Friday Five - A Potpourri Of Highs And Lows

 Friday Five - A Potpourri Of Highs And Lows

The week was full of high and low points . . .

1.  My tooth is, hopefully, fixed. During a routine X-Rays & cleaning appointment, my dentist came in to inform me that I needed one of my fillings redone. Post-procedure, I returned home with an unusually tender mouth as compared to prior dental work I've had done. Some five weeks and multiple visits to the dentist later, I think all is finally well, although it involved more pain and discomfort along the way than I've previously experienced. Life lesson from a childhood spent eating and drinking mass amounts of sugar? Kids, take care of your teeth!

2.  Sailing Season has begun. This will be our first sailing season as newer club members, and we are excited to watch the weekly races and enjoy the socializing that takes place afterwards. I've taken sailing courses, but am very much still a novice. Thus, I will stick with inputting race results on land, to ensure I don't get in the way of the more seasoned sailors. I'm content to simply be part of the land team this year, viewing it as a learning opportunity for future sailing seasons.

3.  Our Social lives are continuing to expand. Speaking of being newer club members, the 2025 group of new members has coalesced into an active and fun social group. Our unofficial leader and his wife are fabulously energetic, and we are having monthly club get togethers to socialize and get to know each other better, which is helping the overall club familiarity to move along nicely. Soon to come is an event involving boat owners hosting new members as we hop from boat to boat in order to enjoy chatting and sipping and noshing. Should be lots of fun.

4.  I'm becoming a boutique clothing store shopper. Prior to losing 25 pounds, I primarily shopped at somewhat generic clothing stores. In giving it some thought, I think it was because I didn't want to draw any attention when trying on new clothes. But, now that I'm comfortable with my weight and shape for the first time in pretty much my entire life, I am falling fast for smaller boutique store shopping. 

Reasons why would include the ease in which employees take in my current size and find clothing they think would fit /look good on me.

I am loving this service! It helps me not become 'stuck' in my clothing styles, and exposes me to silhouettes I would not have thought to try on.

Like this cute knit tank dress with, yikes, horizontal stripes. Never would I have thought to try it on if not for the boutique store owner's encouragement.

Or this smocked-waist skirt. The wide waist band turned out to be slimming once I put it on, exactly the opposite of how I thought it would look.

5.  It's going to be a wild and fun weekend. So many great activities are on the schedule for the weekend, beginning tonight, that I can hardly wait. We are attending a big community anniversary event, a tribute concert, a dinner and wine tasting event, a symphony with a revered conductor, and joining friends for dinner. 

My normal Monday volunteering job just got cancelled, so that means I can happily throw myself into the weekend, and wait to recover until then. 😄

Weight Loss Maintenance At Six Months In

 Weight Loss Maintenance At Six Months In

I posted the following comment over at The Hawaii Plan this morning, and I thought, 'Gosh, I could turn this response into an entire blog post!' So, that's exactly what I decided to do.

Here is the comment, in response to a question about how readers were doing with their health and fitness goals:

I always have small 100 calories packets of plain almonds with me everywhere I go. They really are the perfect food for quick, clean energy, both mental and physical. I highly recommend.

I have kept my lost weight off for over six months now. It's simple but hard (!)- I weigh myself each and every morning, and continue to make a daily food plan. The food plan is the most important component for me. Once I walk thru my day, mentally, and plot out my daily allotment of food/calories, I'm highly likely to stick with it.

I'd like to say it gets a lot easier, but in my experience it does not. I just get to finally enjoy the rewards of being thin along with the ongoing need to self discipline.

Fit is easy- I walk miles and miles and love it. Turns out it was never the exercise that was an issue. It was the food.

I'm now approximately six months post reaching my goal weight of 108 pounds. Unfortunately, unlike breaking my sugar addiction, where the sugar cravings have pretty much disappeared, I still think about food a lot.  I'd thought, hoped, my general food cravings would dissipate, but they have not. They are still alive and well, and they are still an unpleasant chatter in my brain that generally begins in the late afternoon and continues on for several hours. Generally, by about 7 PM, I can shut them off and finish the remainder of my day in peace. 

My self discipline, pretty much finely honed with regard to food at this point, generally allows me to ignore the chatter and stay with my food plan for the day, but it is beyond annoying that I'm still having to fight food noise.

The difference between fighting the food noise now, in maintenance, vs fighting it while working to lose weight, is my rewards for ignoring the noise are immediate and numerous.

• I have a new wardrobe of smaller clothing that both fits and makes me feel great while wearing them. 
• I very much continue to enjoy iced black coffee as my pick-me-up treat.
• My social life is extremely robust, and the compliments from the folk I'm with at an event seem to flow effortlessly. Those unsought compliments are just as enjoyable to my psyche as a sugar-laden dessert used to be, but with no negative downsides. Meaning, ha, my clothes still fit the next morning!
• I like the way I look now in photographs, so no more agonizing over how to 'hide'.
• I no longer grab for my ubiquitous 'butt wrap', a staple of my pre-weight loss life. It's beyond a relief to no longer agonize over the parts of my body I disliked.
• Clothes shopping is now a joy, and the primary way I reward myself when in search/need of a mental pick-me-up.

