Can I have a drumroll, please?

Well, it’s been six months since I began my “quest for thinness in my old age” and I must say it’s been an adventure! But before I reveal the final tale of the scales, I would like to thank all of you who stood behind me through this endeavor, cheering me on and holding my hand. No way could I have made it this far without you. I appreciate all the love, support, and encouragement more than you will ever know.

Like I said in the beginning, this was not just a weight loss process. This was about a lifestyle change that would enable me to feel better about myself physically, mentally, and emotionally. And that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it—feeling good about the skin you’re in? Even though mine has way more sags and wrinkles than I would like!

Truth be told, I can tell a BIG difference in my overall physical fitness since June. While I may not be ready to run a marathon, with a little help from my puffer I can do a 30 minute workout on the elliptical that goes up to resistance level 7 three times! When I started, I could barely make it through 20 minutes on resistance level 2. At work, I can also walk from my car to my desk without getting winded. I no longer need to pull myself up to get up from the floor (as long as my balance isn’t wonky at the time). Who knew little things like this could have such an impact on one’s quality of life?

I’m also happy to report I still love chicken and eat lots of it! It’s been my staple meat for the past six months, and my reliance on yard bird has become a running joke in my family. Seriously, if you remove the skin and grill, roast, or broil it, chicken is a low fat, high protein meat that is pretty calorie-friendly. The same can be said for turkey and most fish.

As for red meat, truthfully I had pretty much given it up long before I started my diet. I’ve long preferred a grilled salmon steak to a T-bone, and just thinking about eating roast beef gives me the willies. While I can eat ground beef, I’d much rather use ground turkey or ground pork—although the calorie and fat counts are pretty much the same for all three.

My last dieting pitfall was this past holiday week. It was chock-full of bad, bad, bad food, and I indulged shamelessly! And my body can now definitely tell the difference. After plying it with a sordid variety of junk food, it’s now ready for some healthy stuff. Maybe it’s just me, but after giving it up for so long, the bad food really does make me feel bad now. And that’s a good thing, right?!

And now, for the results! Did I reach my goal of losing 40 pounds by my 50th birthday? Well, no, I didn’t. But here’s what I did accomplish:

Pounds lost: 32.4
Inches lost: bust 5.5 -- waist 5.25 -- hips 5 -- thighs 6
Body Mass Index: down 5.4 points
Percent body fat: down 10.3%

I've also gone down 4 dress sizes. My fitness guru friend Jeff believes had I just lost fat and not gained muscle, I probably would have made my goal of 40 pounds. And that’s OK—muscle mass is way more healthy than fat, so I’ll take that trade-off any day!

Remember my before picture?

Here’s me on my birthday:

Even though my six months is up, I plan to continue my quest for 40 pounds, including the added muscle weight. I have a whole closet full of skinny britches I would just love to wear again! My next step is to add some weight training to my cardio routine to help me shape and tone. And the more muscle mass I add, the more calories I will burn at rest. And for someone who would rather play on the computer than exercise, that’s a good thing!

Thanks again for accompanying me on my journey to better fitness in my old age! I hope you’ve maybe learned a thing or two along the way—I know I have.

I wish you all the best, and may your new year be full of happiness and blessings!

Week Twenty-Two: No surprises except mine!

It’s getting down to crunch time, and I have yet another holiday behind me. And, may I add that I fared exceedingly well, in spite of the amount of calories, carbs, and fat I managed to cram down my neck in a four day period…and all with very little time for exercise, seeing as how I was on the go most of the weekend.

How much did I lose—or not lose—this past week? I think I’m gonna keep that, along with the rest of my weigh-ins, under wraps until my final check-in. That way I can take this thing out with a bang and not a whimper!

I’m now less than a month away from 50, and it seems that every day I find a new wrinkle. Which has led me to believe that this weight loss thing is a double-edged sword. After all, the fat in my face did a nice job of keeping the wrinkles poofed out and not quite as noticeable. Hmmm…wonder how expensive Botox injections are?

