What a difference 50 pounds and 12 months makes

Do you agree?

I think if you click the photo it will get bigger.

And, by special request, here are the tunic-and-boots and the little black dress.

Thank you, LYNNE! I had such a great time trying to look like I was comfortable doing this. I don't know if I'll ever love having my picture made, but yesterday came pretty close. You're the best!

The next update will be in 15 more pounds. I hope-hope-hope that will happen in December. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy and celebrate what I've already accomplished.

Enjoying and celebrating don't have to involve food. But it might involve MORE CLOTHES. Heh.

Progress photo

Only because you asked for it.

That'll teach you. Heh.

Honestly? I just don't see that much difference. But 15 pounds is 15 pounds
(the difference between May and June), and I suppose it should be recorded for posterity, right?

Lack of progress photo, and more!

Without further ado, here's the January-to-March comparison. I've got arms! And legs! Because it's so freaking hot! Heh.

Even though I'm nine pounds lighter in March than I was
in January, I think having my limbs exposed makes me look
bigger now. I'm not! Swear!

I ended up not going to the gym yesterday after all. Recalling the sage advice to "make hay while the sun shines," I decided to "finish the herb bed while the weather was nice and my husband was willing to help." Three hours working outdoors surely equals half that time in the gym, right?

At one point during the process, my husband asked if I intended to finish all the sections yesterday. I looked at him like he'd grown a third arm. Of course I intended to finish, otherwise why even start? (See OCD post from a couple of days ago.)

To answer Mindy's question from a recent comment, I'm not following a formal plan, unless dividing the circle into eight sections counts as formal. Taller plants will be in the center; everything will gradually get shorter as I plant from the middle toward the outer edge. Each section will not necessarily be dedicated to one plant. At least that's how I'm thinking right now. I might change my mind about that.

(Also, Diandra's comment about my pregnancy dream maybe being about coming up with a new idea is intriguing. Thanks for your insight!)

So what did we do yesterday? Here you go …

Rock and roll! My husband loves moving rocks, and I love that
he loves moving rocks, so I let him. He let me place them
around the edge of the circle.

I never used that old hula hoop anyway. It was the perfect tool for defining
the very center of the area. This photo shows the crop circle pie divided into
fourths. We eventually split it again, ending up with eight slices.

We covered the cardboard paths with dead leaves free mulch. I sprinkled
the inner circle with dill seed and dumped compost over it, but didn't plant
anything else yesterday. Each of the leafy paths got watered down with
the hose to keep the leaves from blowing away and to help them decompose.

I'm getting a truckload of mulch delivered later this spring and intend to mulch between the slices, to further keep weeds from growing there and to make it look a little nicer. All in all, I'm very pleased with the progress so far. By August, it should be lush and gorgeous and full of herby goodness. And to think, last August it was just part of the field we call the "front yard."

It started raining shortly after we finished. Good timing! It will continue to rain off and on today and probably for the next day or two. Since I also planted more onions, more snow peas and a row of mixed greens, I'm glad to see a little rain come through.

Also? When it rains, I'm much more enthusiastic about going to the gym. Hope to get back to my Mon/Wed/Fri routine next week. I have to go to a meeting in Charleston, WV, today, an all-day Democratic women's thing. I'm wearing a hoodie. Not that one old woman wearing a hoodie will make a difference, but maybe it will make a statement.

One more thing: I recently removed the word verification process from the commenting procedure here and have gotten at least one spam comment per day. So I'm going to turn it back on again. Sorry … making it easier for you to comment also makes it easier for unwanted random computers to invade my space. Not cool, unwanted random computers. Totally not cool.

Progress photos

Once a month, you (and I) will be subjected to a side-by-side comparison of, um, me. I used to do these back in the Shrinking Knitter days, and it was somewhat helpful. And since I want to give myself every advantage to once-and-for-all lose this effing weight, and since progress photos were part of my previous success at losing this effing weight (although obviously not once and for all), well these effing progress photos will be part of the permanent record.

Without further ado (and with a lot of trepidation and a dollop of courage):

Of course I am more critical of me than you are. I always got lots of positive feedback on SK, but because I'm a realist and stubborn and have pretty good vision, I rarely believed the nice things you said. Clearly there's no difference between this January and February, other than the change of clothing. But I took the January photo the day I joined the gym and made a little promise that I would do this monthly.

My hope is that strength training will make a visible difference when the scale doesn't. I still haven't taken my measurements, and yes I know I should but you have NO IDEA how much I don't want to do that.

I really am ready for once-and-for-all. And I'm willing to do whatever it takes. I believe slow-and-steady weight loss will yield permanent results, even though I WANT IT ALL GONE NOW.

However, it's like the Rolling Stones said: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

Ah, yes.

Progress photo

Well, not progress, really, this is the new starting point.

I’m happy to report that I did the South Beach Phase 2 Total Body Workout yesterday, which targets, um, the total body. You’re supposed to use a step for a couple of moves, and since I don’t have one I used the bed of the treadmill instead. It seemed like the perfect height and I got to watch television at the same time!

And for the past three days I’ve managed to down two bottles of water each day. Baby steps!

Thanks so much for your thoughtful and encouraging comments. I wish I hadn’t done this so many times before in my life. For those of you who are younger than I, and especially those of you who are losing a significant amount of weight for the first time – figure out now what you need to do for maintenance. I know you’ve read all the same magazine articles that I have, and they’re right. You can’t pick up where you left off once you reach your weight-loss goal. Maintenance is for a lifetime.

Unlike riding a bicycle, it doesn’t get easier to lose weight again once you’ve done it. It actually gets harder. And harder. It takes more vigilance over food, more consistency with exercise, more effort in general to shed pounds with each successive attempt. Once you hit that magic number, don’t let yourself go more than five pounds above it. If I’d done that the last time I was a size 8, I wouldn’t look like that woman in the picture at the top of this post.