Doing what I can

To start, I was happy to weigh-in this morning at 182.5, which is down 1 pound from last Sunday.

I know that it is almost certainly water weight fluctuation and so on and so forth, but I'll take it. My challenge is to get down at least another pound (if not more) by next Sunday.

I've restarted the One Hundred Pushups program this week, and today was day 2 of week 1. Already I saw that the pushups were much easier to do on day 2 than they were on the first day (which was actually on Wednesday - I procrastinated). I noticed that by Friday, my arms and abs were very pleasantly sore, which is a good reminder to myself to keep an eye on what I eat.

And perhaps most significantly today, I hula-hooped for 30 minutes straight. I found a few different figures for the amount of calories burned in 30 min, but the average seems to be 350-400 calories for 30 min with a weighted hoop. My hoop is 5 pounds, and of course I am a heavier person moving myself around, so that figure may be slightly more or less, but it's a great thing to have done either way.

The irony was not lost on me that as I was hooping, I was watching an episode of Chopped on my computer. I love cooking shows, and ordinarily when I'm watching them, I knit or draw or do some sedentary thing. I was happy, this time, to have spent the first 12 min doing my pushups, then the next 30 hula-hooping. I feel like that was time well spent.

I've made plans to go ice skating again this coming weekend, actually with the friend to whom I've been enviously comparing myself. I figured it would be good karma to stop being jealous of her weight loss and instead to start doing healthy activities together. She is not my enemy - my own unhealthy lifestyle is - and allying myself with someone going through the same process as me can only benefit us both. Plus, she's just as excited about ice skating as I am, so it should be a great time!