And I would like to take this time to apologize again to my sister and my husband, who apparently had been planning an elaborate shindig to commemorate my slipping into the abyss of antiquity. And before you roll your eyes at that one, riddle me this: is a 50-year-old piece of furniture not considered antique?

As you’ve probably already guessed by now, I put the kibosh (with a capital K, I might add) to that plan before I knew it was even a plan. For many months now I have lamented on how I wished I could just go off to a corner somewhere, by myself, and let the big Five-Oh quietly pass me by. Apparently, these two thought I was kidding and hatched a plan to make it the biggest event of my life thus far. While all this was going on behind my back, I proceeded to warn my husband that, should I be surprised by any sort of formal gathering on my birthday, I would turn and walk out. Because I knew it was just like him to want to make a big deal out of my birthday (which he does every year, really—I think it’s to make up for the fact that it’s so close to Christmas) and because my sister unsuccessfully pleaded her case with me a couple weeks earlier. She even suggested an outdoor barbecue by the pond. It’s December, for crying out loud!

After a couple of days to mull it over, I did lighten up a little and agreed to consider a family dinner. Because even if I’m old, I still have to eat, true?



True story that happened to me yesterday:

This is how you know you're getting old: I was at a department store and needed help finding women's underwear. Not wanting to be crude or tactless by asking where I could find bras and panties, I found a twenty-something employee and asked where I could find the Foundations department. (Not at all realizing I was apparently speaking something akin to Elizabethan era English.) Following her directions, I went around the corner and to my left...to find she had directed me to Cosmetics.

Week Twenty-One: Happy Turkey!

Did everyone pig out today? I know I did. It was shameful…utterly shameful. But, I enjoyed every delightful morsel! And I’m not going to feel guilty in the least.

This week I probably should have posted some flowery, upbeat prose on successful dieting during the holidays…yadda, yadda, yadda. For those of you with that kind of willpower, I bow at your feet. For me, it’s a load of bunk. Thanksgiving comes only once a year and, honestly, totally blowing this weekend was in my plan from the beginning. So, whatever damage has been done is done, and I’ll deal with the fallout next week.

I realize I’ve pegged the needle on the Lazymeter where posting is concerned. But, honestly, there has been no real news to share; good news, that is. Then I got to feeling guilty because it seemed I was only posting when I made progress, which wasn’t what this whole deal was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be about the ups AND downs, not just the ups. Truthfully, the fact is that my progress is still pretty much in a holding pattern, mostly due to my recent inability to say no to foods that aren’t good for me. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t had snack/junk foods in so long or what, but lately I have been answering the siren’s call from the chips and crackers and such. Not that I’m eating half a bag of chips at one sitting or anything…just a handful here and there, or maybe a few Triscuits or a brownie. The guilt afterward has been horrible, but apparently not horrible enough to get me to stop. Ack!

As a result, I’ve only lost less than a pound since my last posting, and there’s only 5 weeks left to get the last 10 pounds gone!

Can she do it?!?

I’ve promised myself I’m going to be diligent about posting each week until my time is up. Will it be good news, or bad news? Guess you’ll have to tune in and find out!

Until next week, I hope you enjoy what’s left of the long holiday weekend. And before you go to bed tonight, take a moment to think about what you’re thankful for this year and send a little prayer of gratitude to the Big Man upstairs.

Week Seventeen: What Price Beauty?

This week’s post is starting off with another HUGE Thank You to everyone for your continued support. It truly does mean the world to me, and I know I wouldn’t have gotten this far without all of you in my corner, cheering me on and giving me so much encouragement!

I’m excited to be able to finally report some progress this past week! Another 2.4 pounds lost! I’m not sure whether I’ve fully escaped the doldrums yet—we’ll see what next week’s weigh-in brings. It’s very tempting to weigh myself every day. If I’m honest, I do sometimes sneak onto the scales mid-week, and it’s usually a disappointment. But willpower only stretches so far, you know?

