10/5/12

A rant on health.

There's this thing going on right now with a news reporter who got called obese in an e-mail and publicly outed the douche that did it. And then the douche that did it came back and defended himself and was basically a big dink. It's a pretty cool story and I applaud the woman for standing up for herself in some way other than crying and shouting "I'm NOT fat!" between mouthfuls of ice cream. She actually handed it with lots of dignity and was very composed and said some extremely well-chosen words.

What followed is what got my gears grinding. A few woman were talking to me about this. All of them were overweight, none MORBIDLY obese, but still. The things they said made my head spin, one in particular. All of them had the same complaint; losing weight is impossible, they're happy with themselves as is and there's nothing wrong with being their weight.

Well, no, it's not... and if you are happy with your body, awesome! I don't judge because I am still a bit bigger than average and I used to be very obese. Also I don't judge because judging people is wrong.

The thing that got me going was one woman in particular. She went on this rant about how it's impossible for her to lose weight and how clearly I understand because I seem like I keep a healthy lifestyle and I've still got some extra pounds.

That's what stopped me. She's only known me for a few months. I know from what she's said that her daily life consists of sitting at a computer and eating takeout. Not even because she has no time, simply because she "doesn't feel like doing stuff."

She knows from what I've said about my life that I run long distance races, work out every day, eat healthier than your average person, and go for regular physicals at the doctor's. I don't understand where she thinks that we sit in the same boat. She was also under the impression that the only reason to lose weight was to look pretty.

That is NOT why I lost weight.

Before I get into this, I want to show you a picture of me from when I was in high school and a picture I took tonight. I used to be 265lbs. It was awful.

Before:

Now:


I've come a long way. And it's not because it's the North American standard or because I felt bad in my own body. Actually, if it was just how much I cared about how I looked I would probably be even heavier now. Did you see how I dressed? Seriously? It wasn't about image.

So this is my rant on health.

I am bigger than normal. I am still seen as a bit fat. I am above average weight for women, still. I couldn't care less about that. Honestly, if I had to put my feelings about my weight and my image into words, it would be "I don't give a shit."

Honestly, truly. I could still be as wide as I was up there, but if I was as healthy as I am now it wouldn't matter much. But I don't think that's possible. Whatever. Point being, it's not about weight, it's about health. And weight is deceptive in the world of health. This woman saying that we're on the same page is insulting, not because she's heavier than me or whatever, but because she is incredibly unhealthy and not doing anything about it. She has uneven, heavy breathing suggesting an unhealthy heart, and gets out of breath just walking.


Losing weight and being healthy is not impossible or even hard. You don't need to be on a huge exercise program with a personal trainer and eat like a rabbit to start losing weight. Once you start it kinda cascades into a world of health. But you start slow. Like... switch to milk in your coffee one week. Stop eating fast food but every once in a while, have a burger. Whatever. Just do it slowly. Maybe you start going for walks every day. Then sometimes you jog a teeny bit. Maybe sometimes you lift a bit of weights. Not much.

Sometimes you'll have to take a break from health and divulge and then you go back to it.

At this point I go for a 3 1/2 mile run every other day and I eat almost vegetarian but I didn't get there overnight. I took small steps and a few times got frustrated and tried to do it all at once and then fell off the bandwagon because I pushed myself too hard.

I did this stuff because my blood pressure was awful, I didn't want diabetes, and I wanted to ride horses competitively and you have to be in shape to do that. I wanted to be able to climb the stairs and breathe afterwards. I wanted to feel good and boost my immune system because I was sick of being SICK.

I had debilitating tendinitis in my knees. Some days it was so bad I needed crutches to walk. The seizing tendons were becoming so bad that they were slowly working my bones out out of their sockets and caused a dislocation. My doctor told me that unless I wanted to be in a wheel chair from 30yo on, I needed to take better care of my body.

I also have a slow metabolism (it runs in the family - both of my parents are overweight) so it wasn't easy and it's tedious and slow-going. But it's been 7 years since I made the choice to change. I was told by my tendon specialist that I couldn't run, walk too hard, climb stairs, battle snow, or do high-level biking to start out. I needed to swim, horseback ride, and do craptonnes of yard work in order to start it.

So I don't want to hear ANY bullshit about how it's too hard to lose weight. I did it with all of those restrictions and chronic pain in my legs and back from my effed-up knees.

When someone complains about how hard it is to lose weight because they have a cookie addiction or something and just don't have the willpower to introduce exercise, it just rubs me the wrong way. I was told I could end up in a wheel chair by age 30 AND I was told that I would not ever be able to run. I went for a year without running. A whole year, didn't run a step because I was so terrified.

Now I've run in long-distance races and I regularly run a 3 1/2 mile route.

Don't complain to me about overcoming your stupid Oreo addiction. Grow a pair and deal with it if it bothers you that much! Don't get pissed at society for telling you it's bad to eat a WHOLE BOX OF OREOS. Guess what? IT IS BAD. In so many ways. That stuff will KILL you. Literally.

Do not group me in the same area as yourself if you're unhappy with yourself but unwilling to change it.

Healthy saves lives, people! I'm not trashing anyone who looks any way, I'm just asking for people to not bitch about their health/weight if they aren't willing to work out how to deal with it.

Also, here's a picture of me and a friend of mine after the last 5k we ran together! I'm on the right =)

10/4/12

"SHUT UP" girl.

