Quick update

Last weigh-in was 137lbs. That makes the tally exactly 60 at this point. :o

One year later...

Yesterday marked an entire year since the whole eating habit change thing. I feel infinitely better than I did a year ago, that's for sure. It's also becoming more difficult to remain disciplined. The final challenge for me is trying to become motivated enough to exercise - but after all this time I still haven't gotten around to it.

I don't know if it's because I've gotten so much stuff done in the past year - graduating, promotion at work, dealing with some internal demons, the eating thing (obviously), and now I'm working on getting a new car really soon. It's strange - I've accomplished more in the past year than I have in the 9 years before it. I now feel weird when I'm not working hard to achieve something. I used to spend the majority of my time trying to do as little as possible. I somehow managed to do a complete 180 - I hope I can keep it up.

On the plateau

At last weigh-in, I was exactly the same as the week before (although at least that week I had lost a pound)... currently hovering at 138.6lbs. The past few weeks have become increasingly difficult to manage. I can only eat 19 points a day because I still haven't found a form of exercise that I enjoy doing. It's been affecting my energy level - I am in a constant state of fatigue as of late. Fortunately, my aunt will be letting me use her treadmill soon. Hopefully I'll be able to stick to it and start waking up again.

Out of sync.

I'm already failing on the update front. Hopefully I'll get into the groove of posting at some point. I'm still doing well with my weight loss program - I had lost another 3.6lbs when I weighed in last Friday. That puts the official weight at 139.6lbs (clothed, obviously). The weigh-in before that showed a gain of 1lb, so I guess I overcompensated.

I'm several weeks away from the one-year anniversary of starting the program, and have lost weight pretty consistently the entire way. I'm looking forward to being able to stop soon, but I don't think it will be as soon as I had originally hoped. I'm still not exercising regularly, and it's starting to take its toll. Without exercise, I'm limited to under 1000 calories a day. I'm hoping that will change over the summer - the pool is already open but is still too cold for me.

One peculiarity I have noticed so far is that my body changes much faster than my self-image does. It doesn't really happen when looking into the mirror - but whenever I see myself from a perspective I don't normally have I'm always surprised. The other day I was working in a teleconference room, and the cameras were stuck on for whatever reason. When I had finished and started walking out of the room, I saw myself on the monitors... and it was really strange. I had to stop and look at myself for awhile - I didn't really recognize myself. I think I look thinner than I feel.

So... yeah.

This isn't the first blog I've had, but I'm hoping that this iteration will have a completely different direction than prior attempts at plastering my life all over the Tubes. Inspired by my cousin Stephen, I'm going to try my hand at documenting my weight loss.

Truth be told, it does feel a little bit late in the game to start writing about it now. You see, in mid 2007 I'd started out with a weight of 197lbs. Today, I'm down to 143lbs (54lbs lost so far). I'm not ready to stop yet - I'd like to lose another 25-30lbs or so. That may sound light, but I'm short and have a small frame... so it's within a healthy range for me.

I don't expect people to be especially interested in what I have to say. I don't plan on linking it to most people I know... at least not for awhile. I'm trying this out to keep myself honest about the whole thing and to help prevent myself from going off-track.

So anyway, here I am. Future posts will detail how I got here and where I hope to go.

Glowering Dubiously

Samus is getting bored of my lack of posting so I'm going to fix it. This will be a short update, because I have some sort of bizarre plague that's making me inexplicably nauseous and headachey.

I got the 20.1" widecreen LCD of doom last week. This week, it's on sale for $100 less. I was going to return it, but after re-shipping and taxes I'd only get $65 back. Regardless, the monitor kicks ass.

Anthony and I have been playing EverQuest II with his brother and a friend. I still play WoW to raid, though. It's still kind of neat to see the "world" I wasted many months of my life in, 500 years later.

I get to join Phi Theta Kappa tomorrow, which is the National Honor Society for 2-year college students. Hello, resume padding! School-wise, I'm doing pretty well. Getting a little confused in the database class, though.

I bought a domain and hosting again, but I haven't started the actual coding yet. Still working on the layout. I also decided that I'm not going to host a blog there. I'm just going to keep using this one, and make the site more portfolio-ish. By portfolio I don't particularly mean art, because I pretty much suck at being artistic these days. I'll probably put up Flash examples, code, written stuff, and the like.

My chakras are all screwed up.

Root: under-active (-94%)
Sacral: open (0%)
Navel: under-active (-69%)
Heart: under-active (-63%)
Throat: open (13%)
Third Eye: open (38%)
Crown: under-active (-13%)

Quarters

I'm officially old. I turned 25 on Monday. And now: a fairly random collection of thoughts from the past month or so!

The Fall semester begins tomorrow. I'm nervous and excited. Even though the majority of my classes are online, I feel antsy - but I'm definitely looking forward to doing most of my schoolwork while sitting around in pajamas. Another school update: after studying for something like 14+ hours, I got a 96% on my PreCalc final and an A for the course. Current GPA: 3.96! And yes, I'm trying to get that even higher.

I feel deeply disturbed by the whole New Orleans situation. I truly can't fathom the magnitude of human suffering that's going on. It's such a deeply helpless feeling, to see so many destroyed lives, hopes, and dreams. I'm frightened at the notion of some sort of disaster taking place in my area - would we receive the help we needed in time? How do you protect yourself and the ones you love? Most people have the attitude of "I'll worry when it applies to me", which I think is severely flawed. Maybe by the time "it" applies to you, nobody will be around to support you when you need it. Blech, rambling.

Six Feet Under has ended. I feel like a part of me is now permanently gone - it's amazing that an HBO series could affect a TV-hater such as myself in such profound ways. The character I most identified with was Claire, especially towards the end - the lost artist trying to find her way, questioning herself at every step. I guess one fundamental difference would be that I opted for a total career path change into something more "practical" while waiting for something that may never come back to me, instead of taking a chance and seeing what the world had to say about it. Anyway, if you haven't seen this series yet, do it. If you enjoyed the warped dark humor/irony of American Beauty, you'll dig SFU.

Anthony and I are getting along really well. We see each other pretty much every weekend, and do interesting stuff when we can. I think the things we enjoy the most involve food. Or I'm just typing this while I'm hungry. Sometimes we'll drag either my sister or his brother along, which is fun. We're supposed to try and go to Six Flags at some point, but we have yet to find a weekend that's going to work. This weekend was spent playing old video games, and celebrating my birthday.

I have a job interview tomorrow, for a small workstudy position at my school. It sounds like a pretty basic computer lab job (i.e. sitting on AIM most of the time), and the hours are short enough that it wouldn't interfere with my highly obsessive study habits. I definitely need some cash flowing in, because my credit card debt is starting to feel overwhelming.