NSV and Being a Preppy

Happy Monday morning to you!

Hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was spent sans husband and child (lovely!) running errands, cleaning house, and working on school stuff. The school situation still looks bleak, but I'm trying to stay get positive about it.

No matter how dreary and depressing the school situation might be, I've got an NSV to tell you about that definitely put me in a good mood!

MFN (My Friend Natalie, the lovely lady who did the Shamrock Shuffle with me) has a birthday two days after mine. We were even born the same year (1982 represent!), so I'm officially two days older than her. So naturally, having a BFF whose birthday is so close, we usually celebrate together - usually by NOT running 5ks - and get each other small gifts.

MFN is going to school right now, so she works two part time jobs. One of those jobs is at The Loft outlet. And I can honestly tell you that I've never set foot in The Loft in all my life. Because I have always known that it was futile. Nothing there is going to fit me, so why put myself through the drama? But at our post-what-we-thought-was-a-5k-but-later-found-out-was-a-4.5k breakfast, Miss Natalie handed me a shopping bag from the store.

I thought she was just re-using a bag and never expected the gifts inside to actually be from The Loft. But they were. Two super cute shirts. And Natalie is super supportive of the whole Lap Band thing, while also being the friendly kind of realistic, so she told me that the shirts were something to work toward. I had no expectations of being able to fit into something from a "regular" store in a "regular" size, so I thanked her for the motivation and went about my day.

But yesterday, I was trying on a bunch of other clothes that I already owned, and figured I'd give it a "what the hell". Do you see what I see?

Blurry pic, and I'm looking slightly zombie-ish around the eyes. Makeup, Anna! 

Your eyes are not deceiving you.

HO-LY HELL. This is seriously mind blowing to me. I cannot believe that shirt actually fits ME. Now, the universe making sure I don't get too cocky about anything, made sure that the other XL shirt MFN gave me was a completely different story not fit for public consumption. But this shirt. It fits. A size XL from a regularly-sized-people-shop-here store. NUTSO.

In other news, and on the topic of being a preppy:

Remember my recent post about being lazy? A lot of you had great suggestions about preparation being key to actually getting shit done. So I took advantage of a recent grocery shopping trip and the fact that The Hubs and The Kid were gone, and got my prep on.

Thanks, LoganMan, for donating your snack cups to the cause. 

I bought some lunch meat and portioned it out into 3 ounce portions. I used chicken and turkey. I also bought a quarter watermelon and sliced it up into chunks. Wow, that was a juicy job, let me tell you! Easy enough, but definitely messy. It then got packaged into containers of about 4 ounces each. Then I packed two tablespoons-ish of my current obsession, Dean's French Onion Dip, into small containers to go with pretzels that I keep in a drawer at my desk. Combine these with an EAS protein shake for breakfast and some yogurt for a snack, and I am ready to go! 

Lookie here, all organized and shit. 

And then, I took it all one step further, and pre-bagged each day's lunch. I packed for four days of lunches, figuring I'll give myself Friday as a day to eat out as a treat.

Middle row, pretty Kroger bags all ready to go! 

Oh, and if you're wondering what those brown things are sticking out of the beer bottles at the top left, The BFF made The Hubs Beer Reindeer for Christmas. Those are pipe cleaner antlers. LMAO. 

Anyway, it felt great to be so prepared and ready to go. It was awesome this morning to just be able to pick up a bag and walk out the door. The only downside is that all that prep came at a cost to my school work - I had to choose which thing I wanted to spend time on, and prepping and packing four days of lunches (including cutting up a watermelon and peeling/slicing four baby cucumbers for The Kid) isn't really a quick process. I'm happy to have done it, though. Can't wait for lunch today! 

Finally Noticing Things

Over the past year, I've lost more than 33 pounds, which at times seems like a huge number, and at other times seems like a minuscule drop in the bucket. But it is what it is, which is 30 pounds of fat - gone. But also, over the past year, as I was losing this weight, I never really had a moment where I looked in the mirror and thought, "Oh, yeah! I can totally see it!" (Or, not see it as the case may be.) I have noticed pants fitting differently. I am conscious of the fact that I had to "retire" a pair of work pants because they literally won't stay up. I noticed that the t-shirts I wear to bed (usually my husband's) aren't as tight.

