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Old Jen….well, she would have cried for hours, wondering what’s wrong with her, staring at herself in the mirror picking apart every facet of her appearance. Then she would have tortured herself by reading any sweet emails from the ex that she had saved, or looking at pictures of the two of them. By this point…the sadness would have filled up the entire room, and there would be nowhere left to go but down. And this is when she would start eating. It wouldn’t be a conscious choice….one second she would be blowing her nose into a Kleenex…the next she’s knee deep in a bucket of ice cream and surrounded by candy wrappers. It just seemed to happen like that. Almost like an emotional blackout, and you wake up with the evidence of your poor choices all around you. Of course, all of this eating would just make her feel worse….and as we all know, eating does nothing to change your emotions….it just pushes them down for awhile.

New Jen….well, I cried. And I felt sorry for myself. For about 10 minutes. And in those 10 minutes I really let myself feel it. I didn’t try to ignore the sadness….I really, really felt it. And then I let it go. This part might have been easier because I’ve known for awhile that this guy isn’t the one for me, but mostly I think it’s because of the changes I’ve undergone in the past few months. Eating didn’t occur to me. If someone had suggested getting a pint of ice cream I would have been like “what?!” Instead, I went for a run. And maybe it’s just the endorphins, but I’m happy. Yes…it sucks that we broke up. Yes…it really sucks that it happened the day before my birthday, but in the big picture of things, this will be a little blip on my radar, and now I can go on to bigger and better things.

I’m not saying I won’t cry again. I might. But it’s really nice to know that I have discovered a much better way to deal with my emotions…a way that doesn’t involve multiple trips to the fridge and even more guilt and sadness. So….that sucked, but I’ll get over it.

I’ve mentioned before that I like running. If I’m on the treadmill, plain old walking bores the crap out of me. Ten minutes of that and I lose my will to live. I start strategizing about other things I could be doing to workout…like, how about I blindfold myself and try to navigate the war zone of open boxes in my basement. I prefer running…. I’m concentrating so hard on breathing properly and not tripping over my own feet that I don’t have time to think about doing anything else. When I started this three months ago….225 and out of breath from taking the stairs too quickly… I could barely run a 1/4 mile without passing out. It took everything I  had to complete a 21 minute workout….and only 6 minutes of it was running. About a minute into my second interval I was convinced that hell did in fact exist…and had taken up residence on my treadmill. Thankfully, my love of running, however faint it was at that time, kept me from stopping.

At the height of running abilities, I was able to run 1/2 a mile on my dad’s treadmill, from what I remember. I aspired to that for a long time, and since I was a good 40 or 50lbs lighter then…I assumed it would take me a long time to get back to that. It was less than a month in that I hopped on the treadmill and ran 1/2 a mile at once. I was ecstatic. And then a few weeks ago I ran 3/4 of a mile at once. I thought I would pee my pants I was so excited. I wanted to tackle a full mile, but I was scared of failure.

Last Saturday…I hadn’t had the best day, and I wanted to have a good reason to remember that day, not a bad one. And I finally did it. I ran a full mile. 12 minutes. And I didn’t feel like I would pass out at the end. And I did it again the next day. I’m not the best with follow through, so achieving something like that meant a lot to me. And this whole not quitting thing is really paying off. I weighed in yesterday and I was at 202. Which means I am 2.5lbs away from my original goal. I doubt I’ll get there by Friday…but knowing I’m this close, that to reach this goal I’m climbing a hill, not a mountain, feels really nice.

As for my former best friend….I sent her a message. Basically what I said was, “I was hurt by the things you did and said. I was disappointed that instead of talking to me when you had a problem you let it build until it exploded. I don’t think we’ll ever be good friends again, but I would like to make amends with you. However, in order for that to happen, I need an apology from you.” Knowing what I know about her, I don’t think I’ll ever hear anything back. She’s stubborn, and never willing to take responsibility for her bad behaviour. And if I never hear from her, I’m fine with that. I just wanted to say my piece, and I’m good now.

In other news…as of my weigh in today, I’m down to 204.5. Only 5lbs more until my first goal….and I  have 10 days. That’s a little crazy. And I doubt I’ll make it, but I’ll try my hardest.

