Emerging from my cocoon

Hi y'all... I took a Kiki style hiatus from blogging, my job, and well, from life. Over the past six months, I've been on a sabbatical from my job as a tenure track assistant professor, and honestly, how it went was a toss up. Workwise, it was tough. I am a very structured person, and I love a schedule. Sabbatical = no schedule. It was hard to get myself to focus, even harder when my papers were rejected swiftly, and harder still when I put pressure on myself to accomplish as much as I could. Personally, it was crazy. I got engaged and moved in with my sweetheart, which made me SO happy, but at the same time, I never felt so isolated personally and professionally. Most of my friends are people I work with, and since I wasn't going into the office, I felt that most of my social life revolved around my honey and the cat. Fitness? Bwahahaha. Sabbatical means never having to put on real pants, and let's just say it's a scary situation when your sweatpants that are supposed to be comfortable become tight. I mean, seriously, I was squeezing myself into sweatpants. Who does that?

How did I go from a 172 pound Hard Core Kiki to a 193 pound (my high was 197) soft and round Kiki? Stress? Laziness? Elastic waistbands? All of the above?

Yeah, probably.

I figure the best thing to do was be honest with myself. I went from 250ish pounds to 172 pounds over two years. That's a 78 pound loss. SEVENTY EIGHT POUNDS. Wow. Now, I'm up 20 pounds from my lowest low. I can do this again. One thing that I did was create a game plan for when I come back from visiting family next week for my eating and fitness goals over the next five weeks. I have plenty of motivation... fit in clothes that are just sitting in my drawers right now, get off my blood pressure medicine, and (my ultimate goal, years down the road) be fit enough to have a safe pregnancy and live a long life.

There are things that I've realized. I'm not a runner. I never have been and never will be. I do love cardio though, and the endorphins that come from it. I like spending time in the gym, on various machines that are available to me like the elliptical and the stairclimber. I also LOVE spin class, which is something that I haven't done in a while, because my favorite instructor has been teaching at 6:15AM (did you see that lazy part up in the first paragraph? Yeah, that extends to my sleeping habits). I also LOVE feeling strong. Weights are my friend, and I really hate how soft my middle and arms have gotten since I haven't been weight lifting lately. These are things that I remember that helped me on my weight loss journey and things that I actually liked. By incorporating them back into my life, I can get back to where I want to be.

So, what's this blog going to be about, and why did I feel the need to start *another* new blog? Well, first, part of my job is publishing, and every academic loves the chance to "revise and resubmit" a paper rather than being outright rejected. That's how I feel about this weight loss journey that I've been on since Fall 2007. A paper hardly if ever gets accepted outright. I feel that a person hardly if ever is completely successful in their first stab at weight loss. It's easy to get stuck on a plateau (or like me, gain some of that weight back) and say, "ugh, I'm done, I'm never going to reach my goal weight." But that's not what I'm going to do. I'm going to look at what I've done and compare it to what I've been doing (uh, nothing) and... revise my plan and resubmit to my weight loss journey. This blog is about honesty with myself and allowing myself to share my thoughts on this journey.