Look at me, blogging from Panera!

I feel like the writers who like to write in coffeeshops on a regular basis. I see at least three cool looking people sitting with their shiny MacBooks, while I am plinking away on the wee HP Stream. I am not cool. I'm Waiting for Headlights. Cross your fingers interwebs! I'm hoping the highly rated company on eBay shipped the right ones, I didn't have a chance to open them and check and probably wouldn't be sure they were right if I did - if they look vaguely the right shape, I'm going to assume they'll fit. I don't do headlights.

So my poor little old blog has been neglected of late, along with my diet, my house-cleaning, and a host of other things. I've been slacking. But it's March 1, and the warm weather has returned to Central Florida. It's 80 today, and I am suddenly reminded that those shorts and capris I swore last spring I'd wear last summer never actually left the drawer last summer. Yeah. So the choice comes down to surrendering, bagging them up for Goodwill, and shopping for new, more, ahem, grandmotherly-proportioned shorts, or getting back to eating right and moving more. I don't have the spare cash for a new wardrobe, I have vet bills and needed new headlights.

I say "grandmotherly-proportioned" because heavy is apparently the default setting for grandmothers in the US. I have noticed many times that if I mention my grandchildren on Facebook, the sidebar ads immediately switch to online sources for plus-sized clothing. The algorithm is making assumptions. I am not plus-sized just yet, and though I often think the clothes are really cute, and it certainly would be easier to gain more weight to wear them than lose the weight to get into those friggin' shorts, I am not going that route. I can't afford a whole new wardrobe in any size right now. I just need to lose about 10-12 pounds to fit into my not teeny tiny shorts that don't fit. It's ridiculous that I can't do that. I'm not looking at getting into some aspirational (ass-pirational?) size I never was! I used to wear this shit!

So I am not ready to surrender, because I'm cheap and I'm practical. I know exactly what I was doing when I fit those shorts and capris. I was eating a whole food plant based diet, walking, and doing yoga on a regular basis. Then I changed jobs, sat more, got lazy about my diet because...well, just because I did, blah blah, insert lame excuses here. Dairy and processed foods crept back into my diet on a regular basis. And maybe my somewhat more grandmotherly proportions really are my new default setting, and I'm going to have to give it up and get new clothes that fit this summer. But before I accept that conclusion, I will give my all to the WFPB diet for the month of March, and walk, and do yoga more regularly. If at the end of the month those shorts still do not fit, I will suck it up and spend the money on shorts that do fit. BUT, if at the end of the month I'm feeling great again and the shorts fit? As Gawd is mah Witnuss, I'll nevah backslide again! (Except now and then, on special occasions. Tuesdays? Not special occasions.)

To get myself into the mood I've been re-reading (and in one case, listening to) the books that sold me on that way of eating in the first place. Reviewing old recipes, finding new ones, getting my mindset back where it was when I was thinner and had tons of energy and looked so much better, too. And I didn't get sick! I'm fighting my second cold of 2016, and it's barely March. I went years without much more than a 24 hour sniffle and sore throat. I see and feel the difference when I eat the standard American diet, and I'm a believer in WFPB. So it's time to stop being lazy and going for convenience foods that I know are doing me no good at all, and eat the way I know I should. However, if at the end of the month, when we are really into hot weather, I have to conclude that my body has reached "grandmotherly," I promise I will accept it gracefully and buy appropriate and attractive summer clothing. I just don't want to spend money on it until the alternative is sweating in rags.I just dropped hundreds of dollars on headlights, which are now the shiniest and newest thing about Baby the 'Ru. ;-)