompasing schedule for the whole team from nothing and do the day to day tracking of it.  That’s what I’ve been doing for a few weeks (and it’s very “hurry up and wait”, so that’s why you’ve seen a lot of posts).  At first I was a little upset because what I was doing before was much more fun, but I am getting such a kick out of the fact that someone actually asked me to do MY JOB that I’m ok now.

I need a mini-vacation sometime before the shit hits the fan at work (September) and I have more major wedding stuff to deal with (also September).  I’m thinking a 4 day weekend in August sometime sounds grand.  A trip to the waterpark *squeeeee*, a night or two at a fancy hotel downtown Austin, or maybe somewhere within a short drive, or just take all that money, stay at home, and do all sorts of fun weekday things that we can’t normally do.  What would you do if you had 4 days, and were semi-strapped for cash (so no long weekends in Paris or cruises), and just wanted to do something different than normal life?

Tomorrow, a coherent, one subject post and absolutely no lolcats.  I promise (until I change my mind).