Lots of food, lots of exercise

Did my early morning freezing tennis, and I feel excellent for it!  The friend I play with is a relatively new friend and a cancer survivor and she loves living life to the fullest...and that seems to include playing tennis as early as necessary rather than say "not this week - gotta work."  Or "not this Saturday - temps are right around freezing."  Nope - we played.  We laughed.  We had a blast.  And we burned over 500 calories.  (And I'm slowly improving my backhand to the point where I don't end up going completely over the fence or accidentally throwing my racket as I hit the ball.)    The best part about tennis, other than this great friend?  We have no rules.  We know the rules, but we don't care all that much who is supposed to serve or if the ball bounced once or twice, etc.  Oh, it's fun!!

Other exercise today:  Walked the long stairway at the start of a mountain trail near my town with my guy.  Long dirt path uphill leading to the stairs, then 3 times up and down the stairs, 16 min total: 150 calories.  I doubled up on the stairs b/c doing so made me ache right where I most want to improve my muscle tone - my quads.  I want that definition down the side of my legs just about as much as I want a flat belly.  My fiance suggested I try it 3 steps at a time next time, even if that means I'm doing full form lunges to reach that far, and have to go considerably slower.  I think I'll try that!

I posted these pics last time I climbed these stairs, but here we go again:

This photo is from some other hiker's blog I found when I google searched images of this trail.  Doncha love that dude sticking his head out from under the staircase like a bridge troll?

Your Daily Summary

-78

CALORIES REMAINING

Goal	Food	Exercise	= Net
1210	2031	- 743	1288

One more quick spurt of exercise: after a trip into the city tonight, I had to walk from the train to a friend's house to borrow her car to get home.  Mild hill, walked very fast since I had to go past a bar that kinda gives me the creeps with some grubby looking unfamiliars outside, and then down some very dark, empty sidewalks to get to the house.  So like a speedwalk.  It was only like 55 calories, but I tallied it up to counteract some of the crap I ate today:  McDonald's Angus burger (hold the mayo and 1 of the 2 slices of cheese, since y'know, I'm eating healthy here folks...Pass me a fry?), and about 3/4 of a LARGE popcorn at the movies (hold the extra butter b/c...yeah, y'know...)

I think I caught a very teeny tiny glimpse of a new mindset today that may or may not eventually develop into my full fledged mindset....that remains to be seen...But it was focused more on my fitness than on my weight loss.  Like a week may come soon when I don't care what the scale says, but I DO care how many times I can climb these stairs, or how many push ups I can do on my toes.  (Still maxing out at 14, and WOW that 14th is a killer!!  And that's not even consistent - sometimes it's 8.)

This past month I've lost 1 inch from my thighs, .25 inch from my calves, .75 inch from my hips, and not a damn thing from my waist.  (Oddly, my goal was to lose mainly from my waist/belly.  If I'm not gonna, I'd rather keep my big round butt and sizeable thighs intact to hopefully make my waist seem small in comparison.  I'd far prefer this:

to this:

Or this: