28 Day Challenge - Check In

So I decided instead of posting a blog every day and boring the crap out of you all with "I walked around the building."...."I ran stairs"....blah blah blah. I'd do more of a weekly check in. 

Today is Day 16 of 28.

I've entered into my Outlook calendar 3 times to get up from my desk and go take a walk around the building (not including the walking I do on my lunch break). So far it's working great. It not only gives my eyes a break from the computer screen but it gets me up and moving and keeping warm (my office building has no real heat and I've been chilly lately). 

It's nice to have a "fall-back exercise" as it were. My goal for this 28-day challenge was to develop a new healthy habit. Adding in three walks to my schedule (including a pop-up window telling me to get out and go) every work-day helps me accomplish that. Doesn't mean though I'm not trying to do other activities outside of these walks. 

Thursday we went to the pool and swam for a while.

Saturday we went to Multnomah Falls and hiked (I didn't make it to the top but mostly because I didn't want to make the family wait below for me for too long).

It's interesting some of the things I'm observing/noticing over the past few weeks (most of which I'm sure is in my head). 

First I feel more emotional than I normally am. I know that exercising is supposed to release endorphins and therefore put you in a better mood...but that's not really what I've been experiencing. I've been out on a walk and had a burst of anger come from deep in my core. This weekend I had to go home and lay in bed to cry after a ridiculous comment from my brow-wax lady. No euphoria. No smile across my face. Just anger and tears. (WTF?)

The other thing I feel is that I've not been losing weight but gaining it. Now I know this is only Day 16 and I can't expect a miracle. I'd expect more to see no change...not an increase. Like I said this could just be in my head. But pants that don't fit, shirts that feel tighter than before, looking at pictures taken of me and seeing a larger and larger double chin. 

It's frustrating. 

I'm sticking to it though.

28 Day Challenge - Day 10 Check In

Yesterday I had a successful day. I had a Net balance of 222 calories (meaning I ate 1091 but burned off 869). Rode the stationary bicycle at the gym for 20 minutes. Lifted weights for ten. Ate a salad for dinner. 

But mood-wise it was a bummer day. Everyone talks about how getting out and exercising will produce endorphins that help boost your mood. Well my endorphins must be busted because while exercising the only emotion I've felt to my core was anger...and afterwards was still being bummed out. 

Luckily I have amazing friends. I posted on facebook yesterday, "it's hard to build up motivation for the gym when you're in a bummer mood...meh. Alright. Where are my cheerleaders at?" I was overwhelmed by the response. People encouraging me. Reminding me how good I've done so far. Or just telling me to get off my behind and go do it. *lol*

Either way I went. Didn't feel much "happier" afterwards but I do feel like day 10 of 28 was a success.

28 Day Challenge - Day 8 Check In

So yesterday definitely counted as my 1st freebie...and while I know I've allowed myself three freebies, I definitely feel like crap having used one. It was Mother's Day and I was productive around the house (cleaned my room to the tenth degree, did laundry, made breakfast for Mom, helped with dinner, and suffered through an allergy attack for the whole day) but the food was outrageous (made Grandma's Fried Chicken) and I never was able to make my way over to the pool. 

I made it through my first week and I know I should be proud of that. But a weeks always seems to be my maximum. I dive into a new routine and accomplish, accomplish, accomplish....and then a weekend hits and.....nothing..... 

I hope to stay dedicated and to continue into week two just as strong as I was in week one....

Fingers crossed.

28 Day Challenge - Days 6 & 7 Check in

I relaized I didn't do a check in for the last two days so I figured I'd combine them.

On Friday (day 6) I walked the half mile to the bus in the morning and still did laps throughout the day. It was such a cold windy day it was good to get out and run aro und to xjeep warm. Another big accomplishment was ibreduced how much snacking I did. I'm totally guilty of being a bored-snacker. Thankfully I've been keeping healthy snacks at work but doesn't matter how "healthy" a snack is if you binge on it. Overall, exercise and calories intake I think I did pretty good.

Yesterday (day 7) we took my mother out for a Mother's Day brunch (I'm so glad I made reservations)! I went into it thinking that it would be my first freebie day (see first 28-day challenge entry). The breakfast I had (breakfast nachos, a pomegranate champagne cocktail and coffee) came to over 800 calories...holy crap! BUT then came my exercise for the day...grocery shoppping! Now it may not seem like much of an "exercise" but this was 2 weeks worth of shopping, pushing a cart that had to have weighed at least 100 pounds (thanks to the two twenty pound cat litters), and dodging a million shopers and their families. I entered in the TWO HOURS I "leisurely walking" and my calories tracker said I burned 700 calories!!! Lol there went breakfast!

