Diary: Curvie Girlie: A Yo-Yo's Reformation

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The gods are pleased

*counting blessings* SOOOOOO grateful and happy right now.

I got my second job!!!​

I dunno if you noticed, but in the hospitality industry, it pays to know someone, yadadada mean? (translation: "do you know what I mean?") Anyway, I was talking earlier about how I need more money to support my lavish lifestyle :rolleyes: Seriously I'm bad with money--even though I put 4 Gs in an IRA, I have some *cough* credit card debt to take care of. Which I can! Easily! But I think it would be quicker to get a second job...and keep me out of trouble....and away from spending MORE mula. Yadadadada talkin' bout? I feel guilty, like a spoiled bitch, and I come from a poor background and a hard-working single mommy. I feel like I need to work harder right now--and save more money. Anyway, I was jocking on (translation: envying) server's tips. I want to make mass cash from tips! But I have no prior experience serving. This proves to be a problem in the competitive jobforce in this college town/tourist trap. However....

A restaurant in Aptos has an owner who loves me--he thinks I'm a great person, he is very good friends with our company's president, and he always says when he places wine orders and I answer the phone, "Valerie! How are you, you beautiful woman!" Whenever I want to buy a case of wine sans tax, I can have him order, pick it up from him, and give him a check (restaurant=wholesale). He is always nice and accommodating. We have held our summer trade tastings there several times.

Anyway, I got off work early and went over there. He was away. He had given me his CELL PHONE # so I called it. I asked him if he needed any help evenings or weekends, and he said,

"Valerie, you're hired. You got the job--there are plenty of things to do here, and summer is coming up--perfect timing! Get an application,"

:D​

I'm so happy! I really, really want to be a bartender because that's my forte--good times, getting people tipsy and a friendly, fun-loving atmosphere. Yes I am being naive ;) But still, my teenage jobs were working at Una Mas Taqueria and Panda Express Chinese Food--rushes, cranky customers, cleaning, working hard--I've done it, I have plenty of energy, and I need the money.

It is better than stripping.​

Not to mention I would have to drive to San Jose to do that, and I don't have the desire to get a job like that (despite the fact that I could make plenty of money in very little time). No good, no good--and I wouldn't want my BF hanging out at my work, either! :mad:

Anyway, I know that time for working out will be reduced and I will miss my honey bun and will not be able to go out as much. But this is temporary, and it is experience for the future. When I become a sommelier. Maybe. It would be nice, to up and leave for France and study that. I'd do it, maybe.

Stats:

Food: Had 110 calories worth of falafel at work. Ready to run right now off of 1180 calories.

Angel Valerie, over and out!
 
Hey Curves, I'm so glad you got that extra job, I hope you really enjoy it!! I went over to my girlfriends tonight and she stopped by the liquor store and picked me up some Shiraz, mmmmm it was awesome, she is so good to me. HAHHAHA:D well, I hope your enjoying your Friday!! Will talk to you later gator.
Kim
 
Morning Curves!! I hope you had a great Friday Night and I hope your Saturday is even better. You didn't give up and eat chocolate yesterday did you. LOL LMAO!!! Later gator!:D
KIM
 
CaseyAtMartin said:
J/k, I'm sure you'll be a great waitress without having to show leg. Didn't want to sound sexist there.
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I DO hope that looking sharp will help in the tip department, but something tells me that charm is going to count more--and I can pour it on. I think that people, when they go to restaurants, want service from a happy, kind, and helpful person--and I can do that, no prob!

TomO said:
OK, when we go to SF next time to see our son, we're going to drive to SC and stop in your bar.
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Oh how nice! The restaurant is right off of Highway 1, though--you would probably be on 101...I'm guessing....but very sweet!

Miss Ladybug said:
Hey Curves, I'm so glad you got that extra job, I hope you really enjoy it!! I went over to my girlfriends tonight and she stopped by the liquor store and picked me up some Shiraz, mmmmm it was awesome, she is so good to me. HAHHAHA:D well, I hope your enjoying your Friday!! Will talk to you later gator.
Kim
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Ooooooh, Australian wine! Lucky you! Thanks for the congrats!
 
Last night

I wanted to eat cheap. After my run, on only 1300 or so calories mind you, I was FAMISHED. I looked around the house. I ate:

1 can of smoked oysters (yum! they look gross, I know!) at 140 calories; 1 can of white tuna at 140 calories, and some spicy olive tapenade mixed in at probably about 60 calories.

Meager, I know--but then...

BF wanted to stay in (as usual) so I went to the bar early with the Grignolino for Derek. I gave it to him--he was shocked, pleased and grateful. Since I was early waiting for my buddy S. I talked to D.

