Dear Mr Haggerty,

Can I call you Ben? I feel like I know you a little, since I saw you open for Mob Law back in the day at Chop Suey, and you were still Professor Macklemore and you wore a Bush mask and did a lot of really intelligent songs that I’m pretty sure were a lot deeper than I originally thought.

Anyway.

See, I have this kid. I have two, but let’s just talk about my eldest. He’s 13. We call him Boy Wonder here on the internet. He’s a great kid, super intelligent, hardworking and funny.

He’s the tall one.

So. He enjoys your music. A lot. He and his (3 year old) sister sing the chorus to Can’t Hold Us while we drive down the freeway and I can see that song being one that, when he hears it in twenty years, reminds him of this time and place and makes him smile.

He and I talk about your lyrics and where you come from. He says he’s proud of you for standing up for what you believe in and working hard to be who you are today.

The reason I’m writing is because he’s an ambitious kid. He is working on a series of interviews for his middle school newspaper, and his big idea is to interview celebrities and have them give advice to teenagers on how to survive middle and high school, and how to be amazing at whatever they do.

I know it’s a long shot, but you would seriously up my cool mom points for life if he could interview you. You’re at the top of his list, right next to Tom Douglas and Bill Gates.

Kid’s got big dreams, and I want to do everything I can to help him reach them.

Xoxox,
Mia

Ps: if you are not  Macklemore and you want to help Boy Wonder, please feel free to tweet the link at @macklemore, or post wherever you like

Pps: if you are Macklemore or his people, you can reach me at mia DOT cupcake AT yahoo, or tweet @miacupcake.

I’ve been talking about motivation for weight loss with some friends lately. I want to lose weight so I can fit into a bunch of “almost there” clothes. And then make those too big. I’m getting closer and closer into fitting into a pair of pretty expensive jeans I bought a few years ago….but was never able to wear.

I’ve heard a lot of motivating factors:

• keep up with my kids
• fit into a specific piece of clothing (dress, bikini, etc)
• train for a 5k
• be a better roller derby skater
• keep up with my friends
• attract opposite sex
• feel better when naked

Here’s a new one though: win some money.

There’s a new website called DietBet. They encourage you to add that extra “something” to your weight loss journey. In our particular bet, you pay in $25, and as long as you lose 4% of your starting weight, you win.

It’s simple. Lose weight, win money.

You in? Lose weight, win money, kick ass. Click here to join us.

The pot is growing. Get a piece.

DISCLAIMER: (because the FTC asks that I be more transparent) I get a piece of the pot for running/promoting the game. It doesn’t affect your winnings though!

Resolutions. Everyone seems to be making them these days. Tis the season.

Unfortunately, most of these resolutions will probably not last until the end of January. Sometimes it seems like people make resolutions just to have something to break  just to fit in with the crowds.

As most of you know, I’m not really a crowd-follower. For the love of potatoes, I’m just getting on the short boots train.

So instead of resolutions, I think I’ll make a to-do list. One with some pretty big goals.

But instead of just having this list, I will make a plan. Make some steps for the plan. And get it done.

So without further ado, here’s a list of stuff I want to do in 2013. I’ll spare you the plan…it’s kind of long

• work out. Working out makes me happy.
• shop better. Food is not a reward and I am not a dog. Smaller jeans are a reward, and I am fierce.
• tell myself the truth. Looking in the mirror and berating myself isn’t true. Or helpful.
• love my kids more. 
• do less on the internet (I already deleted my Facebook app) and more outside.
• do things for myself. I’ve been relying too much on other people to help me instead of trying to do it myself first. Help is good when you need it.
• be a better friend. I’ve been isolating myself a lot over the past few years, turning down a lot of invitations and avoiding a lot of in-person social contact.

Scenario: You have been working your ASS off, no sugar/alcohol/red-food/green-ham/whatever, exercising, making good choices for three whole weeks. You can see a difference. The people that love you and see you every day are starting to see a difference.

You go out clothes shopping and buy pants a whole.size.smaller. You buy a smaller bra because you fall out of your other one. You are feeling GOOD.

Then someone or something reminds you that you are still big and have a ways to go. Maybe it’s the drunk pal who introduces you as her “fat friend”. Or you look in the mirror at a weak point. Or someone minimizes the fact that you now are in the 220′s and you haven’t been there in YEARS and you had to WORK YOUR ASS OFF to get there.

And suddenly, you feel like eating a whole loaf of bread. Or a whole box of Triscuits. Or not going to the gym or pressing play on your p90x.

Not that I would know anything about this.

But I totally do.

