If my dreams have anything to say about it …

my knitting intention will be cleaning out my knitting magazines. I ripped out or copied patterns in my sleep all. night. long.

I'm not sure which method I'll choose. Ripping out means discarding the remaining periodical, because I wouldn't feel right donating it if it wasn't complete. (Although there is a local group that might be willing to take them.) Copying favorite or potential patterns is a lot more work, and uses toner (if I use our copy machine) or ink (if I use the printer).

I'm leaning toward ripping.

I've been collecting knitting magazines for years and years – Interweave Knits, Knitters and Vogue Knitting are the big three, plus many, many, many other single issues that I haven't subscribed to but thought I couldn't live without. So many patterns are now available digitally; I store them all in Dropbox. Much better to have them in the cloud and instantly available, I think, than taking up all that physical shelf space.

With Dropbox, I also can organize them – folders for pullovers, cardigans, toys, household items, for instance – so whenever I want or need to knit a particular project, I can browse easily.

As for the gardening intention … I'm cutting the size of the vegetable garden in half, and will be growing tomatoes, green beans, onions, cucumbers, okra, peppers and squash. Those are the things we eat most; there's no need to grow anything else. I'll be cleaning up the herb bed, which is a disaster but at least it's not a large space to deal with, and this is the year I work on the perennial beds lining the driveway.

I'm in much better physical shape to tackle all these projects this year, and I don't have to do it all at once. I hope an hour a day, beginning in April, will have all areas done by the end of June. If not … well, I can always extend the arbitrary deadline on gardening.

I forgot to include in yesterday's list that I'm journaling my food again. I've been tracking exercise all along – it's so easy with MapMyRun. Tracking food isn't hard, it's just remembering to do it, either when I plan my meals for the day or after I eat. (I use LoseIt! for food journaling.)

Speaking of running, I did a little bit yesterday. The middle portion of a 10K walk was 30 minutes of 1/1 intervals. I'm much slower than I was last time I did this, but that's okay. It felt great to begin a new year by picking up the pace.

Other than a bit of a cold, I'm feeing well and confident and happy and inspired to make 2014 even better than 2013 was.

Oh, oh, oh … I almost forgot!

One of my good habits that slipped by the wayside when I was sick last month is logging my food in LoseIt. I might log a meal or two, or add the daily workout, but it's been a couple weeks since I counted every calorie, in and out, every day.

So that's another September challenge. Keeping a food log really makes a positive difference in the weight-loss game.

Still going down, down, down

Two and a half more pounds GONE this week.

Astonished. Amazed. It's now been four months since I began my Whole30 (which has grown, for the most part, into something like a Whole120), and I can't quite believe that I'm still losing weight.

The pace has slowed considerably, but down is down and losses are losses.

My mini-goal to weigh what I weighed when I got married by our seventh anniversary (which is next Monday) is thisclose – only half a pound to go.

LoseIt! offers many ways to analyze progress. There are charts and graphs and spreadsheets galore, for just about anything you'd like to track. Want to know what foods you've eaten the most of? There's a chart for that. Favorite exercise? There's a chart for that, as well.

I like this nutrient graph, which clearly illustrates – at least for me and my body – that increasing fat consumption will create weight loss. In my case, it looks like adding healthy fats, beginning in April, has helped me release weight dramatically!

Today was the first day I've exported my weight history to a spreadsheet, so I could figure out the monthly totals. I'm not especially proficient with Excel, and was probably in the art room when we studied statistics in high school. But spreadsheets can be useful at times, and today was one of them.

LoseIt! also tracks activity (the exercise-calories graph shows that May – the month with the greatest loss – was my most active month. Hmmm.), but I like keeping track of miles more than calories, and dailymile is pretty fun for that.

Below the mileage chart is another analytical graphic that tells me I've made it .03 of the way around the world and saved more than 35 gallons of gas since January 1. Which is a little silly, because I wouldn't have driven from one end of my road to another just for the helluvit, but it's nice to know. I guess.

The graphic above shows the current streak. The green arrow indicates the fastest day of the week (Saturday's 5K is part of that total), and the pink one points to the day with the most mileage. Take a minute to add this week's numbers. Or (if you're in a web browser) just look to the right. My previous goal of a 35-mile week got toasted! Forty miles! Pretty soon I'm gonna start training for another half-marathon. Maybe.

Apologies if all these numbers are making your eyes glaze over. I don't think about them much during the week, but I like to take a look at things on Mondays, especially at the end of another month. LoseIt! predicts I'll reach my goal – which I've definitely changed – on November 21. My original plan was to lose 50 pounds. I'm less than 10 pounds from that number this morning. But if I just keep plugging away at it, it would be nice to drop an additional 15 and squeak into the "normal" range on the BMI chart.

I know BMI is somewhat flawed. But the number that will get me there is also what I weighed when I left Ohio for the Middle of Nowhere, 16 years ago. I wouldn't mind seeing that again.

And for the first time in 16 years, I think it might be possible.

Fresh start

NaBloPoMo's theme for April is FRESH. Which is good for April here in the northern hemisphere, where we're all giddy with excitement at ditching our fleece jackets and pulling out the cotton tees again. I'm not putting the fleece in storage quite yet, but soon. Soon.

