Bodyworks

Twenty pounds.

I'm so close I can taste it. I've been faithfully exercising 3 to 4 hours a week. I've kept to my diet for the most part. I have made allowances for special events, but even then I'm still counting calories and stopping before I hit my limit.

I've always had a good appetite. Like many boomer kids, I also grew up with being obligated to finish what was on our plates. "Think of the poor starvling children in Applachia, in India, in China, in Russia" and so on. When I was young, it was easy to stay fit -- there was a ton to do everyday and our play could drag us distant miles from home during the course of the day. Run, bike, roller skate. Chase balls, throw balls, run the bases, slide home. Bike to the ice rink. Hike to the foothills. Ya just didn't think about stuff like that as exercise.

I've stuck with this exercising bit now since February when I found out how high my cholesterol and triglycerides were. I also weighed 192 lbs then. I look in the mirror now and see my inches are moving around. There's muscle in my arms. My waist is a bit thinner and tummy is starting to flatten and shrink just a little. I don't mind seeing myself in the mirror quite so much now when doing my hamster routine on the treadmill. At 192 lbs, I saw my body was beautiful in a Rubenesque way only in certain lights or angles. Generally when clothed.

In another age, Rubenesque would be good enough. But in this age, it was a little too much and I was certainly heading toward the unhealthy side of too much. High levels of triglycerides (152) when they should be in the low 40s is not good. Massive coronaries felled a couple of my uncles in their tracks. (They died 7 years apart and within a mile on the same stretch of Florida highway. Ick.) As a public health issue, heart disease is also expensive to the public even when a person has insurance. I have insurance. Do I really want to pass some of that cost on to an already burdened public? Nah.

There is also the fact that I really do want my DH back in my arms again... I've missed him there for a long time. We all acknowledge it's not fair that he could not find me sexually inviting because I was not smaller & more petite after he got into recovery for a problem that I couldn't fix for years. The genie has been out of the bottle regarding open marriage since last year before I met my lover. I wanted it and the freedom to have uncommitted sex since DH cannot go there with me for the time being. It isn't fair, it wasn't fair. But that's the way it was and is. A person can endure being untouched for a long time, but being touched intimately is also as essential to being human as DH's aesthetic preferences in body type. Of course, I do have certain conditions to live by in this bargain. But that's another blog for another time.

I'm liking the way my body is feeling and starting to look again, I'm taking pleasure in my body's physicality for the first time in decades, only this time I'm trying to be conscious and appreciate of it as well. I like being able to move more freely. It's sweet having more energy and the clarity of mind that goes with it.

So I've got two more pounds to lose before I hit that first 20 pounds lost and hit 172. That doesn't mean I'm done... I've got ___ number of pounds after that to go yet. Yes, you read that correctly. I've left a blank. I have an idea of what my goal is, but I'm in this for the long run so 2, 3, 5 lb losses will cumulate to an overall loss. Coy, but there you have it.