Your specialty. :)

We are a couple of overachievers, aren't we?

well, after years and years of not owning a scale, i now do.

in high school, i had severely disordered eating. not necessarily a full-blown eating disorder, but i had really terrible eating habits. like, i'd eat one meal a day. my body hated me. but it was never about the scale. it was about having no control over anything in my life ... and i controlled the hell out of my eating.

anyway, i've always been fearful of the scale ... like if i started weighing myself regularly that it would turn into a battle.

well, at my annual checkup w/ my doctor, he mentioned my weight was slowly increasing over the 5 years I've been seeing him. (side note: i HATE getting weighted at the doc's office .... it's with all my clothes on, my shoes on and generally after lunch. um, NOT an accurate picture of my weight, but whatever).

i'd been doing more regular workouts w/ Erik, but decided to really be better about it. and i think i have been ....

anyhow, after thinking about it all week, i decided one aspect of maintaining a healthy weight is knowing what your actual weight IS. ya know? erik had a crappy old scale and i couldn't read it very well, and it ... well, just seemed to be more than my brain said I should weigh (how many times have we said THAT to ourselves!!)

so, i bit the bullet and got an electronic scale (as opposed to a 15-year-old one I squint at). now there's no guessing what the verdict is.

on my way home, i was thinking about a goal ... and decided it would actually be a numbers one. i wanted to be under a certian point. and when i got the scale all set up, it turns out i AM under that point. by 3 lbs! so ... guess I'll lower that number.

but it's hard, and almost unfair to do that? or is it? so ... if you're being regular w/ workouts, you are indeed building muscle .... and hopefully losing fat, too ... but how do you tell? you know, if the scale is reflecting good muscles or badness? (i wasn't really in the spirit to fork over $50 for a scale that would calculate these things for me, and actually doubt the accuracies of such scales - does that make me a cynic?)

ok, long enough for today.

sorry!!!!

Wow! They make scales that can tell the difference between muscle and fat? Karen you are so brave to put all that out there. I'm so proud of you for taking the hard look at your fears in order to move forward.

A good way to tell how you are doing other than the scale (fat/muscle) is how your clothes fit. When I started walking my muscles all changed before I lost much weight. When I weighed myself I almost passed out! But my clothes were all getting looser so I knew I was somehow on the right track.

So distracted by scale talk I forgot to mention that I walked 5 miles this morning. Ended up at the farmer's market. Can't wait for the chicken over rice pasta with fresh heirloom tomatoes basil and garlic! mmmm!

:) Thanks, Laura! And nice walk!

The clothes thing is a good guage ... the only trouble I have w/ it ... well, in high schol I had a pair of CK jeans I LOVED .... they were *ultra fab* .... fit like a glove.

THEN I started biking 10 miles/day ... guess what happened? My butt muscles got so defined/etc that the killer jeans didn't fit anymore. I CRIED!!!!!!

Since then, I have opted to go w/ jeans that don't do the glove-like fit anymore. ;)

Oh...we're talking high school! And CK jeans! But were you oh so buffed?!

I painted some more in the boys room. Tommorrow the ceiling. Can't wait to get them back in their beds! I have this cool surf shack theme I'm working on. Maybe I can do their portraits in there afterwards!

Hence, walk and paint = tired!

oooooh, attacking a ceiling? i've not been brave enough to do that yet.

i've been napping a LOT and hopefully later this week I'll have the energy to tear down a portion of the wall between our kitchen and dining room. it needs to GO.

Successfully finished the ceiling! Now the trim. Will it ever be done?
Went to a cool nursery today. It was a fun getaway.

Laura, I'm told that once you finish doing all the remodels/updating you want in your house, you start all over again .... w/ the first room you did. it's a neverending cycle!

I've been doing a bunch of squats. Unfortunately mydailyplate.com doesn't recognize that as physical activity. we'll have to see about that.....

Karen, I'm so impressed that you got a scale. I know that I've fought that in the past and, just like you, realized it's a good thing to know where I stand with the numbers on my scale...not in an obsessed way...rather in an informed way. And huge congrats on being 3 pounds under your initial goal!!! That's wonderful. Are you happy at that weight? Do you really need to lose more? Can you be happy about that and maintain it rather than keep losing? So much of the fight with the scale is about being happy in our own skin...whatever that means to us.

I love that you and Laura are just writing back and forth together...although I'm feeling like a third wheel having been out of the loop for a while!

Ummm...Laura, I want to come over to your house for those heirloom tomatoes!

Laura, you are so good at staying active and not stuck in front of your computer. I want to see your boys' room. It sounds awesome!

And Karen, squats should totally count! They are the most dreaded exercise for me because they HURT! I know they work! And sometimes I can't walk when I get done with them. Working your leg muscles is supposed to totally up the amount of calories you burn. What is mydailyplate.com thinking???