The final weigh in

On Friday I fell asleep while eating a cookie.

Not my proudest moment. Although, in my defense, not my worst.

So that was the beginning of the end for my three-week weight loss challenge.

Today was final weigh in, and I had not made any real attempt to lose weight or even workout.

I think I averaged one workout a week.

One being a deceivingly difficult trampoline class.

You don’t jump up; instead you push down.

What does that even mean?!

And how did someone manage to take the fun out of jumping on trampolines?!

To recap: I had three weeks to lose 10 pounds. I invested $40. If I succeeded, I got double my investment back. If I failed, I lost everything (except for the weight).

Three weeks ago I weighed in at 145.

Today ladies and gentlemen….

Drumroll. ..

Mas drumroll…

Drumroll is not nearly as effective on paper…

139!

That was my weight today. I don’t know if I prefaced that properly.

In the end I didn’t get $80 or even my initial $40 back, but I did get four dollars per pound lost. Which means I only lost $16.

It is probably for the best, because I’ve wanted this cat clock for awhile and it happens to cost as much as the competition.

It’s stupid. I don’t need it, and I have absolutely no good place for it.

So really, I saved $16.

Welp, that’s a wrap on my latest fitness endeavour.

I’ll keep you posted on my holiday weight fluctuations so y’all know you’re not alone.

Til next time!

Is the smaller box of Cheez-Its considered diet?

I said I would post daily on this thing. 

That was six days ago. 

In the true fashion of not upholding to my word, I had to slack off for a few days. 

The weigh-in for my work’s weightloss challenge was last Thursday. I made sure to drink plenty of water right before. 

I’m hoping that’s why this 5’2 lady had the number 145 light up on the scale. 

Maybe I DO need to diet?

Ugh, I really like my waistline, so I’m not feeling any pressure – or motivation. 

Although, I still have $40 on the line to lose 10 pounds.

I’ll give you my current progess:

That is a photo of my best friend and I at Zombie Brew Crawl last Saturday.

Or is it my best friend and me?

 No one knows. 

The face I am making perfectly illustrates my feelings for dieting. 
Here’s another photo to redeem myself:

Look at them guns!
Anyways, as you can see in the photo, I have a tiny glass of beer. Times that by three hours and mutiple tiny glasses – I had a lot of beer that day. 

Needless to say, week one of the diet wasn’t productive. 

Unless you count the fact I bought a tiny box of Cheez-Its instead of the full, grown-up size box for lunch. 

Then week one diet was a success. 

I’ll keep you posted on week two. 

Til next time friends!

Lose ten pounds in three weeks!

Welcome to thirty folks!

I’m still just as unmotivated and disappointingly short.

I really thought I would be taller by now.

Scroll down and you’ll see the prior year of half-ass commitments I applied myself to.

Since I’m a fan of excuses, the reason I have been uninvolved is because I am actually happy.

I may have addressed this topic in a prior post, but in the good fashion of being lazy,  I’ll just re-address it instead of clicking out of this window to view another window, to see if I have already mentioned this topic.

Talk about grammatical errors in that sentence above! I’m too tired to go back and edit, so please give me a pass on this one.

I  was really diligent about posting in this thing a few years ago. It was my way of escaping and safely entering a world where I could be myself.

I only added “safely” because it’s nearly 10pm and I have used all my clever adjectives for my copywriting gig earlier.

But over the past year, I haven’t yearned for that escape like I did two years ago.

Hindsight – it was depression.

But now I’ve entered the lovely world of social anxiety and overthinking every goddamn thing.

I actually hesitated writing “goddamn” because I didn’t want to offend anyone.

I don’t know where this liberal overly PC girl came from, but she is exhausting.

Actually, I have a hypothesis…

I’ve been working in front of a computer too damn long! I forgot how to socially interact with people.

So I’ve decided to take the plunge and teach Spin.

(Like how I brought in the theme of the blog finally?)

It wasn’t so much a plunge as it was a halfass, two sentence inquiry to a craigslist ad.

Luckily for me, a brand new gym is opening, and they need to staff from the ground up.

So it’s by default I got the gig.

But it really reinforces my mantra of “why try hard?”

Which brings me back to our theme of the blog.

(Not really, I just got bored of writing what I litterally just wrote and decided to skip the topic altogether.)

My work is doing a weight-loss challenge. For camaraderie sake I want to participate.

The challenge is to put in $40 and lose 10 pounds in three weeks. If I lose the 10 pounds, I get $80 back!

For you non-maths out there, that’s double my investment.

If I do not lose 10 pounds, I lose my $40. That is opposite of investment.

