I’ve always enjoyed personal touches on blogs and I love getting to know the blogger behind each blog that I read. I’ve always been open with my blog readers and post the occasional personal/non-book related post. I view you guys as my friends, and like to share more of my life with you. Lately, two things have been occupying my mind and time: weight loss and wedding planning. So, on Wednesdays, I’m going to share little updates about each of these things. I hope you don’t mind. :D
Weigh-in
Some of you may remember, back at the end of January, I declared that I would lose weight once and for all! Well, it’s been a little over 7 months since I started, and as of Monday, I’ve lost a total of 69.5 pounds. I’ve got another 70-80 to go. My ultimate goal is to lose a total of 150 pounds, which means I am creeping on up to the halfway mark of 75 pounds and I can’t wait! I’ve dieted and exercised before, but this time I’ve really stuck with it. I’ve had to change my life and it’s starting to show. I’ve had to relearn food and proper eating habits. I used to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and however much I wanted. I’ve had to develop a new relationship with food and exercise.
I use MyFitnessPal to log my calories and exercise. You plug in your weight, how much you want to lose, etc. and it tells you how many calories to eat a day. When you exercise, you input the calories you burned, then you eat more calories that day to make up for what you burned. I’m pretty stringent about my calories and I use a food scale to measure proper servings. I also work out 4-5 days a week. One of those days, I meet with my trainer, Scott, and we usually do strength training together. The other days, I do cardio.
I’ve also been wanting to take up running, but I’ve injured myself a couple of times while attempting to run. Since those injuries, I’ve gotten fitted for some really awesome (and expensive) running shoes so I keep meaning to try again. For now, I’m more focused on losing the weight and will later focus on a large goal of running a 5K and eventually a half marathon. For now, I just want to get more of the weight off.
Some days, I’m frustrated because it’s hard for me to see a difference in myself. I look in the mirror and see the same girl I was 70 pounds ago, but people tell me I look different. My clothes have outgrown me. I know the change is there, but I just wish I could see it too. I’m hoping to hit the 75 pound mark in the next couple of weeks! My official weigh-ins are on Mondays, but I’ll post here on Wednesdays about that week’s weigh-in.
If anyone has any questions or needs support/advice about weight loss, please feel free to contact me. I’d love to help you!
Wedding
As most of you know, I got engaged to my Jerry about two weeks ago! Last night, we finally met with the church and booked our wedding so the date is finally official: October 5, 2013! It seems so far away, but several things went into our decision. One, we wanted a fall wedding. Summers are way too hot here. Two, I’m still in graduate school but I’ll be done in May. Three, we need to save money of course! Money for the wedding, money for the honeymoon, and most importantly, money for a house! We’re living with my parents right now (he moved here from Cali), but we’re enrolling in a first time home buyers club where we deposit money and also earn some grant money by doing so.
So this week, we booked the church, the photographer, and the reception place, a restaurant we love that has a reception room on the second floor. We’ve also chosen colors. Black and dark purple. Jerry wouldn’t go with my favorite color combination, pink and brown. Wonder why?! Haha. I really love the colors we chose, though. We’ve begun work on our centerpieces. Vases with purple-ish (fake) flower arrangements. I’m going to fill the vases with purple marbles then insert LED lights buried in the marbles to make them glow. I hope they come out how I’m envisioning them. Pictures will be posted when they ‘re done. It’s a work in progress.
My bridesmaids dresses are picked out! It’s black and they’ll hold purple bouquets. I wanted to pick a simple and beautiful dress that I knew they could wear again. The dress is over to the left and is from David’s Bridal. My sister-in-law tried it on for me. This weekend, I will officially be asking my four girls to be my bridesmaids/maid of honor, including my sister-in-law. I’ll be presenting them with a little craft I’m making to ask. I’ll post pictures next week, in case any of the girls come on here and see it beforehand. Way to ruin a surprise, right?
I also (unofficially) picked out my dress but will have to try it on again so I can show all my bridesmaids! I just went with my mom and sister-in-law the first time just for fun, but now I have to show all the girls after I ask them to be in the wedding this weekend. I’d post a picture of that, but I don’t want Jerry to see! It’s from David’s and they’re being really great about my weight loss concerns with the dress. They said that if need be, after I order it, they can easily exchange it out for a smaller size later on. I’ll probably order it in a few months or so. It was actually the first dress I tried on. I fell in love with it right away, but tried on other dresses just to be sure. We went to Alfred Angelo as well, but I knew from the get go which dress was mine.
We also got our engagement pictures done. My dad’s a photographer, so we got them done for free and fast! Haha! I’ll post a few shots below.
Those are my updates for now. They won’t usually be so long, but I wanted to give you all the background information on everything and had to catch you up on everything that’s happened so far. Next week should be much shorter! See ya then!
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