namaste: thanks. i hope so! aww... sucks about your weight... but you're still in here, you can restart your weightloss anytime you want and we'll be there to cheer you on! think about your wedding and how awesome it would be to look super sexy fit in that wedding dress, eh?
lisa: haha, yeah, at least one good thing came out of it congratulations on keeping your weightloss going through the holidays! if you can do that, you can do anything!
hey girls!
so yesterday i did managed to drag myself to the gym, although i went and felt like i didn't work very hard since i didn't sweat very much and didn't even hurt anywhere when i left (lol). although this morning my leg muscles were sore so i guess i did do something! lol. i also weighed myself this morning, and i was a bit worried, but was pleasantly surprised that weight was the same as before my cheat day. no loss, but no gain, so it's good in my book. it'll go down eventually.
today i'm off to meet my friend from Canada who is staying in Japan for two weeks! so i'm excited and we are gonna get hair extentions in!! so i'm gonna have long hair in just a few hours! yay! hopefully they'll look better than last time... getting extentions in Japan is super cheap compared to back home (like under 100$) but it's a bit hit or miss whether they'll look nice or not... like i went to one place one time and they looked fabulous, then i went to the same place again a year later and they got really gross after washing them only once... not sure what happened! so we're trying a new place today... wish me luck!!
Kawaii- That's great, I'm glad ya'll are willing to welcome me back. I am looking forward to my wedding, and hoping to be thin to wear something that doesn't resemble a white shower curtain wrapped around me. I would like more creative freedom with my dress, especially since I love form-fitting stuff even at 229 pounds. Good luck with the hair extensions, I have always wanted to do them but they seemed painful to me, especially when they sew it into your original hair.
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So glad it is the end of the holidays. We ended it with a bang, we went to see Trans-Siberian Orchestra for the second time (first show was better) and ate at this really fancy restaurant in the ritzy part of town. My mother-in-law (to be) paid for it all so it was a real treat. The portions were HUGE but I just ate until I was satisfied. I thought it was a pretty cool accomplishment cause usually I just eat until I'm super full and eventually eat more at home.
I guess I could join the bandwagon and say that I will change from henceforth, and that today is THE day, but to be honest I am just jaded about that whole process. I'm not saying that I'm quitting by any means, just approaching it in a slow, methodical way so as to make it last. It hasn't worked for me to have unbridled enthusiasm and throw myself into a diet plan that is severely restrictive, so it makes no sense for me to do it that way.
I do, however, want to do some more exercise. I am thinking of getting back into walking and into my yoga classes first of all. Eventually I will add other things like Zumba and bellydancing. I just didn't want to go into something hard-core like running right away. You have to walk before you can run, after all, lol. Besides, I always had more energy when I exercised.
Anyway, I've talked everyone's ear off so I will go for the evening. Have a great one all.
Kawaii: Sorry that your Christmas date didn't go as planned, but hopefully the massive amounts of fun you're about to have with your Canadian friend will make up for it. I've never done anything especially fancy with my hair, especially in Japan, but one of the local shops is running a new year's special with super awesome prices for a dye and cut set. I'm super tempted to call my company and ask if the "no dye" policy means no purple hair or no dyeing at all...my hair's about 5 different colors from getting bleached out by the sun while I was riding my bike everywhere all summer. I'd hoped it would fade into something normal by now, but it still looks like a crazy person tried to give me highlights...I'd really like to have it a nice, solid, normal color again >.<
Lisa: Props for staying on the wagon! I went a little overboard last weekend, and while I'm still scale-less I'm pretty sure I'm up a pound or two. Bleh.
Namaste: A) You're way too awesome to not have at least some success in the next 2 years. I'm sure you'll be slim and svelte in time for your big day and B) I'm willing to bet that you could rock a shower curtain if you wanted to...maybe not for your wedding, but sometimes it's fun to pretend that things that aren't clothes are clothes. Idk if you've ever been to an ABC party (ABC=Anything But Clothes, in case you haven't), but they're kinda ridiculously fun.
SO jealous that you got to see TSO! They're the only Christmas music that I can stand...orchestral music in general makes me happy, but if I hear them or Apocalyptica that'll completely make my day...
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Just finished my super boring week of work...most days there was a maximum of like...5 other people in the office throughout the day. I ran out of even busy work to do 2 days ago. Yesterday I drew a comic (which made the vice principal unreasonably happy...he demanded that I make him a copy and sign it because it was "awesome" and he was going to show EVERYONE). Today I sat and studied kanji for 6 hours.
