...OMG....

So, after 2 and half months of futility (and weight gain)....I HAVE LOST 6 LBS! Now I haven't weighed myself in like 2-3 weeks so it's not like it all came off at once but....I almost cried. I had to have two other people verify this at the scale with me which I never do lol. OMG...I'm 320lbs which is the lowest I've been since 2006!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD!

Well, I know you are like "well what happened, how'd you do it." Well....it's pretty simple. I stopped "trying to loose weight" and simply did what felt right. Or in essence I stopped caring so dam much about EVERY SINGLE LITTLE THING IN MY LIFE lol. In terms of weightloss... I've tried to eat the minimum, which for me is like one regular portion of an item. I haven't exercised , but I also haven't sat down much. Between rehearsals, two jobs, and meetings lol. I think I needed a week to just live my life WITHOUT thinking about my waistline FIRST. I suppose being sick also played a factor but more with my vision than with my stomach lololol...

In terms of my life...maybe it's like my good friend Andy Looney posted on my FB wall...in order to find love or in this case...succeed at weight loss---I need to remove the barriers preventing my success at weight loss. Of course I immediately thought...barriers...um not exercising, not eating right, bad portions..yadda yadda yadda. I'm pretty good at knowing exactly what I CAN'T do lol. But I decided to focus on something a bit more emotionally tied in. Stress.

Yup, for me, I'm seeing that stress....SUCKS lol. I mean anyone can read this blog and see that I have clearly been thinking about my weight a fair amount lol. However, the snot filled Lovefest epiphany I had last weekend released A LOAD of stress off my back. I realized my unhappiness was not due to my weight, or men, or the success of my acting career, or my job....yes those things are major stressors in my life but the bottom line issue is that I don't love myself enough to know, for example, when to just give myself a break!

When to say Earl you may not have reached your goal or failed art your gial but you, the person are NOT a failure. You will have more time and even if you feel you don't, you're still gonna be here (god willing) to start the adventure (or a new one) again! My shrink mentioned that basically we negate ourselves a lot instead of the behaviors we don't like that we do. We figure that the two are the same. Well, they're not lol....at least I am choosing, for the first time, to separate the two (Lord knows the other way hasn't gotten me much lol).

This past week I have been soooo much more focused on work. I've naturally eaten better for the simple fact that I DIDN'T MAKE IT THAT IMPORTANT. What I've tried to focus on everyday, more than anything...has been simply being happy. Looking at stressful situations and thinking in terms of how can deal with this that's going to make me happy? And further more, after I make my decision I want to be done with it. Like in terms of my job, I just made some decisions on how I'm going to approach my job from now on. What I will and won't do and THAT'S THAT. No more debate, no more beating myself for having a job that it's my passion, no more trying to make it more than it will never be----and no more judging it. I come in, do my job to the best of my ability and I leave.

Instead of saying like I've said for too long that "I don't want to think about or stress about this" I'm simply doing it. I let it go during Lovefest 2011 because I saw that I was running around the same locked cage in circles instead of taking time to check out the cage and make the best of the situation. I'm not going to stress about something I have no power to control or change and that really I don't like that much so why give it that much energy? lol I mean I do my job and I do it to the best of my ability but due to circumstances outside my control even if I loved my job I still wouldn't be able to really do my job like I'D want to lol. I mean I think we'd all like Life on our own terms...and we strive for that...but some things just aren't in our control lol. So, do you stress over it, give up, ignore it?...well I tried all that with my job. But I never tried just accepting it for what it is and focusing on what I can effect. So that's how I'm going to go forward. To be clear....do I like my job now...NO....it is Dumb Ass Monday as usual...YES. But do I expect anything more...NO. It is what it is and that is OKAY WITH ME!

In terms of men...that's going to be a longer journey lol. One mental breakdown and resulting epiphany at a time please...:).

This all rolls into my loving myself thing I'm working on...

Patience with myself is one way I've found of loving myself. It's kind of a large factor in my stress and anxiety levels come to find out lol. Always wanting things done yesterday or to a certain degree. Now for someone as ambitious as me ,that's kind of hard but I'm everyday trying to remind myself to be patient with myself. I'm not a robot, so even the best laid plans get blown to hell. But again, knowing that I push myself extremely hard, working on being patient with myself is a good idea for me to latch on to for now. Then when I think I can move onto another idea that will help me learn to love Earl a bit more I will. Who knows...this could also be a large amount of horseshit as well lol....but it feels good to focus on something that is wel... uncharted territory for me...which means...someones on another one of Life's many adventures!

Perhaps this will end up like The Dark Knight...someone fallin off a building (i.e. me loosing my mind lol)...or perhaps this will be like one of the greatest adventure films ever made...Indiana Johns and the Temple of Doom....a great adventure, where I may encounter snakes (crazy people), rough terrain (interesting situations), and large boulders (??? lol)...an an adventure so fun that it may spawn several sequels or more life adventures for Earl??? Who knows...I bout blew my own mind trying to keep that action movie and life metaphor going...lol...

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Phorever Phabulously Yours,

Earliana "Earl" McLaurin