Monday

and I'm so sore and tired, and disgusted with myself. The diet and exercise routine that had gone off the rails about ten days ago must be resurrected. Yes, I got a lot of exercise doing yard work, but tiring though it may be, it doesn't burn as many calories as I'd like to think. Today it's back to the gym and back to watching my diet. I did get a lot done around the house - I also ate frozen pizza instead of cooking the nice South Beach friendly stuffed pepper recipe I planned. I haven't been watching my diet much for the past couple of weeks, and the scale was quite a shocker today. Let's just say I feel like I'm starting from scratch again - but start from scratch I must.

My hands are quite torn up and dry - because they were in and out of pond water and other yuck all weekend I washed them over and over, and even moisturizing soap and hand lotion couldn't keep up. No knitting on Rayon Boucle for me. Instead I cast on a hat for The Dulaan Project.
A simple 4x4 ribbed hat from Cottage Creations' Projects for Community Knitting. The yarn is a leftover from my felted bag obsession of a couple of years ago, a lovely variegated wool called Plymouth Charisma, which I think is now extinct. Such a shame, the colors are so pretty and it's nicely soft. The hat will fit a child or a small woman, and I have enough for mittens too. I have enough leftover felting yarn for at least a half dozen hats and some mittens, so I'm in business here. And it all counts toward stash revitalization.

So it was 77 degrees yesterday and I was still bemoaning my non-beach-ready body and knitting a wool hat. Spring is here, and it's time for Catherine to put herself in swimsuit boot camp - I need to buy a new suit this year and I'm just appalled at the idea at the moment. It's daily workouts for me from here on. As I said to Janet in comments, I've lost the same 3 pounds over and over, and...they're baaaack.... I'm very frustrated, but mostly with myself. As soon as I see some real progress on the fitness front, I allow myself to backslide. It's self-defeating behavior and I'm not even sure why I do it. I know all the reasons the fitness experts give - fear of changing your appearance, fear of attention from men, etc. - shoot, none of those apply to me, I remember looking really good and getting the attention and I LIKED it. I think in my case it's more basically ego-driven than that - I want to believe I can look the way I want at my age without doing any work at all. When I was in my 20s I could lose weight by eating a salad for lunch and exercising a little bit. I have this delusional idea in my head that this is how it should be in my 40s. It ain't.

In addition to wanting to look good, I have many solid health reasons to want to maintain my weight and watch my diet - I'm getting into the age where the hereditary tendencies toward Type II diabetes and heart disease begins to rear their ugly heads, and I know perfectly well that exercise is the key to keeping them at bay. And yet I still want to pretend I'm really still 24 and can do pizza and beer and burn it off by taking a walk. Reality. It bites sometimes.... Heavy Sigh....