New Year's Resolution: Freedom from the Scale

I know it may be late, but it struck me today as I was preparing food for the week. (Side note: I am constantly in a time battle against my bulging refrigerator. My meals are determined by how sensitive the food is to mold, not what I actually feel like eating. I have to strategize the order in which to eat my food.) Anyway, I haven't weighed myself for over a month, which is a lifetime for me, and I told myself I'll just quit and maybe limit it to once every 2 or 3 months at the most.

I'm tired of having that little number determine how I live my life. Weight, by itself, is a poor indicator of health. Fat content, by itself, is a poor indicator of health. See, I think that's where I got tripped up, a long, long time ago. I decided at one point that I no longer trusted my eyes, that absolute truth lied in those little numbers. Mirrors and pictures may lie and clothes may stretch, but the scale never lies. Within the scale is the harsh reality and I must always be aware of what that number is.

Sure, there were brief periods, maybe months, where I decided that thinness was an overrated ideal. Thinness didn't make factory made clothes any easier to find or life much more satisfying. But these moments inevitably ended with a triggering event---sometimes an unflattering picture or fluorescent lighting in a dressing room stall. Then I would be back to scribbling little calorie counts in the margins of my books or on the back of receipts. I would run, run, run from the phantom number on the scale until my whole body reluctantly gave up bits of its fat reserves.

Anyone who has successfully dieted can tell you that the relationship between health and weight is bullshit. Exercise stimulates your appetite. You often lose more weight when you cut calories and do minimal exercise. You may gain weight as you build muscle, which scares many women from building muscle in fear of looking bulky or gaining weight. Sometimes fat doesn't go away. Even when I was pounding the pavement or treadmill 5 to 6 times a week, I didn't look lean. My legs didn't gain those muscle lines.

For me, health had little to do with thinness or weight, or even body composition. So I decided that I will stop reading these false signals. I was interpreting the numbers all backwards. They are merely indicators of poor diet and health, but only I know for sure what my diet and health is. Changing those numbers doesn't necessarily mean that I am changing my health and diet in the right direction. Only I can control that. All these notions of "fitness" are based on attaining a certain image and I can't worry about that anymore.

So, to end my long rant, which is mostly to myself, but who knows, maybe it's fun for other people to read, I am going to stop reading that stupid scale. This year, I am going to make colorful meals and eat well for me. I'm going to run because it clears my mind. I am going to play sports, because I miss catching up with friends. I am going to snowboard, because I want to beat my bf down the mountain. Who cares about the scale. I may throw away the mirror next. Ha. (Probably not.)

Self-tanner/ body makeup rave

My old roommate introduced me to this product when I asked her what kind of self-tanner she used to get such a natural color. It's not really a self-tanner. It's waterproof body make up that washes off in the shower.

I've used this many times and no it doesn't smear off on your clothes. It doesn't smear on other people. I've worn it to clubs and it stayed put through hot, crowded LA dance floors.

Why I like this product:

It's quick. I don't really have time to tan and tanning beds kind of scare me. I used to love them in college, but all those warnings have gotten to me. This spray gives me instant color, unlike those "buildable"self-tanners that take more than one application. If I have an event that night, I can just spray this on maybe 20 minutes before I have to go out the door.

The color looks natural. Sally's has created a pretty good formula for my skin tone. I am naturally a beige-yellow color and this tan is a nice caramel brown. I like that it's NOT subtle. If I wanted subtle color, I wouldn't bother spending money to dye my skin.

Why you may not like this product: It's temporary. Unlike self-tanners that last for awhile, this body make up will wash off in the shower. It's great if you only want to tan for one event, but it will get annoying applying this everyday to keep that color.

The spray nozzle means that it's kind of hard to apply and will make a mess if you don't aim it directly at a close distance to your body parts. I suggest spraying in the bathtub, so that it doesn't make a big mess. It's also hard to aim it onto your back. I usually just spray into my hand and rub it onto my back.

Pictures:

As you can see, I applied it to one leg, but not the other for comparison purposes. Pictures were taken without flash in the daytime.

(I'm wearing it in my NYE picture and some old Halloween pics.)

the NYE post

My friend Shawn told me about a Groupon for an NYE event in OC for $20. Usually NYE events are like $60, so I thought what the heck, how bad can it be? Bad. Murderously bad. For real, someone died at that event! It happened shortly after the party was over, around the time Kev and I were taking our friends to Norm's. My friends rented a hotel room across the street from the event. We went back to change and walked back out to our car. We saw a ton of police cars and some police tape. "Somebody got stabbed," Kev said. Sure enough, I googled the event the next day and 3 people were stabbed!

We should have known something was up when we got to the front of the line and there were absolutely no promoters or security. The event check-in table had been abandoned. Wristbands were all over the ground. Kevin and I picked up a couple and put them on ourselves. There was a mob of people at the Hilton entrance, trying to squeeze pass the doors. We joined the mob and eventually squeezed in. Our tickets were completely worthless.

