Welcome back to the next installment of AIM! This month’s topic is quite interesting and affects all of us on some level. Weight regain. It’s so common in life to lose and gain weight over and over again. And after a really large loss, is it inevitable to have some regain? I don’t think it is a universal truth, but it is common. Some people are able to lose the weight and stay there. Others, not so much.
I have lost and gained over my lifetime and it wasn’t until I really made a lifestyle change that the loss stuck (mostly). I know that you always hear that, but it’s true.
I was here:
Then I got to my lowest point here:
And for the last 2 years I have been here:
Don’t you love my most recent dressing room shot? This was a couple months ago. I’m a size bigger than the previous picture. The reason? More food, basically. I am a foodie. Not a 5-star restaurant, snooty nose in the air, must have the latest and greatest item foodie, but someone who appreciates good food. Simple food that is well made – or gourmet food. So, there was some weight creep from that – and I was aware when it was happening.
I also find that I have trouble in the summers when I am doing tons and tons of biking trying to balance calories in and out. That seems to be where I struggle the most and that season is pretty much here now. When you burn 1200 calories in biking and need to take that back in on top of your daily – that can be hard. Then the next day if I am not biking, my stomach is like a bottomless pit. It’s hard to balance. I am hoping to do better this year.
While the black pants in the middle photo are a pair that this year I said I was going to wear again, the work that it takes to get there (and STAY there) could be more than I want to do. I have made some progress this year so far, which is good, but it’s extremely slow. I’m not totally comfortable where I am, but then again, I am not really uncomfortable, either.
Yeah, I could drop my calories really low and exercise like a demon and cut out more of my favorite things and get a lot smaller, but at what cost? Food is enjoyable to me. I love to exercise, but I don’t want to spend more than an hour or so doing that a day – unless we are talking a cupcake bike ride on weekends! I have a full-time job and I don’t want to spend all my free time trying to burn calories off. Exercise is fun to me and I want to keep it that way.
I guess I am just a bit more relaxed about the whole thing as long as I amnot gainingmore. Then I tighten things up again. Then I relax. I don’t want to be someone who white-knuckle rides on the scale and is paranoid about eating. I finally am in a pretty good place with food, other than over snacking at times, and I do not want to ever associate food with guilt again.
One blog I love to read is by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff called Weighty Matters. He really has a great way of viewing weight loss in the context of real life and not a weight loss bubble.
The other thing he has stated a few times is this: “Life is about the healthiest life that you can enjoy, not the healthiest life that you can tolerate.”
I think that plays a role in my maintenance journey.
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Make sure you read about “Through Thick and Thin,” at my fellow AIMers’ blogs for their thoughts on this topic!
AIM: Adventures in Maintenance is Lynn, Lori, Debby, Shelley, and Cammy, former weight-loss bloggers who now write about life in maintenance. We formed AIM to work together to turn up the volume on the issues facing people in weight maintenance. We publish a post on the same topic on the first Monday of each month. Let us know if there is a topic you’d like us to address!
My biking partner is out of town this weekend and I wanted to go to the lake, so it was solo riding for me!
When I told John that I was going, he said, “Please be careful.” Now, anyone who knows me IRL (and even on the blog) knows that I am about safety first. I might actually be a little too cautious sometimes. I trust no one when I am on my bike. Not even the squirrels darting about. So, I laughed and said back to John, “I am always careful.” His response? “I know, but it makes me feel better to say it to you.” <3
I ate an early lunch and checked over the bike, filled the tires, checked the chain and brakes and headed out. It was wonderfully sunny and warm – in the low 70s! I did have a lightweight jacket on at first because I wasn’t sure if it would be cooler at the lake (it usually is), plus the wooded part of the path can be cooler as well. Except I forgot there were barely any leaves on the trees and the wooded parts were pretty sunny! The first 6 miles or so were on city roads until I got into Glens Falls and got onto the bikeway.
I ditched my jacket at this crossover of a road from the path. I always feel like there should be donut and candy shops on this road, but there aren’t.
Starting to sweat!
A couple miles later, I realized I had better put on sunscreen. I probably was blinding anybody I went past since my pasty white arms have hardly seen the light of day since last fall. So I pulled over to put that on.
I’m a ghost in this. I didn’t see my own reflection until I downloaded this
This is the marsh. It’s still pretty brown.
I was curious as to how my hill legs would be for the first lake ride of the year. I made it up all the climbs pretty easily and I am totally thrilled at how good my legs are already. I don’t know why that is or how to duplicate it next off season, but I’ll take it now! This is the wooded part of the path. No leaves!
This was cut through rock in some parts. Not sure why people feel the need for graffiti, but they do. There are a lot of flags painted on this rock for whatever reason.
