Happy New Year!

9/5/12 Removed the photo. Sorry.

I hope that everyone has a happy and very safe New Year's Eve.  Please do not drink and drive. Use a designated driver or call a cab.

I will be staying home to avoid all the crazies out there who don't use a DD. Hopefully the AdAmAn club doesn't wimp out like a bunch of cry-babies this year. Climb, damnit CLIMB!!!!!

If they make it, I'll get to see something like this:

I wish I could claim this was my picture. But I can't, it's by a photographer named Mark Reis. The "window" is in Garden of the Gods (it's the Siamese Twins rock formation if you wanted to know). And I have my own pictures of and through it. But nothing this amazing.

So that's it for 2011! I will see you in 2012!

 

 

 

P.S. I took Katie J's advice and got a signature from mylivesignature.com I had to play with it for quite a while so it looked good. I like the letters slanted by not that there's a huge chunk of black at the left side of it. Tried to crop it but couldn't. Damn.

The Lack Of Craft

So I haven't posted anything crafty. I have posted three times about weight loss and have about three drafts saved in various stages of being written. I don't want this to be a niche blog. I've tried that before splitting things up and having as many as four blogs at one time, but something always faded into the background. I'm not exciting enough (or motivated enough) to maintain separate blogs.

Anyways, craft-wise not much is happening right now. I'm working on a scarf and have been for almost three weeks. A couple days after Thanksgiving I made this pretty scarf out of black and purple fuzzy yarn. Then I washed it. And it came out looking like a Muppet reject. So horrible. The fuzz got all matted down and it was just bad. I still had enough yarn left to make a replacement scarf and that's what I've been working on for three weeks. I crochet a row or two then wander off and find something else to do. Maybe I need a vacation from crochet?

I don't have any real sewing projects going on right now. Have tons of fabric and patterns waiting to be made into something, but in my usual style, I'm procrastinating.

And quilting? Well earlier this year, I made this really pretty queen-size quilt top out of Footprints-themed fabric (the poem about footprints in the sand) and then I started hand-quilting it. And I haven't touched it since May. At first, it was because the quilting rack I was using decided to disintegrate on me. But my dad bought me two very nice quilting hoops that are easier for me to manipulate. So now, it's just flat out laziness keeping me from working on it. It's also my first big project. I've only quilted little pot holder size items. Maybe I bit off more than I can chew with a queen-size quilt.

Nothing else crafty going on.

I need to find my signature way to end my posts. Ideas?

The Plan

Isn't it just the way with the world that all of a sudden WHAM! You're hit with a whole bunch (or three in this case) of ideas for blog posts all at once? Well I guess I'll write one out and then save the other two for a rainy day since I'm trying not to flood the blog with a boatload of posts all at one time. So picking randomly out of the post ideas.... (Or not so randomly actually) I'll talk about how I'm going to lose weight.

So if you haven't been here before... I suggest you read my post from a couple days ago:
A Fat Story (It opens in a new window, so you can read it then flip back to this one). Its about how I got here.

Here's a quick recap of the most important information:

Current Weight: 267.2 lbs

Highest Weight Ever: 274.5 lbs on Nov. 13, 2011

Goal Weight: 145 lbs

So just how am I going to lose 122.2 lbs?

The most basic answer is that I'm going to count calories and exercise. Yeah, that's pretty vague. But it's the truth. Nothing super fancy or some fad diet for me.

For calorie counting, I'm doing a step-down method. At the end of October/beginning of November, I food journaled everything I ate for about two weeks. I counted my calories without restricting them and found my average daily intake. It was about 3400 calories a day. So I started with concentrating on getting my calories below 3000 a day. Then I started stepping down my calories. I decrease my calories by 100 at a time when I feel ready to progress to the next step. Generally, it's about three or four consecutive days of being below my daily goal. Today I stepped down to 2400 after just two days because I felt ready, anxious even, to decrease my calories again.