(Of course my first thought was how can I cheat this?)

Because my laziness outweighs my frugalness (see DietBet post – then immediately notice the non follow-up DiteBet post after) the money motivation isn’t a guarantee I’ll follow through.

So I thought real hard and realized the last time I attempted a “diet” was when I posted on this thing religiously.

Hence this post 🙂

Weigh in is tomorrow. I figured I would update my three-week adventure daily to try and stay motivated.

Hopefully you all can keep me accountable. All you diligent followers you (add winky face).

It’s late and the cat is needing attention – for the record a literal cat – I’m out.

Til tomorrow with weigh-in updates.

…we’ll see if it happens.

Night!

It’s been awhile (in the melody of that one Staind song)

Hello beautiful people!

I believe my last post was about the Diet Bet challenge I committed six months to prior to the holidays and ended on my 30th birthday.

Here’s the update.

I lost interest after month one.

But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t effective. Because it was in the back of my mind, I did make mental notes of my eating habits and commit into a few extra workouts a week. And by few I mean two.

I got back down to my normal weight which I give more credit to moving out of my mom’s (I’d like to note, before I turned 30) and not going out on dates with my awesome winemaker boyfriend four times a week.

I didn’t have to add in the winemaker part, but I feel it is imperative to our relationship and our drunken conversation the night we met which lead to a text message by me to him the following day. I didn’t remember his name, the way he looked (besides his lumberjack beard – which we all know is the manliest of beards), or where we even met, but I did remember the fact he was a winemaker.

So why am I back? I am back because A. I miss writing in this silly little blog and B. shameless self promotion.

I am now in a big kid job, which honestly scares the crap out of me (figuratively not literally). My new title is Marketing and Sales Coordinator. Writing about FSAs, the new Overtime Regulation, and tip-shraing, gave me the itch to write in my own personal blog for funsies AND send a link to the workplace blog.

So if you have time, help your girl out and read the more anecdotal post I published yesterday. It’s similar to my personal blog with the exception of chat about my unsuccessful fitness journey and beard-mentioning hot men.

Thank you all for your support! I’m so excited to be back!

Diet Bet – your review

Remember  when this was a review blog? 

Probably not. It was back in 2013 when I was a young blogger with big hopes and dreams. 

But now I’m a little less naive and realize the Internet is full of many reviews and most of them are just personal opionions I appreciate but can’t rely on. 

That’s when I got this brilliant idea to post a review of the Diet Bet game. 

Brief synopsis: Diet Bet is a website/app where you can sign up for a six month program to lose 10% of your body weight. You place a certain amount of money each month with a group of friends, and whoever meets the goal splits the pot of money. 

Our team is The Zipper Rippers and we are waging $10 per month. Right now we have a pot of $610 to split for whoever reaches the goal of losing 10% of their body weight by March. 

Here’s the thing, if I write a review it’s just my opinion and it doesn’t really benefit any of you. Instead, I invite you all to play with my friends and I!

Here’s a link to our game: http://diet.bt/fykDe0

Check it out. I personally am a sucker for a sense of community, so the more the merrier. And in the end, instead of reading my opionion in the game, you can make up your mind for yourself. 

Create your own review 🙂

Chubbier Cheeks

I can’t seem to shed these few pounds I have gained over the last year. My mom says it is because I am happy now. 

Is happiness really worth the slightly tighter jeans and chubbier looking cheeks in photos?

But she is right, I am a lot happier now; that’s partly why I don’t post on this thing like I use to. 

I started this blog as a means to continue writing while I looked for writing gigs; it quickly became a need of affirmation.

I was in a relationship where I didn’t get encouragement with my writing. I was told I had bad grammar and spelling when I asked my ex what he thought of my blog. Although I appreciated the constructive criticism, I really needed to hear “good job”.  This isn’t to say my marriage was bad. Because it wasn’t. It was just lacking this one very important aspect, so I used this blog as metaphorical compensation. 

I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read this silly thing. Who has shared, liked, and followed it. It filled a slight void I hadn’t realized I was missing. 

I’m still going to write occasionally in this, but I don’t need it like I use to. My confidence in my ability to write isn’t dependent on the views I get. My love for writing really has become a personal endeavor with therapeutic journal entries; with short writing prompts where I can make myself laugh; with nonlinear plot lines. I realize I no longer need an audience to write, and I no longer need to write to escape. 

Much like this blog I’ve evolved, and I’m still evolving. I have so much self discovering to do (not the sexy kind) and so many new experiences ahead. This blog came during a very different time of my life and helped masked some very confusing, sad feelings. 