I'm not sure whether or not to be happy that it's the weekend because I don't have any New Year's plans and my apartment is FREEZING. I'm sure that Kawaii can confirm how stupidly uninsulated Japanese buildings are...it's so hard to avoid just making myself into a blanket burrito and powering up my VPN so that I can veg out on Netflix all day. My apartment's too small to do much exercise indoors and the wind is way too strong to go outdoors or make the 30+ minute bike ride to the gym. My face was bright red all day today because I was working at my far school (about a 25 minute bike ride) and got absolutely mauled by the wind this morning. The vice principal had to actually shoo me out the door at 3:00 because he wanted to go home (in his nice, warm car) and I didn't want to face the nasty winds.
In any case, I need to get my butt in gear somehow...just a little over 3 months until I go home, and I want to make my boyfriend's jaw drop. I know that spot reducing doesn't work, but maybe I should look up some core workouts since in general those seem to require less space than lunges and cardio and such...
Hotaru- Thanks for the encouragement. I imagine I was just bummed because my heaviest was 240ish, and I didn't want to go back to that number. It was just too difficult to get around at that weight. Besides, it just feels weird to go back to my original number after I lost 50 lbs. I think I can still lose it though.
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I have had some time to think about things, and I think I can still lose weight if I continue along the path I am going. I am not making any huge changes yet, but I am limiting my portions and I am almost certain I will go back to being a vegan very soon. My boyfriend and I are also working out tomorrow, and I think I will go back to some of my fitness classes starting next week. So, I am making changes in the right direction.
I hope everyone has a good evening.
Last edited by namaste984; 12-28-2012 at 08:19 PM.
namaste: i understand how you feel... i'd been feeling like this for months, pretty much since summer. unhappy with the way i looked, knowing i had to get my as$ into gear, but unwilling to give up food and the motivation was just not there. finally it was just this one comment from my bf that made me realize that it was time to do something about it. you just have to have this one moment where you make the decision "yes, i am doing this", and that you know that it's not half-assed and you stick to it, good luck!
and the extentions look nice! oh, it's not like that here. japanese-style exte are braided into your hair. it's not painful at all! they just take a strand of fake hair, a little strand of your hair and braid it together at the top. it can be a bit uncomfortable the first night, but after that it's fine. the only downsize though is that you can see them a bit through my hair... and since my hair is blonde, you can see some of the bands which are brown :/ my friend got some too though and her hair is dark brown, and hers look really really natural! i'm jealous, haha. here's a pic! I'm the one in the middle.
hotaru: you should just do it. i was always told by other JETs in the past "don't ask, just do". if you ask, there's 90% chance they're gonna say no. if you just do it, there's 90% chance they won't say anything. heck, they might not even notice. i bleached my hair really really white blonde 2-3 weeks ago, then i went to teach after a 2-week break and only a handful of people noticed it was colored (and those people were kids). cuz i went from dark blonde to light blonde, for those people, it was just "still blonde" lol. as long as you're not dying your hair a freaky abnormal color, they should be ok with it. and if they complain (which i doubt they will), you can just say you didn't know. besides, you're only there for a few more months so i wouldn't care what they think eheh. do it!! and oh yeah, i feel you on the cold. it takes ages for my heater to properly heat my room, and when i got home yesterday, it was 9C in my place T_T it was like 14 when i went to bed... i was freezing!!! lol.
well good morning ladies!
I am pretty peachy this morning yesterday, i went out and got my hair done and hung out with my friend and her friend, and we went shopping afterwards (bad idea, i am so poor now... ) and then we went for dinner. at first we were gonna go to this Hawaiian restaurant that i'd been to before, but then i stupidly mentioned that there was a really good okonomiyaki restaurant on the same floor, and they HAD to go there. Okonomiyaki is really delicious, but it's so not on my diet plan!!! it's basically batter, mixed in with vegetables and meat or seafood, fried on a hot plate and then topped with some sweet brown sauce and mayo. i know it sounds gross like that but it's really heaven. i was stressing about it the whole time, but i figured that since i'd barely eaten anything all day, i would be ok and not gain. i didn't even eat the whole thing either, good girl that i am!
so anyways, i step on the scale this morning just to check and... lo and behold! i am lighter!! wohoo!! pretty peachy. scale says 177.7 but i am happy to just move my ticker down to 178. it was my NY goal so yay
oh and little nsv too, yesterday, we went shopping at 109, which is a famous department store in shibuya, which caters to "gyaru" which are super trendy young japanese girls. the clothes are usually excrutiatingly small. sometimes you can luck-out on certain items cuz oversized shirts are really in, but yeah. well anyways, i bought a shirt from there and it fit me so i was really pleased. also, when we were shopping and i'd look at myself in the full-lenght mirrors, i think for the first time i realized that i was visibly smaller than i'd been in a while, so that made me feel good!!
