Photo from Oh She Glows

I’ve blogged a lot about my weight issues and weight loss before. Here are a few of those posts:

• Counting Calories
• Inspiration
• Getting Back on Track
• Cutting Calories
• A Crime has been Committed
• Binge Eating
• On Trying to Lose Weight. Again.

Right now. I’m 10 pounds more than I’d like to be. I’m 8 pounds more than my happy weight and I’m 5 pounds more than I was when I ran my marathon.

I’m only 12 pounds away from my highest weight ever.

And you know what?

I don’t f-ing care anymore.

I am so done with weight. I’m done with worrying about my weight. With feeling fat. With fat talking to myself and telling myself I’d better smarten up. With even looking at the scale let alone weighing myself. With counting calories. With being concerned I’m going to gain all the weight I lost back.

Just done.

I have been obsessed with my weight for most of my life. And I’m done with it.

In the long run, what will those extra 10 pounds matter? When I’m on my death bed am I going to think back to January 2011 when I gained 10 pounds gorging myself on delicious Christmas treats? I highly doubt it. So why should I waste one more precious second of my life worrying about it.

I know how to eat healthy (and enjoy eating healthy) and I spend 5-7 hours a week running and doing yoga. I’m finally at a place where those extra 10 pounds really don’t matter.

I need to let go. I need to let go of my obsession with weight, with calories, with size.

I need to accept the fact that I am, and probably always will be, a size 10 (ish).

I need to remember that sizes are all about perspective – and what store you’re shopping in – anyways.

In 2011, I really, truly, want to let go of weight concerns. I want to quit fat talking to myself and I want to not care about my weight.

I don’t discredit counting calories or tracking food. I wouldn’t be where I am today without it. It taught me HOW to eat properly and WHAT were the correct portion sizes.

But now that I know those things? I’m done. It’s time to learn how to eat intuitively. And that’s going to be a learning process. If it means gaining a few pounds along the way, then fine.

What kind of life it must be to not think about your weight/size on a regular basis. To just not care because in the end, it’s really not that important anyways.

I want to get there in my life. And I will.

I am a paper planner girl through and through.

I have tried using google calendar and outlook to schedule my life. But I just can’t get into it. With a paper planner, on the other hand, I am constantly jotting in little notes, deadlines and schedules. I love it.

My planner from my last year of college when my life was insane:

So when I heard about the Erin Condren Life Planner I decided I had to have it. But the shipping cost was deterring me. $25 (half the price of the planner) to ship to Canada is ridiculous. It does not cost that much money to ship things here.

Luckily, I was going to be seeing Lisa at the beginning of October for the marathon so I chose to ship to her for a measly $7 and then she brought it up to me!

Let me say, the $60ish this planner cost was 110% worth it. I am in love.

I’ve quickly been filling up the pages with to-do lists, deadlines, dates and times to remember.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes I am taking these photos on Webster’s cat stand. It’s the only place in our tiny little basement suite that has good lighting because it’s right in front of our one window.

Getting whacked in the head with a cats tail is just the price I have to pay to take good photos.

Anyways, back to the planner. It comes with all these nifty little labels that I love to use.

And even though I have a pretty good memory when it comes to dates and commitments, it doesn’t hurt to remind myself

In the back of the planner there’s this fabulous little folder and waterproof ziplock baggie to stuff important cards and papers in.

And finally, it came with these great gift labels! Seriously, how cute are they?

My Review

The only complaint I have about this planner is the ridiculous cost that shipping was to Canada. I know a lot of companies in the States do that and I hate it because I know it’s not that expensive. I sent TWO books to Becky for HALF the price that it cost to ship the planner.

If it hadn’t been for sending it to Lisa I would not have bought this planner because the high shipping cost was not worth it to me.

Other than that, I have no complaints. I really like how user-friendly it is, the fun colours and labels and just the overall format of the planner. I would highly recommend it to anyone that uses a paper planner regularly and I believe (minus the shipping) it was worth the $60ish!

Giveaway

I also got two lovely little 10% off coupons, which I am going to giveaway to two equally lovely readers! The discount code is good for anything in Erin Condren’s store and it’s getting close to Christmas so might as well take advantage, right? Right!

All you have to do is leave a comment on this post telling me whether you’re a paper planner person or an electronic planner person or a no planner person and WHY?

I will pick two winners next week!

*Giveaway open until Wednesday, November 17 at 9:00 PM PST. I was not given this Erin Condren planner for review, I bought it with my own money and all thoughts/opinions in this blog post are my own*

It’s been over five months since I wrote this post, and almost six months since I last ate meat so I wanted to update you guys on how things are going for me.

Proudly sporting my No Meat Athlete shirt (notice the Portland Marathon bib hanging in the background?!) I trained for and ran A MARATHON on a strictly pesco-vegetarian diet.

