onyah.com

I’ve mainly been using this blog as a place to talk about my cooking, eating, exercising, and weight loss adventures, and you can be certain that weight loss remains, as ever, an important item on my list of New Year’s Resolutions. But there are some other pretty major things going on in the next year… such as the wedding we’re planning! So in addition to the usual “lose weight” and “spend less money,” my resolution list includes “plan an awesomely fun wedding” and “don’t be a psycho-bride.” And that’s pretty much it!

On the food and eating front, I got some pretty cool toys for Christmas. I cannot wait to use the avocado cutter that my dad got me, or to grow herbs in the Aerogarden my mom got me, or to make ice cream in the ice cream maker I got myself. My friend Darcy got me an adorable set of primary-colored dinosaur-themed cupcake papers and picks. I’m not sure what event I’ll use them for, but it’s gotta be something special! AND I got a fondue pot from Steve’s brother and his girlfriend! It makes me happy to know that the people who know me see me as enough of a cooking enthusiast that they get me awesome cooking stuff for Christmas.

I’m just about finished reading Julie & Julia, which is a book that I am very much enjoying. For those of you who live under a rock and haven’t seen the commercials, the book—now a movie—is about Julie Powell, a blogger who challenged herself to cook every recipe from Julia Child’s Mastering The Art of French Cooking in a year. I really dig Julie’s personality—I am constantly reading passages that make me nod emphatically or laugh out loud. I like how she swears a lot and likens cooking to bizarre sex practices, and today I read the chapter where she throws around the phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkey.” Love it.

So… there’s an example of someone who embarked upon a wildly successful food/cooking/blogging adventure. I had the same pioneering spirit when I joined the CSA—but I’m lacking a little of the discipline. Taking pictures of the food when it arrives, and making sure I cook every last morsel of it before it goes bad, hasn’t been too tough. But the blogging part is coming a little slower. I think I’m just out of practice! That year-or-so that I neglected this blog took its toll. So, hopefully you’ll forgive me if I don’t post a new CSA picture every Wednesday and a weight-loss progress update every Thursday… but you can rest assured that, sooner or later, I will post them!

On the subject of weight loss, I’m happy to report (5 days late) that I had two good weeks, back to back! I’ve been ever-so-frustrated that the 30+ miles I swam in June and July only yielded about a 6-pound weight loss (and that’s including the 3.1 pounds I lost last week)! But I’ve tried not to let it keep me down, and I’ve remained a committed gym-goer nonetheless. I don’t want to jinx it, but maybe my body has decided to work with me on this whole swimming thing, finally?

Today I figured out how to back-date my blog entries, so I’m going to move all my blog posts over here from onyahisaloser. This will allow me to just take that whole she-bang down, and still be able to search for recipes and the like. It’ll be my weekend project!

I have finally accomplished a much-needed upgrade to a web hosting service that’ll allows for WordPress! Which is a good thing. But it’ll take me a bit to get everything up and running. Check back!

PS – You can still access everything that was here before at www.onyah.com/oldsite.

I’ve created this blog as a chronicle of my weight loss journey, as well as a place to share recipes, food finds and the like. I’ve joined and quit and re-joined Weight Watchers more times that I can count in my life—the most recent re-joining was on January 1, 2009. I’ve got no delusions that it’s going to be any easier this time around, but I do have a sense that it will “stick” this time around, for three important reasons:

1. It’s about my health. Every time I’ve done this before, my motivator has been improving my looks or fitting into a certain dress, but this time, I’m working to un-do the damage I’ve already done to my body. I learned about a month ago that I’ve got degenerative disc disease in my lower back, which was caused by living the life of an overweight person for so many years. It was sad and humbling to learn that I’ve done such a thing to myself, but it’s also given me a good kick in the arse to make a change.

2. I’m figuring out how this all began. In September of 2008, I started seeing a therapist who specializes in eating disorders. She’s been helping me to identify the reasons why I eat, and to train myself to pause before putting something in my mouth and make sure it’s really what I want to do.

3. Time’s a-wastin’. One particularly revealing conversation that I had with my therapist was about putting off weight loss, and how I tend to see it as something I’ll get around to one day. I noted, for example, that I keep thinking I’ll lose the weight when I decide it’s time to have a baby. And she asked, “how far off could that be?” And I kinda realized, uh, I’m 30, so… not that far.

And finally, here are a few “before” pictures, for posterity’s sake. These were all taken of me during the holidays in December 2008: