Back to blogging

I put off writing anything in here because I got my wonderful job at SirsiDynix and life got busy and I didn't really have the time or desire to blog. Now, however, we live in Missouri and I'm working for myself again, so I really want to keep all of you updated on how the Davises are doing, especially since we live much further away from most of you than we did in the past.

I never in a million years thought that we would be living in Missouri. It's been quite the change from Utah but we absolutely love it. We have the cutest house in the middle of the country and we recently adopted a dog, which has always been a dream of Cory's.

Cory has started school and is really liking his Master's program. We're going to apply for vet school again for next year and hope that he gets into the University of Missouri so we can stay here. We've made some great friends and just love it here.

I am now working as a health coach for a wonderful program that has helped so many people lose weight and stay healthy for life. If you would like to learn more about it you can check out my website HealthCoachKristen.com and send me a request for more detailed information. I'd really love to tell you about it.

I'm also going to start my weight loss blog again. There's a link in the side bar if you want to follow that.

Here's some pictures!

We had a lot of stuff to pack up, and my mom is so wonderful that she came to Provo to help us get ready.

Our beautiful new cabin home. This was while we were still unpacking so there's lots of empty boxes and other junk on the porch. 

Our new pup, Petra. She really loves Cory.

Updates

• I start a new job in a little over a week at SirsiDynix. They make the library database software that we used at the Harold B. Lee Library. I'll be a technical writer there, and will get to write their help manuals. It doesn't sound like much, but I'm super duper excited about it!
  
  
• The band I'm in, Milo, has been rocking it up lately. We had a show on the Saturday before Halloween, which was awesome despite my being sick. Most recently, we played in the battle of the bands at Muse Music last Tuesday, which was also totally awesome. There was a great energy there and we had a blast playing our music. If you haven't already, you should like us on facebook. (There's a link to take you to our facebook page-on the word Milo-but for some reason I can't get the color to change to be noticeable.)
  
  
• I started a new diet, and I've already lost 7 pounds in a little over two weeks. I'm hoping to be down 10 pounds by the end of the third week. You can read a little bit more about it in my health journey blog (link's right over there ----->). My goal for this diet is to have lost 40 pounds by my birthday at the beginning of March, and I'm thinking it's totally do-able. I only have 33 left to go!
  
  
• We have the Davis's coming down for Thanksgiving tomorrow. It's going to be a blast having everyone here. Although, I'm a little wary to cook a whole Thanksgiving meal in my uber-tiny kitchen. We'll see how that goes.
  
  
• Derby's been sick with a sinus infection for the last two months. We've taken him to the vet and he's been prescribed antibiotics, but it just doesn't seem to go away. I wish it would, because I really want to have him fixed so he'll stop being a stinker and peeing all over everything, but we need to wait for this to clear up before we can do that.

Feel free to not read this one

Two in one day, whew. I'll get back on track soon, I just had something jarring happen to me today and I wanted to post this and start this goal today rather than on Wednesday. This was scheduled to go up on Wednesday so some of it might sound weird.

Today's topic might make a few of you uncomfortable and I just want you to be fully warned before reading on. It's not something I'm uncomfortable talking about, if it were I wouldn't be writing this, but I don't want you to get yourself into something that you'll wish you hadn't started. Today's post will be personal and it will be about my weight. This will also be a lot longer than I usually like my posts to be.

If I gain one more pound I will be officially obese for my height. That's a disturbing thought. I've never been tiny and I've always known that I would have issues with my weight, but it's never been this real before. Please don't try to give me the "you look great" spiel because I know I don't and I know that I haven't for a long time.

I'm going to blame part of it on my genes. Both of my parents have struggled with their weight and most of my extended family has as well. I've been very impressed with several of my relatives, though, who have really tried hard to be healthy despite the genetic disadvantages. Both of my parents are excellent examples. My mom has lost over 80 pounds and is probably the smallest she's been in a long time. She looks great and feels great. My dad has lost 100 pounds and it makes me happy that he's getting healthier and will be around a lot longer than he would have been. I'm glad that my parents are healthy and happy and that they have tried so hard to get to where they are now.