I’ll make an appearance every now and again on this thing, but only for nostalgic purposes. The girl who started this blog isn’t around anymore. But she helped get me where I am now:

Tighter jeans and happy. 

Treasure hunt -wait that’s a thing?

Living in California during the midst of a major drought means great opportunities to hike in 70 degree weather in the beginning of April. 

This is not to say I am insensitive to the drought. In fact, I haven’t washed my car in nearly a year. It is to say, I will seize the day and venture out in all the beauty California has to offer. 

This is, of course, after I nursed my hangover with a food truck kimchi grilled cheese. 

Because I have grand plans of being active every Saturday, and yet, every Saturday I tend to somehow end up with wine, I got my lazy ass hiking last weekend thanks to Geocaching. 

I have to admit, I had never heard of this before and was convinced my friends were just saying a random set of syllables together. But it is, in fact, a real thing as well as a convient app on my phone:

Download the app, click on a green dot, follow the clues and gps coordinates to some random treasure a random person hid. 

Part of the reason I was so amused by this concept was because my friends who told me about it were on beach cruisers downtown looking for geocaches. The idea of three adults riding around on bikes looking for small trinkets really made me happy. 

So last Saturday I finally was active thanks to this Geocache app. Not to brag, but I found the first Geocache amongst my team of three:

First member was my neice whom I allowed to wear flip flops on a hike because I am an adult, and I trusted that a 12 year old could hike in flip flops because she said so. 

Her mediocre superpower is the ability to walk through any terrain in subpar footwear. (You have to imagine these introductions with capes). 

Then there was Tankman. A 38 pound Boston terrier who seems to never calm down even despite his dog years of 42. His superpower is the ability to get distracted by any reflection or shadow on the ground. 

Then there was Jon, the Tankman wrangler. A very important skill to have as Tank is my dog and tends to walk me on these hikes. 

Then there’s me who holds the power of positivity. If we went in the wrong direction to find a geocache, it was okay because I would point out to my fellow sidekicks the beautiful views that layed in front of us. 

What usually was a four mile hike, turned into a seven mile hike and exploration of new territories. 

The point of all this you ask? Physical activity doesn’t always have to be a hard workout or boring. And it’s okay to eat a fatty sandwich before your Saturday  hike 😉 

You only live once afterall. 

YOLO!

Sexy Rumble – yeah it’s a thing

Last week a coach from my gym asked me where I have been.

Thanks for calling me out Coach.

Little does he know, I’ve been busy sexy rumbling at my burlesque dance class.

Granted the class is only once a week. But he doesn’t need to know that.

The class isn’t so much dancing as it is to pose like a 1950s pinup and look sexy.

I can’t hold a sexy pose for half a second before I start giggling.

But the instructor said to create a stage name and character. This will help me with posing since my character is too cool to giggle at herself.

So I came up with the name Margot Fatale.

I chose Margot because it is a girly name. My real name is Rikki, and most people call me Rik, so it’s fun going by something not only girly but also French.

Fatale because I’m a big fan of the Film Noir era. I wrote an entire thesis about the Femme Fatale characters and the power they have over their male counterparts. These films portray the simplicity of men due to their willingness to commit crimes all because they were after the nookie.

Let’s try and bring that word back people. I think we owe to Fred Durst.

At the time, these characters were looked at as evil and negative. But I think there is still something we can learn from them: they are confident, unapologetic, and desirable.

As someone who has a lot of self-doubt and apologizes for everything, these are traits I could learn.

And they are traits Margot already embodies.

I catch myself in front of the mirror and liking what I see. But once I go on the scale, I’m suddenly disappointed in my body and the way I look.

Instead of going to the gym on Tuesday nights and trying to lose those pounds I’ve gained, I go to a dance class where I am forced to pose and be sexy.

At the end of the hour class, I feel more attractive than I do after an hour at the gym.

As I look around the classroom, I see a dozen other sexy, attractive, and desirable women. These women don’t have six packs, or butts with three different types of glutes.

They are women with confidence, and body types not featured on an Instagram page or a health magazine.

They are genuinely and uniquely beautiful women.

So the next time a coach at the gym calls me out for not showing up, I’ll walk my little cat walk, give him three pinup poses, and walk away with confidence.

Little will he know, his ass just got sexy rumbled, and that’s something you won’t learn at the gym.

2015 – so we finally meet

I began my New Years nauseated while watching a marathon of “Dating Naked”.

So far a productive start to 2015.

I’m not a huge fan of starting new at the beginning of the year. This cultural theme of a “fresh start” or “starting over” can only happen once every 12 months.

