♫ If God doesn’t live in Colorado ♪…

What a beautiful day here in northern Colorado this 27th day of January, 2011. Our temperature hit 60 degrees and the sun shone brightly all day. I'm told the local golf courses were crowded and I'll bet lots of people played hookey from work. I worked (if you can call it that) in the yard, raking cottonwood leaves and moving them by wheelbarrow into the garden. Beneath the leaves I found new green shoots of weeds and perennials which fueled my spring fever but probably exposed those tender shoots to upcoming freezing temperatures and drying winds.

One of the many things I love about Colorado is having these spring-like days in midwinter. It boosts my spirits like nothing else. I'm drawing a layout for a garden shed that we might build inside the garden walls later in the spring. And Bob used his long pry bar to poke drainage holes in the bottoms of the stock tanks we moved to the garden and will plant with vegetables in a few short weeks. Tomorrow will be even nicer but I'm going to spend the day with a friend and may not have time for the yard.

Losing Weight and Being Healthy

Finally, after years of grousing about my weight and wishing I were thinner I joined Weight Watchers again! I've been on their plan twice before and was successful both times so I went back to it and this time joined with a friend. That was the first week of May 2010. Now here we are the 24th of January, 2011 and I am 36 lbs lighter with my lifetime goal in sight, only 8 pounds to go! I'm very happy that I have been successful and hope to keep this weight off the rest of my life. If anything, I've learned that I need the structure and peer support that Weight Watchers provides to stay with the program.
I've done a lot of thinking and reading about being over weight and the best way to lose those pounds and keep them off. There is a lot of advice "out there" and all kinds of fashionable diets, popular books, and testimonials. Right now I'm reading a best-selling book by Rory Freeman and Kim Barnouin titled "Skinny Bitch". The book is a gift from my sister and I find it to be cleverly written and full of good advice, most of which I don't plan to follow. The authors say the best (and maybe the only) way to get thin, stay thin, and be healthy is to become a vegan and give up all meat, eggs, and dairy products. It's not that I disagree with them but I am not willing to make such a drastic change in my eating habits. I did go out and buy a carton of coconut milk to try in my oatmeal in an effort to avoid all the hormones and antibiotics found in cow's milk.
So here I am at the beginning of a new year carrying much less weight around on my arthritic knees and feeling good about myself. I hope I can continue this self-improvment program throughout the year and add regular exercise to my daily regime.