Going Out and Having Fun!! (With No Guilt)

So in case you were unaware I am a young single girl (know any hot, professional, nice, younger guys send them my way please ;) ) anyway that being said I do go out occasionally for dinner and drinks sometimes a movie and I've had to learn how to go out and not feel guilty the next day about the calories I ingest.

First I'm gonna tackle the movies, I don't snack at movies at all. No popcorn, No candy and I buy an overpriced bottle of water to drink. I know it sounds impossible, but honestly you are going to ingest 500 plus calories mindlessly during the movie and you just don't need it. First rule of thumb don't go to the movies hungry. Eat dinner first whether at home or a restaurant those calories are going to be better for you calories (nutrient rich) than a bucket of popcorn and a pound of red hots and if you're full then the smells won't make you as hungry and it will be easier to say no. If you absolutely NEED popcorn get a small one, no extra butter, no extra salt, it's plenty buttery and plenty salty all on it's own.

Next drinks, drinking probably won't make you put on weight but it does inhibit weight loss. So here are few tips to drink caloricly responsibly (because we all know not to drink and drive right? I hope so!) Don't drink a whole lot, we don't need to plastered to have a good time, I have three drink maximum on a night out that's enough now I'm not able to drive, but I'm not falling down drunk and its probably about 400 calories I ingested here, that's my snack maximum for the day. Also if you get plastered and you feel like crud the next day you aren't gonna want to work out, so not only did you you drink lots and lots and lots of calories, you don't burn them off the next day, that is bad, bad , bad. So three drinks, no hang over and work out the next day! Now what should you drink? No beer, not even light beer, honestly beer is liquid bread, are you going to eat a whole loaf of bread while on a diet? NO, so don't drink it either. If you loooove beer, have one, only one and make it a light one. Clear alcohols are the best, light rums, vodka, gin these have the least amount of calories and are always good mixed with a diet drink. Margaritas, i love me a margarita, most restaurants have a skinny version, this is great! TGIFridays has two skinny margaritas both only 130 calories. This is how you don't blow your work out at the bar :)

Dining out. When you go to a restaurant be smart okay? First ask yourself how much do I eat out, if your answer is once or twice a month go for it, treat yourself don't worry about it, that Alfredo pasta is not gonna kill you, you are good the other 28-29 days out of the month. If your answer is more like mine and you go out to eat 3 to 4 times a week (dinners and lunches, I told you I had an active social calender) you need to be more aware of what you eat. Stay away from cream sauces and fried foods. Eat lots of salads (not salads with fried chicken on top) and soups. Soups are a good way to one fill you up because it has lots of water and not get a lot of calories. The soups need to broth based not cream based, so get the minestrone over the cream of potato soup. Sandwiches are good, anything covered in gravy is bad (I'm from the south). Baked potatoes are good, make sure it's small about 5 ounces if you get cheese no sour cream, if you get sour cream not cheese. Veggie plates are great, at Chilli's i get the veggie tacos, super good very filling and I don't eat all the tortillas. Skip the desert, get some coffee instead. :)

Can you go out and have fun? YES and you should. If all you do is work, gym, home you aren't living and the whole purpose of being healthy is to live a better life. I believe in living in the moment, so if I REALLY want some pasta and white sauce I'll get it, but i am also aware I will have to put an extra hour on the treadmill the next day to work it off. So go out, have fun, but have fun responsibly and you won't have to stress about the extra calories. Always go strong no matter what!! :)

Benchmarking Our Lives

So in case you didn't know I am six months away from turning 30, wow it's very crazy if you think about it. I'm not at a place in my life where i thought I would be when I was like 20. If you asked me at 20 where i would be at 30 I would've said I'd be, successful, employed, fabulous, living in a big city anywhere but in Texas, married, probably a couple of kids and a house. All of this is not where I am, I'm still in school, I'm single with no long-term relationship on the horizon, no children (besides my doggy children), still living in small town Texas, I do have jobs but not career type jobs and I'm still living with my parents. We tend to gauge our lives by where we are "supposed" to be and by where our friends are. I am at the age where my friends are getting married and having kids and at times I feel kinda left behind.

I don't want this to sound all woe is me, because that's not me. I love my life, I love who I am, I love what I've accomplished but I can't help but feel left out at times. I've decided to put my school kind off again this semester (I'm only going to go part time) because I really need to finish getting my final 80 lbs off before my 30th birthday in six months. I kind of feel like I'm prolonging my real life by doing this, but I also know it would be a wasted semester anyway.

Being on this journey I have learned about so much more than just how to lose weight and keep it off. This journey has taught me so much about life, love, relationships, people and how I fit into this world. I've reached a point in my life where a LOT of my close friends are finding their soul mates and getting married and are having babies, and I am happy for them but a part of me is like hey what about me! We tend to benchmark our lives, a lot like I mark my weight loss, however life does not work on a schedule. Even if I had finished school at 21 or 22 I still wouldn't be were my friends are in their personal lives because how can you share your life with someone if you don't know who you are? That was me my entire 20's, living day to day slowly sabotaging myself because I didn't know who I was.

" Life doesn't deal the hand you want, it deals the hand you need. Whether you believe it, accept it, want it or not, it is what it is. Be content with your own hand. STOP trying to rush life, just let it happen. Learn to live out the life dealt. What will be, will be!"-Antonio Talbert

I think that quote is perfect, one of my best friend's in the world who is marrying her Prince Charming in May constantly talks about wanting to send a thank you card to all her Ex-Boyfriends thanking them for not wasting her time and teaching her what not to look for. I think this is kind of great. I don't regret anything in my life, because I learned from it. I learned I was really unhappy at 430 pounds and that i wasn't living I was existing. No more existing for me, I'm going to live. I'm going to have that amazing full filling career, plan and had have that ridiculously expensive wedding to my Prince Charming when he does decide to appear and sweep me off my feet and I will have a couple of great kids. I just probably won't have them by 30 and that's okay. It's my life and I make the rules.

Life is hard, no one promises you happiness you have to find it. Do I know exactly what I want? Not completely, but I know I know myself a little bit better now at 245lbs than I did at 430lbs, so things change and I'm single at 29 years old and that's okay. I'm almost done with school, am I gonna go to medical school like was my mom's dream? Nope and I'm totally okay with that I'm gonna work on making me happy and when I am happy that's when I know this journey will be over. So here is to the next six months, because by July 12th, the day I turn 30 I will be 180 pounds (or darn close to it) and I will know more about me and I will be one day closer to the rest of my life. So here's to never settling, never giving up (or figuring out) our dreams and going strong no matter what.

Having Fun and Learning to No Longer be the Fat Girl

Oh my gosh, it has been five days since I posted something, I suck. In my defence I have added an hours worth of lap swimming to my workout routine and have been EXHAUSTED at the end of the day, but none the less I will do better I promise!
This is not what I want to talk about today, I want to talk about my night out last night. So me and to of my best girl friends (sorority sisters actually) went out of town for an evening to celebrate one of us moving to Japan. We went to the Riverwalk in San Antonio and had an amazing time at the end of the night we ended up at this amazing little bar. There were two really cute guys at the end of the bar and they bought me and one of my friends (the other is pregnant so no drinking for her) drinks. At one point me and my friend (who is a beautiful size 6) got up to dance (we were very tipsy and just having fun) well one of the guys comes over to us to dance and I automatically assume he wants to dance with her, because fat girl mentality, who would want to dance with me? Well he did want to dance with me. Of course he should, I am pretty, fun and who wouldn't want to spend time with me.
So I've gotten a lot of the weight off and now I need to work on my confidence. I need to believe that a guy might want to dance three songs with me and buy me drinks (even though i didn't give him my number, still to shy) and put myself out there a little bit more. Like the weight loss, the confidence will come in time! :) So I'm going to continue to go strong no matter what!

Dating and New Challenges

So being thinner opens up all kinds of new doors (now that I can actually FIT through a door mind you). One of those is active dating. Now i dated when I was bigger, had men that loved me and that I loved, heck I almost got married, but dating when you're really big is different than when you date thinner. I think really big girls are sure of two things when we date, one lots of guys will sleep with us but not take us out in public and two if they do take us out in public this means he REALLY likes us.
Now I'm not skinny yet, don't get me wrong, but I am becoming what my mom lovingly calls more "normal sized" (the average pants size in the United States for a woman is a 14, i am currently a 16 go me!) and more men are attracted to me. Great! Right? Maybe? um hmmm.. I'm not so sure. Dating now is WAY more confusing than it has ever been in my life.
Now I go out on a really great first date (or dozens) and I think "wow we are totally hitting it off, we're out in public (400 pound girl train of thought) he must like me" and then I don't sleep with him and he never calls again, I'm left thinking "wait we had dinner, a walk on the beach, a great kiss, whats wrong here?" I'm learning the smaller I get the less up front men are about their motives in seeing me. When I was big, a guy would be like "hey I wanna have sex with you but no I can't take you around my friends" now they take me around their friends hoping, I guess, to impress me into bed, and when it doesn't work they don't call (or occasionally it works and then it doesn't last for whatever reason and rarely do they give a freaking reason).
Now I'm confused when I get dumped. Recently a guy I really cared about dumped me, we had been seeing each other awhile (like nine months) but i was convinced he didn't want to be seen in public with me. I never asked, because honestly what big girl wants rejection. Well I get to the size I am now and he leaves me for a girl bigger than me and I'm left confused. Because the only reason a man might not want me is my weight. Right? Wrong, and I'm slowly learning that. Everyone always said beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I gotta say i was kind of convinced that no one would ever REALLY love me at 400 pounds and once I dropped it magically everyone would love me. I was so wrong on both accounts.
So I've learned dating sucks, at any weight, being smaller is not making it any easier. Sure there are more men attracted to me, but not necessarily more good men. So now I guess I gotta kiss even more frogs to find my prince? But goodness frogs are slimy, and here's to hoping my prince is worth all the icky, gooey frogs.