Diet, Exercise & The Best Intentions

I first started exercising to lose weight (as opposed to just having fun) when I was 24. I'd been married a year. I remember beginning a running regimen, calorie counting and eating Deserta(sp?) for sweets. It worked. In three months I'd lost 20 of the 30 lbs gained while backpacking through Europe four years earlier. My girlfriend and I spent three months travelling and eating mostly pastry, drinking mostly beer & just packing on the lbs. Carbs are cheap.

It came off fairly easily and I did not regain weight until I was pregnant and then only a little. By the time I reached my mid-forties, I was still a muscular 138 lbs, playing tennis four times a week, doing yoga nightly and I still fit into a size 6.

Those days began to slip away when I learned I'd need my first hip replacement at the tender age of 47. Five years later I had the other hip replaced. Now one knee needs replacing. It's been a slow but insidious weight gain ever since and I now top the scale @ 165. (I can't believe I'm admitting that!) I lost 10 lbs last summer to attend my high school reunion but I gained it all back over the Christmas holidays.

If I really had guts I'd post "Before" and "After" photos of my weight gain. In other words, the "before" would be me slim & trim. Not gonna happen. Can't deal with it. My husband is kind enough to photoshop my chin for photos we send out now. Otherwise, no one would have any.

I am, however, making another vow to exercise four times per week, 30 minutes minimum. I'm reducing, no eliminating, my alcohol intake. As for eating...well, I have to really curtail my favorite pastime: cooking. If I do all that, maybe I'll be able to lose the weight, get my knee replaced, go back to playing tennis, stop doing yoga for arthritics and start doing real yoga again.

Yes. And pigs will fly.