Once Upon a Time Is Now

http://mareishon.deviantart.com

I have this wall of heroines in my room. They're heroes and villains from my favorite video games, books, movies, and tv shows. I decided to collect them because I'm a big fan of strong female figures in geek culture and when I find them, I latch on for dear life. There's just so much, well, crap when it comes to female characters in genre fiction. Even those we hold dear for nostalgia's sake; Buttercup, Princess Peach, Princess Zelda, Sailor Moon circa season one- All these ladies are just sort of waiting for some guy to come along and rescue them.

I never meant for this wall of action figures to become "thinspiration," but the closer I get to my goal, the more I look at them each morning and think, "Hello ladies, how we doing today?" rather than "Damn. I'll never be as badass as Starbuck. Womp Womp." It's corny, but I'm becoming a bonafide heroine in my own adventure now. I haven't quite cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom yet, but SOON.

As of this morning I'm 84 lbs down and it's just 40 lbs until my goal weight. My next mini goal was for March 20th when I go to PAX East, and I'm just 4 lbs away from it. I hate counting tribbles before they hatch, but it looks like once again I'll be crushing my cosplay weightloss goal. 

I've spent the last week learning to embroider and working like crazy my Rainbow Dash and Soarin cosplays. Brandon's Wonderbolt costume is done! I just need to buy him a white t-shirt and then my costume just needs a few last details on the shoes. I couldn't have done any of it without my friend Annie. She was invaluable and did a TON of problem solving on how to get the cutie marks onto the costumes in the best way. She's ALSO and amazing artist, so check out her work at Squid Salad!

I found a great groupon deal for the Harry Potter Exhibition so Brandon and I went last weekend. It was SO AWESOME to see all those costumes and props up close. The incredible amount of detail that went into them was really impressive. I was also shocked to see how SMALL those costumes were. Obviously, they started out as young kids, but even the Deathly Hallows pieces for Hermione were shockingly tiny! In any case, I brought my wand from the "Wizarding World" in Florida and they took a picture of us in our house scarves. I was surprised to find MYSELF shockingly tiny in the photo! 

The picture is hilarious because it looks like the cover of a Harry Potter romance novel or fan fiction. For bonus points, leave the title in the comments!

Plateau! In the Name of the Moon, I Punish You!

So I'd been sorta stuck in a weight loss plateau for the last few weeks. I'd been losing 1 to 1.5 lbs a week and it just seemed like everything was fluctuating a ton more than usual from day to day. I'm pretty sure it had to do with me starting on "The Pill" for the first time and my body was just adjusting. Considering many people report weight gain, I suppose I should count myself lucky that my body was capitulating to weight loss at all. I was sort of afraid I wouldn't make my goal for the "Hot by Halloween" challenge on the Nutrisystem community forums if it kept up. Needless to say, I was sort of stressed out about losing weight the entire week and I was nervous I was losing my edge.

Well, today was weigh-in day and I lost 6.4 lbs this week. That's BANANAS! I stuck 100% to my food plan and worked out 4 days with some physical activity on the others. I've heard of downward "swooshes" after a plateau, but damn! This was pretty swooshified. Normally I would have given up at a plateau, but this time, I persevered. I just kept telling myself,

"If you've done everything you can to be healthy with your diet and your fitness routine and the scale isn't moving, then just let it go! Science says that what you're doing will cause you to lose weight so stop being so dramatic and stick to the plan."

I also think, "When I'm sad, I stop being sad and start being awesome," but I digress. Science says it, guys. Science. The whole weight loss thing can be as much of a mental battle as a physical one and it's important to take stock of what you're doing and troubleshoot, but sometimes plateaus happen. Just stick to your guns. Maybe switch some dinners for lunches, adjust the times you eat, or try some new workout stuff to keep your body guessing, but at the end of the day, your body will only go as fast as it can and impatience will only drive you crazy. 1-2 lbs a week is a healthy rate. Sometimes you'll lose more, sometimes less. Just go with it. 

Yesterday I posted a quick celebration of some sports bras fitting that hadn't when I first ordered them, but what I didn't say was that I also tried on some T-shirts I had bought that hadn't fit before. It's been one of my mini-goals to be able to fit into these and I'd succeeded with two of the four so far. So I decided to try on the other two yesterday and BAM! They fit! The one below was especially exciting because there was a lot of shame attached to it not fitting before. You see, a group of friends and I all ordered the same shirts from Teefury.com (a site that releases a new design each day). The image matched the symbol for our guild in World of Warcraft (The Unicorn Alliance) and we decided we all just had to have them to wear en masse to conventions and events. Well I ordered the biggest size available thinking it would be fine, but when it came, barely even fit over my boobs, let alone my belly. I tried to laugh it off by making jokes about being the token fat-ass, but inside I was really hurting and every time they all wore them together, I felt really bad about not being able to join in. So yes, it meant the world when I pulled this on yesterday and found that finally it fit. I shared it on Facebook and everyone was super supportive and awesome. I was filled with warm fuzzies because my friends and guildies have been my rocks throughout this whole journey so far.