In the still of the morning

The wolf moon has just slipped behind the mountain to the west. The sun is slowly creeping up behind the mountain to the east. The sky looks soft, dewy, impressionistic, all the colors blurred and blended. Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days.

The heat pump is humming and the coffeemaker is gurgling. It's a lovely, quiet beginning to the day. I'm grateful for electricity on cold mornings like this.

A warming trend is on the way, however. Today's expected high temperature will be double that of yesterday's, in the low 40s. Finally, an opportunity to walk outdoors again. I've missed it a lot, which indicates that I am enjoying moving more, despite the disappointment of Friday's scale result. Tomorrow and Tuesday will also be warm – unseasonably so for southern West Virginia – and I plan to take advantage of them outside, either along the creek or on my mountain.

The elliptical is a fine machine and provides an efficient workout. But I'd much rather have blue herons and mountain deer accompany me during a workout than a recording of Bill Maher or John Stewart.

I won't say I'm an athlete, but the fact that I will work out indoors when I can't walk outside is a pretty big change for me. So let's talk about food for a bit.

As both of you know, I'll be 62 this year, and with age comes a balky metabolism. I've also been dieting since I was a child – I first remember trying to lose weight on a liquid diet at the age of 11. With my mother's blessing. My metabolism doesn't know what the hell to do to keep me upright and breathing. I think I killed it 20 years ago, during the low-fat phase.

When I was much younger, all the women's magazines published weight-loss menu plans that topped out at 1200 calories per day. The calorie deficit I created over the past four weeks had me eating a little less than that, on average. So if the starvation mode theory is true, that could account for only losing two pounds in four weeks. But in my mind, I was doing the right thing.

I wasn't hungry. I wasn't thinking about food or wishing I could have more. I didn't feel deprived. My meals go like this: I enjoy a serving of whatever and then I don't eat again until the next meal. I don't snack, except for a couple little pieces of dark chocolate sometime during the day.

The past two days, I've increased my food consumption significantly. Friday I was 13 calories shy of the target and yesterday it was just 2. I'm going to keep doing this for a week and weigh myself again on Friday, February 1.

I hope to see at least one pound gone. That's a reasonable amount of weight for an older adult female to lose in a week. One whose metabolism isn't dead. So we'll see if feeding myself a little more will make a difference.

My husband doesn't believe in this eat more/lose more theory, so we won't tell him, okay? He's older than I am and eats one meal a day and is in fine, fine shape. (And sometimes, maybe, thinks he knows it all. Sometimes.)

Your comments the past couple days have meant more to me than you'll ever know. I go back and read them again and again. I appreciate your support so much.

Thank you.