Today I have plans to clean the house, my room and do laundry...I'm hoping to pop over to the gym or pool later on (maybe after my pedicure). If not I still have all three of my freebies!

28 Day Challenge - Day 3 Check In

So I've had a jam-packed busy day today. One meeting after another after another. However, I knew that today was going to be busy and it would be hard to find time to do a walk at lunch (in all honesty it's 3:48 and I haven't taken a lunch break yet - I ate my salad in between meetings but no real break). 

So, since I knew I had a busy day planned, and the weather has been so agreeable lately, I took the bus this morning instead of the train. 

May not seem like a big deal. EXCEPT....

When I take the train to work I only walk from the house to the car, the car to the train, the train to a bus and a bus to work. In total I walk (maybe) 3 blocks. And if you've ever been to Portland you know we have teeny-tiny blocks.

However, when I walk to the bus (that takes me directly to the office and requires me being out of the house a 1/2 hour earlier than the train) I walk a 1/2 mile! (and then another 2-3 blocks to get to the office). 

I count today as a success. A half mile in the morning, taking the long way to get places today in the office, and I plan to take the long way (walking) when getting home this evening.

(We'll see how I'm feeling when I get home. We might have a 2-part day).

28 Day Challenge - Day 2 Check In

I would prefer to check in with my 28 day challenge after each accomplishment (however with yesterday being such a busy day I did yesterday's check in earlier today).

Here's my Day 2 check in though - right on time. 

Academic Building

Question for you. Have you ever worked out and just had a (random) release of emotions during it? My Day 2 exercise was power walking at lunch. I did 3 laps around the building plus up/down four flights of stairs. Within my first lap I was nearly overwhelmed by the amount of frustration and anger that burst forth from me. Not at anyone or anything particular just in general. 

By the end I had completely walked it out of my system. 

It was GREAT!

28 Day Challenge - Day 1 Check In

Sister-in-law Gayle, Me, Sister Kat (photo taken by Emily)

So yesterday not only started the first day of May (where has this year gone?) but also the first day of my 28 day Challenge (to be healthier and exercise daily). Yesterday was also my sister's bridal shower (that I've been planning for almost 2 months). It turned out amazing and while I didn't go running or swim laps in the pool I think all the carrying boxes and totes from the house to the clubhouse, the lifting of bottle water crates and bags of serving platters, the cleaning, the decorating, the running around and playing hostess....this should (and in my book does) count towards my "Daily Exercise". I was so tired after 8 hours (the party itself was only 2) I could barely move, or even get up off the couch, it felt as if I'd been working out for those 8 hours. 

Here's to Day 1 of my 28 Day Challenge!

My 28 Day Challenge.

I read a friend's blog today about a 28 day challenge in May and I think it's such a great idea. It's so much harder to get into a good habit than (continue or re) start a "bad" habit. 

 

I've been trying to increase how much I exercise.
Nothing extreme.

I'm just trying to start a good habit. 

I'm not preparing for a marathon (please, with these boobs? Even if I was fit enough to run a marathon I'd need to duct tape the girls down). 

I'm not looking to loose X amount of pounds (although looking at pictures I have noticed an increase in weight - especially in the face. Yes I'd like to loose this weight but I'm not buying a scale. I'm not taking measurements or stressing about my BMI....see my opinion on BMI here). 

I am (usually) happy with my body. I can stand in front of a mirror naked and not criticize my thighs or my love handles. It's taken work but I'm comfortable in my skin. Doesn't mean I can't try to be a healthier (and happier) me.  

I'm going to try exercise every day for 28 days (since May has 31 days that allows for 3 days of "freebies"). Whether that's walking laps in my office building (hooray for an old building with three stories and four different stairwells allowing for loops), water aerobics in the pool, (doing my best) riding the (semi-broken) stationary bicycle in the clubhouse or speed walking around the condo complex. 

I'll try and be good about posting updates here (I think accountability is a good motivator), so feel free to send your inspirational and positive support this way. 

Here's to a new good habit. 

Banning Barbie?

What do other people think about Barbie?

