I had hubby scan some old photos I found. I hardly took pics back then (camera avoider even in my younger and skinnier days), but these weren't even at my biggest. I got 50 pounds BIGGER than in these:
Us in 1998, both fat, me very fat, like 250 or so
around 1999
Christmas Eve 1998 in a long kimono to
cover my 250 lbs or so of bulk...
March 2011, the spring festival at Morikami Gardens ("Hatsume"), hubby and I. I'm 220 lbs here:
Hubby and I in 2012 at Hatsume. I'm 182 lbs:
Me and 2 super nice cosplayers:
L: a character from Zone 00 manga
R: Byakuran (a villain) from HITMAN REBORN --
looks good, right?
Kicking up my heels to DJ HeavyGrinder--she's the cute gal in the background:
House/Electronica/Tech/Trance Music be da bombdiggiest!
The fat old dame loves to dance! I was
really sweaty in the full sun for 30 mins,
so I moved to the shade, but even there,
after an hour, my shirt was kinda soaked!
I got so into it I grabbed the hand of a young cosplayer next to me and just did some salsa moves with her. Tried to get the folks to get up and dance, but really, not a very dancey crowd there. Too bad. DJs ought not go to waste. One fair-goer said to me afterwards, "Wow, you danced a lot." I said, "Yeah, you should have joined in with your gal." He said she tried to get him to get up and dance, cause she didn't wanna dance alone.
Shoot. I'll dance all by my lonesome as long as the music is good. :D
So, like the song says, "I hope you dance."
Okay, my vlog finally got sent via iPhone (like the 7th try!!!!) and I hope Youtube processes it soon so I can do a retro update for the previous post.
Got on three times. Three times, same number. Yes!
Okay, another milestone in getting out of obesity. I started morbidly obese, the category of obesity I stood in when I began this blog. I got down to severely obese at 246. Now, I'm just obese at 216. Next milestone: 186, no longer obese.
I put on some Buck Tick (MEMENTO MORI cd) and put "Galaxy" on repeat:
In your heart, the heart marks dance
Your dripping wings quiver, your life sparkles
Come on, wake up
Come on, fly away
I felt like I "woke up" some last summer, and woke up more last fall. It's been a process of learning to fly. It feels good. Hard, but feels good. Life is starting to really sparkle cause I have the hope of this year, THIS YEAR, getting out of the obese category for the first time in two decades.
Well, I was gonna write one of my usual all over the place long posts, but I'm gonna get up and sing along and dance with Sakurai-San. Here, you can burn off some calories dancing, too!
I draw a peace sign over your heart The sun shines through your wings Life overflowing, blindingly bright Come on, wake up Come on, fly away Come on, so gentle Come on…
I'm a Japanophile. If you read this blog, you already know that.
You can imagine I'm really upset, really upset, after watching the news and learning of the terrible disaster. I'm in tears.
Right now, don't care about food, exercise, water, or the scale. I'm gonna spend my time praying and figuring out which is the best relief agency to donate to, and then maybe I'll wanna eat and drink and do the normal stuff.
Just another reminder why having let our eating and bodies get out of control was so stupid, immature, dumbass, and insane. So many more important things in life. Having to take so much time to correct years of being face-stuffing idiots mean less time paying attention to other things that matter more.
Being fat is stupid. There I said it. Getting fat was dumb and a waste of time and money. Not gonna get fatter. Not gonna stay fat. Cause it's DUMB. I'm tired of being a dumbass who has to spend so much time correcting for past mistakes about FRICKEN FOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It wastes valuable, valuable time that 1000+ people no longer have cause of an earthquake/tsunami. It wastes valuable, valuable money that millions and billions could put to better use in this world.
Overeating is idiotic. OMG, so stupid. We obese people are fricken idiots for having done it to ourselves and for still doing it when we still do it.
Instead of the Susan Powter tagline, I'll tweak it to: STOP THE IDIOCY!
So much energy, time, and money to establish habits about food and exercise that we should have done when we were kids, teens, by age 18. Decades wasted (in my case) in pushing food into my mouth, damaging my body.
