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Life In The Fast Lane, Surely Make You Lose Your Mind
Well, so much for that promise to maintain more regular blogging hours. It's just that work has been insanely busy, what with trying to catch up from all the short weeks since Christmas, including this past weekend, which, as seems to be the case lately, turned out to be rather less than the anticipated "three day weekend" for which I'd been hoping. Mind you, I got quite a bit done on Monday: did most of the taxes for my "second job", processed all the W-2 forms I need to send out, and got some filing done; but I really would have preferred to have not been there at all. And this week has just been more of the same, including the usual round of evening meetings, which generally leaves me only a couple of free nights at home, and those have been spent mainly trying to catch up on domestic chores. Plus, I've had to tackle a good portion of next week's workload on top of everything else, since I'm actually taking a bit of a mini-vacation.
Yes, you heard me: something vaguely resembling an actual vacation, although I'm not planning to travel any farther than La Conner (AKA "The town where that crazy writer lives"). Still, I've booked a little cabin in the woods next to the Sound for a couple of days, where I intend to do little more than walk on the beach and stare at the sky - maybe I'll take a book along, but that may be about it. The rest of the week will be spent (hopefully) just lounging around the home base, maybe get a couple of household projects done, but in general engaging in as few scheduled, structured activities as possible, which for me will be a pleasant change-of-pace.
On another note: apparently, the return to the gym, even though I've only been managing it a couple of times a week, seems to be paying off. I've initially been limiting myself to cardio work: half an hour on an eliptical trainer, half an hour on a recumbent bike, followed by fifteen minutes in the dry sauna, but I'm back on a weight loss track after several weeks of holding steady at around 195-197. As of today, I'm solidly in the mid 193's, and seem to be dropping roughly a pound every ten days.
So, definitely not losing it as fast as my previous track, but as someone pointed out to me the other day (and which I guess should have been obvious if I'd given it more thought) I weigh 30 pounds less than I did six months ago, so my body doesn't require as many calories to maintain the lower weight, which means in turn that the lower calorie diet I've been on is in fact no longer enough to cause me to lose more weight, just to stay at where I am; in short, I'd reached a state of more-or-less equilibrium. And in order to get back onto a weight loss regimen I need to do one (or preferably both) of two things: either further reduce my caloric intake (and I have managed to find a few ways to trim off a bit more without feeling like I'm sacrificing anything), and/or increase the number of calories I burn, which of course is where the return to exercise comes in.
The bottom line is that it looks like I'm definitely going to miss my mid-February target for hitting 180. But, the good news is that I'm still losing weight, albeit more gradually than before. As I continue, I think I also have a better sense of needing to ramp up the activity level accordingly, and with the (temporary, but timely) return of warmish weather (thanks, El Nino!) to the Upper Left-Hand, and a determination to increase my gym visits to three a week, I think I can still get there by maybe April or May.Labels: dieting, vacation, Work
Posted byCOMTE
on 8:34 PM
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