It looks like a foot. It tastes like a foot.

 It has officially been a long ass time. More than a decade, lord. I was going to title this "Guess who's fat guess who's fat a la slim shady but alas. Apparently ignoring your weight doesn't actually help, who knew. I saw some pictures of myself from 2013 when I still thought I was huge and wow do I have a long way to go.  And I'm realizing how little I appreciated what I had and how hard I worked then. But anyway I'm back. Working noom, or well trying to be more open to it anyway. My crappy attitude is not helping at all. Nor did Covid, and work stress, and my iron level being so low Tupperware had higher numbers. Things happened. Not just to me and I need to stop with the damn excuses. I may never hit the numbers I had in those photos but it's a good reminder that my body is very different and it is capable of change even if it's just a little bit. 

Positives: I can run a mile without stopping, I don't think I was EVER capable of that in the past even with significantly less body to pull along. Thank you iron supplements!  I can afford healthy food, nutrition coaching, exercise equipment and the only real problem is how much I use my tools to move forward with my goals. I have the rest of my life left to live and if it takes a year to lose ten pounds it's better than freaking gaining them.  

I ventured into the community in Noon, thinking about how the support and or the accountability of writing about my weight is something I haven't had for a while. Will it help me to update the blog and reach out to the Noom community, I don't know.  I know not doing it didn't help either. so. I'm embracing change. I'm going to embrace eating more sweet potatoes and quinoa and damnit just doing things differently all together. If I really get brave I'll post a current picture, if only to remind myself what all the damn sweet potatoes are for.  

"Well, my time of not taking you seriously is coming to a middle."

it's been a while.  it's also that time of year when people take to the internet to figure out their new years resolutions and look for inspiration.  I've been thinking a lot lately about something i guess I've never written here and something I wish I had figured out ten years ago.  Last year I fainted on new years and Matt freaked out.  I am sure it was just low blood pressure (which is common in the winter when no on drinks enough water, but that's a different story altogether) but the doctors couldn't really give me a concrete answer.  Which is partly why I started looking elsewhere for how to live a healthier life.  I watched Forks over Knives, which is amazing and even if you don't care about killing animals to eat them you should totally care about how they are killed and processed and make it to your table.  Anyway, so I decided to try going vegan.  I know I wasn't eating enough vegetables and fruits to get the vitamins I needed so it seemed like a reasonable place to start in order to feel better.

I've been slowing removing all dairy from my diet as I was already vegetarian and the difference is amazing.  I think it's a lot like how paleo people feel about their diets and I believe it's all about removing the dairy.  I still occasionally eat our home raised eggs but I try to avoid all cows milk products and I feel amazing.  The biggest thing is that I am never hungry, I have no cravings.  I didn't think I would ever have an attitude to food like I do now, where I really have to think about if I'm even hungry when I choose a meal.  I eat about half the food I used to.  And there is nothing I miss.  I used to love chocolate ice cream.  I can look at the ice cream case and buy for matt and never even feel badly that I don't get to have any because I don't even want it, it's no where on my radar.

All in all i'm down about 10 pounds from this time last year.  It took a while to really remove all the milk based foods from my diet and we are toying with the idea of trying goat's milk, although for real cashew and other nut milks are delicious.  I still bake and there are plenty of recipes that don't suffer with the removal of cows milk.  I can still have chips and fries and I do, and I don't count calories anymore.  I have nothing but my personal experience to go by but I feel so incredibly different without dairy in my diet.  Everything tastes better, I feel fuller with a smaller meal, my cravings are just gone.  I so very much wish I had taken the idea of a plant based diet more seriously in my twenties.

It's bullshit that you need the protein, there were vegetarian dinosaurs who didn't have to deal with assholes asking how they get their protein.  All plants have protein.  I read something that I loved on a vegan website.  So many people say they couldn't give up meat or cheese or ice cream, and that's bullshit too.  They don't want to and that's not the same thing at all.  After watching the documentary and some others about veganism I looked at my habits and realized that I had no good reason to eat cheese sticks every day or cows milk in my cereal.  I'm not missing anything in my life without cheese sticks except feeling sick and hungry all the time.

