So I've been going to the gym. That's exciting right? No. Not really. Not at all honestly. It gets quite boring when its literally the only thing you do every day besides blogging. In my post's title I stated that I'd give you the truth, and so I shall. I hate going to the gym, like hate it with everything I have. I hate walking the 3/4 mile it takes to get there and I hate walking the 3/4 mile it takes to get back. Some (like my parents) would say that I'm just being lazy, well I'm not. Walking to the gym and back actually gives me anxiety. Why, you ask? Well see I have to cross 6 intersections there and the same 6 while walking back. I know you're probably saying, "What? You didn't learn how to walk along a crosswalk when you were little? You're pretty pathetic." Well I actually did learn how to do that thankyouverymuch, but that's not the issue here. The issue here is that all of those intersections except one does not have an actual crosswalk to use, and it doesn't have a "walk/do not walk" sign to accompany it (#firstworldproblems). And since all of the intersections I have to cross are literally always busy I kind of have to just take my chances and hope the people driving are paying attention and I won't end up getting hit. There's been three instances where the drivers approaching either weren't paying attention or they just felt like they didn't have to yield for a silly little pedestrian, and continued to drive at a normal speed right towards me. Each of those times the drivers finally decided to stop maybe less than a foot away from me, so they wouldn't end up hitting me. So that was mighty nice of them. It's appreciated, it really is. So that's reason one why I don't like going to the gym. Reason two? Being in the gym in general gives me anxiety, okay not necessarily anxiety, but I feel uncomfortable. When I get passed the entry gates (of hell)(just kidding)(not really), head to the locker room, put my stuff away, and head to the cardio/weight room...I shit you not everyone looks at me. When I enter the room and walk past the stretching area everyone wants to take a moment to pause what they're doing and for that brief moment they stare at me. When I get off the elliptical and walk towards the weights every person doing weights wants to watch me. So me being the naturally self-conscious person that I am, I feel like either I've done something wrong or something is wrong with my appearance. You might think I'm just being overdramatic and that's not really what happens. No. I know when I'm being overdramatic and I will admit when I've over exaggerated things, in which this case I have not. Anyways, I don't know what the problem could be. Maybe they look because I'm tall? But I've been to the gym countless amounts of times, so surely everyone there has seen me at least once so it's not something they have to keep looking at me for. Its really annoying though. Reason three? Well I just hate the gym point blank period. In this case I am being lazy. I haaaaaate doing cardio, if I could skip it I really would. However it's a vital part of weight loss and I use it to warm up my ligaments, so I really can't skip it. It's so boring to me though! It's like, "Oh let me just spend 20-40 minutes of my life on this machine that simulates running or riding a bike while I listen to my music and stare into blank space." How is that appealing to anyone?! Then again, I guess going to the gym isn't supposed to be fun, otherwise everybody and they mama would be at the gym all the time. The only time I've ever actually liked going to the gym was when I had a personal trainer. You would think that having somebody tell you what to do and pushing you to get it done for an hour straight everyday wouldn't be fun. I actually quite enjoyed it. When I don't have a trainer or a gym buddy I can easily say to myself, "I'm really sore today, I'm not going.", or "I'm feeling really tired today, not going.", or "I've got a major headache, not feeling like going to the gym today", or my personal favorite just a simple, "Fuck that." Pardon my language. I tend to use these excuses all too often. Honestly I don't know what my problem is, I'll do really good for like two to three weeks and then I'll start to slack off. For example, when we arrived in Spain I started going to the gym everyday except for the weekends, I did that for 3 and a half weeks and started to see some results, after that I completely fell off. Which is really weird because more motivation is supposed to stem from seeing results, but it did the complete opposite for me. It started raining, no...it was pouring for 5 days straight so I used that as an excuse not to go. So now we're at present day, I haven't gone to the gym in close to a week and I feel really shitty about it. I won't go tomorrow and Friday because Mike and I will be in Girona for his test game. Which means I won't be able to go to the gym until Saturday. So Saturday is when I'll start again and since I don't have a trainer and no one to be my gym buddy, I'm using my blog in lieu of that. I'll use you guys to hold me accountable. Surprisingly after almost a week of not going to the gym my body hasn't seemed to change much. I still look like how I did when those results started to take place. So that's always nice. I went on reddit.com earlier and looked at what helped other people when they hit a slump and some of them said even when they felt like quitting or their weight plateaued their determination never strayed when they had set a deadline for themselves. Whenever they felt like quitting they just thought of that deadline and it kept them going. I think that would help me, now I just have to think of a serious deadline. My birthday is in a month and 10 days, so I don't know if I'll be able to get very far in that time. I'd like to lose between 5-10 pounds by then. So that's a short term goal. But an actual deadline I don't have. Hmmmmm I'm thinking, I'm thinking... AH! Well in Barcelona it start's to get warm in May and warm weather calls for stowing away the jackets, jeans, and long sleeves, and breaking out the shorts, tank tops, and bathing suits. So there we go, I'll set my deadline of losing 30 pounds by May 1st. May 1st it is. It kind of feels like I just signed my soul to the devil. Just kidding! Seriously though, if anyone who reads my blogs has any tips for staying motivated or would like to share your stories with weight loss with me I'd love to hear from you! :)
xx - Amanda!
