*This is the blog post I worked on at the aiport BEFORE my little change of plans. So it’s chronologically out of order but still something I wanted to post and share!*

Saturday, February 2. 5:30pm. John Wayne Airport, Orange County, CA.

Blogging in the airport has become an unexpected habit in this new year, and I gotta say that I’m a fan. It’s exactly the type of setting I envisioned for my grown-up self when I was little – jet-setter with laptop and glass of wine in a busy terminal. So glamorous 😉

Wednesday before I left on this trip to Southern California, my boyfriend and I had a double date at a trivia night. We met our friends Jon and Cianna through my mom actually! Jon is my mom’s coworker and he and his wife are close to my age and also not originally from Idaho. We’ve been to a couple trivia/game nights together now and Cianna is one of the most competitive players I’ve met in person. She reminds me of a mild version of Monica Geller-Bing when we’re playing board games and I love it!

Our team didn’t do so hot at the actual trivia or the musical bingo, but I found a beer that I didn’t hate for the first time in my life! Jon and I split a flight of local craft beers & I genuinely enjoyed the Sippin Pretty Fruited Sour 👌🏽

Game face ON.

Switching gears! I’ve told you about my participation in a couple of health apps that keep you accountable. The main one is StepBet which tracks your daily steps and splits the pot of money among the entrants who hit their goal for six weeks. That one ends this Sunday and I’m still in it! I also entered a 4 week challenge called DietBet, where entrants aim to lose 4% of their body weight in the first 4 weeks of the year. Although I am typically pretty consistent and content with my weight, there’s always a few extra pounds from the holiday splurges and this was the perfect opportunity to get back down to my “happy weight” before my birthday next week. You pay the app $30 to start. Then at the end of 4 weeks, if you were successful in losing 4% then you get your money back PLUS you split the pot of those who failed.

Long story short, I weighed in for the DietBet challenge on January 1st and it told me that in order to lose 4% I would need to lose 4.9 lbs. I didn’t do very much with that information, and I definitely still indulged in wine and cheese and desserts occasionally! Yesterday was the final day of the challenge, and I still had 1.7 lbs. to lose. There’s absolutely no chance of losing body fat in that amount of time, so it would basically come down to water weight. Time to dehydrate myself! I realize this is not healthy at all, and thankfully it was a one-time short term solution. I don’t think I’ll enter a DietBet again because I’m very happy with the weight I’m at and don’t want to make a habit out of using dehydration to move the number on the scale. But I wanted my $30 entry fee back and I’m not a quitter! 😀

Since I was doing my final weigh in around 7pm, I stopped eating and drinking anything at 11:30am. I got home from work and I put on three layers of clothes before heading out to run 40 minutes followed by 45 minutes walking at an incline on the treadmill with the heater on. I’ve gotta say, the hardest part was definitely skipping my afternoon snack! My dad has always called me a “grazer” because I eat small handfuls of food constantly throughout the day. It’s totally normal for me to leave 3 crackers in the box in the cupboard because I know that’s the perfect amount for me to eat later. But it drives him nuts thinking “why would you leave so little? Why not just finish it?!” My coworkers are all used to my snack schedule so they were easy to confide in when I was feeling so deprived after passing up my 2:00pm Cheez-It break. “I’m withering away!” I joked. “I can feel myself getting lighter by the minute!” as I suppressed my urge to tear into a bag of Ranch Quaker Rice Cakes.

Distracting myself from the snack machine with a selfie session. Don’t act like you don’t do this too 😉

I substituted my usual carbs for Listerine tabs. By the end of the afternoon, my day dreams consisted of a bottle of water. (Have you figured out that I can be quite dramatic by now…?)

By 8:00pm I had met my goal and was indulging in a dinner of pizza AND sushi because why choose between them? Zeb and I found a new nature documentary, Earth’s Great Wonders, and I fell asleep while learning about the yaks of the Himalayas.

Next, I will blog all about my trip to Southern California and my visit with my college girlfriend Chelsea! But to be honest, I’m sort of stalling on finishing that post because of some background info on my medical history that I’ll be including for some context for you. Its an emotional topic for me. I definitely want to include it in this blog because Sweet Like My Tea is more of a journal for myself than anything else. I also think my experience and perspective could be beneficial for others to hear. It’s just one of those topics I want to give extra thought to before posting on the internet 🙂

Til next time! Xo, Kenz