Last week I was ranting and raving about hiking a lot and still gaining weight. I’m feeling better about myself now. I’m down 10 pounds from then. I know that doesn’t seem like that should be possible but I think 5 pounds was hormonal and the other 5 pounds lost is hopefully my body realizing that I’ve been hiking like crazy so it ought to shed some weight. The other theory that I don’t really want to be true is that I’m pretty good at maintaining weight. I have a central weight that always stay around. But it is not unusual at all for me to a few pounds up or down depending on the day. But it always bounces around that central weight. I don’t want this just to be a bounce. However, I am at a lower weight than my usual low bounce for 2 days in a row so I’m counting it as real.

In a spurt of enthusiasm and zeal I went bike riding this morning. I usually ride on the bike path. The bike path is perfectly flat and paved. I went riding today on the roads around my house. I live on a hill. I went out and coasted down the road that is a mile long steady climbing hill. I figured I didn’t want to come back up that. Then I went around “the block” – about 3 miles. Coming back the other way is a series of short hills with flat areas in between. I felt good until the end. The breeze stopped and I realized how hot it was. Yesterday it was 95 degrees and humid. That has to be a record. It just doesn’t get to 95 around here. It must be in the mid-80s already this morning. But I made it!

I’ve been logging my exercise on the President’s Challenge. Not because I care about getting an award for getting to 20,000 points but it gives me a goal to shoot for to keep me exercising. I’m over 30% of the way to the first award.

When I was making this tracker this morning I was thinking about my goal weight. I remember when I was in high school I weighed 10 pounds less than this goal weight. I thought I was a fat cow. I was always the heavy kid. Now I would bow down to any diety who would let me be that weight again! LOL

When we were at the Asian festival we were waiting in line for the shuttle bus. It was taking a long time so some people behind us decided to walk. My husband watched them walk off and muttered, “That lady could use the walk.”

I smacked him because he’s one to talk and as I told him, “She’s about my size – so what are you saying?”

He stared at me for a minute and then said, “You are truly delusional, aren’t you?” (I don’t think that any girlish fantasy of Mr. Right/Prince Charming ever includes him coming to that conclusion.)

“What do you mean?”
“You are not the size of that woman. You are..” He scanned the crowd and then pointed someone. “…that size.” The woman he picked out was a nice size. But he is always telling me that I look like I’ve lost weight. If I lost weight every time he said so I’d be 80 pounds by now. I think it is the result of the bouncing around a central weight. So obviously he is biased. But it is sweet.

“That’s sweet! Untrue, but sweet.”
He sighed. “Fine. If you have some totally warped perception of yourself it will keep you from going out and picking up other guys and cheating on me. I don’t mind that at all.”

I’ve been thinking about that since then. I’m trying to have a more realistic body perception. It is photos that get to me. What I see in the mirror doesn’t tend to correspond with the way I photograph. So I think I look ok and then I see a picture and think I have been underestimating how bad I look.

The other strange thing is that I’m heavy for my size so that confuses me. I look at diet ads and the “before” will be a woman my height and my weight who wore a dress size 2 or 3 sizes bigger than what I wear. I’m also only about 1 size bigger than I was when I got married but I’m 15 (no, now 10!) pounds heavier. I can wear some of the shorts I had when I was a lot lighter. I know I’m fairly muscular. It’s all that stall cleaning and hay bale throwing but I was doing that all along. I can’t imagine I gained that much more muscle recently.

Oh well, I don’t think most women ever have a truly unbiased and healthy body image. I’ll just have to work on it more.