Land of Nod is almost here!

Land of Nod is coming to Costa Mesa! Read all about how I'm going and you should too...

Our First Place

This is a google earth screen shot of our first place NOW. I assure you it was horrible.

Josh and I got married when we were 18. EIGHTEEN. I would never let my kid get married at 18... I can't even imagine how hard my family was rolling their eyes. Oh man. Anyway, so we got married at 18 and we didn't know anything about life, money, cost of living, taxes, jobs, whatever. We tried to be grown ups the best we could, but really, we were still kids. 

We rented a suuuuuuuper crappy house from a family acquaintance that was seriously so scary and awful. Honestly, I can't even believe this happened now because it's so against the law it's ridiculous. The house had zero insulation. ZERO. The owners stuffed paper in some parts of the wall. We had to get propane heat and a tiny propane heater was installed in one wall. The house had cracks and stuff all through out and the heat would just escape. It was so cold! And I'm pretty sure our propane tank had a leak as well. I think we had like a 1000 dollar heating bill one month. We finally told the propane people just to come and get their tank because we couldn't afford it. The rest of the winter we hid in the bedroom, surrounded by electric space heaters. We froze. 

The appearance of the house was just so embarrassing. The previous renters had CHICKENS IN THEIR LIVING ROOM IN CAGES. So when we moved in I shampooed the carpets over and over because well, chicken shit. In fact, we scrubbed the entire house from top to bottom... we were in there for a week before we realized we had fleas. We had to seal all the windows with plastic sheeting just to hopefully keep the cold out, and it didn't work because again, no insulation. Am I disgusting you yet? 18 year olds are dumb. I'm just embarrassing myself.

What was our rent you ask? 500. Want to know the funniest thing? We didn't get our security deposit of 500 dollars back because I got a few droplets of paint on the carpet. Guys, there was chicken shit on the carpets when I moved in. I didn't fight it because I was young and dumb and didn't know any better. The guy gave us 50 bucks and said, "I think that's fair.... don't you think?"

Sometimes I still think about that house and how horrible and crappy it was. That was one cold winter. I obviously would never put myself in an experience like that again. I guess Josh and I had to learn things the hard way or something.

Body Boot Camp

I've honestly written this post a ton of times in the last 9 months. Always about how I want to lose weight and I'm so inspired and I'm REALLY going to do it... and well, I feel really embarrassed because I fall off the bandwagon almost immediately. But what's the most embarrassing for me is that I once WAS very fit. I had the mental determination to push myself and I never gave up. I had goals and I met them. I loved working out. Now, I run a very slow mile and feel defeated and tired. I am gung-ho for a week and then the weekend hits and I sabatoge everything. I know this about myself, but I always think that every new venture will be OMGSODIFFERENT and IREALLYGOTTHISGUYS! 

On a whim today I purchased a 6 week Fit Body Boot Camp from Groupon. It was a really good deal and all the yelp reviews seemed promising and I'm pretty easily sold, so yeah. For the past two weeks I've been tracking my calories perfectly and running a mile on the treadmill. I was doing all of this without actually weighing myself. I decided that this time I didn't want to weigh myself and I was going to go on how my clothes fit. But, I finally broke down and weighed myself yesterday and all my suspicions were proven true. I am at the highest weight I've been in a really long time. I've gained 25lbs since moving to California in March 2012. That feels like a lot to gain in a year. But, I was lazy, kinda depressed from missing my family, and well, FOOD. I've told everyone all of this before. But this reality of completely undoing all that I worked really hard to do is a bitter pill to swallow. I've completely derailed from what I used to preach. Shit, even reading all my old motivational posts about working out and eating right is almost unrecognizable to me. I barely know that girl anymore. I really want all of that back.

And yes, just do it. It's something I used to tell people. If you want to lose weight, then do it. I know. But I'm eating my own words and am realizing there's a true mental thing there. You can SAY you want to lose weight all you want, but until you really feel that desperation that enough is enough, I don't think anyone will ever lose weight. Me included. Do I feel that now? I think yes. Getting control of my diet for the past two weeks has been the biggest challenge, and I think I'm there. I've lost about 5 lbs so far just from diet and moderate excercise.

Back to Fit Body Boot Camp, I start today. I got weighed in and measured yesterday and received a little tour of the facility. It all seems exciting. There are so many people from different places in their fitness journey. The trainers were really funny and nice and totally made me feel comfortable. I'm actually really looking forward to going this evening.

I guess the bottom line is this, I'm not sure what will happen. I really want to tell you all that this is going to be the answer for me and that I'll finally be totally committed, because that is what I'm feeling right now. But let's be honest, holding onto something like this is the biggest challenge for me. 

I've been asked about why I dropped my Medifast sponsorship? The feedback from a lot of my readers was really not good and the Medifast posts were found to be annoying by a lot of people, and so I felt it was best to not be a Medifast blogger anymore. Medifast is a really good program, and I really liked them. But after I dropped my sponsorship I ran out of Medifast meals which then resulted in me completely giving up instead of just eating a healthy diet. It was totally my fault. 

I'm just using MyFitnessPal now and tracking every calorie. Just basic old school calorie tracking (how old school can it be if it's an app though?).