Vanity Moment Pics: by Popular Request!

Friday, August 31, 2012

My DH surprised me by contacting organizers for last week's golf tournament and getting the pictures.

You can see he's successfully reduced by 20 pounds since his pre-season weight: looking pretty trim!

And there I am too in my vanity moment.

Did I mention how challenging white pants are?

And how challenging horizontal stripes are? Not to mention sleeveless??

OK, still feeling pretty good about it!!

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Short Holiday

Sunday, August 26, 2012

DH and I are just back from three days in Ottawa -- or more precisely, a day and a bit, with most of the other time spent driving up and driving back!

I wanted to see the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery before it closed September 3. Some of you may have seen it earlier this year in Philadelphia . . . it's a "joint" US /Canadian project which focuses on work from the last four years of Van Gogh's life, with lots of "close up" details from nature and lots of landscape vistas too . . . . There were early photographs and Japanese prints also exhibited, to show a couple of the influence on this period of his work. I had not realized that the texturing effect of his brush strokes evokes the wrinkled paper of the Japanese print "crepon" technique. The gallery (one of Moshe Safdie's best architectural works) was crowded, even with our reserved tickets. But the crowds did not prevent me from seeing and absorbing images that were new to me and which will stay in my mind: a field of wheat, a field of lavender, a vase of poppies, a branch of almond blossom against an intensely blue background, a couple walking through dense undergrowth in a light dappled forest.

We also attended an open air theatre production under a starry sky in a park adjacent to the Rideau River . . . a glorious Marivaux 18th century French farce, comedia del arte style with highly expressive masks, Offenbach music. It was superbly performed, very silly and light-hearted: perfect for a summer night.

Other than that: walking, talking, reading, paying our respects at some dear friends' burial places in Beechwood Cemetery, a drive into the Gatineaus, some nice meals, a few glasses of wine, a very comfortable hotel: good times. Ottawa is a beautiful, human-scaled city where English and French are spoken everywhere, decked out for the summer with provincial floral banners and imaginatively planted flower beds in all the parks. It's our capital city, with its Gothic Parliament buildings and Art Deco Supreme Court, and it always makes me proud to be Canadian!

We shared the drive back, taking turns so each of us could snooze a little . . . I've filled the fridge again, caught up with the laundry, and feel ready to face the week!

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Vanity Moment

Friday, August 24, 2012

I played golf (not well) yesterday in our annual professional association tournament -- and it was great fun. Sunny day, great company, scramble format -- where at least some of "my" shots were used.

A highlight for me? Candid photo taken at the top of my back swing which was part of a slide show playing during dinner. Great form, great follow through: and looking good for an old gal.

White capris (size 8); horizontally striped white/blue/red sleeveless golf shirt (size small); red visor, red/white/blue golf shoes (anniversary gift from DH, and I'd been looking all summer for a coordinating shirt on sale natch, finally found one!!).

Vanity moment: and yes, it's the vanity moments which help keep motivating my superficial girly self for sure!

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It's "Transition to Maintenance": So Don't Wait Till You've Lost the Weight!

Sunday, August 19, 2012

There! "At Goal and Maintaining" has changed its name: it's now "At Goal and Maintaining + Transition to Maintenance".

So: come on over. Depending upon where we began and how each of us feels individually, "Transition to Maintenance" might be 100 pounds away from "goal" (that elusive concept) or 50 pounds or 20 pounds or . . . . you get it.

It's not necessary to get to goal before we learn about maintenance.

And it's not optimal to wait either.

So many people seem to "get to goal", announce they've reached goal weight with a bit of fanfare and congrats all around and then . . . disappear.

Sure, most of us pretty desperately want to take it off. But we've done that before. A few times. So even more urgently, we want to keep it off.

Best strategy: to learn how. While we're losing. And to continue to learn how, while we keep it off. Permanently.

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"At Goal and Maintaining" name change?

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Following up from my previous blog, and given the desire of the "At Goal and Maintaining Team" to promote weight loss maintenance, I'm wondering if a change of name might help?

Dropping the "At Goal" part and focusing on the learning how to maintain part?

I know that before I'd lost enough weight to meet SP's goal for me (155) I didn't venture to join the team. Felt it would have been a little presumptuous, that "this was not for me". I did, however, begin lurking on the site. And then sought out a well-established At Goal member to mentor me a bit (thanks, TRYINGHARDER!!).

But in retrospect, I'm thinking that learning maintenance strategies while losing weight is key to breaking the weight loss/regain cycle. Key to changing that statistic (only 5% of those who lose weight maintain weight loss) to something closer to 100%.

And in any case, pretty much nobody stays "At Goal". We fluctuate up and down. We change what we define to be "At Goal". We distinguish between lowest achievable weight and lowest sustainable weight.

What do you think? If MAINtaining is the main thing . . . . if we're turning away people during the weight loss phase who aren't At Goal . . . would it help to adopt a different team name?

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