The theory behind it being that I won't notice a decrease of 100 calories but I will most definitely notice a decrease of 1600 calories. And it has worked like a charm. I got stuck at 2600 daily calories between Thanksgiving and Christmas because I was being exceptionally hard on myself. A couple days ago, I went back through my food journal (kept in a notebook) and was transfering information to a Google Docs spreadsheet and realized that I was under or within 100 calories of my goal more days than I was 100+ over. I'm not exactly sure why I seemed to stall myself out and beat myself up so much. I kept telling myself that I hadn't been able to get back on track after Thanksgiving. But if I'd been looking at my statistics objectively, I could have been at about 2000 calories a day by now. So frustrating that I did that.

And as for exercise... well that's the part I've been having a problem getting into gear. It's so not fair that it's easier to break a habit then to create a habit. For a couple weeks earlier this month I did really well taking Noel for a walk every day. We walked about a mile in a half hour. But that's all I did.

My ultimate goal for exercise is to do yoga daily, walk Noel daily and alternate between cardio and strength training for six days with one day of "rest" (as in no cardio or strength but still doing yoga and walking Noel). How I'm going to get there is what I'm wrestling with. Do I just jump right in? Or gradually increase my exercise. Friendly advice on this topic is welcome.

So that's the plan. Any thoughts? Helpful hints?

 

To Write Or Not To Write...

Well, I was going to tell you my weight loss plan today. But I've decided on something else that I need to talk about.

I started writing a novel.

I'm not very far; I have a very rough version of the first scene. That's it. But I started writing one. I've also been reading about writing. I found Nathan Bransford's blog and at first I was just reading the articles about getting an agent, how to get published, etc. Then I decided to start reading his articles about the actual writing process. And... I just confused myself.

I mean, in theory the process of writing should be simple, right? Sit down and write. But he talks about outlines. I don't outline anything. In my head I have Point A and Point B but I don't have it all planned out how to get from A to B. Hell, I don't even have a name for my hero yet.

I guess my complaint is that my way isn't the same as his way and because he's a published author and a former literary agent, I feel like I'm doing it wrong. But it's not wrong is it? As long as I get it written, whether the material is good or bad, it was an acceptable method. Or am I just pulling that out of my ass to make myself happy?

While I'm on the topic, I might as well get it all off my chest. Besides, it's my blog and you can't stop me.

I've been reading The Artist's Way. It's been recommended to me in the past by various people. I've just been reading it, not actually doing the process. I thought I'd read it first so I knew what I was doing, then if it felt good I would go back and actually follow it. And I have a major gripe. On Week 4, the woman tells you NO READING. That's right. NO READING. Do NOT read anything. Because creativity breeds in not reading.

WHAT???? Are you freaking kidding me? Telling me to not read is like telling a shark to stop swimming. I must read to breath; they must swim to breath.

When I was in high school I started writing fan-fiction and kept right on writing into adulthood. I've written about *NSYNC, Clay Aiken, Harry Potter, Batman. And even if I'm forced to admit it the Backstreet Boys. Oh the shame! I know that my family thinks I was crazy and probably needed some medication or even a brain transplant. But it made me happy. I loved writing and hey, pre-made characters. And I could change what happened to them. Like I gave Batman girlfriends that could kick ass (cause seriously, they always give him whiny, prima-donna girlfriends that have to be saved in the movies). And in MY Harry Potter world, Remus Lupin and Professor Snape do not die. But anyways, I digress.

The point is that through and after high school, I wrote a lot. Notebooks and notebooks. Then a few years ago, my creativity just went POOF and vanished on me. Not the desire to write. But the words wouldn't come. And since that, there has been the occasional period where I haven't read for long segments of time for whatever reason. Nothing sounded good. Too busy at work. Couldn't figure out how to crochet and read at the same time (I did finally figure this out, I made a weight to hold the book open). Whatever. And in those reading-deprived times I NEVER recovered the ability to write.

To be honest, I don't know when, where or how I got it back. I just know that a few months ago, stories started creeping back into my head when doing mundane things, like mowing the grass or painting my fingernails. So I have to call Bullshit on The Artist's Way. I don't believe that depriving myself of reading will make me a more creative writer.

