Blogger Meet Ups = Amazing women, healthy food and new clothes!

Last night was only the second GTA Blogger Meet Up that I went to but I had an amazing time. These women are truly inspirational, friendly and down to earth!

Andrea, Kat, Kate, Ally, Tiffany, Erin & Kerry

The personalities are very different, yet they all seem to complement each other. We're at different stages in our weight loss journey, different ages, different careers, different points in our lives - yet we have so much in common. We laughed alot - that's the true test of a good time to me.

I can't remember who it was, at our last get together, who suggested a pot luck and clothing exchange this time around. What a brilliant idea!

I didn't take any food photos, but these lovely ladies did so here's a link to their posts with food porn pictures for you to drool over.

Andrea 

Kerry

The food was amazing, all the WW points all calculated for us so we could easily track.  Kat started our appetites out with tapenade and crispy pita chips, the main meal was meatballs, veggies, fruit, carrot salad, squash, sweet potato, vegetable lasagna, chicken/pasta salad and quinoa. I had never had quinoa before and discovered I really like it.  And there was dessert: cherry tarts, fudgey cakey brownies, bread pudding, fruit and vanilla frozen yogurt. I had one full plate of food and then my second plate was veggies and fruit. I had one piece of brownie, one piece of bread pudding and a scoop of the frozen yogurt. Best part, I didn't leave feeling stuffed or sick but I wasn't hungry again all night either.

Before we got to the eating part of the night, Kate acted as MC and displayed all the clothes that were brought for the swap.  I was very fortunate as most of these women are further along in their weight loss journey than I am so there were alot of clothes in my size range.

I didn't think there would be to be honest, but I can wear size 16!!! 

Comfortably. 

Size 16 from mainstream, regular sized people, stores like The Gap and Old Navy and Rickis.  

I didn't think some of these clothes would fit, but I was urged to "Just try it on and see" and they were right.  I can't tell you how overjoyed I was. I can honestly say I never would have walked into The Gap or Old Navy and pulled 16s off the rack on my own - not even to "just try them on".  But they fit. Not snugly, not "only just", they fit properly!  The other major coup for me was a black/grey jacket that I can wear to a job interview I have this coming week. It is a second interview and with only one suit that fits (that I wore to the first interview) I was panicking over what to wear this time.  These ladies came to my rescue with not one, but four jackets!!! Two are perfect for interviews but only one fits really well, the second is just a bit tight so I'll hang on to it and hopefully it will fit in a few months.

The thing that was so amazing to me is that I've pretty much plateaued since October, no real "new" weight loss although I play around with the same 3-5 lbs pretty much on a weekly basis so I didn't think I'd be into a new size yet. My clothes are currently size 18 and few 16Ws and I have one magic pair of  size 14 jeans that fit like a dream but in general, I was thinking I was an 18 and in some things even a 20 still. But everything I took home last night was a 16 or a 1X, I tend to need bigger tops to fit my shoulders/arms and there was one size 18 blouse that made it into my pile but when I tried it on last night at home it was too big, so I'll put it away to take back to the next clothes swap.  This was a huge confidence booster and motivation to me that I am doing "something" right even if I am not sure what it is or how to get the scale to go down. I know the scale is not the only measure of success but at 5' tall, 210 lbs is morbidly obese, we're not talking about losing the last ten pounds here, we're talking about the last 75!

I have a plan to break this pesky plateau and crush those 75lbs but I don't want to talk about it just yet, I will tell you all about it on Tuesday, I promise.