Today was a good day. A day that, at the end of it, you look back and kind of smile and nod in satisfaction.

We're on a brief break from filming due to people being out of the country and such, so it's been fairly relaxed on my end. Not to say I haven't been keeping busy--- my photography is providing me with lots of opportunities and I'm very happy and lucky for that. But on the whole, it's been nice getting to sleep in, cuddle my cat, and work on cleaning out my house. It's been peaceful, to say the least.

Today I decided to do something a bit more drastic and I booked an appointment at The Mane Event, one of the more high-end salons in Waco. Usually I don't bother with such things, and if I have to get my hair cut I go to Ultracuts or some other generic place where I don't even know one stylist from the next. 

My hair is kind of a touchy topic for me. Every woman in my family has very thin, fine hair that begins to thin even more when she turns about thirty right at the top of our heads. My grandmother has very thin hair that she backcombs and teases desperately to try and hide it, and my mother had a wide part that was growing ever-wider before her chemo made it a non-issue and we shaved her head. The men in my family are the same; my grandfather was mostly bald by forty-five and my uncle has long, stringy, very thin hair. So we are just not genetically blessed as a people. When I was young I had thick, curly hair and for awhile it looked like I would take after my father, but alas. Around high school my part began to widen and I went to a barber shop to cut all of my hair off short. After that, it was noticeably thinner without the weight of the curls pulling it down, and you could see my scalp no matter which way I parted it, which way I styled it, or what I did. I started dying it weird colors when I was fifteen, and kept that up for the rest of my adult life; my hair's been blue, turquoise, purple, pink, red, white, orange, black, brown and every shade and combination thereof. People started saying "Your hair is falling out because of how much you color it", but I knew that wasn't the case. I actually took very good care of my hair, using top-end products and deep-conditioning it as well as using dyes that weren't harmful and waiting about two months or more between bleach jobs. But I couldn't convince people that the hair loss wasn't my fault somehow; men bald and people just say "Oh what a shame" but it's so taboo for a woman to lose her hair that people automatically assume she is doing something wrong. I even buzzed my head down to the scalp a few years ago and GI Janed it for awhile, just so that it could come back my natural color with no chemical interference. I had hoped it would prove to people that it wasn't the products I was using that was making it thin out so drastically. Alas, nothing seemed to help--- I tried Rogaine and Nioxin and every 'thickening' treatment I could find to no avail. Finally I just settled for keeping my head buzzed down very short and wearing wigs all the time. The wigs were adorable, easy to maintain, and did things that my hair would never, ever be able to do. I could switch colors at a whim and go from long to short in two minutes. And best of all, people who had never met me before didn't know I was wearing a wig. I felt like an actress playing a part; choosing my wig every day became as much a part of my routine as choosing my eyeshadow color or which shoes I'd wear. 

Now at twenty-seven, my hair is thinner than ever and all I can do is keep it as short as possible and keep rocking wigs. But--- guilty confession--- I am completely in love with both Pink and Miley Cyrus. Primarily Pink, because she is so fierce and wonderful, but Miley has really grown up into a sassy little firecracker and I love it. Her new video "We Can't Stop" is so delightfully bizarre and I adore her signature look of bright red matte lips and white-blonde hair. So I took reference photos in to the stylist, and she started cutting. 

Back in March, at SXSW, my hair was down to my jawline before I went to a screening of "Scenic Route". The movie stars Josh Duhamel, and I got kind of caught up in the moment when he asked if anyone wanted to come onstage and get a mohawk shaved by him. 

Not that it was a bad thing.. as you can see from the pic here with me and the actress Laura Ortiz, it was very thin in the middle and no amount of 'length' was going to fix it.

So the stylist tapered the sides with clippers and got it extremely short, and then cut the damaged ends off in the middle and shortened it up. Then we put bleach and toner down on it and got to work. Two hours later, I walked out of the salon looking like this:

 

It sounds stupid that a haircut should make me feel so good, but it does. It's short and neat, easy to handle, and moreover, the blonde doesn't draw attention to how thin it is. But it is also very liberating and freeing, and I am in love with it.

