An image is an overview of a million parts.

 Have you ever seen the A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by George Seurat?

This piece was created using a method called pointillism. Pointillism is the method of using many small different colored dots to create an image. This painting (or a version of it) hung in the Indianapolis Museum of Art when I was a child. I remember getting as close as permissible to see the thousands if not millions of tiny dots that made up this incredible painting when you backed up. 

Okay, Hannah. That's nice. 

I'm sure you're wondering where I'm going with this. Don't worry I'll explain. 

I have successfully lost 30lbs since January 20, 2022. However, I have lost 64lbs since February 2016. I will explain why I feel like this is so hard to hand someone a pill sized form of what I've done, what I've changed, how this is different. 

In 2019 I had one of the most stressful years of my life. I knew my son had autism but I didn't understand the depth, the gravity of the situation. When I received his diagnosis two years prior I had not been given any amount of direction. I was given a pamphlet and told to have a nice day. Fast forward two years and he is in the first grade and having an absolute mental breakdown. It was terrifying. His behavior had reached a boiling point. We pulled him out and began homeschooling him. I also quit my job to do so. I was scared. I was worried. My hair had fallen out from stress. I quite literally burst a retina. It wasn't a good time. I was also in massive amounts of student loan debt from my Bachelor's in Philosophy and Massage Therapy Certification programmes. 

But! There was a glimmer of hope. I was able to find a remote job that was flexible enough for me to homeschool AND work. So the focus was to take every dime I made to pay down on my $60k of federal student loans. But then the 'Rona happened. I lost my job and my husband's pay was cut by 25%. We were looking at each other trying to not spiral. He had been sent to work from home indefinitely in March of 2020 and that's when we started cleaning everyday to keep ourselves from completely losing it. 

I have always been messy. I am a creative type. I am "right brained" my husband is my exact opposite. While I was playing cello professionally to make ends meet; he was studying engineering on the other side of the world. While I am the emotional "glue" of the family he's the pillars of order and strength. I believe we compliment each other very well. Since we met he has always pushed me to be the better version of myself. Now it came that my messy habits needed curtailed or we can't function as three people in an 800 sq ft apartment without losing our minds. 

That's when it occurred to us that we should start in one small part of the house and work outwards. We ALWAYS had dirty dishes. I cook three times a day for three different people. The amount of dishes we had was overwhelming at times. I was also making a lot of South Asian dishes which included three-four different pans, bowls, spoons being used at any given time. This made for an overwhelming task of dishes once daily if not twice. After a few weeks I realized how AMAZING it was to wake up to a clean kitchen every morning. That morphed into making sure the trash was taken out every time it was full instead of allowing there to be a bag sitting next to the bin. I am ashamed in hindsight by how lazy we were. After the trash was taken out consistently and dishes were done nightly... the counters were wiped down everyday, the carpets were vacuumed everyday, the bed was made everyday, the bathroom was wiped down everyday. We became clean fanatics. 

Among all of this my husband took a new position with a different company in Pittsburgh, PA. So in July 2020 we packed up and moved two hours from North East Ohio to Pittsburgh. This ended up being just and all around crazy experience. I was luckily receiving enhanced unemployment and I was getting unemployment checks from the state of Ohio. I was able to still save to pay off my student loans! Yay. 

By September 2020 I was re-employed with the same remote company but at a pay cut. I was still able to homeschool Charles and save up money to pay off my student loans. But this time I was going to go back to school to study something useful. I chose a bachelor's in Accounting with Western Governors University. My credits from my Philosophy degree would transfer and I would be able to study at my own pace. Because we had implemented all of these positive habits of cleaning, organizing, minimizing junk since the previous March I was able to knuckle down and I ended up beginning the course in November 2020 and completing my degree in February 2022. This was including a second move to a different apartment in Pittsburgh and a cross country move to Colorado Springs in October of 2021. By November of 2021 I had saved enough money to pay off my student loans + my second bachelor's degree a total of about $70k. I was elated. I did it. 

That's when it occurred to me. In 2013 I saw a billboard for WGU's accounting program and told myself I wasn't "good enough" to do it. In 2019 I thought I wouldn't ever have the money to pay off my student loans. In 2021 I thought about dropping out of school because it was all too much. But I didn't. I did the INCREDIBLY hard things that I thought I would never be able to do. I could celebrate and move on. Or I could do what my husband does and question and analyze EVERYTHING. That's exactly what we did. 

How did we get here? How did I pay off my student loans while being partially unemployed? How did I get a second bachelor's degree in 15 months? 

The answer? Micro habits. 

Much like the George Seurat painting I mentioned above...I changed a MILLION different little things and now I've positioned myself to charge head-on to arguably my most overwhelming challenge to date. My weight. 

I've done things like make micro alterations to what I eat for lunch, breakfast, dinner. I've changed how I engage with social media. I've changed what kind of news I read. I've learned how to have boundaries. Blocking out the haters as they say. 

In January of 2022 I noticed that my resting heart rate was too high and I was only getting 6000 steps on a good day. I was tired even going grocery shopping. Even though I wasn't done with my education yet I decided to factor into my day 15 minutes of exercise everyday.  This was with the goal to make a new micro-habit. after a few weeks I increased this to 20 minutes and now I hover somewhere between 25-40min of deliberate exercise daily with the rest of my movement being N.E.A.T (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). Things like walking the dog, mopping my floors, folding laundry, or other chores. This has been revolutionary for me. I was then listening to a fitness podcaster when I they said "You can't out run a bad diet." and it hit me. I've heard this phrase at least 100x in my life but for the first time something clicked. I realized that I can't just exercise the weight off. I actually have to improve my diet.  Imagine that.... 👀

So in March I started counting my calories (incorporating more protein) and the weight has started coming off more consistently and I am losing inches!

So thank you for listening to my rant for forever. 

I will continue to update here and ramble and share recipes, tips, or any other content I find helpful. 

Peace, love, and parachutes!

Hannah