I have to make a confession here. While I understand and am right with folks that she gives a false representation to what women's bodies look like. I also just don't have the fire in my belly to get angry about it. I played with barbie growing up and maybe it was just the way I was raised but I never wished I looked like her or hated my body because it didn't.

*     *     *

Banning Barbie
By LISA BELKIN
Mattel, via Associated Press

Ah, Barbie. Fixation of generations of little girls. And their mothers — but for different reasons.

Rebecca Fitzgerald is struggling with the Barbie dilemma at the moment. Not whether she should buy her 3-year-old daughter the doll; she is quite clear that she would never do that. No, her problem is how to keep her father from showing up with one. And she is looking for advice from Motherlode.

She writes:

I was hoping to get help from you and your readers on explaining to my 60-something father why Barbie isn’t an appropriate gift for my 3-year-old daughter! I know there’s been research on the effect of Barbie on body image in kids as young as 5, but it’s surprisingly difficult to find. He’s a physician and a father of three girls raised to think they could be president — as long as they were pretty, too.

What kind of explanation would prevent him from buying makeup kits, high heels and fishnets when he thinks a busty gal in a tiny dress is a good role model for my preschooler?!

Many thanks,

Rebecca

My first thought was that Rebecca show her father the work of Galia Slayen, now a senior at Hamilton College, who has built herself one big Barbie doll. Hers is a life-sized depiction of how Barbie would look if she were “real,” and by Ms. Slayen’s calculations, poor Barbie would measure six feet in height, with a 39-inch bust, 18-inch waist and 33-inch hips. Made of chicken wire and paper maché, she was a project for National Eating Disorder Week when Ms. Slayen was still in high school. She is dressed, literally and symbolically, in the “size double zero” skirt that “used to slip off my waist when I was struggling with anorexia,” Ms. Slayen wrote in a post on The Huffington Post earlier this year. “I put it on Barbie to serve as a reminder that the way Barbie looks, the way I once looked, is not healthy and is not ‘normal.’ ”

You can see Ms. Slayen’s appearance on “The Today Show” with her mutant Barbie here:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

After Galia Slayen, I thought Rebecca might get some good advice from Peggy Orenstein, author of “Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture” (who happens to be appearing at the 92nd Street Y in TriBeCa Tuesday night on a panel titled “Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Sponge Bob Ate My Son: The Reality of Marketing to Kids.”)

So I forwarded the note from Rebecca, and here’s what Ms. Orenstein had to say:

Dear Rebecca,

Well, first of all, as with children, you need to establish limits with grandparents in general. The grandparents’ role is to adore the grandchildren, yes, but also to respect the parents and their wishes whether or not they agree with them. So answer No. 1 is your father shouldn’t give your daughter a Barbie simply because you don’t want him to. Regardless of whether he thinks that’s foolish or wise. Anything else overrides and undermines your parental authority.

So that’s the Dear Abby part. Let’s move on to Barbie. Barbie is really a symbol of your larger concern, right? It’s not Barbie in a vacuum. And it would be simplistic to say that A+B=C; that is, that if you play with Barbie you’ll grow up to have an eating disorder. In fact, I wish it were that simple.

But what you’re battling against here is something larger and more complex — a marketing and childhood culture that encourages girls in an unprecedented way from an unprecedentedly young age to define themselves through appearance and play-sexiness, that defines femininity through materialism and narcissism. There’s a marketing notion called kids getting older younger: products are pitched initially to older children, but younger kids, wanting to be like cool older sibs, soon adopt them, at which time the older kids instantly abandon them as babyish and move on to something even “cooler.” And for girls, being cool means looking hot.

Dad sounds like a science-y guy, so lob some hard stats at him to explain: when she was first released in 1960, Barbie’s original demographic was 9- to 12-year-old girls. Now a girl is done with Barbie by 5. Fifty percent of 6- to 9-year-old girls in a survey by a market research group say they regularly wear lipstick or lip gloss, and the percentage of 8- to 12-year-olds wearing mascara and eyeliner doubled between 2008 and 2010 (why isn’t the percentage of 8-year-olds wearing mascara zero?).

I’m sure you saw the recent fracas over the push-up bikini top that Abercrombie & Fitch was trying to sell 7- to 12-year-old girls. That top is still out there; they just changed the name, not the product. The point is, the pressure on girls to define themselves from the outside-in rather than the inside-out is enormous. And confusing. And alluring — because it’s fun. For a while, anyway. I mean, makeup! Sparkles! Fashion! Who doesn’t like that? And it can be creative, but in such a well-worn, narrow way, right?

