Alesia

I’m knitting my first scarf, which the ladies at my local LYS have dubbed my “sampler scarf.” :) I knit a specific stitch or pattern until someone suggests another, whereafter I’m off doing that one for a bit.

It’s fun. I’m glad I’m learning and meeting this goal for myself.

I spent about 2 months at the end of 2009 considering how I was going to tackle weight loss, this time. I’m 48 years old, been overweight for most of my life. I may well be overweight the rest of my life – but one thing’s sure, I don’t want to spend whatever time I have left feeling like I can’t trust my body. I don’t want to live my life feeling like crap all the time.

It came to me that if I’m going to do this for real this time, it has to be a “for the rest of my life” kind of change. No fad diets, no gimmicks, no severe measures. And it probably needs to happen slowly. Not as slowly as I put it on, perhaps, but slowly nonetheless. How to do that? How do I change what I’m doing so that it’s just a way to live my life, rather than be on a diet?

It came down to this: Burn more calories than are consumed. Keep fat consumption down to a reasonable level. I wanted to lose one pound a week. Just one. And when I hit a total of 50 lbs. of weight loss, I’d STOP and go into maintenance mode to see if I could hold that ground for one year.

And that’s about it really. I’ve changed some things that I’ve been wanting to change for awhile anyway. I eat less meat, especially red meat. I still enjoy it – had steak last night in fact – just less often, and in smaller quantities. I get lots more yummy yogurt these days, and more fruits and vegetables. I discovered quinoa and have been enjoying incorporating it into recipes.

So far in 2010 I have lost 19 lbs. This is much faster than I’d planned, so I’m taking steps to slow things down. I finally did hit my “one pound a week” goal last week, and have been steadying the process down in the past few days. What’s more important, I do believe the changes are those I can live with—for the rest of my life. :)

More to come…

Today I have a blog entry!

http://bit.ly/dexZ4H—Thread Conditioners: To Use, or Not To Use? All needleworkers, weigh in!