{"id":41783,"date":"2014-02-12T10:01:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T18:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=41783"},"modified":"2014-02-12T10:01:36","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T18:01:36","slug":"ill-be-happy-when","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=41783","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ll Be Happy When&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-41785\" alt=\"happy2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy2-1024x731.jpg\" width=\"695\" height=\"496\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy2-1024x731.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy2-300x214.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy2.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For too many years in my youth I had the assumption that\u00a0<em><span style=\"color: #800080;\">I&#8217;ll be happy when I&#8217;m skinny<\/span>.\u00a0<\/em> I was very unhappy with my weight, &#8220;nothing&#8221; was working to lose it (I use quotes because I wasn&#8217;t REALLY trying), and I felt frustrated. I don&#8217;t know why I thought losing weight was the magical pill that would fix everything\u00a0<em>else<\/em> that I was unhappy with in my life but I did.<\/p>\n<p>For awhile it did kind of work. As I was steadily losing weight and getting attention and positive support from friends, family and coworkers, I felt happy and determined. Once I reached goal weight I felt confident and happy and was getting TONS of attention from men that I hadn&#8217;t really experienced before. That was a huge ego boost. Then I met Michael and we started dating. I felt happy to have found such an amazing guy.<\/p>\n<p>I saw this quote online and wanted to share it:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-41787\" alt=\"happy1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy1.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"348\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy1-300x208.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nI followed this philosophy for a long time. While I was losing weight my #1 focus was reaching goal. Once I reached my goal weight, I flounder a bit and felt lost&#8211;that&#8217;s when I started running. My new goal was to run a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=43\">5k<\/a>. Then an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=465\">8k<\/a>, then <a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=4977\">Hood to Coast<\/a>.\u00a0Every year for the last 5 or so, I had a goal that I was working towards. Training for Hood to Coast. Training for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=1879\">Reach the Beach<\/a>. Training for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=22228\">Portland Century<\/a> ride, etc etc. It helped having a goal. It made me focused, I felt happy that I had something I was working towards.<\/p>\n<p>Last year was the first year I didn&#8217;t have a big goal I was working towards. I was still coming back from my knee injury and wasn&#8217;t cycling a ton. The frequent bike commute to work turned out to be about once a week and it wasn&#8217;t the entire route. I was slowly getting back to running but had lost the drive to run any races because I couldn&#8217;t do the mileage in order to train for it.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/?p=39740\">Getting engaged<\/a> and planning a wedding has been taking over a lot of my life lately. Thankfully I&#8217;ve gotten all the vendors taken care of and booked so really, there isn&#8217;t much for me to do from now until around June. This helped me with my &#8220;I don&#8217;t have a big goal to work towards!&#8221; blues&#8211;at least a little bit. But I&#8217;m still feeling lost. I wish I had that same fire I had three years ago to challenge myself to do races and rides. Where did it go???<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to run a 5k in 2014. I know I can do it. I&#8217;m up to about 2.5 miles running now. I can bump that up to 3.5 with some consistent training&#8211;which is hard in the winter because it rains so much in Oregon and I&#8217;m a wuss. And who wants to spend their whole winter on a treadmill?! As for cycling, I don&#8217;t see myself doing any big rides any time soon. I&#8217;d be happy with just being able to bike to work once or twice a week this summer.<\/p>\n<p>So what do I do? I feel lost. Not sure what to plan for. Not sure where to focus my energy. Not sure not sure not sure!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-41793\" alt=\"happy3\" src=\"http:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy3-1024x682.jpg\" width=\"695\" height=\"462\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy3-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy3-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/happy3.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nOne thing I&#8217;m sure of is that I do not want to put my happiness on hold. I want to be happy NOW. Being unsatisfied with my job has clouded my moods. Gaining a few pounds this winter has made me feel down about my body. I do know that whenever I get home from work in a bad\/sad\/mad mood, Bella cheers me up. Her goofy face helps and she seems to be in-tune to emotions in the house. She&#8217;ll come up to me and lick my face and neck as if she were saying &#8220;CHEER UP MOM! LET&#8217;S HAVE FUN!&#8221; \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>I know part of my issue is not living in the moment. I&#8217;ve tried for decades to practice mindfulness. It&#8217;s so hard. I&#8217;m the type of person that lives in the future, or as <a href=\"http:\/\/theeverygirl.com\/feature\/living-well-ill-be-happy-when\">this article calls it a Future Junkie<\/a>. That is totally me. I&#8217;m a planner. Looking forward to my wedding, the honeymoon, planning our future and kids, etc. It&#8217;s hard to backtrack my brain and live in the moment. Partly because the current moment I&#8217;m in is making me dissatisfied. So I need to fix that!<\/p>\n<p>Note to self:\u00a0YOU DON&#8217;T HAVE TO WAIT TO BE HAPPY.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For too many years in my youth I had the assumption that\u00a0I&#8217;ll be happy when I&#8217;m skinny.\u00a0 I was very unhappy with my weight, &#8220;nothing&#8221; was working to lose it (I use quotes because I wasn&#8217;t REALLY trying), and I felt frustrated. I don&#8217;t know why I thought losing weight was the magical pill that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[3258,2754,514,101,115,154,1335,6460,258,298],"tags":[2755,508,8636,7779,7781,8707,6949,7780,8903,8758],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41783"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41783"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41797,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41783\/revisions\/41797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.110pounds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}