I was happy to reach the lake at mile 16. It was particularly blue today.
All of the shops on Beach St. are closed right now. They only open up for tourist season. Not to mention the road is being repaved right now.
The main street has a fair number of open businesses. Those ones run by locals and not people from downstate who only come up for summer. There were not a lot of people around, but some. The stores were having sidewalk sales and 2 new stores opened that sell only purses – the same store with one location on each side of the street. Really? I own 1 purse (and I hardly ever use it), so that business won’t make it with my support. I stopped at the Lake George Baking Company for my treat and Cafe Vero for my latte to go with and sat in Shepard Park.
I love Cafe Vero. They roast their own coffee and the baristas are well trained. They always do latte art. It’s a bit pricey, but worth it.
My view while nomming:
I texted John to let him know what he was missing!
Then it was time to say goodbye to the lake and head on up the mountain.
It’s a 2 mile climb for a while and so I didn’t stop to take any pictures. I did stop more on this trip in general just to enjoy, though. By myself – I can do whatever I want and stop whenever I want! After the 2 mile climb, you are greeted by Santa and Uncle Sam.
Ah yes. Lake George, the mix of natural beauty and the tacky.
I took part of the canal path on the way home. Some of this is being worked on, so we have to detour around it, but I got on part of it.
Closer look at these guys jetting away when I stopped. Can you see them in the pic above?
Before I knew it – I was home!
33 miles today that felt great. I am ready for Saratoga now. I have the mind rumblings to do a 100 mile day again.
Ride stats:
Total miles: 33 miles
Average speed: 12 mph
Top speed: 25 mph (Wheeeeeee!!!)
Calories burned: 959
Have a great rest of the weekend and I will be back with an AIM post on Monday!
It’s tulip time around Casa Radiance!! Last week one tulip opened – now a lot of them. These are all the early and mid season tulips.
Seeing these makes me SO HAPPY!!!
Apricot Dreams:
Christmas Marvel:
This is a double tulip. It looks almost like a rose. Monte Carlo:
When it’s sunny, these open way up like this. They are very fragrant, too. I paired them with the Christmas Marvel:
Who says pink and yellow don’t go together??
Then the Pink Impression – these are very tall.
The fritillaria. I really like these, but the bulbs are expensive and they are finicky. 3 planted, one came up. Same as last year. Not buying any more. This plant was a big hit with the garden club that met at my house today.
More hyacinths opened up:
Pretty
I planted alliums for the first time and they have sent up buds. I can’t wait to see these (and show them to you)!
I did my tippy pot demonstration for the garden club. It’s too early for the annuals to be ready for planting (other than pansies), so these are empty. I have a set of plastic ones in the front and the terracotta ones on the side.
So cool! I can’t wait until these are full of flowers. I actually might take the pots off and paint them first. ’Cause I need another project…
No time this weekend, though. Beautiful weather on tap and I feel a bike binge coming on!
Thank you all for the comments on my guitar playing. I have that sort of pride/embarrassed feeling about posting them. I am still very much a beginner and I note every mistake in these videos. Yet, I look at how far I have come in the last couple of years with it. Then there is the whole upper arm flab thing But, it’s me, it’s real and unedited.
We have had the most fantastic weather the last few days. Just gorgeous! We rode to breakfast today and I tipped my face up to the sun and just reveled in it. I can’t believe how much the weather can affect my mood. It was 55 degrees and sunny for our ride.
You know it!
Extreme bagel closeup! Careful, carbs are catching, you know
It’s now May and time for me to set some things going for the month. Not too many this month.
1. Pantry use up. When I was cleaning out the bottles of dust old spices from the pantry, I saw a lot of half used up food items. Grains, pastas, beans, etc. This month will be using up a lot of that stuff. I cannot buy any new hot cereal until I have used up the quinoa flakes, Wheatena, cream of wheat and oat bran that is currently in various states of being used up.
2. Keep an extra close eye on my eating. We are taking a vacation this month, so I need to be extra careful the other weeks of the month. Nuff said there.
3. More strength training with weights. I have been a bit lackadaisical with this lately as biking is consuming all my thoughts. I am going to write out some programs and follow them.
4. RELAX! We are taking a very much well-needed vacation and I am going to make the most of it.
That’s it for this month. It’s going to be a busy month. I have 13 to 15 people coming to my house on Friday and I need to be in full cleaning mode now. Guess that will move along spring cleaning a bit.
Quickie post! Another month come and gone. Forward into spring now – woo hoo!
May is going to be a busy month.
Here were my goals for April:
1. 250 miles on the bike. I didn’t quite make it. Weather didn’t cooperate as fully as I would have liked, but I did get 170 miles in.