Now it takes up hours of my day to learn and establish what I should have gotten down to a routine in the 1970's. How to eat. How to move. How to handle stress. How to not overeat.
Basics. I'm wasting time fixing damage and establishing basic habits.
STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPID! Overeating is STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPID!
See what happens when I'm upset and weepy. I get really mad, too.
Anyone stressed by the news or life, remember this (which is now officially my new dieting motto):
OVEREATNG IS AN IDIOTIC, BRAIN-DEAD, HABIT-DRIVEN, EMOTION-FUELED, REASON-DEPRIVED, STUPID-ASS RESPONSE TO ANYTHING THAT IS HAPPENING IN LIFE!**
And I have no appetite. Which is probably a sane response to bad news.
Anyway...when you think you're stressed and wanna stuff your face today, think about Northern Japan and anyone who might be in that tsunami's path. Yeah, THAT is major stress, people. Not your hangnail, your dumb boss, your nagging spouse, your dead car battery, your bad hair day, your ill-fitting wardrobe or sagging skin or bad internet connection or my leaky roof or diving property values.
Real stress. Ask our soldiers in the Middle East. Ask relief workers in various nations. Ask people starving in third world countries. Ask some tsunami survivors whose house got swept out to sea....
Perspective.
I want to thank my government for its offer of help and the military assistance already on route.
My sympathies go out to the Japanese people and nation today. God bless you as you recover.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ **Note: The only events I can think of that justify overeating are these: 1. You know an apocalypse is coming with famine involved and you're fattening up in preparation to survive it. 2. You're an astronaut going on an interplanetary trip and need to fatten up to survive the long-term sleep involved before you wake up on Mars. 3. You're a top athlete preparing for some grueling event and you need to carb load and get some weight on to make it through the various trials. 4. You're gonna do a survivalist reality show and need to bulk up to make it through the lack of food for several weeks.
If you don't fit those categories....overeating is not justified.
In fact...even if you WERE starving, actually starving, about to die from lack of food, overeating will KILL YOU.You gotta bring food in gradually.
Scale...the same, though no overeating/binge-ing going on...
Exercise: Good. Walking/Pilates/Jackie Warner exercises (well, the ones my body is capable of).
Sleep: Spent two days pretty deprived (3.5 hours one night, 5 the next).
Food: Good. Had a small bobble on the weekend (stuff not on my plan) cause we ate out, but there it is. My decision and no excuses.
Mood...pretty good, now that I caught up on some lost sleep.
Monday was fabulous...such fun. Went to see the Vatican Splendors exhibition in Fort Lauderdale and spent 3 hours enjoying the offerings. My most fave were the mosaics/paintings and seeing the actual handwriting of MichelAngelo and Bernini. I got such a thrill, I felt it all up and down my body. My gosh. MichelAngelo's own letter/signature/calipers....
Spent a long time on some particular objects of interest and chatted up some strangers, pointing out particular items of note in some of the works (ie, the exhibition's weakness, even with an audio tour, is not pointing out some of the significant symbols/meanings, imo. Fortunately, I was able to decipher quite a bit on my own and for hubby and some strangers who were going at a similar pace to me.)
I thought of Allan with one painting (the angel appearing to some animals, people to announce the birth of Jesus) cause the only one paying attention to the angel was a cute doggie. He was "kneeling" and looking up and listening intently...and so the light of Heaven showed on his doggy face. How cute...
After the exhibit, since it was deep So FL rush hour, we headed to the nearby Fort Lauderdale beach strip and parked...and walked. :) Chose a lovely patio restaurant to have a meal. Our seats/table had a perfect view of the beach across the street. Tourists, para-sailers, joggers, kids running. The patio was elegant with jazzy music. Nice. Got to be there during sunset....watching the stars emerge...
Been reading and started my cd Japanese lessons yesterday, so didn't feel like blogging AT ALL.
Appetite is calm. On days when I go out and have to be in the car a lot, I cut back on drinking water until I get home. This means I have to cope with more appetite. I will never give up drinking the water afer 50 years of my life eschewing water. Why? I have seen it. I have seen the enormous difference it makes when I drink a lot, drink consistently, and drink BEFORE eating. I'm less hungry. I think less about food.
It is not theory to me anymore. It's not a fad. It's what works. Water/fluids works. Period. On days when I delay water (due to errands/driving in dense traffic--when I can't pee no matter what), I get hungry. On days I do my water drinking according to my system/level, I suffer very little hunger. I get fewer cravings.
So, call me a mermaid and throw water at me. :D I will open my mouth and drink it!
I love the sound of Japanese, and I've gotten better at pronunciation watching anime/dramas/listening to JRock. But I got the cds to learn the language more formally. I have smatterings of words and phrases, and I kick butt on the Japanese "o" and "u" and "f" and "r" sounds (which are not really exactly the way we say it, just like letters are different in Spanish, my original language). I love the Japanese "u" sounds. I kid to my husband that I want to adopt and bunch of kids and name them Kaoru, Noboru, Ryuu, Satoru, Hikaru, Shuuhei, Touru, and such just to pronounce the sound. heh.Now, every time my hubby notices a "u" name...he goes, "There's another one for the name list."
The "f " is interesting. It seems like more an exhalation of hair with the lips and mouth "just so"...a certain way that stops short of of how we say the F in English or Spanish. I remember the lightness of "h" in Greek when we were playing around with that in Bible Study, and the "hi" in Japanese has that lightness.
Nothing sexier than a man with a beautiful voice going all out in Japanese. Num. Manly! If you haven't heard a great male voice using this language, behold he sexiness of Aizen (powerful BLEACH anime villain, recently defeated). And Ulquiorra (my fave Espada from BLEACH and I felt sad when his character, though an adversary to the good guys, turned to ash in his death). He doesn't speak until about 45 seconds into this clip (death scene), but man, you don't need the subs. The voice. The voice.... with all those hard t's and k's and the soft s and sh sounds. Love it.
One of the benefits of doing this beginner's language course is that, well, you can't eat if you are busy pronouncing a foreign language. :)
Feel a binge coming on--hurry, go put on a language tape (pick your faves, natch) and go to it. Or head to youtube or online for a course. Keep your mouth busy.
Or sing. I do that, too, to keep mouth busy in the face of temptations.
If you like jazz, learn to scat. If you like antiques and stuff, learn to be an auctioneer (practice that super fast talking). If you like poetry, recite it.
Or, if you are hipper and younger or if you're just into hip-hoppy stuff, you can keep your mouth unbinge-y and buy doing this:
Do you have "keep the mouth busy and not eating tricks like this? :) They can be fun, right? (And I will not go into detail on one of my alternate "mouth busy" tricks that is only possible when hubby is home. Ahem. That one works REALLY well, as it's very, very, very distracting. Hmmm..there's one way of making your life partner very happy you're dieting. teehee)
So, while I wait for my body to release --and it will, as one thing I've learned from Allan and the Challenges is that consistency pays off. Eat less, move more, it will budge-- I'll be practicing my rudimentary Japanese lessons and watching more fun anime and reading more fun manga and visiting more museums and doing more walking and just refusing to stop until I get to where I wanna be....in all sorts of ways....
Happy new month to everyone. SPRING IS ALMOST HERE...become new!
(I thought my waist looked "less than" and measured. Yep...1/2 inch down from last week.)
Took me long enough. I was tired of being in the low 220s already.
Funny, this is such a contrast to the months and year+ futzing about in the 270's. Sometimes, I get stuck in a decade. 280s and 270s were long ones. 260s less long, but I dithered.
I want to get out of the 210s with ease. This is my prayer. No futzing, dithering, lollygagging. Up and at em. Out of here! Let's do it, Body o' Mine!
(And while you're at it, BofM, please heal up this finger. It hurts to blog!)
Anyway, I felt no vim when I woke up, so I put on some Buck-Tick on the cd player and got my mojo going. Put on my workout clothes. Started moving about to get the blood pumping. Worked. The song "Kamikaze" today especially gave me some good "wind at my back"....which was followed on the CD with the faboo ZERO. (Link is to video of a live performance. Sakurai Atsushi in his long-haired glory. Hot dang! That'll wake up your ovaries.) Double wind!
