Checking In

Hello my long lost banded friends. I hope everyone is doing fab! My life has been crazy and when I come back and read blogs after a long time I'm always inspired and feel good about having a band.

Weight loss is still a constant struggle for me. For the past couple of years I have gained, lost, gained and lost the same 20 lbs. I am so happy that I'm here in this weight right now as opposed to my 300+ days  so I feel good.

I do feel as if the band has done what it can for me, and now I want to work on my head to get the rest of the way there. At the beginning of this year, I wanted to see a doctor that could help me sort through why I have such a compulsive eating/binging problem. For all intensive purposes, I've always been a pretty well adjusted, confident person but I've just never been able to figure this one out on my own.

Right at this moment there are some major things happening in my life. The biggest/toughest one is infertility. We're not talking tried to get pregnant 3 times and just don't know what's wrong, we're talking, it is absolutely impossible to conceive a child naturally. There is a slim to no chance of even having a child with the most expensive type of invitro. For the record, I'm not losing my shit and acting like a maniac. But I am going through a long and hard grieving process that I really haven't talked about much with anyone. It's a big heavy weight that just sits there. But at the end of the day, my husband is cancer-free and I'm thankful for that.

In addition to working through that, my career has been a roller coaster this year as well. I love the company I work for and my job, but we are growing quickly and things are changing so rapidly, that it's sometimes hard to keep up. Something that used to give me so much confidence and happiness is evolving. It's all good. It's just constant craziness and stress.

I am a huge believer in the fact that you get what you need in life and I feel like God gave me a break from the chaos last month. It's funny, prior to moving to NC I was a successful makeup artist running my own business for freelance, and also working in prestige cosmetics. I loved what I did and won awards for it. I read books on the industry and planned on working my way up into a corporate training position. I left that behind when I moved to NC with no connections and hideous pay for the same positions I worked up north. I've never felt the need to go back, but I think it's exactly what i needed.

In June, my sister came out of left field with something called Younique mascara. She was posting pictures of it, and then all of  a sudden started selling it. I was totally turned off right away, direct sales (annoying mary kay ladies in particular) had rubbed me the wrong way for all the years I had worked in cosmetics. Regardless of my resistance, she sent it to me for my birthday. Holy smokes. Best mascara I've ever used.

After a week or two, I had one of those online parties for her. All of a sudden talking about mascara and makeup and bonding with my old friends and new friends over beauty products and having success doing it filled my heart with exactly what it needs.  I decided to start selling it and I swear it has been all the therapy I have needed to get myself back above water. I have something that I'm passionate about again. I'm good at it, it makes me happy, and I can earn a little extra money doing it.


Having something that is fun and fulfilling is making it easier to deal with my 2 big things right now, and focus less on shoveling food in my mouth. I'm working out and in a good place. I'm really determined to lose the last 50 pounds on my own. By just finding my center, being content and dealing with what life throws at me. And I'm putting mascara on every day ... it's true what they say about looking good and feeling good :)