Hanging In There, Kind Of

Well, I'm down a couple pounds so far this week without really trying, so that is good. I just can't seem to get a grip on my eating, and I've been too lazy for exercise.

Though – can we talk about exercise for sec in relation to weight loss?

I know what they always say, a couple things:

• You can't out-exercise bad eating habits
• You exercise for fitness and health benefits (and dare I say, fun?), but not to lose weight

Did you know that back in the old days of Weight Watchers, they actually prohibited their practitioners from exercising at all? They knew that exercise can increase your hunger, and create water retention (muscle repair!), and affect the results on the scale in a way that you might not like.

I bring this up because my partner, who has also been losing weight the past year or so, has found this out. He also discovered that not eating enough might have the opposite effect of what you would think. Last week, we didn't exercise much at all – hardly any tennis or walking, nothing. At the same time, he decided to up his eating some, which I thought was an excellent idea. He had been trying to limit himself to more or less one meal a day, and keeping a sharp eye on calorie intake, and wasn't getting the results he expected, poor guy. Well, this past week he ended up losing about five pounds and entering new weight territory!

Of course that doesn't mean that we're not going to exercise anymore, however we decided that keeping it to 3 or 4 times a week is fine. No more of the every day stuff, necessarily.

As for me, I'm hanging in there. I thought I had told my partner that I was into the 290s again after this past weekend, and when I told him that I was down to 291 this morning, he was surprised and was like, "Uhhh... weren't you into the 260s at one point?" And I was like, ".... yeahhhhh." I know. And he's right to point it out and be concerned. I am concerned, too. So yes, my focus is to get back into the 280s this week.

Uh-oh. Didn't I just say that about the 270s not too long ago? I did.

That's why it's so important to stay vigilant. At least for me, substantial gain can happen really, really quickly. And if I keep waving off five pound gains here and there, I'll soon be back to where I was at the very beginning of this whole thing. Just not an option.

Things I want:

• To start running again – I want to do the No Boundaries program (2.0) in the fall
• To be able to wear the gorgeous tennis clothes I have that are just a little too small for me
• To be able to wear more of the stuff I have in my wardrobe now, comfortably
• To be able to wear clothes sizes that begin with a 1 instead of a 2 (I'm right on the cusp)

In good news, I spent some quality time in my painting studio last night, and took this photo, which I really like. Sometimes the camera is your friend, and sometimes it is decidedly not, but here I feel like I get an idealized version of me with some dramatic lighting evening out my skin tone and nicely outlining the jawline that has been starting to become more apparent again since I've lost the weight. I desperately need a haircut! The new piece I am working on is on the big side – about five by four feet – and it's based on a line of a poem about Frida Kahlo by Marty McConnell: "Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge."

Stupid girls in progress!