Meanwhile, a large-scale survey by Girls Inc. found that between 2000 and 2006 the percentage of elementary school girls who were worried about being thin went up far faster, and was much higher, than the percentage who worried about the quality of their school work. The percentage of the same girls who believed you had to be pretty and thin to be popular went up, too. The pressure girls expressed to be perfect (good at school and sports and pretty, popular and thin) went up. And the American Academy of Pediatrics — an organization I’m sure your dad respects — recently put out a memo to its members telling them that eating disorders were on the rise among children under 12 and they needed to be more mindful of the signs.

Beyond that, when we were children (or at least when I was) Barbie was a doll. Basta. She was not a lifestyle. There were no Barbie toothbrushes, Barbie tricycles, Barbie scooters, Barbie breakfast cereal (I don’t know if there’s really Barbie breakfast cereal, but there are now Disney Princess grapes, so there might as well be, and believe me, if you haven’t started fighting with Dad about Princess, that is coming). Do you really want your child to be subject to that kind of training: that her role in life is to advertise and consume licensed products to the hilt? Forget the girl stuff — your child does not exist to be a marketer’s land grab.

O.K. Now I’ve scared you. I’ve scared him. So what’s a mom or grandpop to do? I say, fight fun with fun. I’m wondering why your dad is so obsessed with Barbie. Because he liked watching you play with her? Because he thinks she defines cute, innocent girlness?

If it’s the former, why not suggest a present that would involve the three of you doing something, making some memory together? If it’s the latter, well, I get that. Girls are adorable when they play with Barbies or Princess. And little girls also have a developmental need to find a way to assert that they’re girls (more on why another time) in the most extreme way with whatever tools are at hand. When I was a child that mean baby dolls, strollers, doll houses. Now it’s spa makeovers for 4-year-olds.

That means, though, that countering with generic toys is really not enough. Besides, it’s hard to convince your daughter (or your father) that you’re giving her more choices by saying no all the time. So you need to offer her other ideas, playthings, books, movies, clothing that signify girl and signify fun yet broaden her idea of femininity. I have an evolving, idiosyncratic list of resources for this on my Web site (and if you have others, by all means let me know). Maybe you could suggest one of them to Dad as an alternative. If he’s looking for a doll companion, how about a groovy girl or a go-go sports girl? Or troll eBay for a Mulan doll (they’re out there; hard to find, though). You know what my daughter adores? Her Lennon Sisters paper dolls. I kid you not. Tell him that she will have so many messages beamed at her every day of her life that only a particular look and a particular body are acceptable, and you don’t want them to come on her birthday from one of the men she loves most in the world. In fact, you could just leave it at that.

Full disclosure, I’m personally harder core on other issues, so a few Barbies infiltrated our home. I just got ridiculously picky about which Barbies. No Barbie Basics No. 10. Not even those dopey fairytopia Barbies. We had Wonder Woman Barbie. Indonesian Barbie. It was ludicrous. But there was one of my (many) compromises. And then I put a dollar in the therapy fund.

But again, it’s not Barbie per se that’s the issue, it’s the whole culture coming at your daughter. Barbie is just the symbol.

And hey, maybe for her birthday you could give him a few presents: “Packaging Girlhood” by Lyn Mikel Brown and Sharon Lamb; “So Sexy So Soon” by Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne; “Pink Brain, Blue Brain” by Lise Eliot; “Consuming Kids” by Susan Linn; and, of course, “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” …

Good luck,

Peggy

Beauty at a Price.

At What Price Beauty? Check Today’s Deal

By Tatiana Boncompagni

Jasmine Chess had long wanted to try eyelash extensions, but the high cost had kept them off her beauty shopping list. Then Ms. Chess, 25, saw an offer to buy the service at a reduced rate ($225 instead of the usual $450) on Gilt City, an online portal that sells vouchers to fitness boutiques and spas (along with restaurants and other attractions).

“I wouldn’t have bought this on my own,” said Ms. Chess, an actress who had previously bought a juice cleanse, hair blowout and makeup on the site. “I did it because it was a deal.”

Thanks to the rise of social coupon Web sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial, beauty consumers are able to bargain-hunt for goods and services that were once rarely, if ever, discounted. Recent sales include an oxygen facial at Bliss Spa in South Beach for $112 (30 percent off) on Gilt City and two 60-minute massages at Balanced Health in Boston for $95 (53 percent off) on LivingSocial....

