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.

Stress and The Scale

Something y'all may not know about me is I am a biologist. So when I hear something that pertains to the body I typically understand it. This makes losing weight a little easier for me, not much mind you, but a little bit. So stress, stress is a bad, bad thing, but no one can ever be stress free. For sure not me, a college student with several jobs and a sick mom, so stress is a part of my life. Unfortunately stress does raise cortisol levels and cortisol is a steroid hormone that is released in response to low blood sugar (skipping meals) and stress. All cortisol does is try to increase blood sugar, and it tells your body "hey we are starving when we do get food store it as fat" because fat is a quick easy energy storage device in the body. This is a great hormone if your a nomadic person with weeks between meals, however most of us are fairly seditory whose next meal is a drive-thru away. All that being said our stress in our lives is very real and when you are trying to lose weight it is something we have to deal with.
Here is a plus, exercising produces serotonin this is an amazing stress reliever and this will help lower your cortisol levels, but what happens when the exercising is causing the stress. For me it is the scale, now in the beginning of my journey I weighed myself before I started working out and then did it once every three months. In the beginning my weight loss was suuuuuuupppppeeerrrr sloooooow, I will explain why in a later post. So when i saw that first 20 pounds i was so happy. However this summer I started going hard to the gym, and I started weighing my self more, like once a week more and this is bad. Your body weight fluctuates sooooo much. Weighing once a week is insanity don't do it, learn from my mistakes. Weigh in once every two weeks or even better once a month. Or don't weigh in at all, let your doctor do your weighing at your regular check up, just workout and enjoy the shrinking inches and dropping pants sizes. Don't let the scale stress you out, there is so much real stress in your life there is no need to add to it. You will be happier for it I promise!