Miracles of Madness

As some of you may know, my work is doing a Biggest Loser competition where we are competing to win $1000! I’m currently in the lead having lost the most percentage of body fat so far (but we are only in the 2nd week so don’t get too excited for me) but it really has put some things into perspective.

So here are a few things I’ve been doing to get me back into shape:

Exercise: I’m not an intense exerciser but I generally do about 20-30 minutes of cardio and 15 minutes of some kind of weight machine (usually 3 sets of 10-12 reps) and have been eating a bit healthier. I’ve been going 4-6 times per week and when I don’t feel like going to the gym, Mike and I go for a hike or a walk around the neighborhood.

Food: A bit healthier meaning I’m cooking almost all the food I consume and have definitely kicked the fast-food habit. I drink no soda and have been gulping down water and green tea for the past week. I did get some lemonade recently but I’ve found myself pretty content with just drinking water (this is absolutely out of the question for Mike who enjoys some kind of sugary drink with lunch and dinner.) I also don’t buy a lot of “fat-free” “low-fat” crap because it usually just takes gross so I just use the things that are full fat in moderation.  Except for mayo, low-fat mayo is actually pretty good.

Sleep: I’ve been sleeping on a pretty good schedule. I try not to stay up past 11 pm and try to get out of bed by 7:30 am. If I’m too worked up about the day or stressed out about work, I drink some chamomile tea and listen to comedy on Pandora with Mike to get myself to relax. Reading a good book in bed is really nice too. It almost feel like I’m pampering myself and all I’m doing is allowing myself to relax. Like, really!?

Stress: My stress levels have decreased significantly as I’ve been trying to find a way to fit everything into my life. It has taken a lot of cooperation and compromise on a part of myself, my boss, Mike, my family, friends, but it is essential to my sobriety and health to not let myself become overly stressed out. I advise everyone to try to figure something out if they are constantly feeling stressed. Move some things around in your schedule, ask for help, put off an activity you really like until you finish up a big project at work and then double the time you get to enjoy that activity—do something, anything, but stress out.

Deprivation: Okay, okay, maybe this heading is a little more dramatic than it needs to be but basically I’m holding off on buying any new clothes (except gym clothes) until the end of the competition. I constantly find myself wanting to buy stuff and then I remind myself, if I’m losing weight these aren’t going to fit me anyway. Better hold off until I get my body where I want it to be. (And if I’m not losing weight, then I better start because I’m not buying any clothes unless I win that $1000 to buy it with!)

So these are just some of the lifestyle changes that I have made in an attempt to be healthy, have more energy, and of course, lose weight. While the gym has definitely been the biggest change for me, it is definitely the best. Being able to feel your body go through movements it was designed to do but it never does really gets you back in touch with your body and your mind.

I’ll keep you guys posted with the weight loss and maybe take photos if it looks like I’ve lost enough weight to. Maybe in another 3-4 weeks, I’m hoping!

Life’s greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved. - Victor Hugo

I’ve been thinking about relationships a lot lately. Not only mine, but others as well. Not only romantic ones but amicable ones, professional ones, family ones. They’re all slightly different but all kinda the same. Mostly, I’ve just been thinking about functional and disfunctional relationships.

I know Mike doesn’t read this blog so I’m not sure how he feels about me writing about this (I’d ask him except he’s asleep already. Zzz…) Some of this relates to my relationship with Mike, but mostly I’m just speaking in generalities.

I’m not even sure if I want to use the term “love” or “relationship” because to me, I’d like to use the phrase “love” because I feel that is what Mike and I have but I know we are “in a relationship” but that not all “relationships” necessarily have “love” so, since I’ll be speaking in generalities, I will stick to using “relationships.”

How to Make A Relationship

1. Conception (0-9 months)

Unless you’re on a dating website, I don’t think most people outwardly seek a relationship with the person they end up loving for forever. I think that the process of conceiving a relationship involves meeting someone when you aren’t expecting to and liking it. Something about them makes you find them interesting and/or attractive. After this, flirtation, plans, friendship occur. In this stage, there is a faint hope that something good can come of this. If you harvest your relationship baby well, you end up in stage 2: The Newborn Relationship

2. The Newborn Relationship (10 mos-2 yrs)

Just like a real baby, a relationship baby is adorable when its first born. This is usually the time when people fall in ‘love’ if it is to be include in the relationship. Its cute, and just thinking and looking at it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. You miss your newborn when it isn’t around and your newborn is all over your brain and all in your heart and you cannot wait to be with this newborn. At this stage, friends and family are probably cooing over your newborn as well, “Its so cute!” You dress up your newborn in new outfits and take it out places and marvel at all the cute things your newborn does. Aw, its so cute, whenever he eats he gets food all in his ‘stache, aw its so cute when she cries for me because she misses me so much. Aww…. Cute baby!

