【Diet】What I eat in a week

It's been almost 6 months since I started my diet, and I'm happy to say: it is working!! I've lost 10% of my starting weight, and my weight loss has been a bit slow but extremely steady. That plateau I thought I'd hit in my first post? When I went back and looked at it in a 3-month context, it was clearly never a plateau at all. Since then, whenever I think I'm hitting a wall, I make a point not to make any changes to my diet or exercise for a whole month. Almost every time, the daily/weekly weigh ins were misleading and my month to month trend is still great. I did truly stall last month, after I got a bit lazy and tried to eat intuitively instead of counting calories. But I still waited about a month just to see what would happen, and I'm glad that I did. Now I know both that I'm able to basically maintain my weight by intuition alone (which is a great sign!) but I'm also confident that the cuts I'm making are truly necessary and making a clear difference.

Anyway, like I said before my main diet is built around having a 300 calorie breakfast and two 500 calorie meals, giving me some wiggle room for my little treats. In reality, I'm actually not often hungry for 3 full meals, so most days I tend to skip either breakfast or lunch, which gives me more allowance for the ✨ treats ✨

But, going back to my 3 big goals:

1. I don't want to feel hungry
2. I want to continue to enjoy eating
3. I don't want to plan my life around it

So somedays I do need all 3 meals, and I just snack a bit less to compensate. It just depends on where my body's at that day!

2023 Wardrobe Review

It's the beginning of the year and my closet is a DISASTER ZONE. The last few months of 2023 involved constant travel and events, leaving me such precious little time for laundry and tidying up. So this month I've really focused on going through all my laundry and while I did, I've also spent some time updating my wardrobe spreadsheet and taking stock of what I have.

My original goal when I started this blog was to make a himekaji capsule wardrobe. And, as long as very large capsules are allowed, I feel at this point that I have basically succeeded! My last wardrobe recap post was in 2020, and my wardrobe at the time was about 50 items. At the time I was just starting to have more confidence and financial freedom to buy brand items instead of scraping the goodwill racks for "himekajiables". Actually, looking back at that post is really nostalgic. I can remember the excitement I felt as I looked at my wardrobe and for the first time really felt like I could be proud of it.

Since then, my wardrobe grew exponentially!! I've done a lot of "bulking and cutting" of my wardrobe () trying new pieces, passing along the ones that didn't fit or feel right and holding on to the ones that brought me the most joy. Overall, my current wardrobe now stands at 123 pieces - more than double my 2020 wardrobe! In 2020 I really liked the direction my wardrobe was going, but it still wasn't quite big enough for daily wear. 123 looks like a big (and really aesthetically pleasing) number, but for me this is a very comfortable size and (if I did more laundry ) it (would probably) be very easy for me to get dressed every day throughout the year! This large number encompasses clothing for all kinds of weather and occasions - Tokyo winters, California summers, fancy restaurants, concerts, boba dates, or (most important) just lounging around the house. I hope you enjoy browsing my clothes!

【workouts】Sailor Moon Step Ups

As part of my weight loss initiative, I knew I would need to find some exercises that I can easily do at home while distracted by other things. Gym memberships, fitness classes, even just going for walks in the park all eventually fail me after the initial spark of motivation. All of these things can be fun in small doses but I knew they wouldn't be the backbone of my long term progress.

In college when I had a gym on campus I had the most success watching anime on the elliptical. For a while I've thought, it would be so nice if I could figure out something like that without having to leave the house! Well, of course I don't have space for an elliptical here. I thought about getting a treadmill, but even the under desk ones can be quite loud and bulky, and I honestly never liked the treadmills even at the gym. I also think the diet and fitness industry as a whole is really manipulative and I didn't want to fall into the trap of thinking I can lose weight just by throwing money at it. I mean, my body builds muscle and burns calories for free literally every day, so I should definitely be able to make at least some progress without it...

I want to diet!

Recently I gained a lot of weight really suddenly, for the first time in my life! 

Truthfully, I feel kind of embarrassed talking about my weight or wanting to lose weight, because I'm still relatively skinny, or at least "average weight" by many metrics, so I'm afraid that wanting to lose weight would come off as shaming others who are bigger than me. Actually, when I look in the mirror right now, I don't see a problem with my appearance. Whether because of my body shape changing or just getting a bit more mature emotionally, I'd say my own self image has actually only improved as time goes on (which is really nice!).

But, I'm used to being a certain weight all my life, so when the number started creeping up, I did feel like I wanted to try dieting to try and get back to what's normal for me. And then those diet attempts didn't pan out, I turned 30, and my weight jumped up more than I'd ever seen before. Now I'm getting serious about it for 2 main reasons:

1. My height and weight finally pushed me into the "overweight" BMI category. Even though I know BMI is a flawed way to measure health broadly, I might be one of the lucky people that BMI is modeled after, so I should probably listen to it 

2. A lot of my clothes are starting not to fit comfortably, and I'm at a serious risk of having to buy a whole new wardrobe. Again, I really wish that my brands catered to a broader size range, but the reality is that they don't and I've got no power to make it happen. So, if I'm lucky to be someone who can continue wearing them just by making some (honestly much needed) lifestyle changes then I'm definitely going to try!

Tokyo 2023 Buys & Outfits!

At long last, we returned to Tokyo! Since I wanted to maximize space in my suitcase, I tried to pack super light this time.

Finding Trendy Jfashion Inspiration

It recently came up in the himekaji server of how to find style inspiration! Certain jfashion styles like lolita, jirai, even himekaji have been named and discovered by the west, which makes it much easier to find and discuss the fashion. On the other hand, there's also really large umbrella categories popular in Tokyo like "girly fashion" or what's currently trendy in malls. All of these fashions tend to be my absolute favorites - they're usually much more toned down and wearable. Because of this though, they don't get nearly as much attention in western jfashion communities, and because there's not always a distinct name associated with the trends it's much much harder to look for inspo. Here are my tips for overcoming these challenges!

TKL Image Carousel Hack!

Have you ever noticed how few images there are on the TKL desktop website!? On mobile or the jp site, there's tons of stock images to browse on each listing page so you can see detail shots of the item in every colorway. But on the EN desktop site, all you get are 4 tiny model photos and that's it. There was speculation on the himekaji server that the image carousel is broken, and that's actually exactly the case! If you want to fix this issue yourself without having to wait for Liz Lisa to patch a fix, then read on!

1. Install Stylus

The first thing you'll need is the Stylus browser extension. It is also available for firefox. Sadly, there's no plugin for Safari yet, but safari actually has this functionality built in, if you're interested!

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpeebahjckkjfobafhncgmne?hl=en