WOW

Who would have ever thought I would write anything let alone a blog. Or at least make an attempt to. I'm 51yrs old and I have been inspired by my youngest brother to write a blog. I talked with him last night about his upcoming trip to Cincinnati and he told me about his blog.When I went to his blogspot I learned a lot about him I didn't know. I got married when he was 12 and moved 100 miles away. Then off to collage he went and after graduating he went on with his adult life. Moving to St. Louis and then to Arizona so I'm lucky to see him once a year. But reading his blog told me a lot about him. The longest time I've spent with him in the last 33 years was 2 weeks in Japan in 1997 and a week in Michigan in 2005 and both of those were packed with lots of other family members so the one on one time is scarce. Funny we go through life passing by so fast we sometimes don't see what were passing. I have spent more time with my brother Thom and my sister Theresa so I don't feel cheated, but Pat was just a kid when I left home. Not that the rest of us weren't. The one thing I really liked about his blog was the daily record keeping about his running and weight loss. I think it might help me keep more on track about my own walking and weight loss if I write about it on a daily basis. I started out back in Nov 2006 when I went to the doctors for my checkup for my thyroid medication and he told me my blood pressure was extremely high. I'm 51 yrs old I've never had high blood pressure in my life.I wasn't too concerned. I told him I would monitor it and if it was still high I would come back in. Well I really put it in the back of my mind until I was in Target about 2 weeks later and saw a blood pressure cuff and took my blood pressure and it was still high. My husband Bob was with me and he told me I should really think about getting more exercise and starting a diet because this was a very serious matter. I still wasn't too concerned but maybe just a little. Christmas came and went I still had not made any changes in my life when we were visiting my parents in Cincinnati and I asked them about their blood pressure history and took my blood pressure with their machine. Well guess what my blood pressure was still high. I couldn't believe it. Bob scared me into making a doctors appointment to get medicine for my blood pressure as it wasn't improving on it's own. After going back to the doctors and realizing I would always be on blood pressure medicine and who knows what else I decided I had to make some changes. Well now it's Feb 2007 and Bob came home from his daily walk (he has been walking or jogging daily for many years) today he walked at the mall because it was too icy outside and hard to walk. He told me I shoud try it. Yea right that takes some effort on my part. Well the next day we were meeting some friends of ours for dinner near the mall and I asked Bob if he would go early and walk at the mall with me just to see if I would like it. He did and we walked for maybe 20 minutes not too fast. It wasn't terrible but it still took more effort than my normal getting out of bed. Well guess what to my surprise I decided to go to the mall the next day and see how much walking I could do on my own. While walking I noticed that people were in there with their dogs. Dogs in a mall well they were everywhere I think I saw at least 10 or 12 dogs in the mall that day. It had been very cold the last couple of weeks so everyone was taking their dogs to the mall. I was so amazed by this I called Amy to tell her and ended up walking the mall for about an hour. I walked more that afternoon then I had in the past 3 months total. Amy told me she would like to start walking every day so we decided to meet the next day after she got out of school. In the mall outside the health food store they have a scale if you put 50 cents in it will print out your weight so I got the courage to get on. And it was ugly just as ugly as when I went to the doctors way back in Nov. I guess I should be thanking my lucky stars that it wasn't higher with the holidays packed in there but it was a whopping 170 lbs. I had alot of walking to do ahead of me. Amy and I meet every day at 3:30 and walk 7 times around the mall about 8000 steps. I try to walk Phoebe (our dog who thinks she's human) sometime during the day or evening and I wear a pedometer every day all day long. Weight starting dropping off a couple of lbs a week I lost about 16 lbs so far. I really enjoy the walking more than I ever thought I would. I have this surge of energy that came form somewhere not sure where but I like it. I've been gardening too. Something I never liked before but now seem to enjoy a lot. But with all the good some bad sneaks its way in and in May I got poisen Ivey. I came down with it on Mothers Day. It was all over my face. I got scared and went to the doctors the very next day he gave me a shot of Cortizone and put me on Predizone. Well I think I'm allergic to steriods. The poison ivy got very bad, then came hives. I was miserable to say the least. For two weeks life sucked. The steroids made me puffy and gain a little of my weight back. It was hard to walk some days as I felt terrible. When I was finished with the medicine the puffiness went away and I loss the weight gain but now I'm stuck and haven't been losing. So I thought if I wrote about my daily progress it might just help. I'm stuck at 155lbs. I still walk everyday but I think my pace has slowed down or maybe I need to cut back on my calorie intake as I lose more weight. Were getting ready to go on vacation to Michigan in a couple of weeks and I would like to lose some more weight before we leave. We will be walking alot I hope so I'm not too concern about gaining on this vacation. I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a calorie counter book to help along the way. Today I had to get my hair done and the weather is pretty humid so I went to the mall to walk I walked 7 times around it takes me about an hour and 10 min. Tonight I walked Phoebe around the neighborhood for about 30 minutes and I'm worn out. Tomorrow is a big day the Apple iphone comes out I'm going to try and buy one but it might not be easy.

weight 155.8
temp: 75
humidity 79%
10,760 steps or 4.75 miles
calories burned 476