After my haircut, I popped by Drug Emporium, our local health food store, and found some chips that are made entirely of ground-up beans instead of potato/starches.  They are totally delicious and actually have a little protein in them, so I can have a few for a snack once in awhile. I also treated myself to the matte red lipstick you see in the photo above, which is Covergirl and awesome, because for whatever reason my uber-expensive and wonderful Make Up Forever Moulin Rouge Artist lipstick is missing and has been for a few months now and I needed to rock a solid red lip with this hair.

At six, I had to go to the gym to meet with my trainer. Zack is really doing some awesome things with me, even though I can only afford to see him once a week. He is an energetic, positive force and I love being around him. He comes up with fun exercises and always powers me through them, making me increase my reps until I feel like I'm going to fail and stopping just before I'm about to collapse from something. 

When we began our interval training, he had me work really hard for about thirty seconds and then would give me a thirty-second rest period. Now we've bumped it up; on a treadmill, I warm up with a brisk walk (about 3.5 on the speed) for a minute, then jog around a 4.5 or so for a solid minute, then go back to speed-walking and so forth. The first time we did this I thought I was going to die; the second time, we did intervals for ten minutes' time. Today we did fifteen minutes, and I jogged for six and a half of those minutes at a 4.7 without stopping. Was it miserable? Yeah. I don't LIKE running. But you know what I do like? Being able to run. My ankle pain is gone. The pain that has plagued me since college is completely gone and now I can run, jump, skip, whatever without it acting up. My knees don't ache and while my back does still hurt, I think this is more the result of my body having to carry over three hundred pounds around for many years.

Today was an ass-kickery day. Fifteen minutes of interval, then squats, step-ups, crunches, lateral pulls and stretching. He also convinced me to get on this weird little machine and do inverted crunches. Not sure how I feel about those, they made me a little headrushy, but I did alright. Made it through my reps anyway. 

When I first started, I would joke about how I hoped he knew how to use the defib machine because I was convinced that I was going to have a stroke. Now those words don't leave my throat; today I was dripping sweat, heaving for breath, and while he was putting away the kettlebells I took the initiative to get on the big inflatable ball and start doing crunches. "You're supposed to be resting," he reminded me, laughing, watching. When I finished twelve of them, he told me to start doing them to the side. I did twelve. He told me to lift one leg off the floor and tighten my core to keep my balance. I did ten with each leg. Were they hard? Yeah, they sucked. But to both of our surprise, I didn't complain at all. Zack even complimented me on my recovery time; he was surprised that I wasn't more deadbeat after the interval running.

Instead, I told him that I'd signed up for a 5K in October. His whole face lit up and he was so excited; he asked if I wanted him to start angling my training toward endurance and jogging form to get me ready. I told him to slow down and not to get his shorts in a bunch; Zack's a track star and running is his favorite thing to do, and I don't want him thinking there's a budding marathoner in me or anything. I'm only going because they throw paint on you the whole time and I thought it'd make for some fun pictures. 

Still. It's kind of fun being able to say "I'm going to do a 5K". Am I going to win? Uh, no. I'm not even attempting to. But will I finish? Yes, doubtless. And that alone is more than I could've said before my surgery; there's no way I would've done it back then. Three miles or so, in a giant crowd of people? That doesn't sound fun at all. 

I am finally beginning to like who I am and what I look like. I'm getting confidence and finding less fault with my daily existence. It's like instead of weight coming off, I'm chipping away at this negative candy shell that's been surrounding me since childhood, and what's underneath? I don't know exactly yet, but I'm liking what I see so far.

Back to good.