3. The Terrible Two’s

In my personal experience, this is where your toddler-relationship starts getting into everything. While toddler’s are running a muck learning to crawl and walk and talk and climb, toddler relationships are involving life plans now, moving in, paying bills, planning career goals, etc. Toddler-relationship starts throwing tantrums and now a messy baby-food face is done in rebellion instead of inability of hand/eye motor control. This is also a crucial age because now you have a toddler-entity that is beginning to understand more and more of what is expected of them.

Michael and I are going into our 3rd year this spring and I’m happy to say we’re better than ever. At this point in our previous relationships is when things started falling apart.  But this time with each other, we’re only stronger and growing even closer together. We are talking about wedding plans and baby plans and that is comforting, even if we don’t want that in the near, near future. But just knowing its out there is like starting a college fund for a 3-year-old you’ll hope wants to be an astronaut or something.

How would you classify the life span of a relationship? Any advice as to what years 3-5 have in store for me/us?

The other day I heard someone complaining about goals. They said they dont believe in writing down goals because then it seems like theyre “set in stone” and he doesnt want to limit himself to things “set in stone.” Here’s what I indirectly said to him: “Bullshit. Stop being such a pansy, put on your big boy pants, and step it up.” Then he said what he really felt: “I’m afraid of failure.” Boom. That is the truth. There is no bullshit pansy there, that is a valid concern. But guess what, everyone fails at someone at sometime or another. I think it was Edison that say “I failed my way to success” and now every time I’m afraid of doing something to reach my goal because I don’t want to fail, I say that to myself. Because guess what, even if we do fail it hardly ever literally kills us (failing at skydiving may prove a different point…) But we learn so much every time we fail. Sometimes more than if we had actually succeeded

Its annoying how people just love hatin’!

I will admit, I have gone through a pretty terrible time in the past few years. Between treating friends like crap, treating crappy people even crappier, and treating myself like crap, and just generally acting like a lunatic—I have made some mistakes.

I made a conscious effort, however, to get all of that out of my system by 25. Whether it consciously happened or not, I feel I did manage to calm down the wild side and really become a respectable adult. The people that were hurt in the process however, still love to dig up graves and show me the skeletons of my past. I find this pretty sad for a few reasons and none of them are personal.

I just really wonder, why makes someone want to cling to hate so desperately? Especially for someone that they don’t even know at all except for a few random drunk outbursts. It makes me glad to see that in my right mind, I don’t stoop to middle-school levels of immaturity and “trash-talking” and false bravado (“Nah fuck that bitch, if I see her, I’m gonna knock her teeth out, even if I am 8 months pregnant!!”) Admittedly, in my drunken rages I did. But now that I’m being productive and being loved, what do these girls have to say for themselves? Nothing productive. Nothing enlightening. Nothing.

Seriously ladies, let’s take a look in the mirror. Put your low self esteem, your lack of self confidence aside. Who are you? How do people think of you? Are you nice? Are you classy? Could someone count on you to keep a secret without you bragging about how you’re keeping a secret? Could someone ask you for help without you flaunting how you’ve helped them for the next several years? Could someone ask you if you’re mature and you wouldn’t have to put them down for asking you if you’re mature? Could you count 5 things worth living for that doesn’t include a dysfunctional relationship or a poor decision to bring a baby into this world out of irresponsibility and to keep that dysfunctional relationship going? At your funeral, will everyone really say they missed you?

If you hate your life, I’m sorry. But don’t start hating on mine because its awesome and I love it and I own it. Change yours and make some good decisions, that’s all it takes to guarantee yourself happiness. Acting like a junior high bully will get you the same opportunities as a junior high bully—none. Acting like a mature, responsible adult—that’ll get you somewhere.

Have you ever become friends with someone and then they end up snubbing you when they make more friends? Totally rude! And I’ll be honest, its not because it hurts my feelings that it makes me upset because quite honestly its a very boring friendship and I only became friends with her because she constantly complained about how she doesnt have friends so unloading her complainy ass on someone else is okie dokie by me but I guess its just my ego goes, “Oh ok, like I didnt have better things to do today than have you flake on me because you think youre so cool you have two whole friends now?? Lets get this clear: you will lose those friends too because you have some terrible self esteem issues that prevent you from developing and valuing quality relatonships. And yeah, dont call me to see if Im free next week, Im not!”

/end rant

Im going to be using this as more of a journal from now on as opposed to a place to keep cool things. Just a heads up in case youd like to unsubscribe now!!! Haha…stay tuned.

Gross. Jim Morrison was a Sagittarius?? >:/

(via allimeowww)

I just randomly remembered a guy I used to date and how he would always open my car door for me. I was impressed. After a particularly disasterly date however, we knew it wasn’t going anywhere. I remember him walking me to his car, opening the door, while I was telling him, “Well at least you were always a gentleman, opening the car door for me and all.” He then let me know that the only reason he had ever opened it for me was because the lock on the driver’s side was broken and only the passenger side would unlock the car. Haha, oh the Romeo’s of the world.