Namaste: Good to hear you're working your way out of that little funk...we all have them from time to time. The fact that you can pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and keep making good choices after setbacks speaks volumes about how much *** you have the potential to kick.
Kawaii: Congrats all over the place! On the scale...off the scale...sounds like you're doing awesome. I know how weird the sizing on Japanese clothes gets, so I'm glad that you found something trendy and awesome that fits. I can't seem to win...when I got here I was too fat for the cute clothes, and now that I fit comfortably into normal sizes, I've come to the realization that I'm too tall to wear most of the trendy stuff without having to tug on the hem constantly to keep from feeling skanktastic. I have a few cute short dresses, but I don't like wearing them around town because my students are everywhere (and impressionable...and frankly pretty much all of my 6th graders seem like they'll be troublemakers in the future, so I try to be a good example).
Okonomiyaki...hisashiburi...I'm not a huge fan (I prefer takoyaki), but when I was studying abroad my university was right outside of Osaka, so okonomiyaki was kinda a big deal...whether or not I like it, it brings out a natsukashii kanji...
Also, you make ridiculously gorgeous purikura...I'm so jealous. What ended up happening with that talent search thing, btw?
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So last weekend I was in the next town over and wasn't there to answer the door when the postman came and tried to deliver my Christmas packages from home. Between holidays and work, today was the first day I could get to the post office...only to find it closed aside from a little booth they'd set up for people sending New Year's cards. While I stood there and cursed quietly to myself for not realizing it would be closed, one of the people manning the booth asked if they could help me. I showed them the slips that had been left in my mail slot and explained that I'd had work and couldn't make it out during the week. I expected a "zannen, ne" or some keigo-rific and unnecessary apology for not being open, because those are the responses I've grown accustomed to hearing when my stupid interferes with my plans and the rules state that there's not much to be done about it. Instead the woman took my slips, unlocked the post office, retrieved my packages, double checked my ID, and told me to have a nice day. BEST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER.
The way that my family does Christmas is that on Thanksgiving everyone draws a name from a hat and spends $100 on the person that they pick. With the exception of my niece (who just turned 1 and is too young to really understand Christmas anyway), there's no small kids to impress with tales of Santa and piles of presents, so with the state of the economy we figured this was a better way a few years back...anyway, the new FitBit was JUST at the $100 price point, so that was my Christmas present. Can't wait to try it out...
Last edited by Hotaruchan; 12-29-2012 at 04:15 AM.
Hotaruchan- You are going to LOVE the Fitbit! Once you get setup, request me as a friend prettybrown1913! The more Fitbit friends you have the more your motivated to move!
All is well on my end , would be better if I could get out and go to the gym.
hotaruchan: yay! thanks i guess i am, eheh. oh yeah... as if being fat wasn't enough, being tall sucks here too... lucky i'm short so it doesn't affect me too much!! and compared to lots of my friends, i can actually buy shoes here! XD yeah, i prefer takoyaki too, but okonomiyaki is pretty good as well, especially at that place! oh the puri contest? i didn't win anything :/ it was so lame, they gave us so many things throughout the competitions, i thought we were gonna get freebies for just showing up, but all we got were sandwiches. lol. and everyone was like half my age and half my size, haha... i guess it was an interesting experience though... and now many students at my high school call me "purikura sensei", which cracks me up. i'm so obsessed with puri because it makes me look so much more prettier than normal, haha.... aww... that's an awesome story about the post office! i guess stuff like that is more likely to happen in the inaka though... i hope you enjoy your present! tell us how it goes!
well good morning ladies!! It's raining in Tokyo, and I do so hate rain... gah! but my friend from Canada is coming over, and we're gonna have a girly day with make-up tutorials and then more shopping! XD normally, in the last month, i've been weighing myself only once or twice a week, but recently, i've taken to doing it more often... this morning i was .2kg down from yesterday! so happy!! ^_^
Lisa: I set it up, but I'm not sure how to add people...I guess I need to explore the site more.
Kawaii: I wear a US size 11.5 shoe, so it's hard to even find men's sneakers that fit (I need to grab a 27.5 or 28 cm shoe...I tried to go roller skating at a Round 1 with some friends for Golden week and while they had skates big enough for my 6'3'' Norwegian guy friend, they didn't have them big enough for me TT^TT). It's so funny how kids latch onto things like that...for the first 3 months or so I was "Angela-sensei" or "Angela-sensei ja nai" because they were still stick on the last ALT's name...then they got used to "Rachel-sensei" then I ruined everything and ran around in Pochama pajamas for the week that I was doing Halloween lessons, so now for any student not actually in my classes, I'm referred to exclusively as "Pochama-sensei."