It's been a tumultuous few weeks for me--- I've been working hard on both the film project, which is very close to wrapping, and my personal photography. I started carrying my camera everywhere when I was 14 and snapped pictures of my friends. I had entire albums of photos of people in bands at local shows, people hanging out at school, people getting dressed up and 'modeling' for me. I was using a film SLR at the time, a very nice Canon that my mom bought for me, but I knew nothing of aperture or lenses or depth-of-field or anything else. I was just developing an eye for framing and composition. When I was sixteen, my high school offered a basic intro to photography class, which I eagerly took. We focused on developing our own film (already becoming an archaic and lost practice by that time) and all we did was take pictures of nature, but it was a lot of fun and I learned some valuable things about camera settings. By the time I was in college my photography was a full-blown habit and I rarely left the house without my digital camera. At twenty I purchased a very nice (for that time) DSLR and started learning the finer points. I was working with bands by then; I was doing interviews for a local paper, and that helped me get press passes to concerts. Those press passes enabled me not only to talk to the bands I admired but to shoot them. Over the next few years I worked with dozens of bands, from HIM and My Chemical Romance to Secondhand Serenade, The Spill Canvas, Yellowcard, Avenged Sevenfold and more. I learned about stage lighting and the importance of ISO and shutter speeds; it was all self-taught and I was very critical of my own work, trying to figure out what 'went wrong' when certain photos didn't come out the way I'd hoped. By now, at twenty-seven, I know that I still have a long way to go but I feel like a much more capable photographer now than when I was fumbling blindly along ten years ago. I have been lucky enough to work with some amazing bands and have a few of my pieces published here and there in newspapers or websites, and I know that this is something I want to pursue for the rest of my life. Lately, I've been granted access to photograph Rockstar Mayhem Festival, Vans Warped Tour and a few other upcoming concerts, plus I've been doing tons of portrait sessions with my friends. All in all, pretty productive, I'd say. :)

My trainer has been working me at the gym; we're mostly working on balance and stretching, which is fantastic for me. He's got me using resistance bands to pull my calf muscles and hamstrings out, and the first day we trained he had me jog on a treadmill. After 30 seconds solid I thought I was going to die from being unable to breathe. Yesterday at our session he made me do intervals of speed-walking and full-out jogging for ten minutes straight in thirty or forty-five second bursts. I thought I was going to die, but I made it the whole ten minutes without quitting or stopping for a break. I was so proud of myself. I haven't run anywhere since I played softball as a pre-teen. I don't enjoy running, but it was exciting just to be able to jog without dying or feeling the agonizing pain in my ankle that I used to feel before I lost all of the weight!

My scale is still at 232, but I'm having plenty of non-scale victories. ALL of my jeans are too big, which meant I went to the thrift store and bought a pair today of smaller size. My 'large' t-shirts fit comfortably now and in some cases I think I could even go to a medium. I have so much more energy than I used to have, and I am always wanting to get out of the house and go do something. My skin has also cleared up immensely; I haven't had a breakout since before the surgery. My skin was always pretty clear, but I would get random outbreaks every now and then; since I have no soda, sugar or carbs in my diet now and very little greasy/processed food, my complexion is a dream come true for me.

I am thinking that when the weather cools down a bit I'd like to buy a bicycle. It's so hot right now that I'd probably pass out riding one, but I haven't been on a bike since I was probably thirteen and I'd like to try picking it up again. It'd be a fun way to get around now and again. :)

Little Miss Domestic

I've been feeling really good about myself this week and taking good care of myself--- my Chike protein shakes came in, so in the mornings I've been rocking the strawberries and creme flavor. It really does taste like a milkshake and it doesn't get frothy or foamy on me, which is great because I sip it through a straw and before I know it, the whole thing is gone and I have more than 20g of protein in me! I do need to buy more Blender bottles though, especially since I don't have a dishwasher. Washing them out every day is annoying, mostly because dishes are my least favorite thing to do chore-wise!