I've seen these little things over the past year, but nothing monumental. No "oh wow!" moments.

I think they're starting, though. I'm normally a mirror avoider. I mean, I glance in the morning to make sure that all my bits are covered, my hair is somewhat orderly, and that I don't have anything in my teeth. But other than that, I tend to run in the opposite direction of them. But lately, after putting on an outfit, I'll glance in the mirror and something will catch my eye to make me linger a bit longer. I can actually see now that I look different. That my top belly tire (I'm lucky enough to have a spare set, woo!) is less pronounced. It doesn't stick out quite so far anymore.

I'm looking in the mirror and actually stopping to see that...I look better! I haven't gone so far as to say that I look "good", but I'm definitely better. Things fit differently. The jeans I bought back in October fit me much better. There are real changes going on up in here. And even if it's hard for me or anyone else to recognize, it's really there. It's really happening. And it's only going to get better from here.

Wednesday Weigh-In and a NSV!

Last Week: 250.2 lb
This Week: 249.6 lb
Loss: 0.6 lb

Huzzah! The 240's! Finally.

I'm not comfortable hovering so close to the 250s, so hopefully I can get my eating and exercise together this week to make sure I get as far away from the 250s as possible. But, yay! 240s!

I only made it to the fitness center those two days last week. Stupid training got in the way. And even though our fitness center is open both before and after work, I'm not willing to make the changes that it would require to do so.

My MIL drives about 45-50 minutes every morning to come to our apartment and watch Logan every day. This means she's leaving her house at about 6:15 am to be at my house in time for me to leave for work. I'm not willing to ask her to leave an hour earlier so that I can get a workout in. She does so much for us already, and the drive is hard enough. I don't think she'd be willing to do it, and frankly, I'm not willing to ask her to.

And as far as after work is concerned, technically, I could do that. The Hubs is home with Bubber Man, and I know that he wouldn't mind if I stayed late a couple nights per week. However, my drive home is about 45 minutes. If I stay an hour late to work out, I wouldn't get home until at least 6:45. Logan goes to bed between 8 and 9, and I like to spend as much time with him as possible, because, you know, he's my kid. 

And I guess, if you were going to go all Jillian Michaels "no excuses" on my ass, the second one would really just be an excuse as to why I don't want to work out at night. Technically, I would still get to see my kid, even if it were only for an hour or two. To some people, that might be enough. Or exercising might be so important that it trumps kid time. No judgement here, but that's not me. Call it an excuse if you want, but my baby is only a baby once, and he's already growing up so fast that I just can't imagine missing any more of it than I already do.

Ah, mother's/wife's/employee's guilt. We're having fun, aren't we?

So, that pretty much leaves lunch time workouts for me. Except for the fact that the fitness trainer does classes from 12 to 1 and 1 to 2. So what I was doing last week, was taking a super early lunch from 11 to 12 and working out then, while I had the facility mostly to myself, and then eating my lunch at my desk after. I'm okay with this set up, so that's the plan for now.

Wow. This post went somewhere I wasn't planning on going. LOL

Oh! My NSV! I almost forgot...

Probably 8 years ago, I bought a grey peacoat. And it basically fit until I got super pregnant in late 2010. After that, and even after having Logan, it buttoned no more. Like, I couldn't even sausage myself into the thing. None of the buttons would close without fear of one popping off and taking someone's eye out. So, winter of 2011, I bought a new, much larger, coat and have been wearing it ever since.

Until today, baby!

I'm back in the peacoat! And nobody is in danger of losing an eye! Thirty one and a half pounds down and the coat is back with a vengeance.

Can I get an amen?!

Well, hi there, LB!

Just a quick note to say "Howdy do!" to Charming Shoppes, Lane Bryant's parent company. Thanks for visiting my blog...

I hope I didn't hurt your feelings with my previous post about your wonky sizing techniques. In all seriousness - if you want a girl to give you a few pointers, I'd be glad to help you out.

Thanks for visiting, and feel free to leave a comment next time! :)

Lane Bryant Can Bite My Ass

So I spent my lunch break partaking in every fat girl's favorite pastime - searching for jeans that fit.

Oh. My. Jeebus. Just shoot me now.

I currently have two pairs of jeans that I wear on a regular basis - a 26 petite Fashion Bug brand, and a 26 petite St. John's Bay from JCPenney. Both of these jeans are way too big and baggy now. Yay! Sort of.

Enter the frantic gotta-find-jeans-on-my-one-hour-lunch-break-at-the-ridiculously-busy-mall debacle.

Fashion Bug went out of business, so I can't go back there. JCPenney had NOTHING that fit or flattered. At Elder Beerman I found an awesome pair of Ruff Hewn jeans that were the perfect length and a very good fit. Score! And then I looked at the price tag...

$80

For one pair of jeans.

Nope. Can't do it. Don't really want to spend three days alone in the Tennessee mountains with a mad husband.

So then I did the thing I swore I'd never do. I went to Lane Bryant.

You see, years ago when the geniuses at LB lost their ever loving minds created their mind bending new sizing method of mixed colors, shapes, and sizes, I swore that I was done shopping there forever. You are a shop that is supposed to make it EASIER for larger women to find cute clothes that fit and flatter. Now suddenly I needed an advanced degree in heiroglyphical analysis AND five hours of free time to navigate your new and "improved" sizing methods.

Nuh-uh. Not gonna do it.

I created this myself! Woot!

But today, against my better judgement, I went anyway. It's been years since I had tried to buy pants there. Surely they had refined the process some by now, right?

Nope. 

Why are you sideways?! :(

I tried on every single Red Square/Yellow Triangle combination from size 22 to (get this!) size 28. What ended up fitting me best there? (And I use "fitting" and "best" VERY loosely) A Yellow Triangle 28.

I shit you not, my friends. I went from a well-fitting Ruff Hewn 22, to an ill-fitting, tight in all the WRONG places 28 at Lane Bryant. At the fat girl store! Say it with me now:

Double-yoo

Tee

Eff

Needless to say, I left there pantsless. 

Wait. 

I left there with pants. Just not new ones. That would be embarrassing. And I was late getting back to work. Why does this process have to be so hard, my peeps? 

Meh.

Ugh

Judge for yourself, but I say this woman is awesome.

American Apparel's Creative Director, Iris Alonzo is quoted as saying: "If every brand that tried to do this was met with such negative press, we may have to wait another decade for the mainstream to embrace something so simple."

How dare American Apparel use this as a means to justify discrimination.
 
I'm disgusted.

I can't button my pants.

(It's my 200th blog post! Woot! I hope you weren't expecting anything earth shattering to mark the occasion.)

Yes, interwebs, it's true. I wore pants to work today that I am physically unable to button. It's past laundry day, so I'm literally down to the 'slim' pickins. They are size 22 camel colored slacks.

Size 22.

TWENTY-TWO!

Apparently, size 22 is 'slim' in my world now. I am, quite literally, too big for my britches. When did that happen? How did that happen? Rhetorical questions, of course, because I know exactly when and how, but I like to pretend that I don't.

Anyway, I bought several pair of capris before our recent visit to South Carolina, and most of those were 24s. Except for one pair. In one pair, I had to buy the biggest number I've ever bought. I *shudder* thinking about it.

I bought a 26.

(Which is not to say that anyone wearing a 26 or higher should feel horrible about herself. It is just to say that I, personally, have never had to reach that number, and it was a big deal to me.)

I know that stores size things all wonkey and that an 18 in one store could be a 22 in another, but no matter how off the sizing is, I don't have to be a genius to know that a 22, 24, 26 is too big for me. I wish I could say that I don't get caught up in numbers, but when the numbers keep going up, you HAVE to get caught up in them or else they'll just keep going that way.

I vow to never have to buy a 26 (or higher) again.

Soon, I'll share a picture of Mount Pantsuvius, the mile-high stack of jeans and slacks that I'm saving because I refuse to give up hope that I'll be able to fit back into them one day. I just can't bring myself to give up the dream and donate them to Goodwill. When I get home, I'll have one more pair to add to the top. But one day...

One day, Mount Pantsuvius will be conquered and replaced. Goodwill will get my pants, and they'll get them because I can't fit into them. Not because I'm too big, but because they're too big, and no buttoning in the world would ever make them fit.