Some people said “I can’t believe you gave up meat right before training for a marathon. That was stupid.” Ummm, one of the best ultra-marathoners in the world, Scott Jurek, is vegan – as in no animal products.

If someone wants to eat meat, fine, but don’t be so uneducated on vegetarian and vegan diets and have the nerve to tell me that I can’t train for an endurance event on one. THAT annoys me.

Anyways, rant over! It just bugs me when people who obviously don’t know what they’re talking about say stuff like that

On to the real point of today’s post, I thought I’d answer some commonly asked questions/queries about my latest lifestyle change.

First, read this post for background on WHY I gave up meat.

Pesco-Vegetarian

According to this Active.com article, I am a pesco-vegetarian. Meaning, I eat seafood, eggs and dairy and exclude all other animal products: poultry, beef and pork. However, this isn’t to say I eat seafood every day. In fact, I’d say I eat seafood 3-4 times per month, mostly when we go out and mostly in sushi form (I love me some Salmon Rolls!). I rarely buy it and cook it because it’s expensive.

I do eat dairy (half-and-half creamer, cheese and yogurt) and eggs on almost a daily basis. So just so you know, when I refer to “meat” throughout the rest of this post I mean poultry, pork and beef. Not seafood.

Do I Miss Meat?

Not at all. In fact, the idea of eating meat makes me feel gross. I find it kind of humourous when people ask me this question because I am the kind of person who would not give up a kind of food they wanted or craved. If I craved meat every day for the last six months I wouldn’t be writing this blog post right now because I wouldn’t have made it six months! I have no interest in eating meat whatsoever anymore, which is why I haven’t.

What about ethically-raised meat?

Despite the fact that I don’t even 100% agree that any animal can be ethically raised and slaughtered (this is just my opinion, though) I don’t eat “ethically-raised” meat for the same reason I stated above, the idea of eating any kind of meat makes me feel gross and doesn’t appeal to me at all. Think about a type of food you don’t like. Brussel sprouts maybe? I no longer like meat because I no longer like the idea of eating meat. So I don’t eat it just like other people might not eat brussel sprouts or banana’s.

I know a lot of people will disagree with me and call this stupid, but it’s how I feel/think, in my mind, a pig or cow is no different than Webster. I love animals and six months ago I decided I don’t want to eat them anymore. I haven’t regretted it or looked back once.

Where do you get your protein?

Well, for starters, yogurt, eggs, cheese, beans, protein powder, chickpeas, protein bars, tofu and nuts. Check out this very informative article to learn more about getting protein as a vegetarian athlete. I eat average approximately 70-80 grams of protein a day, which is more than enough for my body weight.

What supplements or vitamins do you take?

I take a daily B-12 supplement, which is recommended for people who don’t eat meat. I will take a multivitamin occasionally too. I’m not sure if there are any other supplements out there I should be taking? Vegetarians, let me know!

Does Eric eat meat?

Yes, he does. If we go out to eat he will often order some sort of beef meal like a burger or a steak. He also eats pork and chicken but rarely. However, we only buy meat when grocery shopping once every 2 months or so – this is mostly because of the price. So when cooking at home he also eats a mostly vegetarian diet. I’d say Eric eats meat approximately 2-4 times per week at the most, sometimes less and sometimes more.

One Last Thing…

I have so much more to say on this topic, but I won’t for now because this post is long! I pointed to this video on my blog and posted this quote a couple weeks ago and I just want to touch on it again.

“My book is about the meals that most of us face on a daily basis. So if someone says to me, I’m very compelled by what you wrote but I’m gonna find myself in Indonesia in 2 weeks and want to be able to eat everything, I’ll say eat everything while you are in Indonesia but when you come back don’t eat everything. The reason we have factory farming is not these exceptional circumstances. It’s not the Christmas ham the Thanksgiving turkey and the trip to Indonesia it’s McDonalds and Burger King and supermarket meat and airport meat. This is what we need to withdraw from.”

I absolutely LOVE Foer’s point above because it really encompasses my philosophy. When you think about giving up (or cutting back on) eating meat, don’t think about the Thanksgiving Turkey, and the Christmas Ham or the trips across the world. Think about the random burger you have or the piece of chicken you only ate half of. Could you do without that more often? Probably.

Factory Farming is the number one cause of most environmental problems. And all we need to do is eat less meat.

I don’t mean to push my opinions/feelings on anyone in this post, just sharing my opinions and advice when it comes to giving up meat. I believe everyone can choose the lifestyle they want to live and everyone is entitled to their own opinions!

If you have any questions at all about the way I eat or my opinions or want to share your own opinions on this topic, please do so in the comments. Ya’ll know I love a good discussion!