Things are looking up

Or down.  Actually, a month in Italy will help almost any problem!

I am pleased to say that I have lost a little weight, and that certainly improves how I look.  Okay, so I thought that bulge on my side was permanent, but it turns out that it wasn't.  Today I weight 138.5/142 and on September 1, I probably weighed 142/146 (the first number is what I weigh first thing in the morning and the second is what I likely actually weigh!) and those 3.5 pounds make a difference.  How did this happen?  In Italy?  I ate less.  Crap, what a simple solution--just eat less.  I'm not sure I technically "ate less", but I think I ate better.  It helps that the food tastes so great that you can actually be satisfied by having a small portion; it also helps that there were more options at a meal rather than my kind of "one dish" menus.  That side of salad or veggies can go a long way to filling you up!  I also never (well, almost never) took seconds.  At home I don't either, but I take extra on the first because I know I'm not getting more, so the secret is to not take that extra.  It isn't fun, but it is possible.  I did eat a fair number of desserts in Italy.  Hmmmmmmm.  Maybe I should get a dessert or two during each week to give me something to look forward to.  

I had decided before I left that I would quite eating three large (very large) olives with my martini on Friday.  I thought I would do zero olives, but that seems cruel--I'm doing one.  Again, I drank a lot of wine in Italy, so it isn't like I gave up those empty alcohol calories!  I'm looking for calories I can give up without too much pain.

I'm also weeding my wardrobe.  A month with the same clothes certainly tells you that you can do with less, especially if the less looks good on you.  Okay, I didn't think everything looked good on me, but I made mental notes about what did, and what didn't, and that's what the next couple of months are going to be about--finding what looks good and getting rid of all the excess that doesn't.

Obviously I have a tight relationship with my clothes, and looking good in my clothes.  I'm willing to give up looking hot if I can look good.  Oh, and my pants had suddenly gotten too short, but that also seems to be reversed by having a little more room in them higher up!

I have done nothing about the bike-in-trainer.  I still intend to (although it is rainy), but I'm enjoying a sinus infection so that doesn't make much sense right now.  

And I'm going to be positive.  This can be fixed!  Not the fix I might have thought of a few weeks ago, but it is possible to get fitter and lose the extra weight (I'm just talking the extra, not more than needed).  And that's a lot!  

We'll talk about those arms some other time.  

Today's Thoughts

This is what I look like today.   A great pair of pants, if you discount the fact that they wrinkle.  They are pretty high on the list of acceptable pants because they fit!  They are nicely made by Eli Tahari and I can't recall what I paid for them, but let's say $250.  The first day I wore them I got a smudge on the leg just below my knee from the car which doesn't come out.  Why did I buy light colored pants?  Perhaps I was thinking it would be like my fabulous boot-cut white Cambio jeans.  They were always getting dirty too, but looked so great.  Sadly, they were size 8 and there just came a moment where I couldn't pull that off anymore.  I don't really know which changed first--the jeans or me; okay it was me, but I went from hot to muffin top in an eye blink.  Thanks to long legs and Pilates I wore them past 50, so I can't really complain, but in the past year every single pair of real jeans I own has become unflattering.  I have a pair of "jeans" from Michael Kors which look great on me, but they aren't real jeans. So now if I am leaving the house I usually wear slacks or the faux jeans.  I look okay, but never do I feel like I look hot anymore.  Sometimes I forget and think I look hot, then I see myself and realize I was thinking of myself as I used to be.

Today I'm just going to lay it out.  That pooch on my right side--it's me, not the top.  I artfully arrange whatever I'm wearing to minimize this, but there it is.  And I'm in my best Pilates posture (not good, but the best I can do).  Clearly an answer might be to lose some weight, but I have to say that is less appealing than, say, breaking a bone.  I should be getting more exercise, but I have all the usual reasons not to do that too.  I have committed to putting my old hybrid bike in the trainer on the bedroom deck and trying to do that, but like everything else, it requires at least three major things besides just dragging the damn bike and equipment up to the top floor.

I'm using the Photo Booth on my Mac, so I have limited options, but I thought I would try getting a sense of what the rear view looks like by climbing up on a chair.  I'm not a good photographer, so perhaps the limitations of essentially being in a photo booth are a good thing.  Anyway, I am not sure I can comment.  I finally get a less-than shlumpy photo, but this isn't the rear-view I remember!  

I'm not sure how to rearrange the photos, so they are all kind of stacked up.  And the paragraph you just finished reading should have been at the top, but I can't figure out how to rearrange text either.