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. 😄