But I do understand the romance behind it, and if it’s what someone needs to get motivated, then I completely understand.

I’m guilty of this myself. Yes, this year I made life changes outside of the traditional January 1st time-frame. But I really never took the time of self-reflection, took the time to evaluate my character, my weaknesses, and my accomplishments.

I guess once every 12 months is better than nothing.

My New Years resolution for 2014 was to stay off my phone.

We will just say I’m currently writing this on my phone.
But because my resolution was a failure, doesn’t mean my year was.

Granted it was a tough year. I ended my seven and a half year relationship: lost my husband, my best friend, my home, my dog, and most of my belongings.

Admittedly I still feel an immense amount of guilt in that decision. Even though, in the end, I know it had to be made.

But I won’t let that define my 2014.

In the past seven months, I have had more life experiences than I had in over two years.

I went to a “self-love” workshop (not the sexy kind), reconnected with old friends, finally visited Austin, wrote a script, entered a short story contest, signed up for a dance class (which starts tonight), tried bouldering at the rock gym, finally met my idol, Chuck Palahniuk, and met amazing inspirational people.

I know these may seem small, but they were things I had been talking about trying for years.

I just never started any of them.

The fact is it’s never too late.
And achievements are never too small.

Don’t dwell on not going through with your resolution, because maybe this isn’t the time for that one. Focus on what you have accomplished and remember there isn’t a specific time frame to start anew. It can happen whenever you make it happen.

Whenever you’re ready for it to happen.

During my “self love” workshop, we had one minute to say all positive things about ourselves. Super silly I know, but it’s amazing what having positive thoughts can do for your ego. Below is my little mantra (from what I can remember). It was impromptu, and done within the minute we were given, so it may read offbeat, but it’s what I chose to say about myself.

Take the time to create your own. Say it out loud. Own it. Type it in the comments, say it in the mirror, or create a blog on how fantastic you are.

Because honey, you are your own best critic.

My Little Mantra
“I’m a writer
A comedian
I’m a dancer

I’m a lover
not a fighter
but I’m still a warrior

I’m an explorer
A traveler

I am not a fucking lady
I am no longer domesticated

I’m a daughter
A sister

I’m a little bit weird
But that’s part of my charm

I am fucking Rikki”

The Unhappy Face

The unhappy face started when I was in preschool: Ms. Judy showed me a letter and I would have to name it.
So when she placed the magnetic “W” on the board and I said “C”, she sent me home with a brown-construction paper sad face while my best friend Kyle got the yellow-smiley face.

I don’t know how many four year olds are familiar with the alphabet, but I was not one of them and Kyle was.

So far that’s a 50/50 statistic.

To this day I still remember that unhappy face I continually got sent home with. If you’re good with reading between the lines, you have come to the rightful conclusion that I always guessed “C” in this non-multiple choice test.

Fast forward 25 years and now I can confidentially say I know the difference between a “W” and “C”. I am also fully aware of the impact a sad face has for any sort of negative reinforcement.

Because my job is in front of a computer all day, I successfully gained ten pounds.

Unfortunately not in the chest area.

Once I finally got fed up with the steady weight gain, I proposed to my department to do an exercise for two minutes on the hour.

In front of the window.
That’s in front of the street.
That’s in front of an apartment community.
Where people walk their dogs.

Luckily they agreed.

The first thing I learned: squats do a better job of waking me up than my third cup of morning coffee.

The second thing I learned: supermans in an office in the middle of the day looks eerily similar to a bank being held up.

The third thing I learned: it’s really easy to skip an hour – especially if we are in the middle of something.

That’s where the unhappy face comes in.

As a joke, I placed a sad face under our 12pm slot to remind ourselves we failed. Much like the way Ms. Judy reminded me I failed at the alphabet so many years ago.

Clearly I have some deep seeded psychological issues with this.

But somehow, this joke caught on. My manager missed an hour and made sure to do double the next hour because she “didn’t want an unhappy face.”

Soon enough we made sure to get each hour, whether it was to do double one hour, or exercise alone in front of the window if we missed on the hour. If not, we shamefully have to draw the dreaded sad face.

Since I’ve started this routine, I’ve lost a couple pounds. (With my luck, probably in the chest area.) I see a little definition in my abs, and I feel more camaraderie with my department.

The fact is, you don’t need multiple hours in the gym, or need to be in shape, just a little change to your daily routine and you will be surprise with the impact it will have on you. You will also be surprised the impact an upside down happy face will have on your motivation.

‘Til next time friends!!