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Monday, December 8, 2014
Curls on a Monday
I sit here this morning ultimately debating on whether or not I should commit to these changes to my blog. I act like its life or death, it's not, I'm just overdramatic. But I feel like if I change my blog now it has to be the last time I change it (or at least the last change for a good while), because I've made soooooo many changes over the course of the few months that I've had it. In the beginning I had planned to blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Soon that changed to just Monday and Friday, then there was at least a month's time where I didn't blog at all because I didn't have anything I felt was worth reading. When we landed in Belgium I began to blog again every Sunday because I actually had good material, but alas, now that we've been in Spain for about 5 weeks I'm running out of things to blog about. So in order to keep myself blogging and to give me something to do besides just going to the gym I feel these changes are necessary. Most of my readers (if not all of them) are my family and my boyfriend's family, which they're like my family too. So like I was saying it's basically all family. They navigate to my blog to read about what Mike and I have been up to each week and weekend, which is greatly appreciated because frankly I didn't think anyone would really read it at all. And starting today when these changes are implemented I hope to still have my family readers because you guys (are) the real MVP, and I'm still going to do my daily Sunday blogs to let you know what we've been up to. Mike and I have made a promise to try and do more exciting things every weekend, even when it rains because apparently there's no escaping the rain here. I mean for God-sake we live in Barcelona, we live in Spain...we live in Europe period, That's not something American people our age get to do too often (unless you're obscenely rich). So on that note, onto what my post for today is really going to be about!
As promised I'm delivering a brand new type of blog post today. New type of blog post to the world? No. New to me? Yes, because I've never done one before. Normally these types of posts would be done through a vlog on Youtube or something, however I don't have enough gall to sit in front of my laptop's video camera for a good 15 minutes discussing the hairstyle I chose to do and showing you how I styled it. I can't even handle speaking in front of a crowd of people I've known for 3+ years (e.g. our going away party) without my heart feeling like it's going to burst out of my chest, so there's no way I'm going to record myself and post it on the internet knowing there's a potential possibility of millions of people seeing it. Yeah, no thanks I'm cool.
So anyways I spend what's probably an unhealthy amount of time studying every nook and cranny of all things Pinterest. My boards on Pinterest are pretty much what any 20-something girl's boards would be (Desserts, Memes, Wedding day, Hairstyles, Cute outfits, etc), however my favorite things to look at on Pinterest would be different hairstyles, makeup ideas, and cute outfits. That's probably a typical girl thing too. Some of the hairstyles I see on Pinterst seem rather intricate and others seem pretty easy, so what I've planned to do on Mondays is post a step by step picture tutorial for said hairstyle in order to show everyone that even a girl like me (someone not exactly skilled in the art of styling hair) can indeed re-create the hairstyles that are seen on Pinterest. I do realize that there are some hairstyles that already have step by step tutorials, but the thing is the girls that do those could already have experience (maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't know their life) with styling hair and whatnot. I offer you a chance to see someone who is a beginner try and do different hairstyles. And when I say beginner, believe me I mean it. I wore my hair in a ponytail or pigtails all throughout elementary school and halfway through middle school until I discovered what a straightener was. Then I only ever straightened my hair until my junior year in high school because that's all I knew how to do. I didn't learn how to curl my hair until junior year was almost over. That was close to 4 years ago and I haven't learned to do much else since then. So bear with me for the first few types of these posts, they may not be all too glamorous but I will work on it.
Okay so here we go, I decided to go with something pretty easy for my first post.
Loose/Messy-ish curls with a flat iron!
It didn't take me long at all, maybe 10 minutes.
I messed up with one of the pictures, so I had to use a photo twice. And the font color goes back and forth between pink and black, but like I said...bear with me folks!
xx - Amanda!
As promised I'm delivering a brand new type of blog post today. New type of blog post to the world? No. New to me? Yes, because I've never done one before. Normally these types of posts would be done through a vlog on Youtube or something, however I don't have enough gall to sit in front of my laptop's video camera for a good 15 minutes discussing the hairstyle I chose to do and showing you how I styled it. I can't even handle speaking in front of a crowd of people I've known for 3+ years (e.g. our going away party) without my heart feeling like it's going to burst out of my chest, so there's no way I'm going to record myself and post it on the internet knowing there's a potential possibility of millions of people seeing it. Yeah, no thanks I'm cool.
So anyways I spend what's probably an unhealthy amount of time studying every nook and cranny of all things Pinterest. My boards on Pinterest are pretty much what any 20-something girl's boards would be (Desserts, Memes, Wedding day, Hairstyles, Cute outfits, etc), however my favorite things to look at on Pinterest would be different hairstyles, makeup ideas, and cute outfits. That's probably a typical girl thing too. Some of the hairstyles I see on Pinterst seem rather intricate and others seem pretty easy, so what I've planned to do on Mondays is post a step by step picture tutorial for said hairstyle in order to show everyone that even a girl like me (someone not exactly skilled in the art of styling hair) can indeed re-create the hairstyles that are seen on Pinterest. I do realize that there are some hairstyles that already have step by step tutorials, but the thing is the girls that do those could already have experience (maybe they do, maybe they don't. I don't know their life) with styling hair and whatnot. I offer you a chance to see someone who is a beginner try and do different hairstyles. And when I say beginner, believe me I mean it. I wore my hair in a ponytail or pigtails all throughout elementary school and halfway through middle school until I discovered what a straightener was. Then I only ever straightened my hair until my junior year in high school because that's all I knew how to do. I didn't learn how to curl my hair until junior year was almost over. That was close to 4 years ago and I haven't learned to do much else since then. So bear with me for the first few types of these posts, they may not be all too glamorous but I will work on it.
Okay so here we go, I decided to go with something pretty easy for my first post.
Loose/Messy-ish curls with a flat iron!
It didn't take me long at all, maybe 10 minutes.
I messed up with one of the pictures, so I had to use a photo twice. And the font color goes back and forth between pink and black, but like I said...bear with me folks!
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