I have also been really faithful with my gym trips; I went three times this week. One of them was Wednesday, when Zack and I had an hour-long session. We're working primarily on my balance and flexibility, which is rough. Pre-WLS, I had very bad balance but I always considered myself decently flexible. I could drop into a deep squat to check out DVDs on the bottom shelf at a store, for example. Since surgery I've had some neuropathy in my legs (probably due to a vitamin deficiency but I haven't had blood work done so I'm not sure) and it's impossible for me to squat that deeply anymore; it makes the back of my knees ache fiercely. However, Zack has been coming up with interesting stuff for us to do, mostly involving medicine balls and balance balls and planking and things like that that force me to be in control of my core muscles. I have gone swimming each time too; it is working wonders to unkink my muscles.

Thursday night I drove to see my beautiful sister Heather. Heather is a bigger girl too and she was actually chosen to be a featured person on a weight-loss reality show, but she had to bow out due to work obligations. However, the experience of going out there taught her lots about nutrition and new exercises, and so she and I come from different places on this. Heather and her wonderful wife Tanya grilled us a healthy dinner of steak, corn, squash, zucchini, carrots, asparagus and tomatoes, followed by swimming in their backyard pool. It's so much fun to have someone else who will eat the same healthy, small portions you do and who will hold you accountable for working out. I wish she lived closer because it would be great to get with her a few times a week to work together.

I had stopped at a tiny little roadside truck earlier in the week and picked up a big bag of fresh peaches. Summer is one of my favorite times of the year in Texas despite the brutal heat because we get a huge influx of fresh fruits and veggies, so it's so much fun to try and see what I can do with them. I decided to adapt a recipe I found for peach cake; I'm a terrible cook but I really love baking, so I thought there was a good chance it would turn out.

I basically mixed flour and Splenda, butter (I used real butter because margarine just doesn't bake as well), one egg and cinnamon to hand-press a crust, then cut up the peaches into large uneven chunks, skin still on them, and put them on top of the crust. I blended fat-free cream cheese, natural vanilla extract, another egg and a bit more Splenda to make a cream sauce, which I poured over the top of the peaches. I then topped the whole thing with more of the same mix I used for the crust and an even sprinkle of cinnamon across the top. It's not overly sweet, but it's pretty amazing. You serve it cold, although I guess you could do it warm if you wanted.

After my peach cake/cobbler hybrid thing, I took myself on a movie date to see The Purge at the dollar theater. Most of my friends didn't like it, but I enjoyed it. The only thing that amazed me was that several people brought their children; it was the middle of the day on a weekday so I thought I'd be safe, but there were crying and babbling toddlers around me for most of the film. I get very twitchy about that, particularly when it's a movie about gratuitous, condoned ultra-violence.

After The Purge, I came home and decided to make a recipe from my favorite blog in the world. The owner, Shelly, is a weight-loss surgery patient who now creates recipes and blogs about post-WLS fitness. I have been craving something savory, so I decided to try her 'pizza meatloaf', which is amazing. I even did a few substitutions on her recipe which I think made it even healthier; I used turkey pepperoni instead of regular, fat-free mozzarella chunks, left out the bruschetta sauce, and when I soaked the bread crumbs, I used my protein-inflused lactose-free milk instead of regular milk. I wish people could've smelled my house when they were baking... it was insanely delicious. I still have plenty of leftovers, too; I may try mashing half a sweet potato tomorrow to get some complex carbs in there as well as make it all comfort-foody.

________________

This was a terrifically awesome, fun weekend!

It was my first Saturday off from filming in a long time, so despite very kind invites from my best friends asking me to come  to Dallas to hang out, I abstained. Instead I got up early on Saturday morning and headed to the Downtown Farmer's Market; it's the first time I've been able to make it, and boy am I excited! I want to make this a weekly thing as soon as filming is done! The market stretches to include a lot of vendor booths from local farms, slaughterhouses,  cheesemakers and more offering local, organic produce and artisanal foods. There are also food trucks and concession booths with delicious fresh offerings. It's a dog-friendly place so lots of people brought their furry companions and I got to see some real beauties, including an Irish Wolfhound that was taller than his owner when he got up on his hind legs!