Here is a sample of one day of my Food Plan, which I prepare each morning after viewing my Calendar for the day:

• 4/20 Daily Food
• Breakfast: 200 (Date bar)
• Snack: 100 (Almonds)
• Lunch: 270 (Trader Joe bean & rice burrito w/salsa)
• Snack: 150 (Greek yogurt, 1/2 cup berries)
• Dinner: 200 (Wine, deli cheese slice, 4 crackers, 1 cup baby carrots)
• 
  
• TOTAL: 920

I continue to review my stats in the Mayo Clinic online calorie calculator to ensure I'm in sync with what the results return for my age, gender and current weight, and yep, 920 calories, plus additional for whatever I've burned via exercise, comprises the entirety of my daily calorie allotment. At this point, food noise notwithstanding, I can say that I'm used to it and no longer fight it. So that is at least progress!

More Money Than Energy . . . A Retirement Shift

More Money Than Energy . . . A Retirement Shift

 

I was perusing our budget this morning, something I do on a regular basis in order to evaluate how each individual category is holding up, and what we might want to do next with the remaining allocations. 

In looking at the remaining fund buckets for several categories - Entertainment, Hobbies, and Travel primarily - it occurred to me that this may be the second year in a row we fall a bit short of utilizing all the allocated funds. Why? Because we simply don't have the intense desire to Go-Go-Go that defined the first dozen or so years of our retirement. We are increasingly happy in our coastal-close home, surrounded as we are by friendly neighbors, friendly people when we're out and about, friendly social clubs, picturesque walking routes, and flavorful places to pick up or sit down and enjoy small and not-so-small bites to eat. 

So is our somewhat diminished desire to pull down our suitcases a result of being genuinely satisfied in our current surroundings, a result of getting older and simply having a bit less energy, or perhaps some combination of the two?

I would like to think it's the former rather than the later. Regardless, I can say that I'm happier and more content than I've been in a few years. Our recent move, prompted by our realtor dangling offers to good to pass by on our former home, plus our desire to move away from an oddly unfriendly neighborhood, has ended up bringing some lovely new aspects into our retirement lives. Because we are now so darn close to the coast (an easy one mile downhill walk), we've joined some coastal-oriented organizations that have brought new friendships into our lives. And we are much enjoying the richness these new friendships are now providing. 

Perhaps I'm still under the glow of back-to-back social engagements yesterday, perhaps I'm simply excited about the fun evening we have scheduled for tonight, but whatever the reason, I woke up this morning feeling warm and fuzzy about our current life here and the years here still to come. And when my thoughts turned to travel, as I perused our 2026 remaining Travel budget funds, I realized I didn't want to travel to the degree that we used to, because doing so would cause us to miss out on a myriad of social events still to come this year.

What a change from prior retirement years, several of which involved traveling over six to eight months a year. (Any of you that might have followed my blog then can attest to the consistency of our Go-Go-Go! mentality and lifestyle.)

So I don't know if the change in my travel desire is a result of age, or simply due to growing location satisfaction.

Travel is our largest budget allocation, followed by Entertainment and Hobbies. We are already pretty occupied by our Hobbies during the week, and our Entertainment options over each weekend, and there is no conceivable way that we have enough residual energy to do more of either.

The only thing I'm currently feeling pulled toward is possibly a home even closer to the coast than we are now. It's not a strong enough feeling for me to feel compelled to take any action, but it's there. We'll see what happens to it in the months and years ahead.  

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Today's Healthy Focus Plan:  Walk seven miles along the beach, prep the house for my daughter and her partner's arrival, dress and depart for a dinner and tribute band event at one of our social clubs.

Monday Musings - So About My Closet . . .

 Monday Musings - So, About My Closet . . .

We had a lovely Easter, enjoying brunch with my mom and my spouse's sister, followed by a stroll along a lovely walking path that follows a stream through my mom's retirement community.

Otherwise, lots of fun April activities await, most of which involve a bit of dressing up, something I much enjoy. I have the biggest closet I've ever had in this house, and I love it an to an embarrassing degree. Funny story: a neighbor toured our home recently, and when we went into the bedroom dressing area, he expressed surprise that I had the entire walk in closet to myself (my spouse uses the adjacent reach-in closet). I was shocked, because not once had it ever occurred to me to share. I wasn't being selfish -  it had simply, genuinely never occurred to me that sharing was even an option! 😄

Though it may look like two identical mirrored wardrobe closets, they are not.
My spouse's on the right is a simple reach-in. Mine on the left is a big walk in.