“It used to be, ‘Fifty percent off a haircut, what’s the catch?’ ” said Andrew Unger, a founder of Lifebooker, which began offering deals in late 2007, though it took two years, he said, for consumers to become comfortable with the concept. Since then, “every month has been better than the last,” Mr. Unger said.

According to Yipit, an aggregator of online daily deals, the number of sites offering health- and beauty-related services has nearly quintupled in the last year, to 341, while sales of these services (including spa treatments, dental whitening and hair salon services) reached $78 million for January to March of this year and are on track to reach $312 million for 2011, representing 31 percent of total daily deal sales.

Shopping for beauty services online isn’t something Barbara Fisher, a sales associate for Coach in Manhattan, ever imagined doing, but since hearing about Lifebooker and a half-dozen deal sites through friends, she has bought vouchers for waxing and dental whitening trays and signed up for a free boot camp class...

But are beauty consumers really spending less or just buying more? Jessica Israel, a buyer of television commercial space for an advertising company in Westchester, recently purchased spray tanning, a haircut and a few massages for a discount online, all splurges she would not have tried otherwise....

Yvette Rose, the founder of the Kickstart Diet, said she had more than 5,000 views on her company Web site the day that her deal, 40 percent off a five-day food cleanse, was listed on Gilt City. “I’ve been in Town & Country and Vogue, and neither of them gave me the visibility that Gilt did,” said Ms. Rose, who sold 100 diet packages for $250 instead of the usual $425.

Oscar Blandi, a Madison Avenue hairstylist, offered a highlight and blowout package ($145, down from $275) at his salon on Gilt City last December as part of what he called a marketing strategy to help his junior stylists and colorists build their business. “This gets them in the door,” he said. “It’s up to me to cultivate the client.”

But merchants like Ms. Rose and Mr. Blandi are looking for more than just exposure. More crucial to them is that customers return, and pay full price....

But at what point does a business risk devaluing itself in the name of finding a few new customers? Dr. Steven Pearlman, a facial plastic surgeon who listed discounted prices for chemical peels, laser services, Botox and Juvederm on Gilt City last year, said he would not work with a deal site again for a very long time.

“I don’t want to undercut patients who have been seeing me for years and paying full price, the majority of whom do,” Dr. Pearlman said. “I don’t want to cheapen the brand.”....

Ms. Fisher, the Coach sales associate, said: “Now going to the salon is like getting on an airplane. You don’t know what someone in the seat next to you is paying.” 

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I have to admit there's just something golden and alluring about the phrase "__% off". Doesn't really matter what the numbers are- 10, 30, 50 - it calls to me.

I also have to admit to subscribing to more than my fair share of online coupon sites - Groupon, LivingSocial, Sharing Spree and Travelzoo. However, while I may receive many coupons and deals in my inbox they usually end up in my trash right away. Whether it's because I'm not willing to travel over an hour to get my haircut or (like this morning's Groupon) have my "alignment checked".

There have been many times though when the deal is just too good to pass up. A restaurant I haven't tried but has got rave reviews (I'm a yelper too, did I mention?), a 2 for one spa treatment (Mothers Day - check!), a 50% off coupon for a tea shop (perfect give-a-way gift for the tea party themed party I'm hosting)...no they aren't things I would have bought anyway.

In some ways I think of that as the point. Not looking for that "alignment check" deal because I need one anyway and just have been putting it off. It's a luxury. An opportunity to do something nice for myself (or someone else).

What do you think?
Have you bought anything from an online coupon site?
What was it? Was it for you or someone else?
Did you need it or was it a special treat?

Health at Every Size

Health at Every Size?
By Renee Michael

"The start of Lent today will offer many of us yet another opportunity to renew that resolution we made at the start of the year (and abandoned by the time February rolled in), to lose the extra poundage. But before you vow to give up your glasses of Cabernet and your plates of pasta primavera, you might want to consider H.A.E.S., or Health at Every Size, a new “peace movement” that one of its proponents, Linda Bacon, a nutritionist in the Department of Nutrition at the University of California, Davis, says was designed to halt “the collateral damage” — food and body preoccupation, self-hatred and eating disorders — that has resulted from the failed war on obesity. H.A.E.S. is based on the idea that “the best way to improve health is to honor your body,” and it supports the adoption of good health habits simply for the sake of health and well-being rather than weight control.