And my last thing, I promise. I hate being asked what I'm doing when I'm writing, whether its fiction or blog. It should be kind of obvious. I'm either typing continuously on the computer or writing in a notebook. I'm writing something. And anyways, does it really matter? I swear someday I'm going to respond that I'm writing my manifesto for world domination.

Shutting up now. Enjoy what's left of your day.

 

P.S. I just noticed I spelled occasional wrong in my blog title. Way to make myself look stupid. Fixing that.

A Fat Story

Before I get to the bulk of the post, if you've visited here before you'll notice that I deleted all the little posts that had just one link in each one. I decided that posting links that way would fill up a blog reader rather quickly and be extremely annoying. So I'm going to accumulate all the links I find interesting together in one post per week. I set this week's to post on Friday. I don't know why I picked Friday. I just did. And now on with the interesting part of the post...

Weight loss.

I said I might post about it. And I am. I just hope I'm not jinxing myself. Every time that I've written about my weight loss in a blog I've gone on to gain weight rather than lose it. So let's just hope that this time is different. Cross your fingers for me.

So here goes. More weight loss information about me than you probably wanted to know.

This morning I weighed myself. We'll call it Weigh In #1. I've been weighing myself once a week since early in November but I had mentally prepared myself to have to start completely over today. I was sure that over the last three days I had completely undone any progress that I had made in the last couple months. But I hadn't. Anyways here's what it was...

Weigh In #1

Weight: 267.2 lbs

BMI: 41.94

I actually managed to lose weight. I had last weighed myself on Dec. 18 and my weight then was 269.0 lbs. Not only did I lose weight. I managed to lose almost two pounds. But I still decided that since I had emotionally prepared myself for today to be the new beginning that I would follow through with that.

Now would probably be a good time to back up and give you some backstory about how I got to this point.

My childhood and teen years can be split into two. There's one defining moment. My parents decided to move me from one school district to another in fifth grade. Pre-move, I was just like any other kid. Really. I had plenty of friends and didn't stand out for anything size related (I stood out in school because I was in the TAG program - Talented and Gifted - for math and science). I was a regular sized kid. None of the common size descriptions really applied to me. I wasn't scrawny, lanky,chubby, husky, etc. You get the picture, I was normal. In fact the only girl that I remember being quite a bit smaller than me was this one girl who did figure skating. She was noticeably smaller than all the girls though. Not just me.

Then we moved.

And Post-Move, I started to stand out. At first, I really only stood out because my parents stood out from the other parents and the kids noticed. I was a later baby for my parents (35 for my mom, 44 for my dad). I know that's not crazy, especially now when you regularly hear about 40+ women giving birth. But the area we moved into was a "better" area. The people were higher economically than the previous area. And the people were definitely more vain. The women and men (they're just as vain) would never have admitted to being as old as my parents. Gasp. And they did everything they could afford to hide their age. With some it was as simple as dying their hair to hide the grey and some others went as extreme as plastic surgery. Anyways, my parents stood out and kids noticed. And those kids did not like different. So comments were made.

Then came middle school. Now I was starting to stand out. I was noticeably larger than the other girls. Not because I had gained excessive amounts of weight over the summer. But because the most of the other girls were becoming weight conscious. A product of watching their mothers exercise obsessively. So the other girls became toothpicks. And that's when the bullying really began. Girls are the worst bullies. They really are. Anyone who's been bullied by both boys and girls will tell you that. So I was being bullied at school by the other girls and a handful of boys and there was family drama at home (I'm not discussing that at this time. Maybe some other time) and I found something to comfort myself. I started turning to food to sooth my hurt feelings.

High school was more of the same crap. I was being picked on by the girls. A handful of boys were being asses. But I was starting to gain weight. Not tons. I weighed 180 pounds the day I graduated high school.

So then I got a job. I worked at a gas station. I worked closing shift a lot, getting off work a little bit after midnight. And the gas station I worked at was between the mall and a neighborhood. So there was a lot of dead time in the evenings. It would be somewhat steady until about 9:30 (the mall closed at 9), then I might get a group of people around 10:30-11ish when the mall movie theater's last movie let out. But otherwise. Nada. I had my cleaning down to a science so that I only spent about a half hour of that downtime cleaning. But the rest of it? Well I had to keep myself from falling asleep with boredom. So I ate. Candy. Chips. Hot dogs. Nachos (I paid for it all too. Talk about throwing money down the crapper). Sometimes ice cream. Oh and there was a Chinese restaurant up the parking lot and they would deliver! How great is that?  I also drank lots and lots of soda.

AND on top of that, I would drink the coffee. Not the brewed coffee from the pot with minimal calories compared to soda. Those yummy cappuccinos from the machine. I'd probably drink about four of the 20oz ones in one shift. Yeah. I'm not even going to do the calorie counts. I think it's better that I don't know.

BUT THAT'S NOT ALL...

I also drank soda at home. On a day I worked I would drink half a 12-pack. That's right. Six additional cans to the soda I drank at work. On a day I didn't work, easily the whole 12-pack. I have no idea how I managed to keep my weight where I did. At that time, my maximum weight was 245 pounds.

So I worked at the gas station for five years then I moved on to work in a tennis club's in-house restaurant for a few months. No significant weight change while I was there. But I was fired from there and in the two months before I got another job (at a craft store) I got up to a new maximum 265 lbs.

While I worked at the craft store, I managed to somewhat get my act together for awhile and lost down to 198 lbs. Then I started dating this guy. And we ate out, especially pizza lot. At least twice a week. And through the six months I dated him I gained back to 245 lbs.

Then a few years ago, I was fired from the craft store and in the time since I have gained weight. Until a couple months ago I had been hovering around the 260-265 range. But I hadn't gone over that high of 265 lbs. Then on Nov. 14 I set a new high. 274.5 lbs. Gross. So since then I've been (half-assedly) trying to lose weight again. I've been calorie counting and sporadically exercising.

So that's how I got to today. 267.2 lbs. And you might be wondering what my plan is. I'll tell you that tomorrow. I'm tired of sitting here and this post is pretty long.

 

Me Procrastinate? Never!

So I was going to do a weigh in and really start concentrating on my weight loss again today.

But I decided not to.

I still have a partial 2L bottle of cherry Pepsi and a ton of jello salads leftover from yesterday that I want the freedom to eat without guilt (we add fruit so it's not that unhealthy, I just want to be able to eat A LOT of it). So not starting anything until tomorrow earliest.

I've got a plan mostly worked out in my head but my inner whiner (anyone else ever read The Secrets of a Former Fat Girl? Good book) keeps trying to convince me that my plan sucks. So far I haven't succumbed and changed anything. But we'll see what happens.

That's it for now.

Welcome to My World

Hello. So here I am. I decided instead of revamping and resurrecting one of my old blogs, I had to start a new one. Why? No real reason except that I thought of an awesome name for a blog. Admit it. The Occasional Adventures of a Hermit is a good name. Okay fine. Don't admit it. Be that way.

So you may be wondering what I'm going to talk about? Yeah, me too.

Let me just pull out my crystal ball and see what I might talk about.
* Weight loss. I have no problem admitting that I'm overweight (in the 260-270 range to be exact) and want to weigh about 145 pounds. I might talk about it. I might not. It depends on my mood.

* Crafts. I crochet a lot. Sew regularly. I want to learn how to knit. I'm sporadic about quilting and embroidery, but who knows what will happen.

* Photos. I have no training and use just a point and shoot but I like taking pictures.

* Music. I must be surrounded by music almost all day long. I have to sleep to music. I listen to country mostly. A lot of Celtic/Renaissance Faire music. And I also play piano and am attempting to teach myself guitar. Did I also mention that I played the tuba, flute and trumpet in school?

* TV. I watch a lot of it and usually have a lot of things I want to say. I may talk about it here.

* My Dog. I have a cocker spaniel named Noel. She's my child and I probably will talk about her way too much.

* Movies. Netflix is my best friend. It's true.

Wow. I just made my life sound even more lame than I already thought it was. How amazingly sad. Well that's it for now. I hope that everyone has had a very Merry Christmas.