Anyhow, before I get on to the fun things I'm looking forward to in April, here are some photos of my beloved closet. Another side story here - we have had beautiful closet systems put into all of our home closets except for mine. The reason?  I am so enamored of the way I was able to organize it out, I'm actually afraid of what a remodel might do to it! 

Two things here: 1) the hanging jewelry is all costume, so pretty much without any value (just saying!),
and 2) I have wire shelf dividers arriving today to better organize my purses
and I am so excited, lol!

I showed my closet to a neighbor recently, in order to get her opinion on the pros vs cons of redoing it, and her opinion went from "Of course you should remodel it to match the rest of the house!" before seeing my closet, to "Oh my gosh, leave it as is!" after viewing my organizational results.

Bit of a sidetrack there - sorry!

April events include a symphony, a play (The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock), a 70's tribute band event, an 80's tribute band event, a winery event, an anniversary celebration event (not ours), a concert, a visit from my older daughter and her partner, and getting my spouse's sister moved and settled into my mom's unit.

Because I love to organize so much, I'm actually looking forward to the move with my sister-in-law - so much organizing will be involved I can hardly wait!

I know, what can I say? Other than to admit that 1) yes, I do believe I have some OCD tendencies, and 2) Marie Kondo is one of my greatest personal hero's ever. 😄

 

Friday Five - We Doubled Our Money!

Friday Five - We Doubled Our Money!

It was an interesting week, medically speaking. All is well, but I'm acutely aware that I am in my 60's and my physical form is aging rapidly. We also had interactions with two sets of dear friends that are struggling through cancer, another heart wrenching reminder that we are all now on the downward side of that bell curve. 

Note to self:  Life is short. Live big. Love mightily.

1.  We had fun turning $100 into $200. We attended a recent event that included a $20 Wine Pull Booth. We bought five pulls, which resulted in the following, once we got home and looked up our pulls online:

    Bottle One- $15 retail

    Bottle Two- $20 retail

    Bottle Three- $45 retail

    Bottle Four- $52 retail

    Bottle Five- $65 retail

    

Retail total for the five pulls: $197, almost exactly twice what we paid. Plus, no sales tax, an additional $15 savings. 😃

2.  Restarting HRT turned out to a good, but somewhat costly decision. After consulting with my doctor, I went back on HRT in January of this year, because once fully off, my hot flashes returned roaringly. 

I was unaware that going off HRT and subsequently restarting it was not necessarily a simple matter for the aging body, and thus was just mildly concerned when some light spotting began to occur. 

However, a little research courtesy of Mr. Google quickly confirmed this was not normal, and that I should notify my doctor asap, which I did. Well, three appointments and two minor procedures later, all is well, even as the co-pays stacked up(!).  

I have about a year left until Medicare and I'm hoping the body hangs in there until then, because my current private insurance medical co-pay threshold is quite precipitous.

3.  We are meeting friends for a picnic at the Harbor tonight.  Enjoying picnic dinners at the harbor is a summer tradition that we get to enjoy in March this year, thanks to our very unusual, currently high temps. Hooray!

Picnics at the harbor are such a lovely and relaxing way to enjoy a beautiful evening. Parking in the area where we picnic is ample and free. The grass area where we generally set up is broad and never overcrowded. And the views are lovely - we sit at a slight elevation which allows us to enjoy the many large and small watercraft that go in and out of the harbor, plus ample marine animal life - sea lions, pelicans, cormorants, Great Blue and Night herons, Great White and Snowy egrets, and the occasional, but very regal, osprey.

 

4.  More music and reading in the evenings is now occurring. We were already light TV viewers, but in that we watched exactly zero TV during our recent three week cruise vacation, we decided to experiment and see if reducing from two shows per evening to just one show might result in higher quality evenings. Interestingly, the adjustment was very easy, and we are currently enjoying ending our at-home evenings with soft jazz and books. It's been a nice change.

5.  My happiest days are always when three things occur - lots of hours spent in motion outdoors, one flavor-filled meal, and some downtime spent reading. Additional time spent with family or friends is then the icing on the proverbial cake.

Tomorrow's plan is an 8 mile walk, a shared sandwich at our favorite local deli, then books and iced coffee while sitting outside on our patio. Based on these three things, I expect it to be a good day.

I hope you make it a good day, wherever you are!

Monday Musings - The Dress Fits!

 Monday Musings - The Dress Fits!

I haven't talked about my weight loss journey in a while, so I hope you'll forgive if I take today's blog post as an opportunity to do so, in that the public accountability goes a very long way in helping me stay the course.

We had a Hawaiian themed event to attend this weekend, on what initially was looking to be an 80+ degree day. In anticipation, I had set aside a shorter sun dress with Hawaiian flowers that I felt comfortable (i.e, thin) in.

But then the weather took a slight turn, and the highs for the event dropped into the high 60's/low 70's. Aaargh - what to do?

(And yes, these type of curveballs do throw me, because I use what I'll be wearing as an incentive to stay the course, calorie wise, in the days preceding.)

I went into my closet and started looking through my longer sun dresses, and came across one that I had purchased last year while we were in the Caribbean, but never worn, because what had seemed to fit just fine while on vacation, was actually a bit to tight to wear comfortably back home in my non-vacation life.

But, of course, that was 25 pounds ago. So, when I tried it back on over the weekend I was thrilled - it didn't feel tight any longer, and I happily accessorized and wore it to our event. And because I felt good/thin, I didn’t overeat as compensation. I stayed with my food plan for the event - water, protein, and vegetables.

.

(I realize the above shoes are a bit too clunky for the dress,
however, I have an increasingly painful bunion on one foot,
and it has altered my shoe game considerably! 😄 )

The offset to being able to wear smaller clothes that I feel good in, and the somewhat unpleasant reality, is that I don't get to eat very much food. That is the honest and ongoing truth to how I lost and am now keeping the weight off - I only have a select number of calories I can eat on any given day, and when I reach the limit, I am done. Even if my brain doesn't always agree.

 

So, I'm increasingly particular (picky if you will) about what I'm willing to use those calories on. I want flavorful, high quality food vs low quality food, because I feel better overall when I eat higher quality food, and less hungry in between meals.

And that's it. I fought hard to lose the weight, and now that it's gone I plan to continue with the changed habits that got me here for the duration of my life. Because there has not been one single moment over the last year when I've looked back and wished I'd eaten something that I chose not to. Only the reverse. 

I have read the following Reddit thread many times since reaching my goal weight. It's full of thoughts and advice that I have found to be extremely helpful in changing my mental stance on eating: Cal Poly Study: Successful Weight Loss Habits. If any of you are on a similar journey, I hope you find it to be of some help as well.

Friday Five - Feel The Heat

 Friday Five - Feel The Heat

We are experiencing an unusual heat event here this past and upcoming week, so I've had to put my brain temporarily into summer mode.  So odd in the middle of March, but I'm trying to roll with it.

1.  We're needing to shift our walks to the morning. One of my great joys in retirement is not waking up to an alarm (even as I often wake up on my own before 6am, LOL). But this week, all my planned walks are happening several hours earlier than normal in order to beat the heat. Yes, even as close to the beach as we are, it's been extremely warm. Right at the shoreline is still comfortably cool, but every walking route we take eventually veers away and hits pavement, at which point temperatures rise. All to say I'm temporarily setting my alarm clock until this seasonally-unusual heat dome passes.  

2.  I caved and turned on the A/C last night. We rely on the strong afternoon coastal breeze to cool the house in warmer weather, but if/when that breeze dies out, such as currently, the house can definitely get stuffy. So, I broke and turned on the A/C last night, trying hard not to see dollar bills flying by overhead as it kicked on. Our already-high electrical fees here in California recently went up again, so I'm definitely not looking forward to our next bill!

3.  We're going to San Juan, Puerto Rico for our Christmas Holiday family vacation. Our daughters are so excited with the plan they came up with, which in turn makes my spouse and I very happy. We'll be staying in adjacent apartments in UNESCO-designated Old Town San Juan between Christmas and New Years, tagging along with whatever activities the girls and their families come up with. It should make for a wonderful end to 2026 and start to 2027 to be all together. I read a reference to gifting money in this manner as 'Giving with a warm hand'. Enjoy gifting now, in a manner that can be experienced and enjoyed while we are alive, rather than waiting till we're, well, not. 

4.  I'm almost on auto-pilot with regard to my daily eating plan, after losing 25 pounds last year. Even after a full year of working to modify my eating habits, first to effect weight loss, then to maintain it, there are still days that I struggle. One thing I do, that is proving to be very helpful, is to make up the day's eating plan each morning while I sip my coffee. I go through my day, identify any calorie splurges, such as tonight, when I'll be having a 150 calorie, 6 oz glass of wine at our Club, and schedule out my remaining daily calories. This allows me to pleasantly anticipate and look forward to various caloric events, while still maintaining control over the rest of my day.

5.  We finalized our Easter Sunday plans.  Not religious over here - the ocean is my church - but others in my family are, so I do work to honor their beliefs even if not sharing them. Thus, this year's Easter plans will begin on Holy Saturday with taking my mom and my husband's sister to dinner and sunset viewing at our Club. This will be followed by all but me attending services on Easter Sunday morning, during which I'll pick up a freshly baked quiche from a French bakery in town, and take it, along with champagne and an array of fresh fruit, to my mother's home, where we'll all meet up for Easter brunch. Afterward my mom wants to take us along the creek trail that runs near her home, which I'm very much looking forward to.