Hello :]

When I titled the blog “The Pound of No Return” back in June (yes, procrastinator to the max), I liked it for 2 main reasons. One, I though it was kinda clever (pound of no return, point of no return, get it?) and two, because it was fairly relatable to for a lot of the weight loss bloggers I have been reading for almost the last two years. Everyone has their ‘pound of no return’, the number on the scale that either gives them there ‘a-ha’ moment (a la Oprah), scares the crap out of them, or shows them that they will never be that weight again. I know my pound of no return and I’ve known it since the first time I reached it in early spring 2009 (and then went 25 lbs. below it in the following months). It’s a scary number for me but I have been creeping closer and closer to it for months. Recently, I realized I was there. It made me sad to accept that I had undone all the work I had put in before, but I was ok with it, because I knew could just do it again.

And then I was two lbs. over ‘my pound of no return’, today.

I’m B: a 21 year-old, soon to be college graduate (May 2011), journalism major, university paper sports editor, high school basketball coach, sports addict, book nerd, daughter, sister, aunt, Godmother, and Christian. (The journalist/editor/English minor in me knows there are some major case disagreements in that description, but I’m ignoring it for now.)

This is my third attempt at a blog and I have been most hesitant to start this up again, because the more blogs I read, I’m not sure what my genre is. In the small blog world I read, it seems as if you need to categorize: are you a weight loss blogger? A fitness/nutrition/wellness blogger? A foodie? A personal blogger? (or one of these categories that also has a separate personal blog or a personal blogger who so happens to talk a lot about fitness.) I am none of those and all of those. This is just my life, as boring and uneventful as it may be. Yes, I have a lot of weight to lose, but I want to feel free to talk about other things that happen in my life to, even if they are not related to weight loss/exercise stuff.

Also, though this probably won’t be an anonymous blog, I hope to keep it separate from the people in my life. It’s just easier that way. (Though I do have a personal tumblr that some of my friends look at.)

You may have noticed that I haven’t said what my ‘pound of no return’ is. And I probably won’t, at least for a while, because the point is that everyone on a weight-loss journey (and most people in general) has one and it’s different for each person. My number may disgust you or you may think it’s not that bad. To evaluate what people consider acceptable/not acceptable is irrelevant. Each person has their own history, their own goals to achieve, and their own ways of getting there.

These are mine.

"How Many Hearts Have You Broken?"

Hi blogland. It is so wonderful to be with you again. This was not the introduction post I had originally intended but I just want to get these thoughts down. Official intro post to come soon...hopefully later this week.

I'll be the first to say I'm ridiculously overly body conscious. Though I hate to admit it, my weight (and more importantly my size) play too big of a role in my everyday decisions, my interactions with people, and my perception of myself. Unfortunately, I belittle (ha!) my whole self down to just my body. I disregard my mind, my heart, my love, my friendship, my talents, my everything else because I hate the way I look and feel really ashamed by it. [I know I can do something about this (and I am) but i'll get to that later]

And I've been like this my whole life to the point where I use weight as the excuse/reason for why my life is the way it is, even if its that not entirely true. Could losing and keeping the weight off in high school greatly changed how my basketball career went, could I be playing college basketball right now if I made that life choice? Maybe, probably. Do I regret that? Yes. In areas of my life like sports and coaching, changing my lifestyle, losing weight, and becoming fit would make a huge difference in my success and effectiveness. Those things directly correlate.

But I too often use my size as an excuse in situations that don't necessarily fit. Like boys and dating.

I'm the best friend/sister/one of the guys type girl. And I love it. I have a bunch of guy friends and I like that they trust me so much to be honest with me and be real with me. But I don't date. I'm 21, had one boy friend for a month in high school, and have never been on date. Why is this so? On a daily basis, I think, if only I lose weight/when i'm thin, I can get a boyfriend. The more I think about this, two problems arise. 1. I am not that self-assured to assume the only thing between me and a relationship is my stomach. I realize reasons for my singledom probably have to do with my personality and other traits more than I'd like to admit or get into right now but my first instinct is to always blame my body. Attraction is important and if no guy is ever attracted to me, because I am not physically attractive, than that's a problem... and 2. This isn't 100% true. Today in chapel, I saw a couple walk in holding hands and I thought "I will never get to go to chapel [at school] with a boyfriend. If I would have lost weight sooner, maybe I could have." That thought lasted for a good 10 seconds before I realized this isn't true. If God wanted me to have a relationship, He would have placed a man in my life that didn't care about my body or like it. God has 100x more to do with my single status than I ever will and I'm slowly coming to peace with that. It is possible to like a big girl, I know that. But I never extend that understanding to include myself. I'm the exception but not in a good way.

For years, I've come to believe that as a rule. I'm not thin so therefore I get no boys. Generally, I feel like most people in my life think this way too so it blows my mind when I come across someone that doesn't think this, like today.

Because of some random timing, my classmate Jimmy and I had lunch together today. (Well really, he had lunch and I sat there with him.) Jimmy is a football player, really cool, and seems like a generally nice guy. In the few months that I've known him, we've had limited conversations that were usually around football so I only partially know him. [Physically, Jimmy's body is kinda perfect to me because I love tall, big guys but that besides the point.] While we were sitting there, he talked to me a lot about girls and bad experiences he's had with girls at our school and in high school. Jimmy kept making really blanketed statements like "All you girls are the same," "All girls are misleading," and "Girls only care about are abs". I don't consider all girls to be the same and expressed that it was ridiculously unfair to lump us all together. He eventually obliged and changed his wording to "most girls." Still, however, in most conversations in my life, few guys would lump me into the "all girls" category, especially when it came to things like dating. Even more so, when he said "All girls are misleading," I scoffed. In response, with a smile he said "Sure, how many hearts have you broken?" As in I was capable of doing this.

This threw me so much! I really wanted to say, "Umm, hey Jimmy, have you SEEN ME?" When other people validate the idea that I could be someone's girlfriend, that it's possible for someone to be attracted to me, that maybe I'm not the ugliest person on campus, it confuses me. I need to work on it.