Fresh ripe watermelons!

 

 Amazing waffles with ridiculous topping options... left to right, strawberries and bananas; eggs, bacon and homemade sausage, butter and organic maple syrup. YUM!

The lovely Wolfhound!

The highlight of my morning, however, was a man who owns a pest-control business here in town. He has a stunning German shepherd that is one of the best-behaved and well-trained dogs I've ever seen, and when he walked past me I had to do a double-take when I saw what was riding on his shoulder... He takes in orphaned and displaced baby raccoons and raises them until they're old enough to go to the zoo or an animal sanctuary! This little tyke is eight weeks old and was amazing... it was having a blast meeting people and 'sampling' all of the wares from the booths!

 

I purchased hand-ground peanut butter (no sugar added, it's literally just peanuts, oil and salt), a fresh cheese spread called "Leopard Spread" from a local cheese house, made of extra-sharp cheddar, cream cheese, peppers and spices, and some grass-fed beef tamales. I also sampled a delicious hibiscus-berry lemonade, which I will be buying a gallon of when I make it back to the market; it was tasty, refreshing, and sweetened with just a pinch of raw sugar. I enjoyed my treat on the bank of the river, enjoying the beautiful day even though it was stiflingly hot. 

 

After the morning at the market I headed to the flea market a few streets over, where I browsed a lot of foreign knock-off designer clothes, cowboy boots and hats, and Tejana mixtapes. Our flea market used to consist of people with booths of paperback books, racks of vintage clothing, and tons of odds and ends, but lately it's become a place for cheap imitation sunglasses and bootleg CDs, or people who buy all of the DVDs from a video store going out of business and then come here to resell them. It's a sad state of affairs and makes for boring browsing, but you never know. I snagged a primo parking space and wandered with my Powerade Zero, trying to stay hydrated in the sweltering sunlight.  I wound up finding a booth run by an older Nigerian man who had a lot of vintage camera equipment; he had rented one of the permanent 'storage building' spaces and was using it as a sort of mobile photo studio, full of backdrops, props and more. For a nominal fee he would shoot people in a variety of poses with props and costumes. While I'm not sure how that business model works out for him, he had a very nice travel hardcase with foam inserts and a vintage Canon lens I was interested in, so we chatted cameras for awhile and then I offered him twenty bucks for both, which he accepted. The case alone probably retailed for close to $75 so I feel pretty good about the deal. I needed one anyway, it'll help me transport my stuff safely to LA this fall!

Speaking of LA, I have several exciting vacations coming up. In September I'm flying to Indianapolis to help my friend Shae volunteer at the world-famous HorrorHound convention. Then in October I'm flying to Columbus, Ohio to see 30 Seconds to Mars play a show. I've been a huge fan of theirs since 2005 and I have never had the opportunity to see them live, and of course on this US tour they aren't coming anywhere near Texas. So I decided to go ahead and splurge and make it an 'event'; I bought a sidestage ticket so that I can watch from the wings instead of in the completely-insane crowd, and I get a meet and greet and professional photo with the band, among other perks. Worth it to see an incredible band who, by all accounts and things I've seen, are some of the best live performers out there. Later in October I'm flying to Los Angeles the same way I do every year; one of my best friends Stephanie lives out there and we always do a lot of fun Halloween things together to celebrate our favorite holiday. One such thing is Universal Studios, where we attend Halloween Horror Nights. I can't wait for this year to see what mazes they're going to announce!

Next weekend it's back to filming, but we're working on two very pivotal scenes. One involves horror icon Marilyn Burns, who played 'final girl' Sally in the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as the actor who portrayed the man who rescued her in the film, Ed Guinn. So that's super-exciting! We're in the home stretch to finish the movie's principal filming now, I'm working on an epic photo shoot for the weekend of August 1, and I am feeling better than ever!

