Hello! I am here to introduce myself. I'm 45 years old and from Seattle! I have been on MFP a couple of years and I haven't really used the social features much. I used to be on SparkPeople and the social aspect helped so much, and honestly, I'm struggling.

I was a very heavy child and I was 250 lbs in my early 20s. I'm only 5'1" if I stretch up really tall.

My life has been a roller coaster with depression and chronic illnesses, but I was in an AMAZING place two years ago. I got down to 125 lbs. I ran a marathon. I was on top of the world even though I still had horrific chronic pain and Illnesses. I have regained 15 lbs in a year. I can't. I'm supposed to be marathon training and I'm struggling so much. It was difficult before, but manageable. I'm thinking of just going down to the half-marathon, to be honest.
I run about six half-marathons a year. It's a lot of money but that money ensures I stay in shape for it.

Aside from that, I'm a musician (viola) and artist and I live alone with my beautiful cat.

I will actually be out of town next Sunday (weigh-in day).

I tried to post a picture of my beautiful cat Mildred, but it won't let me, so just picture the quintessential Halloween cat, silky black with yellow eyes.

Introduction Time!

I'm Itakimasu, which means in Japanese, "thanks for the food" roughly translated. I've been attempting to learn Japanese for a couple of years now. I'm 48 with two children, a girl 26 and my son 23. 5'6" and 180lbs.

I'm on the Oregon Coast in a beautiful location with four cats. I am really into bicycles and hiking / running, I started working out in 2000, running in 2007, and cycling in 2018. At some points in my life it has helped with my weight but eh' it's hard to say. I have a lot of health problems so mostly I just really enjoy trail running and cycling when I can, I'm always been terrible at physical fitness.

I trained as an artist in traditional methods and used to teach Web Design / Photoshop and Computer repair at a small community college. I've also given various art lessons and been hosted in art shows etc. and have built large scale web sites and done some professional photography, but mostly these days my daughter has taken over as the artist. I write a lot. I paint my walls and turn my cabinets into paintings, lol

I live near the ocean but this far north the ocean is very cold. We're in a lot of movies like The Goonies, Free Willy was shot near here, one of the Ninja Turtle movies, a few horror and some TV shows like Ghost Hunters were in my neighborhood, and some kind of Deadliest Catch show, as we have a big crab industry. When you hear, "GRAVEYARD OF THE PACIFIC" whoo hoo, that's my home! haha

While painting our old fixer upper I got into listening to UFO cases and have listened to a lot of podcasts. We do get a lot of military overhead because we're about 400 miles from a big air base (Lewis-McChord / Tacoma Washington), which isn't far when you're in a jet or one of the big planes. So then I started watching airplanes and collecting UFO books. lol. It has been really interesting actually.

Here's Baby Blues. Idk y mfp is being a pita