Last week a friend commented on my blog that my version of diet and exercise is “keeping it real.” That statement got me to thinking about different weight loss and exercise plans and the lengths to which we go to stay thin, or in shape, or both.

Seems like no matter where we look—movies, magazines, television, the internet—“slim and trim, young and beautiful” is being shoved down our throats like some bad-tasting medicine. It’s no wonder so many of us look in the mirror and just want to puke. The pressure for perfection has reached biblical proportions.

In 2009, Americans spent a staggering $45 billion on diets. That’s a hell of a lot of money for lettuce and carrot sticks. While evidence continues to show that weight loss from exercise and healthier eating can increase longevity and decrease medical issues, if you add another $10 billion a year for plastic surgery, $1.2 billion for liposuction, $1.1 billion for breast augmentation, and $8 billion for cosmetics, it’s easy to see our obsession with looks goes far beyond simply maintaining a healthy weight.

How many times have you looked at a glamorous movie star or fashion model and thought “Man, why can’t I look like that?” I know—me, too. But did you ever wonder how far they go to maintain that size and shape?

I found an article at celebrity-diets.org that claimed to have the inside skinny (I love a good pun, don’t you?!) on how the rich and famous maintain their sleek physiques. For instance, it said Renee Zellweger maintains her 7st (7 stone) figure on tuna, cold meats, dressing-free salad and raw vegetables, for a total of 773 calories a day.

OK, I had to Google to find out how much 7st is in the first place. Imagine my shock and horror when I found out it’s only 98 pounds. The calories I can appreciate because I stay anywhere between 750 and 1000 per day, but 98 pounds? At 5’4”? I remember being 108 pounds at an even 5’; I could fit into a size 1, and every time I saw my grandma she was on my case for being too thin. What size must Renee be—00?

The article goes on to give the typical daily intake of actress Liz Hurley—a paltry 449 calories—which I’m pretty sure is less than that of most people in third world countries. As if her micro-diet isn’t enough, she takes regular pilates classes which burn around 300 calories per session. Supermodel Claudia Schiffer’s typical daily intake was listed at 537 calories.

Spice Girl Victoria Beckham was reported to have been on a strawberry diet before the birth of her third child, eating a bowl of strawberries for breakfast and little else for the rest of the day, except for liters of mineral water.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how this sort of eating is either reasonable or healthy. I wonder what sort of medical issues these girls will have in, say, 25 years or so. While I’m not condoning a diet like what the article listed for Kelly Osbourne—over 2000 calories’ worth of cheeseburgers, fries, shakes, and colas—it has been scientifically proven that there are minimum calorie requirements to maintain healthy body functions. And I would bet none of these ladies comes nowhere close to meeting that standard. After all, what good is having a knockout body when it’s going to conk out on you before you’re 50?

It would be nice if we could all have our own private chef to cook only sensible meals for us and a personal trainer to see that we get the proper amount of the right kind of exercise. Maybe in some parallel universe where watching TV is good exercise and chocolate is one of the five food groups.

The fact is the majority of us are just regular people with regular lives and regular jobs. Which means we must resort to regular means of eating healthy and staying fit. Can’t afford a membership to the gym, much less a personal trainer? Not a problem. Walking doesn’t cost a dime. Neither do many other types of exercise. All you have to do is a little research and find what works best for you. Make Google your best good friend. Don’t have a computer? That’s not a problem, either. Your local library is a great resource for books and magazines, and many of them also have computers with internet access available for patrons’ use. And while you’re there, check out some cookbooks and magazines for healthy, easy-to-prepare recipes you can fix yourself at home.

Trust me, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come up with a recipe for success. A pinch of research, a dab of determination, and drop of perseverance will take you a long way. And, as always, make sure you consult your health care professional before starting any diet or exercise program.

Good luck!