Friday Quote Day

However beautiful the strategy,

you should occasionally look at the results.
~ Winston Churchill

Well, duh.

This applies to sooooo many things going on in my world right now. But since this blog started as a vehicle for my blathering about weight loss and fitness, let's start there.

My husband thinks taking a long walk every day is the path to enlightenment, both mental and physical. At one time I would not have argued with him, because I read all the popular literature and watched all the health segments on the news that say walking is the path to enlightment.

And I walked. And ran. And didn't lose any weight. (Because we all know that enlightenment means thin, right?)

The outdoor work I've been doing this spring and summer have produced more weight-loss results than the last three years of aerobic activity. This 'work,' if one can call it that, involves heavy lifting with a purpose. It engages my body and my mind. It doesn't bore me and it takes a lot of time.

There's not as much to do right now. Plants are well established. Everything is producing. My garden of graves has been knocked down (where all the early crops were) and it's looking more like a traditional garden with tidy rows of newly planted seeds. (The graves were overkill; I can plant more stuff in the same space on flat ground. I tried to find a picture on an earlier blog entry, but I can't.) But the bounty that keeps coming in takes a lot of time to pick, prepare and preserve.

In other words, there's no boredom in gardening. And if there's no boredom, there's no mindless snacking.

Going back to the heavy lifting with a purpose, though, it seems to me that's key to the couple of pounds that have left me lately. I'm going to come up with some kind of project for fall – building something or digging a new garden bed, maybe – that will tide me over until cold weather comes. Maybe, maybe, I'll have lost a few more pounds by then and will have an incentive to lift dumbbells instead of shovels full of dirt, once the snow flies.

Have a great weekend. Looks like rain is moving in, and maybe cooler temperatures for a couple days. That would be most welcome!