On A Lark

This morning I weighed in at 136 pounds. Not horrible, but certainly not where I want to be. A little more than a year ago, I lost a bunch of baby (and whole grain Goldfish - yes, I know, it sounds ridiculous to me too) weight. But not all of it. At least, not as much as I hope to lose. Not enough to put me back where I was when I was eighteen, which, as anyone over 30 can tell you, really is frozen in time as some sort of ideal.

I hope to write about my quest to lose the "last" sixteen pounds. The ones that are stuck on my hips and belly and the backs of my arms, the ones that the little voice in my head tells me are permanent unless I get a little crazy. It's about trying to find a bit of balance while on this quest. Sometime I'll tell you the meaning that sixteen has in my life, above and beyond the number on the scale.

I've done, and continue to do, a vast variety of things to make it to this goal. I have been strict as hell with my diet, using a diet program to track every calorie in and out. I work out four days a week (it would be like seven, eight, ten... except I'm trying to find a balance between my family and my workout). I've said screw it all and eaten Halloween candy until I was sick. Okay, this doesn't count as getting me to my goal, but for the sake of honesty, it's something I've done. I want to do triathalons. I plan to complete an Ironman before I die.

So why start a blog? Mostly because I've been reading a lot of them lately. Probably because I need somewhere to whine and vent, and my husband's getting pretty sick of hearing about the size of my ass and 50 recipes you can make with chickpeas. You know how you can see something, or watch something, or read something and end up saying "I could totally do that!" I did the same thing a bunch of years ago when Trading Spaces was new on TLC. I was convinced I could be an interior designer... never mind my complete lack of artistic ability. I made a couple pieces of silly artwork, covered a couch, made a few throw pillows, and by then it was out of my system.

I have such high hopes for this blog though!

I've found there's this unbridled honesty in the blogs I've been reading that I envy. Anonymous honesty. The ability to just type whatever comes to mind and not care if someone reads it, or learns something fabulous, or just thinks you're a total idiot. So I'm just going to put it all down, and if you take issue with that, so be it.

By the way, did I mention that I'm trying to cut my family's food bill? By a lot? Not because we ate extravagantly before, but because money has been tight around here, and this seems like a relatively easy undertaking. I'm trying to get us to around $250/month for the four of us - or about $2/day each. I'm not really planning to take pictures of receipts and such, but I am keeping a running tally for the month. (And for last month, when we came in at $217.68 which in retrospect didn't include a Sam's Club trip, so that number is off. Great start, right?)

So, I plan to write about weight loss, and gain. Workouts and the lack thereof. Cooking and food, and being a non-red-meat-eater when I know my husband wishes I would just cook him a steak sometimes.

I hope it turns out just like I envision.