When I was in my last year of high school I somehow gathered a following of overenthusiastic teenage girls who were for some reason in love with me (not in the romantic sense). As girls tend to frighten and annoy me I can assure you that the feeling was not reciprocated. These were the girls who lived in expensive houses, had loving parents, but slacked off in school and alternated between complaining about how awful their lives were and acting like annoying overly-excited/happy 5-year-olds. And not in a humorous way.

And they would hang around me when I worked (I started my art career in high school and would do commissions in my free time/on breaks because I worked 2 jobs outside of high school) and practiced music. I would do or say something that they found hilarious and they would split their sides laughing and tell me I'm awesome.

Okay. Sounds not bad. But it would be something like:

"Man I need a coffee" to a friend of mine and they would just fricking explode out of nowhere! It gave me a bit of a nervous twitch for a while.

They were the kind of girls that you could hear clearly from across the room because they only had two vocal presets: crying and screaming at the top of their lungs.

They added me on Facebook and followed all of my posts and liked my art website and page and blog and followed my band around like tame sorts of groupies. They wanted to be our roadies. Or some BS that we didn't need because we were an out-of-high-school-rock-band playing for at best 200 people and at worst 5. As soon as HS ended, I blocked most of them from my FB page and blocked their updates and wanted nothing to do with them.

However, one girl in particular just somehow weeded her way into my Facebooking experience. I now know her as "shut up" girl because every single thing I see her post makes me want to tell her to shut up and grow up. Because by this time she's got to be at least 22 years old and she still talks like she did when we were in high school. Which was already immature for her age. But I never say anything because I did a couple of times and she would cry to me about how mean I was and how I used to be her role model.

It was really stupid things that I called her on, too, like her publicly bitching out her father on Facebook for never being around or being in her life.

Her father is a FREAKING SOLDIER. He's never around because he spends most of his time deployed.

So after the 8-millionth time I finally deleted her. It takes a lot to get me to delete you from Facebook, mostly because I really couldn't care less who's around, so you have to blatantly annoy me to the point of me blocking you from appearing in anything, and then somehow worm your way back onto my page and continue the annoyance. It takes skill!

Anyways. So she requested a billion times (probably once a month) to be my friend on Facebook again and I kept declining. Finally it stopped until a couple of years later when she asked again. I thought, "hey, she HAS to have grown up a BIT since I last saw her... right?!"

Nope.

It's the same whiny crap, and she still lives with her parents. Except NOW she has a "photography business" that has been around for a couple of years and has never had a paid photoshoot because her pictures are AWFUL. But she's always talking about how she's going to make her living off of it and as soon as she does she's going to move out of her parents' house because they're mean to her and they suck.

She's going far, man.

Anyways. Here's some stuff from shut up girl. I will post more as time goes on and more happen.

Seriously. Every single post. This is the only person for whom I feel NO pity when they are sad. And I have like Christian guilt over it too because I'm supposed to love everyone but I can't like someone who refuses to do anything with themselves.

















Remember this is coming from a highly privileged 22yo who's lived rent-free in her family's half-million-dollar homes all her life.

I'm too tired to write about my day.

So I drew a picture to describe it. Here's a brief explanation. First a man on a pink bike drove by me screaming weird things then I had coffee with my ex whom I'm still friends with and he had a surprise for me then my pet snake escaped into our storage room and hell if I can get him out then a customer asked me out and I said no. Then I realized my writing was awful today, so I took a break to set heat/food traps for my snake and then I had a slight mental meltdown.

I'm fine, just tired. I need to wake up before everyone and remove the traps before my roommates see them. And then just keep setting them at night (snakes are nocturnal) until I catch him without them knowing he's out. Anyways. Picture.



And as an added bonus here's a picture of the pants.

Good night.

10/1/12

Business day!

Things are sorting out. I've been in contact with some well-known professionals in the horse business and am currently discussing doing artwork for their farms. I've also hidden the advertising for authors to kind of keep my sanity but still offer character design. This morning, I ended up going out to a wellness studio that's hanging a series of paintings that they commissioned me to do.

I recently bought a bunch of English tack so I can practice and keep in riding shape while I'm not training out at the farm, and so I can use it (it's old/beat up) to work with the younger horses so I don't have to wreck the barn's $6000 saddles if a young horse gets away from me.

Working on some other paintings. Found some time this weekend to write and outline a bunch and shut my editor up/calmed them down enough to stop harassing me all the time.

Had an interesting conversation via Facebook with my mom yesterday. I showed her a video of me working on conditioning a Grand Prix jumper and she goes "why are you riding ENGLISH?" like it was a dirty thing to do or something. She's always mocked the English tack, saying it was prissy or something, I don't know, I didn't pay close enough attention because it was always BS.

It was just humorous because for the past 8 years I've ridden nothing BUT English. The first time I've been in a Western saddles since I was 17 was last weekend when I went out to a friend's ranch to work with some of her youngsters. I told her that and she kind of goes "well this family never rode English."

"This family" rides casually at best, so it's not like I'm insulting some family honor. I DO have an uncle who is a professional rodeo rider but he's not actually related to me so he doesn't count.

I kindly explained that you CAN'T ride jumpers without riding English, and she just has no clue.

I missed being in the horse world. I really really did. I can't believe I bowed out for a whole 2 years.