Hello, and happy July 4th everyone!

Alot of pretty awesome things have happened on this day throughout history, The Declaration of Independence was signed, Alice in Wonderland was published, Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum helped defeat the alien invasion…

…and I have decided to get my life back…

…again.

For those of you who follow my blog, you know it’s been a pretty rough couple of months.  I resolved to make things better come June, but in the end that didn’t really amount of anything.  While I did have some great times these past couple months, and I accomplished A LOT, I’m afraid I’ve just about gained back almost all of the weight I’ve lost since the beginning (will post the official weight on Tuesday though, as always).

I’m ashamed of that, but I don’t want to dwell on it, and I’d like very much to move forward.  For the past few months I let emotional/boredom/stress eating get the best of me, and overall I did very little as far as working out goes.

But that ends today.  I am declaring my independence from obesity (corny, but go with it) and I am getting my life back.

WooT!

Regular weigh ins will be coming back on Tuesdays (no skipping), and I will be doing more with weekly goals for myself.  I also need to think about my overall goals and what I’d ultimately like to see come out of my life.  It won’t be easy (it never is), and I will probably still have slip ups, but hopefully this time around they won’t knock me completely off track. 

So stay tuned…

This past weekend was truly one of the best weekends I’ve had in a very long time.  I had so much fun, met a ton of new people, made a ton of new friends, learned quite a bit more about the blogging process, got all sorts of free swag, etc…etc…etc…

Here a few pictures from the weekend:

This was the view from my hotel room for the weekend, which was at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, where the conference was also held.  Now, I live right outside of Baltimore City, so this wasn’t anything I haven’t seen before, but this was first time actually spending the night in the city, and it was very nice seeing the beautiful Inner Harbor out of my window.

Me with the lovely Sue (aka MrsFatass), who was my Fitbloggin’ BFF   We had a ton of fun (and a few Tequila shots, WooT!).

Me with the lovely Carla (aka MizFit), at a bar on the Inner Harbor.  She is just as awesome in person as she in on her blog.  I loved every minute of being in her presence.

Holy crap, look at all the free shit I got!!!!!  We recieved a gift bag at registration full of stuff from POM Wonderful, Quaker, Skinny Cow, to name a few.  Since I registered for the New Balance 5k, I also got free running shoes…to KEEP!!! WooT!  Everyone who signed up was also given a Gruve.  A Gruve is a little thing you wear on your waise that tracks how much you move and keeps track of the calories to burn.  We all thought we were only trying them out, and would have to return them…but then they should we could keep them.  WOOHOO!  I didn’t wear it much during the conference, but I’ve had it all since then and may try to write a review soon.

MORE FREE SWAG!  This was a gift from Sue.  Those of you who follow me on twitter may know about the whole big love thing I have going on with her, Ryan (aka nomorebacon) and Sam (aka Slimminsam).  I didn’t wear the shirt out   but I did sleep in it and it was super comfortable

This was the whole lot of us on Saturday morning, right before the Fitbloggin’ 5k.  I was uber tired and extremely hungover, but I ran it.  My time was much slower than Mighty Medford (ran it in about 40 minutes), but that’s okay, because I will rock it next year

I love Jennette Fulda.  I had recently read her awesome book and love her blog, and when I found out she was going to be at the conference, I knew I had to meet her and get her autograph.  Success!!!  I probably came off as being really wierd and creepy (I’m sorry if I did, Pastaqueen!) but this was like meeting a celebrity, so of course I wasn’t going to be able to keep it together.  I’ll have to work on that.

All in all, this was truly an incredible experience.  I wish I had more pictures, because I met so many awesome people!  Mary, AJ, FitInMyHeart, JourneyBeyondSurvival, Jen in Real Life, Fitarella, Benjamin Teal, TrulyTrayce, YumYucky, LoserforLife, and so many others!  I also learned alot about the blogging process, which I hope will help improve my writing here.

WooT!

How was YOUR weekend?  Were you at Fitbloggin?  If you were, what did you think?

I can’t wait for next year!

About two months ago two Biggest Loser type challenges started at my office. 

One was company wide, and called the Team Lean Challenge.   Basically you weighed in as teams, and whichever team lost the largest percentage of weight won a Nintendo Wii (for each person).

The other challenge was within my department, and was an individual challenge.  You would weigh in each week, and if you lost no weight you had to pay a dollar, and if you gained weight you had a pay a dollar for each pound gained.  At the end whoever lost the most weight would get that money.

My “Team Lean” team consisted of me and two other co-workers.  As a team, we bombed.  I don’t know what our final total was, but I know the winning team was based out of one of our Washington DC offices, and they lost 9.8% of their initial weight.  WooT to them.

As for the departmental challenge?

Yeah, I kicked ass in that one.  Of my total weight lost so far, 19 pounds of that was during the challenge, making me the winner.  The prize had gotten up to $73.00.

WooT!!!!

What’s even better is that of that $73.00, I had only contributed two dollars, and those were weeks I didn’t lose anything (in blog time, thats Week 2 and Week 4).

So far this has been an awesome week, and its Christmas week, so that makes it 200% awesomer by default.  Is everyone ready for the holiday?  I have a sh*t ton of wrapping to do, but other than that I think I’m in good shape.

Have a great day!