Holy crapoly - it's been too long! 
Well, guess what folks? I was doing great with my weight loss until after Thanksgiving, and then I went on a pig-out fest for the entire holiday season and gained back 10 lbs, so I'm back up to 160.
yeahhhh, my fault, I know, and I'm most definitely not *whining* because I know what I did wrong. I dropped the ball on my exercise routine and my diet, and lo and behold, I gained some weight back.
That being said, at least it was only 10 lbs. A few pairs of my pants are fitting too tightly, and some shirts, and I have decided that there is no way I'm going to go buy bigger clothes, so I just have to lose weight first. I can definitely see a difference - pics from Thanksgiving at my parents' house I look markedly thinner than I do now. Now, to get back to that weight (150) and then some (goal weight is 120, but I'll even be happy with 130 at this point).
I'm going back to school in the Fall, and I want to be healthy in order to be focused on my studies. I know that working out is going to help me be more focused on my goals, as well as eating right. Good nutrition and being in shape = better mental focus. This is a proven, scientific FACT. So I MUST adhere to a healthy lifestyle.
Part of my problem is that lately I've gotten re-addicted to flavored drinks that aren't "diet" drinks, but full-sugar...lemonade, juices, sodas...argh, liquid sugar! I have also been more often than I'd like to mixing those with the likes of vodka, or having beer more than once a week, which of course is a bad habit for health.
My uncle just passed away yesterday from very advanced lung cancer. A week ago they thought he just had pneumonia. A few days after that they knew it was cancer but thought it may be treatable. Then a day or so after that they thought he had 2 months left to live. Then a few days after that he passed away because the cancer had spread that quickly. I have dealt with a lot of grief in the past few years. In '06 my favorite grandmother passed away, in '07 one of my family's best friends stopped getting treated for his Crohn's disease and he died in his sleep, in '08 my cousin had a burglar break into his apartment and shoot him to death, last year one of my best friends got drunk and started cleaning his gun (that he didn't think was loaded), which went off and shot him, and now my uncle is also suddenly gone.
When it comes to belief in a deity I'm an atheist, and when it comes to what happens to someone after they die I'm an agnostic (literally means "not knowing"), but I can't really visualize the concept of a "heaven." It sometimes irks me when (albeit good intentioned) people say they'll pray for me, or for those people, or that they're with jesus now, or in heaven. It kind of annoys me. I'd rather people just say, "I sympathize" or "I'm sorry" and give me a hug, ya know? That would make me feel better than, "he's with jesus now." ARRRRGH. I mean, I know they mean well and often people who say that also have limited knowledge of science or cosmology (my main areas of interest and what I plan to study - focusing on astrophysics actually). I've also had a few people condescendingly say that I'll become a believer once enough people I know die. I think enough people I know have, and the fact that I'm still not a believer proves that I've been "tested." Faith to me is an emotion that humans have developed over time to comfort them. Religion and dogma have taken it so far that people really enrapt in it feel guilty even questioning it. I am not one of those people. I haven't believed in a god since I was 12, and have always felt that it was highly unlikely for a person to survive death in a non-physical form, but never counted it out either.
Anyway, people assume if you aren't religious, you must have a harder time dealing with death and mourning. I disagree. It's the same experience, I just take out the words, "heaven" and "jesus" and replace them with sentiments of remembering the person, the person living on in my memories, the fact that there is a great circle of life on our planet, the fact that they made their mark, the fact that they positively impacted myself and others. But it doesn't take away the raw pain of grief and the feelings of unfairness over the loss, and neither does thinking that you might get to see your loved ones when it's your time. I've made it abundantly clear that I'm not a christian, don't plan on becoming one, and thus things like prayer don't mean anything to me. What means more to me are kind gestures, or just giving me a hug!
OK sorry to go off on a rant about that part of my life. The point of that was to get some of the negative emotions off my chest. This has been a terrible week for my family with my uncle being in the hospital and his condition getting worse so quickly. Any time someone I love passes away it reminds me that life is indeed so short, and we're only given one shot at it, so we need to be the best we can while we're here. That does have to do with my goals of weight loss, keeping my BED (binge eating disorder) under control (which of course in times of high emotion is hard to do), and treating myself healthily so that I can have a good quality of life while I'm still here. If I treat myself right, I can also help others and be a good sister, friend, daughter, partner, student (and hopefully eventual researcher in the astrophysics field). I'm soon going to start volunteering at a science museum for children in my area. It was founded when I was 13, and at that time it was being run out of some rentable office space, and was a "portable" museum (meaning exhibits/experiment demonstrations where moved around in a big van or truck to different places) until they raised enough money to get a permanent space. It's been cool to watch that educational venture grow over the years, and of course being a firm believer in getting kids VERY interested in the sciences, I want to be a part of it. That, taking care of myself, getting back to school, are going to help me be the best human I can.
*kisses*
Amy - who WILL lose the weight, and who WILL win by doing so, and who will NEVER give up, even if I do have backslides...
I just hope that wherever his spirit is, that he's happy and at peace. I do miss him all the time, though. And so many things remind me of him, it can be very challenging to get through a normal day without at least tearing up just a little. I feel like I got a lot of things off my chest last night, though...
