Week 14, Day 7: My cheat day and working out

I'm now down 37 pounds, and have two more weeks of full product to go before heading into transition. My fear of food has abated and now I've been thinking of new ways to eat, and healthier modifications of favorite recipes.

On Thursday, April 17, I cheated. So far I've been able to resist the cakes, cookies, fudge and bagels. However, on Thursday one of my co-workers brought a platter of baby carrot and celery sticks. This event coincided with my forgetting to pack my nutrition bar in my purse, which gave me the perfect excuse to cheat. :)

I picked up one celery stick (about 2" long) and a baby carrot, and brought them to my desk. When it was time for lunch I munched on them slowly, with itty bitty bites. They tasted good! I was surprised by the strings in the celery, because those had not been in my veggie fantasies. But it was great to have a bit of raw veggie after abstaining all this time.

I'm not a bit remorseful. And that one little cheat was enough for me; no big bags of raw veggies are in my refrigerator to snack on. (Or Oreo cookies, for that matter.)

The other big news is…I joined a gym! A gym near my home is under new ownership and they are running a new member special through the end of April. The monthly rates are very reasonable and there is no contract. For the special they reduced their sign-up fee to $1. I paid a prorated amount for the rest of April, and my full membership will kick in on May 1.

It's a nice gym, large and clean, with lots of machines and equipment. The treadmill I used today was huge, with a secure place for me to put my e-book reader. (Yes, I'm one of those weirdos who reads on the treadmill.) There are also classes available, such as yoga, Zumba, kickboxing, cycling, etc.

I decided to join this gym rather than the yoga studio due to cost; also, there is more variety at the gym and there are several types of exercise I would like to try.

As today is Easter Sunday, the classes were canceled, but I'm going back tomorrow night to try Zumba.:)  It's amazing how much easier it is to move around with 37 pounds gone! I feel energized, not exhausted.

The staff member who signed me up at the gym had to fill out a registration form with several questions, one of which was, "How much do you weigh?" Back in January I would have been embarrassed to answer (and would probably have lied). Today I had no problem answering truthfully. He asked me what my goal weight was, and I said, "I weighed 120 in high school, but I don't know if that's achievable at my age." He said, "Sure it is!"

How things have changed in three short months!!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate; and to those who do not, have a great Sunday evening! Here are some of my knitted creations, pattern design by Susan B. Anderson:

Week 6, Day 6: Hooray for smaller jeans (and closet surfing)

My jeans (which fit me fine a month ago) are now way too big. I can pull them off without even undoing them! And when I sit down or bend over, I don't want to flash everyone in the room. :( Yesterday I went shopping in my closet and found a pair which is a size smaller – they fit great!

I once read a magazine article about the late comedian Jackie Gleason. Those in my generation and older will remember him! The article said he had suits in his closet in varying sizes, all arranged in order, to accommodate his weight fluctuation. I have a walk-in closet filled with clothes from size 8 to 18. Someone said, when I told them about weight loss and new way of life, "You'll have to go shopping for all new clothes!" I can just walk into my closet and find things that I had no idea were there. They may not be the latest styles, but I like vintage dresses, so I'm good to go.

Seeing the results in the mirror and in my clothes are giving me great motivation. I have figured that my scale (and being unclothed) registers about four pounds less than being fully clothed on Kaiser's scale. By that estimation, I have lost about 19 pounds since beginning product.

I'm a bit under the weather this weekend. I have been fighting a cold and sore throat, and the bug appears to be winning. I hope it will stop here and not morph into full-blown flu. The silver lining to being sick is that I'm not hungry at all.

A bit off-topic (but it's my blog and I'm allowed to go off-topic)…I'm reading a wonderful book: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I first read it in high school but I didn't have the wisdom to fully appreciate it. If you want to read about life, relationships, faith and reason, pick this one up and give it a try. It's big and challenging, but well worth the effort. If you are an e-book reader, there are freebies online and at the Amazon site. A word of caution: Some of the freebies aren't proofread or very well-formatted and are frustrating to read. For $1.99 on Amazon, you can purchase the annotated and illustrated Garnett translation for Kindle by Petrocast Ebooks. It is very well-edited and is easy to navigate. The footnotes are also helpful.