It's a Monday and the first of the month. I wonder how many people are rebooting their New Year's Resolutions this morning?

As both of you know, my fresh [health-and-fitness] start began not on January 1, but on the day after Christmas. So here we are, the day after Easter, and how am I doing?

Well, I didn't expect another loss after last week's two pounds gone. But I didn't expect to get them back. I've been bouncing around this weight since mid-February. I'm now losing a half-pound a week, and it will be 2015 before I reach my goal. (LoseIt! optimistically predicts January 27, 2014, but that's based on losing a pound a week. WHICH AIN'T HAPPENING!)

I could analyze the numbers and make plans and cry into my coffee, but none of that is going to change the fact that I've worked really, REALLY hard for not much reward. If you base your reward on the scale. Which I do. But I shouldn't. And I know I shouldn't. The reward is healthier! Fitter! Almost wearing jeans again!

I love having all the data at my fingertips. In the past 95 days, I've been over my daily calorie budget for eight of them, and have been at a deficit every damned week. I've worked out way more days than I haven't. The strength-training I added this week should eventually help IF I stay consistent with it. And starting work at the garden center will help, too, as I'll be on my feet instead of on my ass for eight or nine more hours per week.

Let's see, what else.

My pledge to purge my e-mail subscriptions has been very successful. I've lost 50 pounds of junk e-mail and gained an hour a day to play solitaire. Yay, me!

And to wrap up Lent, yesterday my husband and I each filled a trash bag with random stuff we know we can live without. It's a start. A FRESH START. Heh.

I'm a geek and I know it

One of the things I love about working out and working on fitness and health in the 21st century is the abundance of technological help available. It's especially good for someone like me, who lives far from the madding crowd. Or the stinky gym locker room. Whatever.

LoseIt!'s summary for last week. Some days are better than
others, and I do have a tough time eating more than this.

I get weekly wrap-ups from LoseIt! and dailymile and it's encouraging to see those seven-day totals all in one nice, neat little graphic. It's discouraging to step on the scale and see an unexpected result, but after 12 weeks of recording every calorie in and out, I guess it's time to stop expecting anything like a normal response from my body.

As I study the LoseIt! graphic, I wonder if I'm doing it wrong. I don't think I am. The final column should be as close to zero as possible, right? I realize I'm far below that on most days, but on the days I come close I really feel as though I've eaten too much. At my age, I don't need the same number of calories a 40- or 30-year-old needs. I'm assuming LoseIt! factors age into its recommendations.

I tried out the BMR calculator at fat2fitradio.com using my height, current weight, goal weight and four different ages, and the suggested calorie target is lower for each decade.

62 years old, which is what I'll be on May 25. And don't you forget it! Heh.

The suggestion at the sedentary level is in the ballpark with LoseIt!'s recommendation. I would put myself in the Moderately Active level. I exercise six or seven days a week, but I wouldn't call it hard.

32-year-old female.

If I were 32, I could add another couple hundred calories per day and still lose weight, according to the calculator. I can guarantee I wasn't eating this much when I was 32. Thirty years ago we followed the guidelines in popular women's magazines that told us to eat 1200 calories a week, and offered menu plans with exciting lunches like "green salad topped with two ounces of tuna drained of oil." Okay, I'm making the lunch part up, but you get the idea.

At 42 (above, left) I would need to cut about a hundred calories a day, and at 52 (above, right) another hundred. (You can click on those tiny charts and they'll get bigger. I think.)

The chart I love getting every week is from dailymile:

And the lifetime wrap-up on the website is even better.

Just think if you'd started keeping these stats when you were running track in high school, and could look back and see how far around the world you've come when you hit your 60s. Ah, but no regrets for me. I'm just happy to be able to put one foot in front of the other on a daily basis. I'm not quite ready to sit down yet.

I'm not geeky enough to create my own spreadsheets in Excel, mostly because I think Excel is evil. I've been known to use spreadsheets in the past, however. The kind where you use graph paper and a pencil to record your progress. Because that's all we had, back in the day. You young whippersnappers probably don't know what graph paper is. Now take your ball and get off my lawn!

That went well

I fully expected to stay the same weight this week, based on a combination of

• past experience
• a weekend with little exertion and
• all restaurant meals for the past couple days.

So I was surprised shocked and pleased thrilled to see a 1.5-pound loss. It'll be nine weeks Wednesday when I put my nose to this grindstone, and in that time I've lost a total of 8.5 pounds. This is what I've hoped for and, more importantly, this is what I've planned for.

Had I stayed the same again this week, I'm not sure what I might have done. I'm just glad I don't have to figure it out. It looks like I'll be experiencing a stay-the-same/lose-a-little cycle, so the best thing I can do is not go off the deep end when I stay the same.

For the record, I was nearly 1400 calories under budget for the week. I went over the limit Saturday, but by only 42. (I shouldn't have licked the caramel sauce from my dessert plate at dinner, heh.) LoseIt! has reduced my budget by 10 calories per day this week. I won't even notice that. And I walked every day this week, for a total of 24 miles.