Waste of paint. (NSFW, maybe?)

So I didn't go to the gym today (to be honest, I can blame my own laziness and be honest about it; I wanted to watch a movie instead, and eat fat-free peanut butter with a spoon, and catch up on emails since all weekend I was neglecting it), but I started cleaning out my old folders of pictures to see what I could toss into the old Recycling Bin. Among those folders I found a gem I forgot I'd taken; it was something I snapped in December 2012, when I was at my most depressed and angry at how I'd let my body go. I had already begun researching the option of gastric sleeve surgery and had already had my first meeting with the doctors to discuss pricing and options. I had just bought a pair of bigger panties; a 3X, actually, a size 24, and I was disgusted with myself because I didn't want to keep buying bigger clothes.

I'm not proud of the why behind the original photo. I was body-shaming myself; I was angry because my friends kept telling me that I was beautiful and I didn't think that I deserved it. I thought they were only saying it because they knew my personality, because they found me beautiful the way my mom always said I was beautiful--- because it was their job to say so, just like it was my job to nod and pretend like I believed them. So I thought, 'No more Myspace angles, no more flattering lighting, no more birds-eye view shots to hide my chins. I want to see what I really look like.' I remember setting the timer on my camera and standing anxiously in the middle of my bedroom, waiting for the ten-second self-timer to tick down and the flash to fire. And I remember seeing the picture and thinking 'No... no no no, there's been a mistake, take it again', but there were already tears in my eyes by then and I didn't take it again. And for whatever reason I actually uploaded it to my computer and put it in a folder, buried among pictures of my mom and Thanksgiving dinner and other random odds and ends. Buried and forgotten.

Until today.

Today I opened the file and stared at it, and in my head I thought about my friends, how beautiful all of them are to me. They all take issue with something about themselves; their weight, their hair color, their complexion, whatever it is. But to me, they are perfect, like exotic birds who have never known the inside of cages. They are colorful plumage and wide wingspans, they are perfect hugs and shoulders made for nestling against during a Netflix marathon and beards that scritch-scratch my cheeks when we hug. They are piercings and tattoos and scars and strange jewelry found in thrift shops and old attics, they are crooked teeth and stubbled legs and chipped nail polish and every single one of them appear to me like calligraphy. So why did I doubt them? Why did I believe that they were so beautiful and wonderful and special and that I was this hideous troll they deigned to associate with? Why did I spend years thinking I was the Ugly Duckling in my group of friends? Why did I try to hide behind my skinnier friends, insist on putting myself behind the camera instead of in front of it, and concern myself with how many chins I had in a picture of myself laughing at a hilarious joke? This weekend on set, our friend Mike Kaddour was snapping photos and I remember asking him not to post any unflattering ones. That was what I was concerned about, rather than the fact that I had fake blood smudged on one cheekbone and bug bites all over my calves and was having the time of my life watching my best friends try to make a fake head explode with an air compressor and a tub of goo.

I stood in front of the mirror at Shawn's in my sports bra and panties and I turned on the overhead light. Nothing artful here, no creative positions. Just my body as it is now, and I emailed it to myself before I could change my mind.

My body before, my body now.

The main difference is... in the first one, I look sad and resentful of the camera, like I already know how the final photo will look, what the end product would be. I was so unhappy with myself, and so desperate for something to change.

I'm not bikini-ready yet, or even anywhere close. I'm 240 pounds. By anyone's standards including my own I'm still morbidly obese.

But I am beautiful. I just never realized until now that maybe I was then, too.