2. Do a month of body weight only exercises. I was somewhat lame about this and only posted 1 of the routines.
3. Guitar video. I posted one yesterday and as a bonus for lucky listeners, a second one below!
4. Clean out the pantry. I did clear out some old spices, but I think we need to do a “use stuff up in the pantry” month.
5. Try 2 new veggies. I did one – the rutabaga. Turns out this time of year there aren’t a lot of new types of produce in the market. I could have done something like orange cauliflower, but that would have been pretty lame of me.
Well, glad to be back. There was a domain registration snafu over the weekend. Of course it would be over the weekend and tech support was nonexistent. So, my apologies for anyone thinking I just disappeared – and thanks for people emailing and on FB checking in to let me know. Nice to know people care Community hugs all around!
Anyhoo – we had the most fantastic weather weekend around here. Just fabulous! So, that meant some good riding happened.
Me and new helmet ready to ride! I finally got my straps adjusted right after the first part of the ride – you can see them sticking out funny in this picture.
We headed down to Schuylerville as I wanted to take John to the place I took my sister a few weeks ago.
It was in the low 60s, so I had on a couple layers, but the sun was shining and it was so nice to be out! We stopped at 8 miles in on route 4 at our usual rest stop along the canal.
I told John to wave hi to the nice people!
I just loved the sky. Spring is finally here!
Now it just needs to get a little greener.
We zipped on down to Schuylerville. We were averaging 14 miles an hour, which is good for our hybrids! We arrived at EspressoHuis at around mile 13.
I love that they showcase local artists and have a local baker do their baked goods. This horse is pretty cool.
I had a raspberry almond cupcake and a latte:
We sat out on the huge deck out back and enjoyed the weather.
Isn’t this a cool place to have a cuppa?
We had a fairly uneventful ride home, but did stop to take some pictures of burros! One of the local farms now has them.
They are for sale, too. Maybe I will ask for one for my birthday
We decided to give one of our tough hills a try to see how the early season legs are. The McIntyre Hill. It’s at the very end of the ride when we go this way. When I first started climbing, I did not think I was going to make it. I was in almost the lowest possible gear and I was talking to myself pretty hard to get to the top (expletives included). We both made it, barely! But yay!!! One of those times when I wish I had a heart rate monitor, although it probably would have exploded.
Ride stats:
Total miles: 27.25
Average speed: 13.5 mph
Top speed: 24.4 mph
Calories burned: 840
Quite pleased with the ride overall. In fact, we got in over 50 miles of riding this weekend. Woot! Next week will be Lake George and those hills.
And to end, as promised, here is one of my guitar videos I made this month. You can watch it on youtube here or below. It’s about 3 minutes.
It took a lot of takes to get one I was fairly happy with LOL!
For real! A what’s blooming post! It finally feels like spring around here. Finally. The garden is changing every day now. I note from last year that we are about 2 weeks behind.
I can’t remember what kind of tulips these are. Early species – I think?
The close up at night and open in the sun.
Hyacinths! These are new this year. There are 3 colors coming up, but only 2 are open right now. The purple:
and the pink:
Lots of buds on the tulips, too. My garden club comes over next Friday and I will have blooms for them! Yay! I am doing the tippy pot demo and I can only show the structure because it is too early for any plants to be available to actually put in the pots (other than pansies). At least there will be some color.
This guy will probably be blooming:
This is the fritillaria. I really like these, but they are expensive and just not hardy at all. 3 bulbs planted last year and 1 came up. So, I replaced the 2 that didn’t come up and only 1 came up this year. Lame!
I can’t wait to see the flowers open. I shall show you my inner geek here. I have a map for my garden. It’s done to scale, too.
You can see the line where the old bed border was and the new front curve I put in last fall. I just never bothered to erase the old line LOL!
Of course, I made notes to myself about where to put the new bulbs last fall.
I am really not sure why I thought I would be able to decipher this come spring…
At least it’s fun guessing. I know what I bought – I just don’t remember where they went!
Last night John and I had a date night. We had a groupon for Mouzon House in Saratoga. A place that really is not in our budget without a groupon. In fact, we went about a year ago with our last groupon LOL!
It’s a wonderful old house that has been converted to a restaurant with a New Orleans flair to it. Unfortunately, they no longer offer the half portions of dinners. Not sure why, but that meant no appetizer.
They did bring out some fresh grilled flat bread, though.
This was whole wheat and really good. I had a few pieces.
My entree choice was the Quail Gumbo. This is a farm-to-table restaurant and they use local purveyors for meat and produce. So, I thought I would try the quail.
It pretty much came with the whole little bird in there! It was a small bird. The whole thing was maybe the size of a normal chicken thigh. The gumbo was excellent, too!
John had shrimp and grits:
Not the best picture. So good as well!