So that's what I'm up to.  I hope some of the new years visitors who stop by consider watching the film.  Even if you aren't over weight, don't have heart disease or diabetes it's good for all of us to eat less meat and less dairy and more vegetables and beans.  As they say food is the best medicine or the slowest poison and life is too short to be sick.

" I realize certain words were exchanged. Also, certain... bullets."

This is one of the skirts I got on sale at the limited, 

I wish it was a little bit shorter but i can always take it up.  I wanted to wear it to work for the christmas party so I chose the black turtle neck sweater and black tights/shoes so it doesn't fight the shiny sequins.

Truly awful fashion photos, i suppose i could at least wash the mirror, but if i wait for things to be perfect nothing would ever get posted...so this picture is new trouser jeans and a pretty blue shirred sweater from the limited.  they got me with their 50% off sale and i ordered a ridiculous ton of stuff.  Unfortunately I love almost all of it.  The vest is required for work but it doesn't bother me too much with this outfit.

Rebecca called this nordic chic!  this is the worst picture of them all but it was a snow day, no time to clean!  A pop of color in my tank top, navy blue sweater, black tweed skirt/ black wool tights and the best sorel boots ever made.  well one of them.

"Ten percent of nothing is, let me do the math here, nothing into nothing, carry the nothin'...

listing things on ebay is a serious pain in the ass.  I've been finally getting rid of all the things i've been keeping just incase i want to wear them or incase i lose ten pounds or whatever.  it's helping pay for all the new clothes that hopefully look decent and haven't been sitting in my closet since the ice age.  

speaking of, it's beautiful and snowy today.  it's my 33rd birthday and it's been pretty uneventful.  listing on ebay, baking cookies for the work party.  boring normal everyday stuff.  should there be some revelation as the birthdays stack up.  we're working on our house, trying to buy a new car since the maxima died, two happy healthy dog kids.  not much but contentment on this birthday.  i suppose thats a good thing yeah?  

as always waiting to find the sequence of things that keeps my body at a healthy weight but not fighting for it as much as i sometimes have.  I'm so lucky in so many ways, happy and healthy with a warm place to live and clothes and coats to wear.  Lucky enough even if my jeans are never a smaller size.  

first try at royal icing...

This is my first try at cookies with royal icing.  I'm super impressed that it came out so well without crying.  The cookie dough was wonderful.  The flavor of the unfrosted cookies is a little bland but the dough was amazing to work with.  

  The icing is from King Arthur Flour's site.  I used just whites because hannaford doesn't sell meringue powder.  It was very easy to work with too.  The moose I added cocoa to to make them brown made it a little more tricky to work with but only half of them look like they've contracted mange so that's a win in my book.  

Caramel Apple pie

I've never made an open top apple pie before.  I guess this is splitting the difference.  The apples aren't quite as soft but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  It's very caramelized and the crust is nicely crisp.  I guess I should experiment more often.

"Stay in character, remember your lines, and energy, energy, energy, especially in the musical numbers!"

Somehow in the last year I've decided there's a girly girl inside me.  Girly enough to sign up for Ipsy Glam Bag.  And I love it.  This is actually my first bag after being on the wait list for a month or so.  The wait was actually quite a bit shorter than I thought, adds to the anticipation.

I got an adorable gold bag, in a hilariously pink mailer which I just love!  A red lip crayon which is perhaps my least favorite but maybe I just haven't embraced the RED yet.  I got blue eye shadow which I'm on the fence about but should give a try some time.  Gorgeous Pixi bronzer, gorgeous silver glitter eye liner, nail polish that is so me it's kind of ridiculous and the most perfect nude lipstick from em.  Michelle Phan.  It's smooth as silk, it's a beautiful shade, and it's made in the USA so I don't even feel guilty about possibly buying a ton of it from now until the end of time.  

This is me in wearing the nude lipstick, it looks particularly nude here.  I still love it.  nude with a hint of peach.  it's perfect.

It's a ten dollar investment for the months bag but I definitely feel like I got my money's worth and more.  There were definitely things I loved about birchbox, moisturizer and sunscreen are high on my priority list.  I can't tell from one bag if I'm going to see a lot of those type of things in the glam bag but it is a lot of fun to find out.