Our trip went very well. We met up with a couple who live in southwest Virginia. We enjoy their company very much, but only see them two or three times a year, and only when we wives get together to make the plans.

Our home base was Hendersonville, NC, which is a lovely little town and well worth visiting. Saturday morning we went to nearby Flat Rock to visit Carl Sandburg's home, Connemara, which has been maintained by the National Park Service since his death in the late 1960s. The home and grounds are lovely, and have been left intact, as if the family were going to return at any minute.

A grazing Nubian at Connemara.

Many people don't know that Mrs. Sandburg was known worldwide for her dairy goats. Her visitors, who sometimes traveled from Europe to purchase a kid, frequently asked, "And what does your husband do?" Fifteen goats are still kept at Connemara, all direct descendants of the original flock.

We lunched in Saluda, NC, a tiny little railroad town, the main street of which was lined with cafés and shops and galleries. Because we are old, we went back to the hotel to nap before dinner at the Mrs. G and Me bistro in downtown Hendersonville. The menu offered something for everyone and Mr. G came around as we were finishing up to personally thank us for dining with them.

Originally from Great Britain, he had no idea he was chatting up a table full of single-payer advocates. My husband asked his opinion of the American health care system and we got an earful! Appalling! Dreadful! Bloody awful! When he learned the two men at the table were physicians, he began to apologize, but we quickly assured him we agreed wholeheartedly. He, in turn, assured us that the Brits were quite satisfied with their National Health Service, despite what we might hear on Fox News.

I was plum tuckered out when we got home yesterday afternoon, but took a long rest in order to stay up to watch all of the (in my opinion) incredibly lackluster Academy Awards. Hollywood produced some spectacular films this year, but the program seemed uninspired and I thought Seth McFarlane was mean-spirited and a tad too sarcastic. Perhaps that's the way Hollywood is, as well. (Reviews of his hosting gig are glowing, however, so what do I know?)

I was left wishing I'd seen more of the films, especially Les Miserables, Argo and Life of Pi, which I originally had no interest in at all. Nice that they're either on pay-per-view or soon will be.

I was also left feeling great that I stayed up until the last statue was handed out, thus not missing Michelle Obama via satellite, opening the envelope and announcing that Argo had won. I think all the Republicans in the country just stopped going to the movies. Heh.

Spring-ish

Look closely at those little green shoots poking up from that patch of dirt. This photo was taken at a rest stop in east Tennessee, near Bristol, late yesterday afternoon as I made my way back home from Nashville.

Those are daffodils. January 13, 2013. Mine are popping up, as well. See?

But you know what? I went back in my photo files and found a similar shot taken on January 20 of last year. And they bloomed when they were supposed to. Well, maybe a little earlier than expected, but the early growth spurt didn't results in a lack of flowers.

I'm not sure what to think of this. Winter isn't even a month old and I'm seeing robins and daffodils, two sure-fire signs of spring, at least in my mind.

It was 70° in Nashville Friday and Saturday. A cold front has now moved through – if I were still there, I'd be appropriately dressed. As it was, I was too warm in my long-sleeved shirts. I didn't even take my jacket out of the car. And it was a good thing I packed two dress-up ensembles, as the one with the quilted jacket would have been far too warm to wear to the performance I went to Saturday evening.

Which was lovely, by the way. My granddaughter is so talented and so graceful, a natural at dance. Watching her move delights me.

And I am beyond grateful she inherited the lithe, lean genes of her mother, who got them from her father, rather than the vertically challenged and horizontally enhanced ones from my side of the family.

LoseIt!'s week begins on Monday, while mine begins on Wednesday. (You perpetual dieters will know what that means.) LoseIt! sends a report every Monday letting you know how you've done. As I'm only weighing myself once a month, I have no loss to report, but I've stayed below the calorie limit every day since I began 20 days ago (-5519 calories), and have managed to rack up 18 hours and 10 minutes of intentional activity (nearly an hour a day!).

Not bad for an old lady.

The cold front that moved through Nashville is heading toward southern West Virginia. There's a lull in the rain right now, and the temperature is manageable, in the low 40s. If I'm going to walk outdoors today, this would be the time to do it. (My designated Monday rest day got switched to yesterday again. Two consecutive weeks! Perhaps I should re-think the rest day plan. Or perhaps I should continue to remain flexible.)

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go …

One more thing about LoseIt

When I was training for the half-marathons I've done, I liked to add stars to the chart to show my progress. It felt great to look at that piece of paper and see those shiny little symbols adding up as I made my way through the weeks and weeks of hard, easy and long runs.

Well, LoseIt knows about people like me, and every once in a while they give you a badge, a little Attagirl, an additional pat on the back. I haven't figured out what I need to do to earn one, so it's not like I'm working for anything other than to continue being consistent with eating reasonable amounts of healthful foods and exercising. But it makes me smile when I get an e-mail announcing I've earned another badge.

It's kind of like Girl Scouts, except I'm doing the work for myself, not for the privilege of sewing patches on my sash and showing off to the other girls in my troop.