After eating, we walked around downtown Saratoga. It’s nice to see this chiropractor with a sense of humor.
And the answer to the meaning of life?
Who knew?
We wanted something sweet, so we popped into Spot Coffee for a bit of decaf and split a S’mores bar.
This was half of the bar! Very tasty, too. We love this place and they are opening one up in Glens Falls early this summer. Yay!
Today brought my new head protection. I have tried 3 different brands of helmets over the years: Schwinn, Bell and Giro. Giro is definitely my favorite. It’s a good quality helmet and the outer shell is part of the styrofoam helmet instead of just being a covering (the problem with my cracked old helmet).
It’s a floral print with lots of color:
Other side:
My helmet prop:
Pixie says ”Really?”
There will be no painting of this helmet. Too cool looking as it is. Now I am out to take my new helmet for a spin!
I am not a perfect eater. If I was, I would likely be 15 pounds lighter and maintaining at *that* weight instead of where I have been maintaining.
I have portion sizes down pat. Meals are easy for me. I rarely overeat at mealtimes. Snacks have to be planned in or I will pacman my way through the pantry. Even when I do plan snacks, things can go awry. This is usually due to stress or hormones. When both of those beams cross, it spells doom.
There are 2 times of day that are hard for me. Mid morning I can get pretty snacky (which is true hunger) and the time between cooking dinner and eating dinner. Dinner time especially is the hardest. Since I am getting things out of the pantry, I will grab a few nuts, crackers, a handful of cereal, etc., and nibble These add up fast.
Sometimes I get food amnesia and forget to record it. Even if *I* don’t write it down, my body doesn’t know that. It’s not like my body says “Wait, if she didn’t write it, don’t store any of those calories”. Don’t we wish it were like that?
Working at home has its challenges, and a big one is the food. Of course, I do control the food that comes into the house. (Or mostly, since John is part of the household and can bring in whatever he wants. ). We don’t bring in a bunch of junk food and things like that, but that doesn’t stop me from overeating stuff in the pantry.
Like nuts:
Sometimes I am okay with nuts. I was for a while, but then I got snacky on them and this week they were not bought at the store. Off to the dungeon you go, nuts. Sorry.
Cereal:
This can really be a red light food for me. John eats a lot of cereal, so we buy it. Again, sometimes I am fine having it around. Other times I will get a small bowl of it like this. Doesn’t seem so bad until I have done that 4 or 5 times. That’s a serving and a half.
One of John’s favorite snacks is chocolate chips.
This is his bowl by his computer. Who walks up and snags some chips out of his bowl? That would be me.
I took this picture and John was thinking I was going to make some comment about his snacking habits on the blog LOL! Nope, just my habits.
Interestingly, I have yet to have an issue with dried pineapple.
I love this stuff, too. However, the most I can eat is 2 rings, and usually I just eat one. Why this food is different than some others, I don’t know, but I am okay with that.
I know I have mentioned before that when there is a food in the house that I start having a problem with, I get it away from mouth eye level and it goes up here:
That doesn’t completely stop me from getting stuff, but I would say it is about 90% effective. I forget about things up there, too, which is good.
I don’t take a snapshot of all these snacks during the day. So I hope that no one thinks I eat perfectly all the time. I don’t have it all figured out and struggle with this sometimes. Just puttin’ that out there.
I don’t know about you, but I was not ready for Monday quite yet.
Coconut flour waffles before settling in for work.
It was a busy day. I had to get as much work done as I could early because I had to tutor in the afternoon. Quick lunch break:
1-minute muffin with peanut flour. Normally I top my muffin with the peanut flour mixture, but I got it to liquidy. Oops.
I’ve been working with another new learner since early February. It’s going pretty well. This is my 4th learner in since I started. Now the coordinator left suddenly and we are not quite sure what is happening. Still tutoring until we hear anything further.
After I got back, I got some grapes for a snack to work some more (can you sense the work theme of the day??)
Pixie says, ”Where were you, mom?”
She misses her lap.
Dinner was actually leftovers and something different around here! Meatloaf. I don’t know if I have ever cooked meatloaf. I just used a seasoning packet and egg (no breadcrumbs). It was pretty good.
After dinner, John and I went out for an evening bike ride. It was nice to get out on the bikes.
Arrival home after 11 miles
I just got a call from work asking for help tonight, so I need to get back to work and help get the queues caught up! It’s been extremely busy. Going to make my latte (or have John make it ) that I didn’t get this afternoon and commence to typing.
I'm a 44-year-old who has undertaken a journey to lose 115 pounds without surgery. It's taken me years, but I'm almost there! Currently maintaining 105 pound loss.
But, it’s me, it’s real and unedited.
Community hugs all around!
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