Moving Right Along!                 

Time that is, it just keeps moving along and I just keep getting older as I move along with it.  I have really been struggling with exercise.  My issues with lots of pain in knees and hips did not go away with the weight loss as I had hoped.  I guess there are only so many things losing lots of weight can fix :(  You will all get a kick out of this; I have been perusing Youtube for exercise videos to try.  All last week I did The Leslie Sansone walk 1 mile video and even got my daughter to do it with me twice.  Then I looked up Richard Simmons and found this video that was made in 1986 called, "Richard Simmons and the Silver Foxes" so even though I haven't yet decided to let the silver in my hair win I decided to check it out.  He does a low-impact aerobic work-out with the mom or dad of some famous celebrities.  They include, Farrah Fawcett's mom, Dustin Hoffman's dad, Al Pacino's dad, Sylvester Stallone's mom and Richard Simmon's mom.  It was still a little hard for me to do but I persevered.  Most of them have passed on by now but they were my age or older when they made this video so I figured it was tailor made for me.  Even though it hurts I have to keep moving and do the best I can.

It's been a crazy week here at the White house.  On Monday our youngest son was on his way to pick his dad up from work when he was hit by a 16 y/o boy making an illegal left turn.  Blessedly, our son is okay but the only working car we had is totaled. Then we found out from our mechanic that my car, which he has had for 2 weeks, is just not worth fixing.  The interesting thing about this whole situation is that I have just not been stressing over it.  I keep remembering a bible verse, Romans 8:28 which says, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." I don't know what God has planned for my family through all of this but I am expecting a blessing somehow through it all.  I will keep you posted.

Tomorrow is my 47th anniversary and you may recall that my goal was to get out of the 170's by then.  This morning my weight was 168.4, woo hoo!  My scale is a Tanita Body Fat Monitor scale.  After you weigh you have to stay on the scale a few more seconds and then it shows your body fat percentage.  It has four ranges at the bottom of the display.  A - sign, a 0, a + sign and a ++ sign and below those in the same order it reads, Underfat, Healthy, Overfat and Obese.  It gives you a number that is your percentage.  When I first started this journey I was in the Obese range and the number was 50.  That number has gradually gone down and eventually moved into the 40's and the Overfat range.  In the last week it has moved to 34.5 and is in the Healthy range.  I still feel like I need to lose a good 20-25 pounds but at least I am in a much better range for fat percentage.  Still cannot believe I was 50% fat!!  My BMI was 39.5 and is now 27.1 which is still considered overweight.  So many different guidelines out there for how we should be.  For me, I just want to be healthy and I think I am getting there!

You may recall the story of my friend, Clay, who had surgery on 9/24/13 and is still in the hospital.  Well, today, after 4 months in the hospital, he was moved to rehab and seems to be really on the upswing.  He had a stage IV wound which means it went all the way to the bone and wouldn't heal.  I am so glad he is finally starting to improve.  I can't wait to hear the entire story behind what happened because what he has experienced is not the norm for weight loss surgery patients.

Well, it is starting to snow here in Colorado again.  The mountains are supposed to get about 30 inches!  That will make the skiers very happy!  Down here on the plains we are supposed to get 4-8 inches.  No matter where you live it seems to be crazy weather so everybody be safe out there!