I am taking a hiatus from this website.
I rarely update it anyway about diet-related stuff…
When I’m feeling more motivated, I’ll return.
This doesn’t mean I’ve given up healthier eating. In fact, I am eating a LOT better these days.
If anyone wants to keep up with what I’m up to, check out my Myspace site - http://myspace.com/justrian.
See ya!
… so I may as well shoot sunrise pictures from my balcony.
I am literally going crazy from lack of sleep! Arrgghghghghghghghghgghgh!
Here is one more picture from yesterday morning when the storm was rolling in. (Yet another one is on its way in as I type this, in fact):
My newest hobby is taking photos of the beautiful cloud formations from my balcony here in Tulsa, OK.
These were taken with my blackberry pearl phone… still working out the kinks on how to get the clearest shots!
Firstly, here is a pictures of a rainbow that I took sometime on Friday:
And this morning’s cloud formation as yet another thunderstorm was (or rather is at this very moment) rolling in:
I know I haven’t been updating here very often lately… life has just been getting in the way!
Anyway, I appreciate the people who have left me comments. I do however need to explain something to the people who think that I am obsessed with celebrity weight and that THAT is the reason for my alcoholism.
I started theskinnywebsite.com in Nov 2005 as an experiment, sort of like a joke. This was around the time Janet Jackson had gained a ton of weight and Nicole Richie & Lindsay Lohan were skeletons. I was at lunch with a couple of coworkers and grabbed a tabloid that had a picture of Janet Jackson on it. One of my coworkers said “No way, that isn’t Janet Jackson!!!” Anyway, I bought the tabloid and took it back to work with me. I realized that day that the only time I bought tabloids was when there was a celebrity weight or diet story in it. Otherwise, I could care less. I could care less which celebs were hooking up with who, who was in rehab, who was spotted doing this or that, etc. (This remains true to today except now I am curious about who is in rehab, for obvious reasons!) 
So anyway… around this time, I had been having success with my book site, chicklitbooks.com and had recently been quoted in both The Wall Street Journal and USA Today about it. But I was looking for a new site idea. I had briefly considered starting a diet site and bought the domain name theskinnywebsite.com for that very purpose (but this was a few months before that November). I got bored of the diet site before it was even 5% done.
So I figured… hey… there are no sites devoted to celebrity weight or diets. Why not start one for the heck of it, where I would make fun of the “scary skinnies” and talk about who had gained?
So I did… back in the beginning days, I used to write a lot more than I do in posts now. I would be a bit mean and a lot snarkier than I am now. I did the site completely anonymously for that very reason.
I never knew the site would grow in traffic and popularity to the extent that it did… I remember updating it for a while that November and December, did some advertising, then got involved with other things the following January. However, one day in mid-January 2006, I checked my stats and realized I was getting almost a thousand visitors per day! Wow! Even on some of my busiest days on chicklitbooks.com, I didn’t get that much traffic (except just a couple of times).
So I got a little excited that the idea had “taken off”. I decided to keep updating it. I changed it over to Wordpress into blog format. And it just took off… traffic grew in leaps just by word of mouth. I didn’t have to do any advertising after December 2005.
And as traffic grew, advertisers and profits grew. I toned down my posts. I became an expert and finding information I needed. Just this year I signed up with paparazzi companies to pay them to use their photos legally.
Nowadays, the site is my main source of income. I am very grateful for that. I’ll be honest though - some days, I could care less about celebrities and who is gaining and losing weight. It’s not something on my mind 24/7 unlike what some of you may think. Most days, I do the site and posts within a couple of hours and go about the rest of my day not thinking about it except to check comments and site functionality, etc.
So no, I do not spend very many hours a day thinking about celebrity diets and who is getting skinny, fat, etc. I am in NO WAY obsessed with it! It’s simply a hobby that got translated into a very popular website. These days I strive to keep it fun and light.
To the person who thinks I was being literal with my “hopelessly addicted” paragraph… sorry to disappoint you, but I was being facetious.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I am a person with a huge amount of interests. Celebrity diets and weight is only a small percentage of it. I think I do a great job at keeping my posts on theskinnywebsite.com light and amusing. So come on… don’t take it all so seriously!
Now about my alcoholism… it’s a very serious matter. I did not become an alcoholic because I wanted to look like a celebrity or was obsessed with dieting, etc. To imply such a thing is seriously preposterous! Both of my parents were hardcore alcoholics and died when I was in my teens. So I am an adult child of alcoholics. (ACOA) Unfortunately, it runs in my family.
Anyway, it’s time for bed… I will update again in the next couple of days about diet stuff. I just wanted to get all of this ridiculousness cleared up!
It’s quite weird, but no matter what size I really am, I usually think of myself as the skinny, awesome-bodied girl I was most of my life. I had such a fabulous figure for slightly more than 10 of the 12 1/2 adult years I have lived that it is an image that’s hard to let go in my mind. I can’t seem to truly and realistically get it through my thick head that I NEED to lose weight. That I NEED to slim down and uncover my once killer body.
Some may call it Body Dysmorphic Disorder. But I call it a blessing… who the heck needs yet another obsession or reason to be mad at oneself?
Let me explain… I know this post is coming off very strangely. You see, I know I am still technically “overweight”. I know I don’t have that 26-inch waist that I had for many years. My upper arms and legs aren’t as slender and gracefully feminine that they were for those 10 years. Now, they are all covered in an extra layer or two of fat.
But in my every-day life, as I carry about my business, see friends, family, hang out, relax, have fun, etc, I’m not usually aware that my body is no longer beautiful. In fact, for reasons I don’t quite understand, it’s engraved in the back of my mind that my body is awesome. I look in the mirror and about 85% of the time don’t see those layers of fat.
But they are there. The scale tells me so. The size of clothing I have to purchase tells me so even louder.
Perhaps I am in denial about what I really look like?
Perhaps this is the reason I have found it so hard to really get rid of this extra weight?
Perhaps I am making excuses again? 
Perhaps I just no longer give a flying frig?
Perhaps I need to invest in florescent lighting and stand in front of a full-length mirror naked?
Anyway, this post probably won’t make very much sense to most of you. I guess what I am trying to say is that although I know intellectually that no, I am NOT slender and gorgeous, it just doesn’t matter much to me these days.
The truth of the matter is that I am undergoing a psychological, emotional and spiritual change in my life that is making all the stupid and meaningless stuff just not mean much anymore. Like… obsession with my weight.
Now I understand why so many celebrities - and regular people - have so much trouble with relapsing when they are supposed to be recovering from either drug or alcohol addiction.
Recovery is HARD. HARD. I will never again make fun of anyone struggling with any addiction. Alcoholism is actually a deadly disease and supposedly less than 4% who are afflicted with it recover.
I’m determined to be in that 4%! I don’t care what I have to do.
(No, I have not relapsed, but had I not had several new AA friends to call and meetings to go to, I surely would have today.)
Update on my appetite: still non-existent.
Update on my weight: Down another pound! (3.5 lost in 5 days). Pants sliding down hips again. Almost accidentally flashed shoppers at grocery store earlier.
Well it’s 3am and I’m going to bed!
