August 2, 2025: A Great Day To Believe In Yourself !

 

Since 2025 has been a horrible year so far (from a diet and exercise perspective), I decided to restart the year yesterday. Going forward I'm just going to title my blog's with the date, because I tend not to write every day and it gets hard to keep track of the days. I will still try to capture everything I've been up to when I do write.

It was chilly when I got up this morning ! The thermostat in the dining room read 65 and Minnie was curled up in a ball on her pillow on the couch. The sun chased the chill away before long and I love seeing the blue skies and sunshine ! It was just after 9:30 when I got up and by 12:30 it was a comfortable 73 outside. I felt good this morning and once the cats were taken care of I sat down to enjoy my breakfast while watching YouTube and catching up on my slot games. I'm trying again to keep the kitchen clean so I tidied up, went upstairs and made my bed then got myself dressed. I also made a protein shake to ensure there were no excuses not to exercise. Before sitting down to start this blog I also clipped my toe nails and then put my treadmill shoes on ! I'm headed to the treadmill shortly ! It was nice to come downstairs this morning and see the cleaned off dining room table and the much neater kitchen ! Today's plan is still to clean both bathrooms and the laundry room. 

Breakfast today was a 180 calorie cinnamon roll and later an 80 calorie yogurt. I had a 155 calorie chocolate shake during my workout. Lunch was 2 hotdogs with 40 calorie bread. Afternoon snack was 80 calorie cottage cheese and an apple. Dinner was sweet & sour chicken over rice. Evening snack was a few vanilla cookies and a 120 calorie pudding cup with whipped cream. I opened a can of beer after dinner but didn't even drink half of it, so the calories (95 for the whole can) were negligible.

Kim texted this morning about a Skaneateles Lake boat cruise on 9-6. It's Taylor Swift themed, so Lauren is all over that ! I think it will be fun, so of course I am going ! I'm going to look online for a short sleeve midi/maxi dress and perhaps a new sweater for the outing.

I'm seeing that getting up and moving is helping me feel better mentally and physically. My body is so stiff these days because I've basically been sitting on my fat butt since I got laid off. Now that I've embraced being "retired", it's time to get back into a routine and start moving. I can't lose the weight sitting on the couch. You know you're good with being retired when you think about looking for a job but don't want anything to interfere with your social life ! What the heck, I worked for 40 years - it's time to enjoy the years I have left !

Well, it's about 1:08 now, so I'm going to push myself off the couch and get on the treadmill ! It's 2:24 pm now and I completed 14m24s on the treadmill and I've had lunch. I've had some concern about my heart rate spiking during exercise, although the spikes are brief. At my age (nearly 63 and obese) you have to worry about heart issues. Yesterday my heart rate spiked to 168, so today I tried to be more mindful of taking big deep breaths while I exercised. I'd say that paid off as today's spike was only 120, which is well below my max of 157 or 158 based on 220 - my age. Brief spikes above your max are fine, but you never want to see a sustained heart rate that high. My resting heart rate is typically in the 60's, which is great. Once I start getting this weight off I'll be a bit less worried about the whole thing.

I spent some time today updating my "When I'm Gone" document. I know that's kind of morbid, but one of my siblings is going to end up having to settle my estate some day and I want the process to be as easy as possible.