In 2005 I moved and started graduate school. During this time I also became more and more interested in weight training. I read a lot and started to up my protein intake quite a bit (mostly with whey powder...at this point I didn't really care if my food was heavily processed or not). Even though I started out as a weakling, over the next year I gained quite a bit of strength. My physique didn't get to where I wanted to be, but that's because my diet wasn't always spot on, which I like to blame on grad school, but we all have our excuses.
Fast forward to fall 2006. I had some pretty harsh personal problems and stopped training. I also developed an eating disorder during this time. I dropped to 140 lbs which isn't a dangerously low BMI, but I was pretty thin and I looked awful (no muscles whatsoever). I eventually dealt with these issues and moved on. Still didn't get back into training though. Which of course I also blamed on being really busy with grad school.
Not much happened until Feb 2008 when I became vegan. It just clicked one day (after almost 10 years as a lacto-ovo). Another thing that coincided with this is that I discovered I love to cook. Up until that point I had relied on convenience packaged foods. It's not easy to find vegan convenience foods here so I had to learn my way around the kitchen. Turns out I love it. Great. Now I was eating better, but my diet still had sugar and white flour and caffeine. Then I read Eat to Live by Dr. Fuhrman. This totally changed the way I view food. I'm happy to report that I now eat pretty darn healthy most of the time...about 75% produce. I try to only eat whole grains, no refined sugar, and no more coffee.
Is grad school any less busy now? No. But I'm tired of making excuses. I miss how good I used to feel after an awesome workout. So here I am, back on the wagon. It hurts my pride to have to basically start at square one again (strength-wise), but I really have nobody to blame for that but myself.
So my goals are to drop about 10-15 lbs body fat by eating clean, doing cardio, and lifting heavy weights. I also do yoga a few times a week. I'm really inflexible and have mild arthritis and I find that yoga helps a lot. Oh, and I'm also getting married in August so of course I'd like to look great for that.

I'm not sure about my weight. My scale needs a new battery. I was avoiding weighing myself as sometimes I find that causes me to obsess and I really don't want to be in that head space again. However I think that if I limit my weigh-ins to once every 2 weeks or so that should be okay.
Wow, this turned out to be quite the novel. Anyway, I'm so ready for this.