Infatuation: GONE. Dude: dull as dishwater​

Ha ha! It should NOT be a stereotype that model-hot, tall men happen to be dull and boring. I don't think that's true BUT the 3 hottest men with whom I've ever made acquaintance were dull, boring, and vain. I immediately grew bored. The good looks became irrelevant--I was actually very pleased. Like I said, I hated being mesmerized by some other dude--he mad me miss my funny, witty, intelligent and innovative BF.

That is that! (wiping hands of it)

Last night I was pretty bored. It was a WEIRD night--no one was feeling it. S. and I were boring each other, the streets were very empty for a Friday, no one seemed to be having a good time, and S. left at midnight. I met up with that one guy, and we chatted it up about what a weird night it was. At least he's interesting and I wasn't bored. I went home thinking, "Man, my nights of bar hopping are going to be over soon due to the 2nd job--and I'm glad of it"

Stats:

Entire day and night: only 2 Newcastles!!! 12 oz = 150 calories, but the glasses I think hold 14-16 oz, so somewhere around 400 calories

BUT I did get a soymilk ice cream milkshake with peanut butter. :( I'm not too bummed out about it though--It was not a huge dent in my diet and I am not going out this weekend--I'm going to my hometown to visit my best friend and her toddler, who is 1 and 1/2 (almost). She's so smart and beautiful! I didn't mention I was there for her birth! A home birth! Me, my best friend, the midwife, the Doula and the baby's daddy. When Kaya's head came out of my best friend, it was the best moment of my life!!! Yay for Birth!! I LIKE birth. It made me burst into tears of happiness! I'm looking forward to seeing them :)

On exercise:

I am bad because I don't listen to people who mention days of rest. My 10K race is next Sunday and I feel like my running is getting worse, not better. I think I seriously need 48 hours off exercise or something--I notice I'm TIRED when I exercise, and just a few weeks ago I felt like wonder woman. I seldom if ever give myself a day off exercise. I'm tired, now--I'm not sure if I should take today AND tomorrow off.....maybe I'll go to Kickboe right now. not sure yet. Yeah, i think I'll go--but rest tomorrow!
 
Curves, isn't that always the way with really good looking me, I've seen it so many times before. I agree that you probably need a time off of working out, your a little power house, your going to burn yourself out. But I know once you get into a routine, it's hard not to go. I know you will do fine in the 10K, so take it easy. I can't believe you had a dull night, now that was unexpected I must say. Maybe today will be much better! :p
 
About Body Image: hope this helps

I just started thinking about a topic that can make anyone on here, probably, squirm a bit:

Body Image​

The fact that we are on here alone points to our preoccupation with it. We are honest about it--we're not hiding it. We look to each other for inspiration and support, which is the beauty of this forum. We all want different things, although some are closer in our goals than others. Hopefully we can be open-minded enough not to judge each other's desires. And in the long run, I certainly hope that our end goal is health, fitness, and happiness from feeling good about ourselves.

My Story: I wasn't always healthy about my body image. RIGHT NOW I am loving my body and my gears are shifted more toward what it can DO. I admit, I am fixated on that number: *130; *20.4--BUT a lot of you can sympathize because you understand what it's like to want to see a special number that has meaning to you on that scale. Maybe it reflects happier days--maybe it is your educated guess as to how your body could look its best for your personal aesthetics. My own reasons for that number I am going to keep quiet about because in retrospect, it seems a little shallow and silly. But I picked my goal, and I am determined to reach it, because I want to see what I am capable of--and once I'm there I can determine if I want to maintain that for the rest of my life. Some part of me doubts it. But we'll see--time will tell.

Our country seems to be preoccupied with size and weight, especially for females. This is no news: broken record status. How does it really affect your psyche? Some people are like ducks--the pressure beads and drops like water off their backs. Either that or they are frontin'. All of us here want to transform ourselves. Some of us want to be athletes, and think that less body fat might improve our game. Other of us have serious health issues that can get better if we lose some excess fat. Some of us want to eat right and exercise to redeem ourselves of past abuse we did to our precious bodies. At some level, this must hurt us.

I think nothing can hurt us like ourselves in our self-esteem and image. Ideally, we would all except our perceived flaws instead of tripping out on them, and also accept our accolades--instead of worrying about being conceited or vain. Where is the line, anyway? How hard is it to feel good about ourselves as people and how we look without accusing ourselves of narcissism? I think that some people may feel guilty for feeling good about themselves. It is passive aggressive to wallow in self hate because self love is so sinful on some weird kind of level. Balance is the hardest thing.