I'm going to blame the second part of my current state on the fact that I am a lazy bum. I try to exercise regularly but it's so easy for me to make up excuses. "I was up really late last night," or "I have too many other things to get done today," or "I'm on my period," or "It's too hot outside to go running." I like the way I feel when I exercise but that's not always the best motivation for me. I've always been one for immediate gratification and sleeping in usually makes me happier more quickly than going for a run does.

And the third source of blame? I like to eat. A lot. I love the way food tastes and the way it feels in my mouth. I've never been happy with the way that I look but I always knew that I would never have issues with under eating because of the way I feel about food. I love different tastes and textures and trying new foods and recipes. My love of food gets a little weird sometimes though. Very often, I can't not eat something that I think looks good and sometimes it's so bad that I start eyeing the largest piece or desiring the last morsel. This is a terribly unhealthy habit and I know it's buried somewhere in my psychosis because I can feel weird parts of my brain firing and my blood pressure rising when I feel a particular need to eat something. I know, it's strange. I wish I could explain it better. And I really don't understand it, deep down I know that one bite will taste the same as the next or that I'll have other opportunities to sample this particular food, but for whatever reason I have to have the most and I have to have it now. I have a really strange relationship with food.

I can't control the genes part but I can control the other two. Those parts of me need to change. I'm all about loving my body and not comparing myself to others but it's hard to see someone who looks really cute in an outfit I like and know that I would never be able to wear it. And it's hard to think that people might be judging me because of my weight. And it's hard to always be "the fat friend" with all the tiny people around me. I want to be happy and I am often not. So, here's my goal and my promise to you. I am going to get in shape. I am going to regulate what I eat and I am going to exercise. I am going to lose weight and feel good about myself. I know that I'll never be a size 2 and I honestly don't want to be, but I want to be happy and I want to feel like I can wear clothes from the stores I like and I want to like the way I look and I want my husband to think I'm even more beautiful and sexy than he already does.

Okay, here's the hard part for me. It's something I don't do very often, and only the fact that I know I don't have very many readers is making me able to do this (I'm going to pretend that nobody pays attention to facebook and assume I only have 18 readers). I'm going to tell you how much I weigh. A few days ago I weighed myself at 191 pounds. For me that's a BMI of 29.9. Oh wow, that's a lot. I have put on 10 pounds since I graduated from BYU and it shows and I can feel it. I would really love to weigh what I did my senior year of high school. I tried really hard at the beginning of that school year and dropped 20 pounds to about 150. I was still "the fat friend" but at least I wasn't overweight anymore. And now, for a 23 year old woman, I'm going to say that's not a bad weight and it will put me in the normal range for my height. Plus, it will probably help to fix my infertility, at least I hope so. 150 pounds is my goal and my promise to you. I'm not going to set a definite time limit because I don't have any realistic idea of how long this will take, and if I do end up getting pregnant this will no longer be my goal, but I will lose 40 pounds, preferably within the next 6 months. That's roughly 1 1/2 pounds a week. I don't care if you're interested or not, but to keep me motivated I'm going to be making regular updates of my progress and about what I learn along the way.

Please don't take this to be a rant about how I want to be different than I am or how I wish I looked like the Victoria's Secret models or anything like that. Yes, I have body image issues, as I'm sure many do, but I try to be accepting of myself, even if I don't always succeed. This is more about the understanding that I am getting older and I'm not going to be able to always eat whatever I want with minimal consequences. The weight loss part is about getting healthy and then staying healthy. I don't want to be super skinny, and with my bone structure I can guarantee I never will, but I want to feel good about myself and I want to be healthy. To me, that's what this is about.

I started a new blog for this journey where I'll be making progress updates. If you want to read about it you can go to http://learningtolovekristen.blogspot.com/.