I decided I'm going to appropriate the term "kamikaze" while on the challenge. Not in the tragic and deadly way it was used in WWII and continues to be thought of today. But in the sense of divine intervention for my good. Kami is a word meaning god(s). Kaze means wind. Wind from God or the gods. Divine Wind. Kamikaze. It's a beautiful word. Too bad we have such ugly, sad, destructive images for it in our recent generations.
Let's make it a beautiful one again.
I believe in God. I believe God wants our good and when it is His Will, He will intercede on our behalf. God's plan is bigger than any one of us, but each one of us has great value.
So, I do pray for that divine winds--holy typhoons, mighty hurricanes of mercy-- to carry me to my health goals. Wind to blow away the boats carrying my enemies so they cannot disembark and wage war on me.
How are you doing as February closes and we see ourselves two months into the new year (less new now)? Are you meeting resolutions, short-term goals? Are you still fighting the fat fight or did you give up?
Find a new wind...keep going...
Here is a "nothing to see" video of Buck-Tick's "Kamikaze", couldn't find a performance one...enjoy...lyrics/translation here...
Since I began walking due to the Phase 4, I've made an effort to make my time walking beautiful. It makes it pleasurable, even when my ankles are killing me:
~I try to find prettier streets in the neighborhood. Ones with trees or houses I enjoy looking at. I found a small enclave of Mi-Mo homes. It cheers me up.
~I think thoughts of healing. I talk to my joints and muscles. I ask my body to heal. I focus on proper posture, make small corrections with each step as needed. I focus on balance, a clear stride, on a beautiful posture.
~ I meditate on a piece of poetry or a haiku (small enough to focus) a bit of beautiful lyrics from a song or a Bible verse. I just let my mind play with the beauty of the words or thoughts.
~I pray. Sometimes, just for the people I pass. If I see an older person puttering in their yard with a cane in hand, I pray for their joints to be healed or free of pain and for their relatives not to forget them. If I see a lady who looks like she's rushing home from work with groceries, I pray for her to find ease in preparing her evening's meal and for her children to appreciate it. If I pass a tree that looks ailing, I pray for it to be rid of its pests. If it's rush hour, I pray for drivers to be safe. If I see another heavy person walking my route, I pray for them to get healthy and keep exercising and get home safely.
If there were a kyudo club in my area, I'd take it up. If find the practice aesthetically and meditatively beautiful. The ritual of it. The posture. The outfits. The actual weaponry. The focus. The gloves, even--and the 3-fingered glove when the hand is in shooting position, it's one of the most erotic things to me. Absolutely makes me kinda giddy. I find it entrancing, the way I find the movement of the feet in kendo entrancing The kyudo tradition of including serenity and beauty and unity, even when using a dangerous thing (bow and arrow), ravishes me.
Taisen Deshimaru in The Zen Way to the Martial Arts (1982) wrote:
Who releases the arrow? When is it released? When body and consciousness are one and perfectly detached; then the arrow flies freely to its target. The shooting stance is also important; it must be beautiful, harmonious -- both inside and outside the body.
I sometimes am in a nice zone in Pilates where my interior is as busy and productive as my exterior, but sometimes, I'm just telling myself, "Yes yes, you can do this, can get through this, breathe in, breathe out, you're a warrior..GAH!"
heh
But walking, when I start with pain (hips) and end sometimes with pain (ankles, knees) has a pace and duration that allows me to just be within myself and with my body in a strange sort of way that, yes, can be amazingly cosmic and expansive.
I don't like making walking about counting steps. I count calories and I keep a time frame for exercise, but the walking itself...I just want to BE and BECOME. If that's Zen, fine. If that's spiritual, fine.
I just want exercise to become something so beautiful I cannot live without it. I want movement to bring me crazy pleasure, delirious pleasure. I want to end up seeing it as a joy.
So, this is one way.
How do YOU do your walking? Do you find ways to make exercising beautiful and pleasurable and not just utilitarian?
