On getting in shape

For the last 4 months, I have been working on losing weight, which includes joining Weight Watchers and exercising more. It's been going pretty well, and I am fairly happy that I am down 30 pounds. Though of course I would like to have lost more, that's pretty reasonable. Also, I haven't given up peanut butter, ice cream or chocolate. I probably wouldn't have lasted if that had been required.

I'm at that point where I need to buy some new clothes, but I still need to lose more weight, so hesitant to buy too much. The first thing I bought? New bras. Went to Nordstrom's last weekend and used a fitter, who helped me pick out very nice, very expensive bras. Fortunately I found out you are only supposed to wash them every 4-5 times you wear them (unless you sweat heavily), because I only bought 3. Band size was 4 inches smaller! But cups were 2 sizes larger, which was a huge surprise. I also bought a couple of shirts for my trip to Chicago. Which I didn't end up wearing. Next will be pants, because I only have a couple of older ones that I can wear now. Yeah, I know, terrible problem to have.

The exercise part is a mix of highs and lows. After a few weeks, I got the ActiveLink, which is a device you wear and every so often you plug it in to the USB port on a computer and it tells the WeightWatchers online tracking system how many extra points you get. I found out that I am so sedentary during the day that my 40-50 minute walks in the morning didn't even get me to baseline on the ActiveLink. I have to add at least 30 minutes at lunch and a stroll in the evening to get to the 4-point target.

The high part is that agility is way more points than I expected. I mean, each run is only a minute or less, and there are a maximum of 5 runs a day. Of course, there's also warming him up and walking him out afterwards, plus I usually work 2 or 3 classes. But still. My first agility trial was 7 points for one day. The last one, I was a leash-runner for half of the first (really large) class on Saturday and ended up walking fast back and forth for over an hour. That day I got 11 points.

On the other hand, the exercise video I got doesn't seem to earn me as many points as walking for the same amount of time, even though I feel like I am working a LOT harder. Consequently, I don't use it as much as I probably should.

Anyway, I actually started this post to talk about what I did this morning. It is supposed to be hellish hot later today, so I decided to walk Bravo when I got up. Russ has been running every other day, and so he decided to go along. We went down to Lake Normandale just as the sun was coming up, so it was really pretty. Russ took off running and after a few minutes, I started to run as well. I've done that a little over the past few weeks. This time I ran most of the way down one side of the lake. Then I had to stop and walk for a while. I picked up running again for maybe a third of the next side, then walked the final part. It's supposed to be a total of 1.9 miles, and I'm guessing I ran at least 3/4 of a mile. Which is much more than I would have run if Russ hadn't been ahead of me.

The thing that annoys me is that Russ only started running again about 5 weeks ago. Before that, he had been going on our evening ambles for maybe a month. He now runs every other day - started with half a mile and built up. Today, though, he ran nearly the whole lake path, while I was exhausted after less than half running, the rest walking. And to add insult to injury, he came home to do pushups and lift weights, while I collapsed in a chair.

Guess it's good that now I have someone to push me.