I haven’t lost that much weight since I broke the chair. Less than I hoped for (20 pounds in a week? Not going to happen), but more than I have in a long time. About a week ago, I allowed someone to minimize my success. Two little words nearly derailed three weeks of me kicking my own ass and CHANGING MY LIFE.

“That’s it?”, she said, when I told her how much weight I had lost. “That’s it?”

She meant well. What she meant was “holy schnikes lady, you look like you’ve lost 20 pounds! I cannot believe that you look that amazing and awesome and have just lost xxx pounds. You look like you have lost so much more! Congrats! You are awesome and amazing!”

I heard “wow, you’ve been working hard and have only lost that much? That is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Saddest thing I’ve ever seen.

I went home and ate a piece of bread. Curled in the corner of my bed, sobbing and eating a piece of bread. I was a pathetic mess with a piece of forbidden carbs crushed in my fist.

I allowed someone else to knock me down. I took someone else’s well-meant words, twisted them, took ownership of that warped meaning and allowed it to nearly derail my entire progress train.

Your victories are yours. If you want to celebrate five pounds, you celebrate the shit out of that five pounds. Want to celebrate a pants size? DO IT.

Just don’t celebrate by eating a cake. That’s not celebration. That’s erasing progress.

You have to do you before you can worry (if you EVER want to) about what other people are saying about you. You cannot own what other people say about you, and you cannot let your well being hang on another’s opinion of you.

Example: I have a friend who is having a really rough time of things. She just got dumped by her fiance, who left her for another girl. She thinks she is too fat and too ugly to function. She had to move back in with her parents. (No, this is not me. Strangely parallel though) She is having some pretty big issues functioning. She’s basically where I was four months ago.

She’s been allowing what her parents say about her to run her life. Her parents are not nice people and telling her all sorts of terrible things. And she is taking ownership of them. She is allowing them space in her brain and her heart and letting them blacken her until she cannot get out of bed in the morning.

You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to accept what other people say or think of you. That’s their reality, as skewed as it may be. It doesn’t have to be yours.

I have a particular woman in my life who is a former friend. She is a very sad creature, who seems to thrive on drama. Being a recovering drama queen myself, I understand that you get to a point in your life where you hate yourself, so you love watching other people fall from grace.

TRUTH. This, you can own.

When I went through the whole breakup a few months ago, she practically *rolled* in my despair. She spread my misery out so far, I heard two people in front of me at the grocery store talking about me one day. No joke. I was horrified.

I didn’t own any of what she had to say. That wasn’t me. None of what I heard those women talking about was anything close to the truth.
You can’t worry or rely on what other people are saying about you when you change your life. You can’t let the “oh just one cupcake won’t hurt” people steer you wrong. You can’t be someone else’s puppet and let them pull your strings.

Like that picture over there says: If you want to achieve greatness, stop looking to other people for approval. Because it won’t be the kind you want, it won’t be the right size, the right color, the right delivery.
What you need resides in YOU. Quit asking other people for permission to be awesome. 

Motivation: The general desire or willingness of someone to do something.

Inspiration: The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do something creative: “flashes of inspiration”

I like to think the difference between the two in the weight loss arena is that Motivation is the one that kicks you into play, and Inspiration is the one that keeps you going. But I think the two go hand in hand when it comes to keeping you on your personal track.

The other day, I talked about what my motivating moment to start losing weight and do it RIGHT was.

My inspirations are my kids, and my clothes. The kids part doesn’t really need explaining; I don’t want to be out of breath chasing after Chuck around a playground anymore and I want to be able to go for a run with Boy Wonder.

The clothes part is another story altogether. I have two closets, you see. Well, maybe not two CLOSETS, but I have two closets WORTH of clothes. I have all of the clothing I have acquired since I got to this size (18, for those of you keeping track at home).

And then, in two large rubbermaid totes and a suitcase, I have my funky teeshirts, and my cute jeans and my favorite short leather jacket that wears like a baseball glove, and a pair of cherry red knee-high Doc Martens and a rust/pink/brown burnout handkerchief dress and a cute lime green gypsy skirt. None of which fit me.

I want to wear the dress to my Christmas party. I want to be able to wear the Doc Martens for Valentine’s Day. I want to wear my favorite leather jacket on my birthday in February.

Everyone has their own driving force. And like I have said before, I can’t tell you what yours is. You have to go out and find it.

And you NEED to find something to push you through those moments when you are in the middle of a cleanse and decide to eat a pretty big soft taco with just beans and a tiny bit of cheese and lettuce and salsa and your stomach gets all angry and you end up curled up in your bed at 7:45pm praying for Tums.

*cough* Not that I would know what that feels like.

Do you know what YOUR driving force looks like?