Sighh... I'm optimistic about goals again....

Well, it's happened.  Suddenly my body picked up speed and I gained more weight.  I now weigh 175, which is over the weight line, and is, incidentally, how much I weighed when I was nine months pregnant.  And I don't know if you're aware of this, but generally a woman who is not nine months pregnant should not weigh as much as she did when she was.  So I'm having another vanity crisis.

I know.  Eye rolls and sighs.

As a result of this, I have a drawer full of shorts from last summer that I can no longer button up, and all my jeans give me the most horrifying muffin top.  I don't want to wear any of my t shirts, and my tight tanks don't ever see the light of day.  I'm losing most of my wardrobe, and I'm not imagining it.  I've legitimately gained weight and I'm not okay with it.

I cannot seem to convince my husband we should buy an elliptical or a treadmill, so I've had to look for other options.  So. Recently I was made full time at my work, so rather than packing lunches, I get a Slim Fast shake for breakfast and a protein bar for lunch, with various healthy snacks thrown in to keep me from losing my mind and going over to the Burger King that's next door.

I'm not kidding.  My window faces the drive thru and I sit and listen to people order Burger King all day.  It's bad.  Luckily BK isn't my favorite fast food place in the world so I'm managing to resist.

My snacks range from hummus and pita chips to grapes or cherries, carrots and ranch dip made with greek yogurt, cottage cheese and peaches, or my current favorite, pico de gallo with baked Tostitos.  For the record, the pico de gallo comes from Albertson's deli and is literally nothing but vegetables.  The ingredients list says, "Tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, cilantro." And it's delicious.  At home I'm reducing my portions and planning out my meals so they're healthier, mostly.  And I'm allowed to do what I like (within reason) on the weekend.

On top of this, I have discovered a lovely little loop through the business park in which I work that, according to Google Maps is 1.1 miles long.  I can walk it in about 20-25 min.  I've walked it a few times, jogged it twice.  Here is my current plan.

I'm going to walk it once in the morning, for kind of a morning break, once the other parttimer shows up at my work, during what would normally be my lunchtime, I will jog it, with an extended loop through a park that's along the route added for distance.  In the afternoon, I'll walk the normal loop one more time.  Total, this is nearly four miles of travel.  I don't know exactly, because I don't know how much the loop through the park adds. Obviously, I'm bringing jogging clothes and shoes for the afternoon jog. Not gonna go jogging in work clothes.  For the walks though I'm probably fine to go in whatever I'm wearing.  That's a decent amount of exercise for one day.  And since a lot of it is walked, it's not so difficult I'm going to give up. The jogging sucks, but I can do it. Plus the walk through the business park is actually really nice, it's a nice area.  So it's a very pleasant path.

My bare minimum goal weight is 155.  yeesh.  I'd rather be 150.  My perhaps excessively optimistic goal is 145, but I'd rather be 140.  However, I fear we might be reaching unhealthy levels if we get too far.  What I would like is to be able to reward myself with a bikini.  I've never worn one and I want to.  As it is I'd already look better than a lot of people do in a bikini, (that's not vanity, that me logically realizing that I'm not actually massively overweight) if I lose a little weight I bet I'll be a knockout.  Based on how much I have to lose, though, the bikini goal is probably a next summer thing. But we'll see.  This plan seems doable.  Lets see if I can stick to this one.

Doctor Who Scarf

Well, here it is.  Loom beading is very tedious.  I had to end it rather abruptly, because I ran out of thread on my loom. I thought I'd cut enough for the pattern that I was using, but I must have made a mistake in my math somewhere.  It's fine, this is plenty long enough.  I had some mild drama with it- if you look at the fringe on the end of the scarf, that was the color I'd originally selected for my purple segments.  Once I actually started getting it worked in, I hated it.  It was not the right color at all.  I tried to push through, figured I couldn't do anything about it now.  But the hate grew too strong, and I bought the much nicer color you see here.  Replacing the segments I'd already done involved CAREFULLY cutting the weft thread and avoiding the warp threads, which is much, much harder than it sounds.  I eventually realized I could just crush one of the beads with my pliers to get easier access to the weft, but apparently crushing a glass bead wrapped around a thin thread can occasionally cause damage to the thread- so I had a few warp threads cut that I had to figure out how to patch.  It was a bit awkward and knotty, but I managed.  And there are no visible flaws from this.  And as you can see, I ended up using the original purple color for the fringe.  It works.  I love it.