It's raining out in Gunma too, but I'm actually pretty okay with that...it's been drizzly for the last 2 or 3 days, but in that time it's gotten noticeably warmer. I'll take any break from the cold and the wind that I can get.
I've decided that I'm going to try out some intermittent fasting for a while...essentially you just confine your eating to an 8-hour window, which seems reasonable given that a lot of the time spent not-eating is also spent sleeping. Hopefully not worrying about breakfast will give me a few more minutes to exercise in the mornings too. I only have 3 full months until I go home now (contract ends April 4th ), so while I'm pretty close to my goal weight, I'd really like to be less squishy by the time that I get there. If the cold doesn't keep me in my blanket burrito, I'm going to try to do a short workout when I get up and before I go to bed every day. Hopefully that'll get me some results.
Icon- That is so exciting! Hope you have a great time on your wedding day.
Hotaru- I appreciate the kind words. I am getting more and more out of the funk as time goes on and getting into more of a healthy lifestyle mode. It's taken a little time and effort but I am proud of my progress and hope to lose back to where I started to begin with. It sure would be nice to see the ticker actually move.
Kawaii- Your pictures are always so pretty, and I love your eye makeup. The style of the photos crack me up, I have several friends from college who volunteer in Japan or have visited friends, and they post those purikura pictures on FaceBook a lot. I already have really wide eyes so I imagine making them larger would make me look like a deer in headlights, lol.
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I have eaten well and exercised today, and it has been a long time since I have been able to say that. I am not following a diet plan in particular, just a combination of different things, like regular exercise, eating smaller but more frequent meals, and a combination of workbooks and other books. It helps a lot. I don't have too much to report tonight, so have a good evening all.
Last edited by namaste984; 12-30-2012 at 07:13 PM.
hotaru: haha, what's pochama? that's cute though. too bad about the shoes thing though i don't really think you should starve yourself, but i guess if you think you've got it under control... besides, you already lost a lot of weight! i'm sure the people back home will be like "wow!"
icon: hey! happy new year!
namaste: haha, yeah, i am puri obsessed! and makeup obsessed... my eyes are actually pretty much that size. lol. i don't choose the "big eye" function when i do puri, otherwise i look like an alien!! XD but yeah, it still makes them a tiny bit bigger, but not much! i am a big, round-eye gaijin for real! lol. that's great! congratulations on treating your body well today
hi guys!! today is my cheat day! woot! *lol* and i got a lot of stuff going on today so i should really get off the interwebs and get into the shower! not gonna weigh in for a while, me thinks... but i'm gonna wish you all a happy new year!
Kawaii- Yes I love makeup too, and lip gloss! I have a forty-color eyeshadow kit from Elf which cost me less than $10. I am forever trying something different with my makeup, and I definitely have a thing for dark liner. Though for Christmas my mom got me all these makeup brushes, including a liner brush so I will be able to line in all the colors now. Thanks for the encouragement, I can't wait til I can back into exercising more often.
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My fiancé and I are going to a NYE party at the bowling alley tomorrow night (still Sunday here in the States) which means I will have to restrain from eating and drinking everything in sight. Thankfully, I don't drink alcohol or have much money to spend so I think my partying will be limited to way too many games of bowling, laser tag, and other active things. I'm excited nonetheless.
My family is back in town, which is a bit of a shock to the system after almost a week alone. I don't think I've ever completely gotten used to having a roommate besides my cat, let alone several roommates all at once. But I just keep telling myself it's only for two more years and then I can have a house and a lovely fiancé (and probably many pets) to myself. Optimism, right? lol
I guess I'll go chill for now. Hope ya'll have a great evening or morning, whatever floats your boat.
Last edited by namaste984; 12-30-2012 at 09:40 PM.
congratulations on keeping your weightloss going through the holidays! if you can do that, you can do anything! 
and we are gonna get hair extentions in!! so i'm gonna have long hair in just a few hours! yay! hopefully they'll look better than last time... getting extentions in Japan is super cheap compared to back home (like under 100$) but it's a bit hit or miss whether they'll look nice or not... like i went to one place one time and they looked fabulous, then i went to the same place again a year later and they got really gross after washing them only once... not sure what happened! so we're trying a new place today... wish me luck!!
i don't really think you should starve yourself, but i guess if you think you've got it under control... besides, you already lost a lot of weight! i'm sure the people back home will be like "wow!" 
happy new year!
