Today was the last day of my vacation. I got to read the New York Times, relax and most excitingly go shopping. I went to pick something up at Kmart (which you will get to see next week!) and I was right across the street from The Grove so I decided to stop in and shop. Immediately after I stepped out of the parking garage I saw JCrew and had to stop in. If you know me at all you know I have a J Crew obsession and I also had some Christmas money.

I browsed around the sale section and other areas of the store admiring all of the cute Spring clothing. I hesitated for a second above a pair of pants but decided to try them on anyways. I recently went through my closet and took out everything that didn’t fit. This included all of my pants that weren’t jeans so as you can imagine I have a bit of a hole in my wardrobe.

And then the greatest fitting room moment ever happened.

Size 4 pants. Size small top. Bam.

When I first made the choice to live a healthier lifestyle I didn’t really have a set goal in mind. I knew I wanted to be healthier and more active. I knew that, by doing so, I would lose weight and along the way I had some ideas about what a number might be. I gave up the idea of a scale number a while ago when I got rid of my scale.

Of course, when setting out on anything there are public goals and private goals. From the time I first started my healthy lifestyle I had an idea about a size number I wanted to see if I could achieve. I only told a handful of people and I didn’t put too much emphasis on it throughout the past year but it was always in the back of my mind. I knew that I would ONLY do what was healthy for me and thus the number might not be attainable. If my body settled at a bigger size than so be it. I’m not on a “diet” so it wasn’t the finish line and I didn’t even know if it would be achievable. I didn’t want to set myself up to fail (what I perceive to be the problem with “diets”) and thus I was totally OK if I never hit that number.

Well, it is. I went from an 8 (lets not lie for the sake of vanity, my pants were really tight) to a 4. It was the best fitting room moment ever and I will not lie, I’ve had a lot of bad fitting room moments.

Like last March when I though for sure I’d lost a pant size only to realize that my thighs hadn’t lost any weight. Or trying to fit my arm holes into sleeves that didn’t fit. Or trying on a pair of pants only to realize that the pants wouldn’t go up past my knees. We’ve all had those moments, haven’t we?

Any ways, I put the above outfit on and paraded out of the fitting room and examined myself in the main mirror and told the lady working in the fitting room about my weigh loss. It was awesome and I celebrated with a latte. I was the same size (or forced myself to believe I was the same size even though I was really a bigger one) for so long. It’s weird to think I’m not that person anymore. And truly, I’m not that person anymore. Bigger Katherine didn’t run half marathons, she didn’t take good care of herself and she was always hoping something would change but I never took action. I won’t harp on it too much since I posted on almost the same topic a few weeks ago but I am so happy today for all I have worked for.

On that positive note: I made a delicious, healthy and vegan (I love when that randomly happens) dinner. I was inspired by the stir fry I made the other night and came up something easy: Avocado Fried Rice.

I cooked a little over 1/3 of a cup short grain brown rice.

I’m buying all my grains in bulk and transferring them into plastic bags. I know it’s terrible for the environment but its a new system and I plan on reusing the bags.

While the rice was cooking I prepared bok choy.

I ended up chopping up 3 stalks but not before finding a stow away…

I actually wasn’t too freaked out by this… hey at least I know its fresh. I put the little guy outside and continued on.

Once the rice was done I cooked up the bok choy…

Added the rice

and topped with an appropriate amount of soyaki (>2 tablespoons).

Now here is the truly genius part. This is just a plain, actually rather boring stir fry until we top it off with THIS:

Half of an avocado. You might ask, what does this add? An appropriate response would be “what doesn’t this add?!” The avocado was super creamy and fresh tasting. Nothing makes something light and creamy and delicious like an avocado. This is a different variety of avocado than I typically buy. I was told that the type is Fuerte by the man at the FM and that it would taste “buttery”. Um, sold! It was very buttery and delicious. Normally I don’t buy avocado because I just don’t use it that frequently and it goes bad fast once cut into but I see many more fuerte avocados in the near future. This meal was good, cheap, quick, easy and the creaminess of avocado and the soyaki flavor together were very interesting!

Tomorrow is my first full day back at school. I don’t have class until almost 2 so I have morning yoga planned. As for right now I’m going to eat some delicious homemade biscotti (because I have awesome friends who just send me delicious baked goods in the mail) and watch Desperate Housewives. Side note: my spell check doesn’t know biscotti. How is that even possible?  Hope you’re having a good night!