45,500 Calories and a Dress

I recently weighed myself, which is something I try not to do too often. I like to check in every 3 weeks. Too often is depressing, but not enough, and you never see your progress; which can be depressing too.

And the scale said I had lost 13 pounds, from when I started last November. I prefer to call it 45,500 calories, though. I felt every single one of those pounds, or 3,500 calories. And I'm okay with that because I have come to the enlightening conclusion that being healthy and toned with minimal body fat is a lot of work. I'm not sure why this was such a breakthrough for me. I used to just think there were skinny people and bigger people, and that was determined by genetics. Skinny people were lucky and had good metabolisms. And since I had always considered myself a fairly skinny person, I was completely shocked that my baby weight stuck around...and around...and around. I thought nature would take care of it for me, and when it didn't that was hard. All of sudden my genetics failed me. And so I started working out, a lot. And I didn't see results for the longest time, but something happened in that process. I embraced hard, sweating, almost want to puke, work. I realized that all those lucky, lucky, skinny people, were at the gym, every day when I was, and they were running faster and harder than I ever had. They weren't lucky, they had to pound it out, just like me. It was a big moment for me. Being healthy = hard work. And now that I have fully accepted that, I'm seeing slow and steady results. But I have to say, I still feel all of it; every single calorie I run, or lift, or dance off and every single calorie I don't eat. It's amazing to me that I can eat 400 calories in a blink of an eye (hello cookies!), but exercising it off takes much, much longer, and it involves more pain (don't worry, the good kind). I just keep chanting to myself, I'm strong, I'm strong, I'm strong. Or sometimes, bikini! bikini! bikini!

And this long story is to get to my good point. I finally used the gift Scott gave me over a year ago. I thought I would be back to my size, 2 months after Lucy was born, and part of that year's Christmas present was a gift card to Anthropologie. And I held onto that thing for a long time. Scott is sweet, and knew I always wanted to buy myself a fun dress. I never do. I buy skirts. And I never shop at Anthropologie. And so spending that card was special. I felt really pretty when I tried on the dress (the pictures don't do it justice). And it fit, didn't show my undies (why is it so hard to find clothes that don't), and was a size smaller than what I was wearing 5 months ago. And I have to thank Kim for coming with me, and encouraging me. I know this seems silly, but it was kind of a big deal.  So here is a picture of the dress, and I guess you probably want to see one of me in it. I'm taking it to Hawaii, so I will post some when I get back.

Did anyone stick around for this whole post? It's 12:30 and I'm rambling. Anyway, the moral of the story is if you work hard you can buy an Anthropologie dress. Ok, not really. Um, the moral of the story is, hard work at something you want = self acceptance.

**correction, I wasn't a size 2, I meant a size two months or 60 days after Lucy was born. If I'm complaining about being a size 2, then I should really be tripped or something!**