Hello blog world! Greeting from California! Yes, I am home in LA and minus the rain we had today I am happy to be here.

**Disclaimer: this post is about weight loss**

The theme of the week is detox.I also haven’t posted about my weight in a while (uh, since May?) so I thought this would be a nice little update on both.

If you read the blog you know that finals, finals ending, and the holidays are a major time of indulgence for me. I don’t really limit myself in what I eat when it comes to the holidays. I eat my normal meals when there isn’t a special event, and I ran 12 miles last week. Business as usual with special extras. Bottom line: my Mom makes really good cookies and if I eat 6 cookies and some ice cream one then so be it is my general attitude. The world won’t end. It’s just a cookie and I live an active lifestyle.

With that attitude in mind I ate cookies, ice cream, potatoes, bacon, soup, ham, cheese (lots and lots of cheese), popcorn, sushi, pizza, beer, wine, prosecco and cocktails. I have always been a black belt eater meaning I always can make room in my stomach for a little more food. In the past it has taken a large portion of food to make me feel full. This is no longer the case. As of Monday night my stomach was screaming surrender and I had sharp shooting pains. I was eating what everyone else was eating and I was the only one with a stomach ache so it wasn’t food poisoning. It was my stomach saying the party is over.

Its been almost one year since I started running, eating healthy, and building my active lifestyle (I started January 1st 2010). 2010 was the year of the detox for me. The changes I’ve made in the past year have resulted in a change in my system. Despite the fact that I didn’t eat crazy portions, I cannot eat like I used to and whats more, I don’t want to. I always heard people say “when you eat healthy you will start to crave the healthy food” and I thought it was the biggest sham but it’s actually true for me. Of course I want cookies, cheese, bacon and cocktails but I cannot actually eat massive portions like I used to. In addition, going for three days without running felt like a million years. One morning I woke up hung over and felt totally icky. I thought back to the feeling I had the day before stepping off the treadmill after my 5 mile run and I wished I felt that way again. The feeling I have post run trumps every unhealthy overindulgence. I love my new lifestyle and there isn’t anything I would trade it for.

Oh and also, I threw out my scale. This happened in August, when I hit the 20 lbs lost point. Every time I stepped on the scale it read the same weight down to the decimal- clearly this couldn’t be accurate. In August I bought a pair of size 28 jeans. I wear a size 4 skirt and as long as those fit I don’t care what the scale says. I am giving all my “pre active lifestyle” clothing that don’t fit anymore away because that isn’t my lifestyle anymore. Remember the post I did about wanting to be under 140? Arbitrary number and arbitrary goal. Feeling good is the goal. Striving for a number didn’t make me happy. Weighing myself didn’t make me happy.  Looking at the scale everyday in my bathroom, even when I wasn’t weighing myself was stressful and it didn’t make me happy. Thus, the scale went out the window. My lifestyle makes me feel fantastic. I don’t want anything in my life that doesn’t make me feel fantastic.

In the spirit of detox, this week I am cooking almost exclusively out of the Super Natural Food Cookbook and the Skinny Bitch Cookbook. Yep, the theme of the week is detox and feeling and living well. Sipping on Kombucha and starting 2011 off right! My stomach feels better just thinking about it 🙂