When I was a teenie, and a measly 120 by way of hard drugs and poor eating, I loved the number--but not the lifestyle. When I was 150 at age 22, and VERY happy, I loved my lifestyle--but not the number. Why? Blame it on pressure or something. I knew at the time that I could be 159 and still at a status quo weight for my height. At 24, in December, I realized that if I didn't stop over-eating and over-drinking, I could easily become obese. I was headed toward BMI 25+ land. I thought, "I could just keep eating." As a "jock," I wanted to be able to do the things I love and try new things. Of course I could do all that at a healthy, higher weight. BUT enter body image. I didn't like the way I had bulges here and there--and a double chin at times, and I didn't like that I couldn't wear certain clothes and such.

Here's where my post gets controversial. Yes, I am SO ashamed to admit that the media images of women influenced my aesthetics. It is, after all, only part of acculturation. As a very social human, I am influenced and subject to peer pressure. I spent many years resisting that and I always felt alone, angry, and outcasted--and now I'm not just talking about body image. It seemed like once I started to accept certain aspects of my culture, more people agreed with me, times became more harmonious--being a VEGAN, ENVIRONMENTALIST FEMINAZI was hard work--that's why I slacked off and started eating fish, driving a car, and dressing up. But to tie that into body image, I wanted to be "hot." Hottness does not equal a weight. But for some reason, I thought that at 130-140, it may (for me). Is this so sick? I don't know....maybe if I hated myself and demanded perfection? I don't. But yes, the number still is there.

I do not know how it feels to be obese. I do know that I would feel very bad about myself; hopeless, angry, frustrated. I remember all last summer, I was fluctuating from 160 to 153 for months, and crying in the shower after I weighed myself. Mind you--that is merely the high end of a healthy weight! It didn't help that my boyfriend is 150 lbs and 6'. I detested weighing more than him. He also has carelessly said a few things during our relationship that made me feel very bad. He's not a bad guy, not at all! But some people stick their foot in their mouth sometimes and yeah....not like no one knows that it's like to be hurt by a careless comment, right? But I feel awful, to think that some of my friends on here get comments like, "Are you pregnant?" and feel terrible, or "Good for you!" when they're out exercising, or, "You'd be so pretty if you just lost weight," which is probably one of the worst! I care about people's feelings. It upsets me something terrible when a "fat" person gets hurt by a backhanded compliment--because I know how it feels to hate my weight, regardless if you think I have never been heavy enough to really know. And you're right on some level: I HAVE never known what it is to be clinically obese. But I can imagine.

However, I celebrate "big" people who love being big, despite what anyone says or what the media tells them. They are the ones thinking right and who have the great body image. Ideally, a person would love herself at any size, AND even if she wanted to lose weight, she would continue to love herself as she got smaller. That is me: I love myself at 160, although I wanted to be smaller, I love each and every stage of this weight loss and although I gripe about it, I really am glad to be alive and have a healthy self-esteem. And I LOVE seeing so many people here who are the same way, at any size. :D
 
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What a wonderful post, Valerie. You hit upon a very essential truth -- that you will have a much harder time losing weight if you hate your body.

Of course, there IS a difference between being merely overweight and being obese. When you're overweight, it's a lot easier to keep a positive body image. You generally hate parts of you, but not the whole package. That's how I felt up to my 30's, before I got over 230 lbs.

When you fall into the obese and morbidly obese category (I've only been in the first, not the second), you start hating the whole package -- just because fat starts accumulating everywhere. Parts of your body that basically were OK when you were just overweight take on the "ugliness" of the parts of your body you've hated for a long time.

That's why exercise is so critical. I'm beginning to think that exercise is much more than 30% of the equation. Why? Because the more you exercise, the more you can begin to find things you LIKE about yourself. Even though the outward appearance of your body may not have changed, exercise will bring about internal changes. Your blood pressure may go down; your blood sugar may fall into line; you find that suddenly you can walk 3 miles, when before you could hardly walk up the stairs.

With diet alone, it's very hard to get that feeling.

That's why I'm not going to tell people anymore the old mantra -- that losing weight is 70% diet. It's true -- if you eat too many calories, you'll gain weight. But I think it's equally true -- if you don't exercise, you'll have an almost impossible time reshaping your body image, and ultimately you will fail to keep the weight off, which is really what counts in the long run.

Thanks again for this insightful post!
 
Curves, great post tonight!! I think we all are on this site for a reason, and nobody here needs to know why. This isn't a point the finger at you website, it's not a shame on you website, it's a support website. We are on here to encourage others and support others on their new ventures. Some may be here to lose weight, I've read some that are trying to gain weight. It doesn't matter, the point is we all need to fix something about ourselves, be it big or small. What I think is people on here may not realize how brave and strong they all are, they are opening up their Windows (lives) for everyone to peek into. That takes guts and balls, and to put it all out in writing is huge. This is why I love this website. Thanks for sharing your story and thoughts. Never give up on what you want! Regardless of what others might think. We are doing this for ourselves after all. ;)
Kim:)
 
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