Once inside, we realized that there was no order to the dance floors. The event was billed as having 7 different dance floors. Yeah, good luck trying to figure out where they were! There were three separate floors with no signs indicating where the dance floors were or whether there was a main dance floor. Throngs of people crowded the hallways. We wandered around trying to find a dance floor for the countdown.

Midnight came and went with no fanfare other than an impromptu countdown by people in the hallway. It wasn't even an event. It was more like conference rooms with music. I will never go to something promoted by Nytehype or Ones We Love ever again. Who the heck effs up an event that badly? Does it cost too much to throw a little confetti around? Is it too much of a burden to hire security to make sure that people don't come into the party with weapons? Ridiculous.

Edited to add one of the few pics I took on NYE.

Bf is standing on his tiptoes, but I am wearing heels, so I guess this is an accurate representation of our height difference.

Protecting your creative work on the internet

I felt inspired to write another one of these posts since I keep coming across blogs where people will write "copyrighted by so and so." Uhh, cool. Do you know who enforces copyrights? YOU DO. There's no copyright police around making sure people are not going to steal your copyrighted material. (And yes, you can get a copyright registration with the US Copyright Office, but they don't enforce. Additionally, under common law, anything you create is automatically copyrighted so there a ton of people running around with copyrighted material.)

To enforce your copyright, you have to find out the identity of the infringer. You have to sue them. You have to pony up the money for litigation and in the end, you might just get an injunction (which means they have to stop using your stuff) and no money damages. P.S. If you are a blogger, you probably won't get money damages unless you are making money off of your site. The litigation costs are going to surpass whatever money you recover from damages to your site. Trust. Also, the internet is worldwide. If the infringer lives in another country, that may mean trying to find a forum (court) that has power to compel your infringer to stop and that is willing to hear your dispute.

That little mark that you put on your pictures means nothing if you don't have the means to enforce. It's smarter to use technological protection measures. You can code your pictures so that people can't right click and save or hotlink to your pictures. You can make it so that people can't highlight your text and copy and paste on to their sites. These mechanisms are much more effective and cost-effective in protecting your intellectual property. (I don't know how to do this yet- techno n00b, but if you care that much about your stuff, you should learn.)

Happy blogging.

vacation recap

I've been a techno-klutz for the past week. First, I accidentally knocked Kev's laptop from the hotel chair when I bumped into it with my hip. I thought it would be fine, since I've dropped my laptop more than once and it managed to survive. Wrong. I cracked the screen. The upside to that is he took apart his laptop and frankensteined his keyboard onto my laptop. (My keyboard was missing the 1 key.) So yay for that. We ordered another screen when we got home.

Then, on our way home from the trip, I started clearing out my camera so I can take new pictures on our last day and deleted all our trip pictures. I downloaded a recovery program, but since I took some new pictures, it wrote over the only pictures that I wanted. I consider it Murphy's Law in action. We sought out a giant Xmas tree and a giant heart and those picture were written over. Meanwhile, all the Usher concert pictures remained intact. Well, here's half of what would have been a cute couples picture.

Cool, huh?

Then when I was using a spray adhesive to attach tags to my Xmas gifts, I sprayed too much and covered his phone with adhesive...on the touch screen. O.o But I'm happy to report I've been damage free for 3 days now, and my bf has not dumped me. Yay.

Hrm, what else? The vacation was unremarkable. We went to Union Square, Ferry Building, Japantown, Berkeley and Fisherman's Wharf. We also took a tour of a chocolate factory (Tcho) which was actually started by the guy who started Wired magazine. The next day, I saw his daughter (the tour guide) and him eating outside of the Ferry Building. What a coincidence.

On the chocolate tour, Kevin was an eager beaver, raising his hand to answer and ask questions left and right. I made a comment about it after we left and he said, "I thought they were going to give us chocolate for participating." They didn't. Lame.

pre-vacation thoughts

Kevin wants to leave at 4 a.m. I woke up at noon today. Looks like I'm just going to stay up. We're going to SF, in case you're wondering.

I love winter break. Law school ruins our spring break by forcing us to come back and finish up the semester, so it's not really a break. You're still worrying about the semester. Summer isn't a break either. We worry about finding jobs and working. But winter, now there's a time to lie around, text your friends who are home for the holidays, and watch Netflix for hours on end.

Or go to Target.

Owls for my living room.

top from CAbi

skirt from Target

I love lace, but I'm not a fan of the wide black band on top. Oh well, it was $11.

Quilted pattern on the brain. These look less bright in person. I may have to take a daytime pic.

thoughts from the library

Florence Henderson aka Carol Brady is on the cover of "Senior Living." She is still alive. And yes that magazine exists.

I've always said I want to be a writer, even if it's just those frothy Harlequin-lites for teens, but I would never ever want to be associated with a book titled, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake. Yes, that also exists.