We are in week nine since I have been starting the walking thing. My mother and I recently bought matching hiking journals as a way to save photos in a collection of our walks on the rail-trail each time we visit. While we may not have photos from every visit, there are a great deal of them as we have seen the weather change dramatically through the spring to where we are now nine weeks later.
Likewise, as the weather has changed in the course of the nine weeks, so has my weight and I am beginning to notice it in the clothes I wear. This week, while we didn’t have a support group meeting because of the Memorial Day holiday, we haven’t been slacking because of that missing weigh-in. In fact, I still have to weigh in at the day program this morning (I didn’t go as of this writing yet this week.) So, I know I need to be in line for that. Another thing that my mother and I did was go on a cookie cruise. This is done by visiting seven quilt shops in Western and Central Pennsylvania in two days, visiting each shop, receiving a cookie, the recipe for that cookie and finally a pattern for something creative. When you arrive at the last shop, you get in raffle for a gift card. All things considered, we stayed within our calorie limits as much as we could and we even stopped at the World Famous Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, PA, which we visited last fall when completing another trip of a quilting nature in the vicinity.
Same as the last time, the funicular that carries individuals to the observation deck was closed, resulting in the need to climb 194 steps, which we did in the fall, but with as much ease as last week. It was much easier, we both made most of those 194 steps without stopping completely, except at the last landing, which much to our dismay we just missed a hopper train, but we did catch the tail end of it where we saw two locomotives at the end, so I guess it was beneficial to go, and to complex the issue, it rained when we left.
However, a non-scale victory was reached this time though. When visiting the gift shop last fall. The highest size t-shirt was 3X. Being 30 pounds more than I am now, there was absolutely no way I was fitting into a 3X at that time. However now as I visited the gift shop during our most recent visit, I have been wearing some 3X shirts (and am “swimming” in many of my 4Xs, so I felt confident in purchasing a shirt because I knew that I had earned it for the work of climbing the steps, not once, but twice in just over seven months,
Closer to home, I am doing well on the bike trail too. Although at times when I am not seeing the positives out od walking, it can be difficult for my mother as I falsely claim she is “abusing” me by “making” me walk 2-3 miles each trip we head out on. In a way, a few days later I see the benefits pay off because the scale is good to me. As I mentioned earlier in this post, I have lost over 30 pounds through personal weigh-ins, not through the support group or day program weigh ins. I know by putting in the work that I have done over the past nine weeks, it is why the loss Is as consistent as it has been and that it pays off to do the work, because I remember where I was nine weeks ago, and it wasn’t a pretty sunny place. I also know that I have to keep the work on if I want to be healthy and get to a healhy weight.
Sometimes getting through the weeks can be difficult, sometimes it takes getting through each day or even every hour. It’s extremely hard when you live alone and I am proud to have my mother for support although oftentimes I don’t show it in the way that I should, but in the end, I know I couldn’t do it without her and her multitude of support. To here I sincerely devote this post to her.
Dustin's Dynasty 