Saying Goodbye to Yoga Pants & Saggy Rears

I'm not doing great at getting here on a regular basis - I think of all these things I want to write about, but like fireflies on a summer evening, they flit away before I can catch them.

We've been busy working away at our goals for 2016 - it seems to me you either make them, and then give up within weeks or you - sometime in mid-January, decide you really are going to do 'them', whatever 'them' is, and they take on a force in your life. Getting healthy was a big goal for CS and me - per doctor's orders - and we're finding getting healthy takes time! Time being the biggest currency in our society these days, it's worse than money or willpower or anything else.

So I've switched from water aerobics, which was fun, but I was the youngest in the class by a good bit, and I never felt like I was really getting a good workout. Of course it's  hard to say if you're sweating when you're wet pretty much all over... Like Star Wars, I switched to the other side - moving over to the recumbent bike and weight machines.

Does anyone else relate to realizing at some point that whatever weight you were when you thought you were overweight, say ten years ago, or twenty even, that weight is now your goal, and you'd feel skinny as a rail if you could hit it again? We're slowly losing weight, and that's great but what is more important is lab results. I see the doctor next week to have some blood drawn which will tell the truth of what I've been up to since last November. I have a feeling he's going to be able to see every cheese nip or tortilla chip I ate, but hopefully all those salads and exercising will show up too.

Along that line, I started reading a book that, by title, sounds pretty stinking dry, but is pretty interesting. I got it at the library at my daughter's suggestion, 'The Healing Power of Exercise', by Goldberg and Elliot - two doctors. Which is preferable to say, maybe someone who eats sticks and leaves and runs 15 miles a day and wrote a book. Each chapter talks about an issue - blood pressure, cholesterol, losing weight, etc. and I've learned all sorts of stuff about how a body works, or doesn't. It hasn't made me excited to walk into the gym, but it has made me walk in. That's saying something.

I also started, last night, For the Love, by Jen Hatmaker. I'm going to hear her speak in a few weeks with my DIL, and this book has a subtitle of 'Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards' which falls well into my goals of getting into shape, etc. When I had my checkup the doctor told me he'd just seen a 55 year old who 'could still rock a bikini'. He did not say that about me. Nor do I want to rock one, but I do want the insides of my body to be healthy, and the structure - muscles, joints, etc. to be strong and able to hold up to whatever life throws at me. I'm enjoying that I finally do not weigh what I did when I last gave birth, 33 years ago, but my next goal is that my abdomen quit closely resembling a pile of unbaked bread dough.

Jen's chapter, 'Fashion Concerns' addressing the current leggings-as-tights, 'tights-as-leggings' is worth the cost of the book in itself. That being said by a person who seriously owns at least 7 pairs of leggings, thereby enabling me to wear them 6 1/2 days a week. I need guidance in that area.

Having lost about 10% of my body weight since sometime in November when the doctor gave me a good talking to reality check, this week I had the sad experience of putting TWO pairs of my ALL TIME FAVORITE EVER IN MY LIFE black yoga pants from New York & Company in the give away box. The - literally - rear view of yoga pants on a  60 year old backside is questionable anyway, and the only thing worse than stretching them out to the max in every direction they can go is having them sag. 

I once had a man whistle at me - it is still a dear memory - when I was at lunch with my co-workers, walking across the parking lot in a pair of red pants. (Oh yes I do remember it vividly, as I replay it now and then on those days when the sight of my unclad body starts the descent into despair.) He yelled nice a__! I acted shocked and blushed but inside I did such a happy dance as you've never seen. I was a mother with a 4 year old, and absolutely ate up that wolf call and shout out. That has now been 36 years, but who's counting, and nobody is yelling anything out about me walking away from them. So while I may not be a mile wide, the lift has left the building, and saggy yoga pants are just not going to work. I had to force myself to throw my arm out, extend it over the Goodwill box that permanently lives on my closet floor, and drop both pairs of yoga pants in it.

So - grab the books - both of them, learn what you can, change where you can, and I'll be back to report on the conference with Jen. I'm not sure what she's going to be wearing but I can bet what she won't have on. Hoping my doctor tells his next patient, after seeing me, that some 60 year old lady could 'still rock a bikini'...? I'm not seeing that happen, but you never know. I've still got 10 months of this year to get at it!

How about you? Resolutions going strong, dying a slow death, or completely buried? And tell me about the last time you got a wolf call or good ole' whistle! Let's re-remember it together, so it's easier to call up the next time you need it. In my book that's fighting for grace!