Difficult to Love

When I was a teenager on the Internet, I met a beautiful girl named Audrey who shared my love of the British rock band Placebo. Audrey was one of the most gorgeous girls I'd ever seen and she lived an impossibly complex, stylish, and inspiring life. I wrote poetry about her and after I read posts about how perfectly poetic and picturesque her existence was, I'd be jealous for hours that I couldn't be that wonderful. She posted this on her tumblr awhile back and I had to repost:

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

It's a poem called "for women who are 'difficult' to love" by Warsan Shire, and it's amazing and beautiful and incredibly powerful and hit me in all of the feels.

I posted already once about my difficulty with my love life; I've found, at the ripe old age of 27, that maybe solitude is the best option for me. I'm doing my best not to come at it from a 'crazy cat lady' sort of perspective but a more philosophical one; I am a complicated girl. I have unresolved daddy issues, problems with authority, and a wanderlust that makes me hard to pin down. I change my mind at the drop of a hat and I have trouble finishing things. I like getting dolled up and going on dates, but I prefer lying on the couch with my best friends watching Netflix and unwinding. I always feel like I can't live up to someone's perception of me, or worse, that I don't deserve their love anyway and sooner or later they'll realize it. It's a complicated and shitty position to be in because I've made myself 'unlovable' in that way; I don't like to open up and show my vulnerabilities, and therefore it's hard for anyone to get close enough to me to love me.

I've been working like crazy on the film set, twelve-hour shoot days or more sometimes, and the one this weekend was a doozy. We couldn't start until sundown and we wrapped a little after five A.M. when the sky was the color of new bluejeans and I was almost convinced that the gray fox that had just run across the road in front of our headlights was a mirage. I took on a lot with this project, not only because I really liked the script and believed in it but because the director/writer is like my older brother. He's one of my favorite people in the world and I wanted to stand by him and help him any which way I could to make his dream come true. It's been a very fun summer, and I love everyone we're working with; the pool of actors Shawn hired are top-notch and we have an incredibly dedicated, wonderful, talented crew. Beyond that, we've all become close and had a terrific time hanging out on set and between shoots, and I'm not looking forward to the wrap party because I don't want it to end. That being said, sometimes I have gotten frustrated or exhausted or worn down working on this--- people who've never made an independent film won't likely understand how much work goes into it, and to say that these things are a 'labor of love' is an understatement. Still, I am really enjoying myself and this experience is one that is really making me happy and confident.

My weight's holding steady around 240. Meh. I wish I was losing faster, but I guess I can't complain since that means I'm 108 down from when I had the surgery seven months ago. That's a lot of progress in a short amount of time.

I rejoined the gym (Gold's, since it's less than half a mile from my house) and hired a new personal trainer named Zack. Zack's kind of ridiculously attractive and looks like a male model, but he is also really nice and seemed to know what he was doing. He's pre-med and has never had a gastric surgery patient as a client before, so I think we can both benefit from this as a learning tool. He had me do a lot of stretching and made me jog on the treadmill. Once upon a time there's no way I could've maintained a jog for more than a few seconds, but he made me do it for almost two full minutes. We also did lunges (during which I proved how bad my balance was), box-steps and kettlebell swings. We're going to focus on toning me up and building lean muscle instead of doing tons of cardio; we're going to do mostly flexibility/stretching exercises, incorporate some basic yoga, and do toning and weight-training. I'm also going to make full use of that membership by swimming my ass off and using the hot tub on sore muscles. I need to up my vitamin intake and I ordered more Chike because that shit is delicious and it's the only protein shake I'm really good at drinking. Oddly enough, pre-surgery I liked vanilla or chocolate but I'd never really get strawberry, but I find with protein shakes, strawberry seems to sit the best with me.

I also ordered some Quest bars. I've never had them before, but they were having a promotional sale for fourth of July and some of those flavors sound absolutely amazing. I've seen Shelly talk about them on her blog, especially the chocolate chip cookie dough ones, but I have to be honest, I'm mostly excited about the lemon cream pie one.

Trying to be better. It's too easy to fall off the wagon, even post-surgery. Better choices and accountability are the two things I need to work on the most.