Bacon and Lucy Aphramor, a National Health Service specialist dietitian and an honorary research fellow at the Applied Research Center in Health and Lifestyle Interventions at Coventry University in England, published a paper in Nutrition Journal earlier this year. It argues that a weight-focused approach geared toward losing weight is — surprise! — not especially effective in either reducing the weight or creating healthier bodies. In fact, they say, such an approach can unintentionally lead to weight gain and worse health.

Bacon and Aphramor analyzed nearly 200 studies for their article, which lands where many frustrated dieters have already found themselves — with the knowledge that while dieting can result in short-term weight loss, the majority of overweight people are unable to maintain that loss for very long. Contrary to popular belief, the two researchers argue, weight-focused dieters do not achieve many of the supposed benefits of weight loss. The data present no compelling evidence to support the generally accepted notion that a weight-loss approach will prolong life. Nor does it support the common belief that anyone can lose weight and keep it off through diet, exercise and willpower. Or that weight loss is the only way overweight and obese people can improve their health. Bacon and Aphramor insist that adjusting your lifestyle habits with an eye toward improving markers of well-being like reduced blood pressure, lower cholesterol levels, reduced stress, increased energy and improved self-esteem — independent of any weight loss at all — is a far more desirable goal for people of all sizes to pursue. And they suggest that the health care community should adopt an approach toward public-health nutrition that “encourages individuals to concentrate on developing healthy habits rather than on weight management.”

Of course, acceptance of such a philosophy would require a monumental change in mindset not just in the health care and weight-loss industries, but among waist-watchers themselves. As any dieter who has hopped on the scale a dozen times in one day to check whether he or she has lost any weight since the last weigh-in will tell you, as grateful as you may be for a higher count of good cholesterol or a decrease in your high blood-pressure stats, those aren’t really the numbers that you care most about when you are slipping on a dress or a suit twice the size of the one you wore five years ago. And even after some 30 years of campaigning on the part of fat-acceptance activists to get people to not automatically assume that a person carrying around a bit of extra girth is unhealthy, heavy people still suffer from discrimination and bias.

Still, for those among us who want to at least try a different approach to our health care efforts this Lenten season and make peace with the bodies we have, Linda Bacon invites you to pledge your commitment to the H.A.E.S. movement.

At the time that I wrote this post, fewer than 1,800 people had signed on."

*      *     *

My first official introduction to HAES was a few weeks ago when a speaker came to talk to our students. She was a counselor at a local clinic in Portland that focuses and teaches the HAES program to their patients and clients.While she wasn't the best speaker it was nice to see/hear that there is movement to stop focusing on the (scale/weight) numbers and start looking more at the whole person.

I've always been on the plus side of life....and let's be honest you can only claim it's "Baby Fat" for so long.

I've been lucky, and I know it, I've never had an eating disorder, I never had my parents or boyfriends tell me I'm fat....that didn't stop me though from having insecurities about my weight. Growing up and having my school crushes see me as someone to partner up with during group work but then "date" the skinnier girls who could fit into this week's latest fashion trend. It made adolescence hard (but then really mother nature plays awful tricks on you when you're younger).

(Sorry. I just love this bit of Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill and when I saw it animated with stick figures I had to add it in. It just worked)

So, where was I? Oh yea....It was frustrating (and still is) to not dress like an 80-year old grandma in elastic pants and muumuus. But I trudged through and did what I could. I had only really been in (what I would consider) one major relationship. There had been a few minor ones here and there - but somewhere inside of me I didn't feel I was worth or attractive enough or desirable enough to have someone want me. To be in another relationship again.

At some point, some morning, I woke up and realized I was what was stopping me from having the relationships I was lacking. I decided I needed to work on my (internal) self-image. I went out and purchased a number of "Fat-Friendly" books: Fat!So?, The Fat Girl's Guide, Body Outlaws and Fat Chicks Rule!

Whether it was the books or just the intentionality behind my attitude and self-views or a combination - I'll never know. What I do know is I've started to love my curves. 

Started to appreciated that people come in all shapes and sizes and to not hate my body or myself for the curves I've been given. And once I opened myself up to loving myself I allowed myself to be loved. I know have a man who loves that I'm curvy. Loves my stomach - one of my least favorite body parts. 

I'm glad there are doctors and counselors out in the world trying to help people of all sizes embrace their bodies and know that your dress size does not equal how healthy (or happy) you are (or can be).