Moving Along. Estimates.

I joined a gym.

This is not shocking and new for me.

For most of my life--from my 20's through my 30's--I was a gym member. And I actuall went, too.

I went when I lived in New York City in the late 80's.

I worked out at the UCLA gym during most of the 90's.

Even after I finished my Ph.D. at UCLA, I worked out: I joined a gym in Hollywood.

Living in Philadelphia, I worked out at a gym.

But after a bunch of health problems, I stopped going. I would walk or jog in Santa Cruz down near the ocean on West Cliff Drive. Lovely.

But after dieting myself down about 16 pounds and finding my weight staying there, I decided that exercise might be helpful.

Also my scales--both my old and new one--were telling me that I wasn't losing that much body fat. (The measure it by passing electricity through you. Sounds strange, but you don't feel it.) Anyway, it's just an estimate, but I thought it was worth doing something about.

So 30 or 40 minutes of treadmill time several times a week, plus a little weight lifting is now the order of the day.

In the first five days, I lost two pounds of fat. No, my total weight didn't change much. But according to the scale--and it's pretty consistent over time, even if it varies from day to day--my percentage of body weight that's fat went down.

I was 20% body fat when I started.

Which I found kind of weird and creepy: as if all the fat might be pushed to one side of my body and then kind of lopped off.

Now it's down closer to 17%.

I'd love to have it be 15% or less.

But I have a feeling the rest of this transformation will be v-e-r-y slow.

Like maybe losing a pound or two a week.

But I'm enjoying it. It is invigorating.

And I can eat more!

Sadly, of course, one wants to eat a lot more. Before I ate 1200-1400 calories a day. When I exercise, I want to eat about 2000! That's probably reasonable, but the exercise gadget I run on tell me I'm burning around 300 calories--again, probably an estimate--so that's still an extra 300.

Today I ate 300 calories of breakfast--soy milk & cottage cheese. (I was in a hurry!) Then I exercised, then ate lunch with my friend Alison. BIG greasy lunch. Wonderful, but neither small nor low-calorie. (About 750 calories. I'm estimating again. )

But I wasn't that hungry the rest of the day, drank a nonfat latte, ate an apple, and had fish and veggies for supper.

So from 164 to 147 pounds, from 20% body fat to 17%, between January 6 and February 17th.

Slowly but surely.

Moving along.

--E. R. O'Neill