Goodbye 2016, Hello 2017 – Part 1

What a year 2016 was for all of us! I wanted to memorialize my accomplishments and happenings in 2016 and I figured this would be the best way to do it. I originally started off publishing Notes on my Facebook but fell off the bandwagon after January. But I’m going to try my best to remember each month and what happened and I’m going to continue to try and keep up the trend throughout 2017.

January 2016: Rang in the New Year with free Maroon 5 tickets I won off the radio! Took my mother-in-law and while we were sitting in the farthest row back, the tickets were FREE and we were there! I’ve wanted to see Maroon 5 since my dad first introduced them to me when I was in 6th or 7th grade. I also got my second tattoo (the Tree of Gondor) with my mother-in-law (who got a music note with a cowboy hat) and friend (who got Toby Keith’s initials).

February 2016: This was my biggest month of the year – this was the month I decided that enough was enough with my weight and took action. No bullshit, no half-assery. This was the photo that finalized it for me, taken at Harrah’s Las Vegas around Chinese New Year. I knew I had put on a lot of weight (originally due to hating my job in property management), but I continued to put on weight even after getting a new job – even though it was a job I loved. I had hit the “fuck it” stage and was suffering from the depression caused by my last job. I was drinking heavily every night, gorging myself on food daily… It was one of the darkest times of my life. And when I saw this picture I had my mom take of me when we were out and about on the Strip, I cried.

Me at my heaviest weight I had ever been in my life. 27 years old, 215 lbs.

A week later, I signed up for Weight Watchers. I also sought help through a weight loss program offered through my work, which kept me motivated to stay on track and not veer off the path as I had done SO MANY TIMES with previous weight loss attempts. (I’ve always struggled with my weight, but that’s for another blog.) Long story short, this event in my life has a happy ending, but I’ll get to that. (Lost -7.2 lbs in my first month!)

March 2016: My birthday month! My dad, stepmom and family, who live in California, came out to spend my birthday week with me and we did A LOT. We hiked in Red Rock Canyon, went to the Valley of Fire (my first time visiting since I moved here six years ago!), ate at The Wicked Spoon at the Cosmopolitan hotel (which was extremely difficult since I was so new on my weight loss program), saw Zootopia in theaters, walked the Strip and more! This week proved to me that I was stronger than I thought I was and further motivated me to continue on my weight loss journey. My Fitbit became my best friend too. (Total weight loss at the end of March: -25.8 lbs!)

April 2016: End of March, early April is one of my favorite times of the year because with it comes VIVA LAS VEGAS, the rockabilly weekender here in Vegas! This was my and my husband’s third year attending the Saturday car show and while it was a little rougher than the two years prior, it was still one of our biggest years yet – I met Dita Von Teese!

Me meeting Dita Von Teese! I just remember I kept thinking as my husband took our picture, “Please let it be a good picture, please let it be a good picture… No double chins, no funny faces…”

This was also the first Viva we attended where I wore a full-on wiggle dress and was mostly comfortable in it. I wore a black swing dress the first time we went in 2014, a beautiful green lame wrap/sarong/wiggle dress in 2015 (disguised the belly beautifully), and then this bad boy in the picture, which is a full wiggle, in 2016. I even wore my custom Imelda May necklace! (One of my favorite rockabilly singers.)

The red dress! Which is, sadly, too big now.

The other big accomplishment for me in April was attending and COMPLETING the Inflatable 5K run with a friend from work. It truly amazed me that I had not only the strength to climb up and through some of the obstacles on the course, but that I had the will and stamina to complete ALL obstacles. The pictures below show a particular obstacle I had gotten myself worked up over before we even got to the damn race! I kept telling myself, there’s no WAY I can complete this race – I don’t have the strength or power to climb these obstacles! Who am I kidding?! Turns out, the only person I was kidding was myself because I did it!

(Total weight loss at the end of April: -35.2 lbs!)

For the sake of length, I’m going to break up 2016 into multiple blogs.

See you at Part 2! 🙂