Without getting into too much detail….I’ve had a lot of issues with my friends in the past 8 months or so. My best friend “friend dumped me” in January. We had been hanging out constantly for months, especially since she and her boyfriend (another good friend of mine) had broken up…sometime last fall. Then, around November, she started dating this other guy who was also in our circle of friends in high school (and the former best friend of her ex.) I was there for her through a lot, including the two weeks of tears after the breakup. She had a new year’s eve party, which I didn’t go to because I was sick, and then suddenly everything changed. A couple of days into January, I sent her a message on msn, and she was completely cold. So I sent her an email, genuinely concerned about her, asking what was wrong. I got back this long email about how she felt I was taking advantage of her generosity, and if I don’t want to contribute monetarily to our friendship, there wouldn’t be one.  I basically told her to shove her friendship. I knew the whole time that it was about her new boyfriend, who never liked me. I was devastated that this girl who has been my best friend for years would so easily toss me aside for a guy. And when they broke up 2 months later, she sent me a message. No apology, no sign of any regret. (Ha….so much for not getting into too much detail). I’ve pretty much avoided her….because I don’t know how to deal with the situation. We have a lot of mutual friends, and while I would like to be on good terms with her, that would take an apology on her end, and that’s something I’m pretty sure she will never give me.

On the other side of my friends…..there’s her ex-boyfriend, who has pretty much always been the ringleader of the group. I very briefly dated his best friend last summer, and it won’t seem to leave me alone. We made the absolute worst couple. I don’t want to say that he’s stupid…but he’s no nobel prize winner either. And not to toot my own horn….I’m fairly intelligent. I need someone who can keep up with me intellectually….and he couldn’t. He was so freaking quiet, something I never expected, because he has always been fairly outgoing around his friends. Maybe he was just nervous, but it was kind of off putting. He was also kind of cold. We got into an argument, and I started crying, mostly because I was so pissed off that he wasn’t listening to me. In reaction to my crying, he started laughing at me and saying I needed to learn how to take a joke. So that was pretty much over right then and there….sealed with a slam as I shut the car door as hard as I could. However, the drama wasn’t over. I made a couple of drunken mistakes that included him last fall, and my complete lack of emotion may have hurt his feelings, who knows, but after that, he turned into the worlds biggest jackass. He started sending me messages saying that I owed him money, and when I told him to shove it, he went on this tirade about how I’m a walrus, and morbidly obese (which I am certainly not). It didn’t hurt, because I don’t think I could possibly respect his opinion less than I do, but it was just annoying.

So…now that I’ve given some backstory….here’s the reason for the anxiety. My ex (I hesitate to even call him that), goes everywhere his best friend goes, and I’m assuming that will include the party tonight. I don’t want to see him, because he will either be a complete jerk (but I’m not sure if he has the balls to be like that to my face), or he’ll spend the entire night trying to get in my good books in a very misguided attempt to get into my pants. To be completely honest, I would rather he be a jerk. Well…I’d rather he completely leave me alone, but if I had to pick one, I’d pick jerk. I also haven’t seen most of my friends for a couple of months, since I stopped drinking and participating and other recreational activities that they all favor. So yeah….if it were just a regular old party, I might opt out, but it’s a birthday party for a girl I really like, and it’s nice of them to even invite me considering my AWOL status, so I want to go. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve missed out on a lot in my life because of fear and anxiety, and I’m so sick of it. I turn 20 in two weeks…and it will mark a change in who I am. I won’t let my anxiety rule my life. I’d rather regret doing something, than not having the courage to do it at all. (Excluding stupid, dangerous things).

And I think my life of living anxiety/regret free is going to start with sending a message to my former best friend. At the very least I’ll get all of this off of my chest. From what I’ve gathered from the few messages we’ve sent back and forth (and from what I know about her), she wants to be friends again, but doesn’t know how to get to there. So I’ll give her a map.

Anyways…Happy Friday to everyone out there!!

Generally, when I fall off the face of the earth like this it means I have completely abandoned my goals and plans and have reverted back to my ways of much too much. Fortunately, in the last (almost) three months, I have formed some pretty good habits. Healthy eating is the go to now, instead of the after thought. When I’m hungry I don’t reach for chips, or candy, or fast food. Instead I have things like fruits, vegetables, and nuts. The downside is that I eat pretty much the same thing everyday, but that will only become a problem once I get sick of it, which I hope won’t be for awhile. My diet used to revolve around convenience, and taste. I would purposefully avoid the nutrition labels on the back of my frozen chicken wings, and boxes of oreos, just grabbing handfuls whenever I felt like it, and then trying to pretend like nothing ever happened. I don’t even really eat packaged food anymore. I haven’t had any sort of frozen meal, frozen breaded fish, canned soup or anything else along those lines for at least a month. And I find that I’m not missing it at all.

I started this “journey” at 225.5 and I said I wanted to be under 200 (something I haven’t seen in a good 4 years) by my 20th birthday. My birthday happens to be two weeks from tomorrow, and I’m not sure if I’ll make the goal. I weighed in at 206.5 this morning (unofficial weigh-in, since it’s not Monday) so that means I have 7lbs to lose in 2 weeks. I’ve upped the intensity of my workouts, and the frequency. Everyday so far this week I’ve gone on the treadmill and done a strength training workout….so hopefully that will pay off.

This is a really important goal for me….because I see turning 20 as officially becoming an adult, since you no longer have the word ‘teen’ attached to your age. And I really don’t want to enter adulthood weighing 200lbs or more. It won’t kill me, but it would be nice to see a 1 in front of my weight….like a sign of good things to come.

Something else I’m super excited about…. the awesome ladies over at http://weightlosswiththefabulousfatties.wordpress.comare holding their second Fabulous Fatties Challenge, and today is the last day to join. It starts tomorrow, May 29th, and goes for 2 weeks, until June 12th (whoo hoo!! My birthday!!). You get points for different things you do, like eating fruits and vegetables, doing a good deed, and working out. I think it’s an awesome idea and I’m really excited about it. So go join!!

That being said…..today has been really hard. I combined my breakfast and lunch at about 11:30 in the morning, and then had a granola bar and some crackers. I’ve been fighting the urge to go crazy on the easter chocolates and chips that are in the kitchen. But I won’t. Because I don’t want to spend a week trying to make up for one crappy day. My weight loss plan is about constantly moving forward, not two steps forward, one step back.

So….my plan is to make a healthy dinner, skip the exercise today since I have cramps and no motivation, and plan my meals for the rest of the week. I think I’ll be okay. Midol is on the way and I should be back to normal in no time.

I took the bike for a couple of trial laps around my neighbourhood, making sure that everything worked okay, the seat was the right height and comfortable, the breaks worked, etc. Everything was great. It all worked perfectly and it felt really nice to be outside. I came back home to grab some water and then I was off. And that’s when the day started to unravel….

Three blocks away from my house I came out of an alley and saw a car coming at me, so I hit the brakes to try and slow down. The left brake popped right out if it’s holder and wouldn’t work. I was this close –> <– to running into the side of that car. Luckily, the woman driving it swerved out of the way in time, and she even smiled at me when I yelled sorry (Thanks nice lady!!). I managed to fix the brake enough so that it would work, and I was off again. There’s a really beautiful park with a reservoir right by my house, as well as a bunch of trails and a nature center. I headed off in that direction, and about ten minutes later, I noticed that the seat of the bike kept twisting around. I stopped and got off to see if I could tighten it, and the entire thing came off, and wouldn’t go back on properly. I couldn’t sit on it straight, it would either tilt forward or back and come very close to falling off. I won’t even get into how badly it was assaulting my lady parts. Needless to say, I started heading home, hoping I could make it back in one piece. Not even halfway there I had to get off and start walking the bike, because riding was impossible. Adding insult to injury, the bike decided to ram the pedals into the back of my leg a few times on the way there. Evil, evil bicycle!!! Besides looking like a tool in my helmet, I was really psyched about riding it, and now I have a bunch of repairs to make before I can even take it out again. And they’re repairs I’m not even sure I want to make, considering how old and worn the bike is. So back to the treadmill for now, a lovely piece of equipment that has never tried to kill me.

I went on a Monday to a local gas to fill up the tires. I didn’t notice that I had overfilled one until I had gotten home, so I had to deflate it and go back to fill it up again the next day. When I went to lift the bike up to put it in the back of the truck, the handlebars swung around and hit me in the head. Then one of the pedals got caught on the fence and I was knocked into the side of the bike. After filling the tires, I somehow cut my finger on the bike. I’m still not sure how that happened. And after all that, I haven’t even been able to ride the bike yet. The week before I took it out of storage we were having really nice weather. Then all of last week after I filled the tires it snowed almost everyday. We haven’t had a nice day since. I’m telling you….that bike is evil. I’m a little worried to even ride it at all. It may try to toss me off into traffic or something.