Sorry that sometimes I take a bit to respond. I do read all the comments, usually within a day. I almost exclusively use my iPhone for mfp, but when I need to type something long, I use my Mac. Evidently, that takes a bit of effort, lol!

Last weekend, I went on a mission trip with our church youth. We cleaned up what I call 'tree-debris' SW of where we live, from a fire and then, later flood. We cut and moved wood, some out of a stream. A couple days later, I was really feeling it. I typically only do 1-2 hours of yard work at a time, so there was good reason for muscle soreness.

My latest project is getting my tush in gear and getting prepared in case we have to evacuate for a wildfire. We have pulled together a bug-out kit with clothing and toiletries and made a list of what to grab, if we have to leave quickly. We have just updated our home insurance (increased coverage to reflect higher construction costs). My next step is to video our house contents. Then, we will get a safety deposit box 'down the hill' (not in our mountain neighborhood) and store the hard drive with the house videos along with important papers and some photos, of course. Even at 60 years old, I realize that there is always more adulting to do!

I hope all of you are doing well. Weight-wise, I have been struggling to maintain (although I still want to drop a few more pounds). I haven't been tracking, even though I keep saying I will. I have found a very strong and direct correlation with tracking and keeping your weight down; who would have thought!?! I am tracking today, though. I do exercise pretty much every day, so there is that, at least.

My progress on prepping for wildfires has stalled over the last week or two. My husband purchased the adaptor needed for our external hard drive to mate with my (newer, not new) Mac (which doesn't take 'regular' USB's - whaaa?)). I've had that or 1-2 wks now. We upped our coverage with our insurance company a couple weeks ago. We realized that we needed to measure each room because the historical information is questionable (from realtor, maybe Zillow, when we bought it several years ago). We will adjust the home policy once again, if needed. I still have to take the videos of our house and contents. I did scope out which bank to use for safe deposit box. After today, this project goes back to #1 priority. Oh, and tomorrow, we are having a fire mitigation company (usually landscapers) come to quote to mitigate our property. I have done a lot of this work for the first 2 years we lived here (hadn't been done for years), but I can't reach a lot and my husband is not up for all the chain sawing of the larger, dead branches. We have two acres and I pretty much did all I could reach with loppers, excluding two little oak and pine groves (oak tress are no more than 12' bushes, they don't grow tall here due to the elevation). But all of our property needs tending to, for the higher stuff. I have made a huge slash pile, that they will get rid of, too. Our neighbors used them last year and recommended them. For those not in the western US...I did not know this being in the Midwest...'slash' is what I call dead tree-debris (a little rhyming there). At our elevation, there are a lot of Ponderosa pines and their lower branches slowly die off. Having this dead wood on our property increases the risk of our house catching on fire, if there is a local fire. This is true for the tens of thousands of pine cones on our property, too. Slash is any dead wood. A slash pile is a pile of dead wood, lined up, so it is easier to pick-up, if using machinery (all lined up, about 4' length pieces). My slash pile is 20-25' long and about 3-4' high (it compresses down with time, was higher when I piled it up). We have lived on wooded property before and I am well trained on picking up sticks!!! Thus ends today's lesson on wild fires; sorry I am rambling.

I have been working with one of the local charities to get me set-up to provide pro-bono (free) counseling services to their clients that may need it. (Counseling was my second career). They were re-vamping a few programs and among things, hiring a new social worker, who will be the person making referrals to me. Anyway, that is all complete and I start in about a week. I will only be working one afternoon a week (all I want to). My husband and I have already scheduled our summer camping trips around it. We usually camp for one week and then are home for one week.

I apologize for anything repetitive; I did not go back and review what I have previously posted.

Anyway, I thought of you ladies yesterday when I went to buy some jeans. I pretty much live in jeans, here in CO; CO is a very casual place to live. My sister lives in the South and they seem to dress up a lot more than we do. The Midwest, where we moved from, is somewhere in between. Anyhow, my jeans have been slowly dying. I threw out one pair (I wear them beyond donating them...I truly hate to clothes shop), relegated one pair to be 'paint clothes', and relegated one pair to the 'bug-out kit' (for wild fire evacuations). I was down to the one pair that I wore shopping, lol. (OK, there is one more, a 'black' pair, which has faded to gray. Did I want gray? No, I wanted black. Again, it goes back to wearing the same clothing forever. This are my 'I don't have another pair clean' jeans.) But I digress... So, I bought 3 pairs---all in size 8's!!! My current jeans (all of them mentioned above) are 10's that have been taken in 1-2 times. I tried on 4 brands and all of them fit in size eight. (And, yes, I know about vanity sizing, but am choosing to ignore that for now, possibly forever). I had purchased 2 pairs of shorts in size 8 a few months back for a trip, but this just reinforces that I am a smaller size, which is nice. It is especially nice because I have gained back a few pounds and have not yet been able to buckle down to counting calories again. At least I am holding steady at this number and not gaining any more. I usually drop a few pounds in the summer due to all of the hiking that we do.

I believe that this calorie counting/watching will be for the rest of my life. I know a lot of people on mfp say this, but I was to stamp my feet in protest. I never had to even think about my weight when younger. Sorry for the whining (whinging for folks in the UK?). Perhaps some of you can relate.

And, for you all to have a laugh, it snowed here on the 1st of June, a good 5". Some things just seem wrong. This was atypically late in the year for us, but we always want more precipitation, in any form. My town has gotten better, drought-wise, for the last two years (yea!).

Hopefully, there aren't too many typos. Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

Hello, and Becca, I am still here, alive and kicking. My weight continues to be higher than my lowest, but I have started working on that. I am just not up to calorie counting, so I am working on intuitive eating. Actually, giving thought to what I eat, not just giving myself permission for anything, in any quantity, lol! I’ll go back to calorie counting in a week, if this doesn’t work. I’m into it maybe a good half week or so; I have had many false starts.

I continue to exercise most days. Getting in my 25 minutes on the elliptical machine is critical for me to lose/maintain weight. I also do a little of lifting weights, stretching and a few PT exercises. PT, btw, has pretty much fixed me up. I no longer have pain in my shoulder or hip.

My husband and I have been busy with him having some medical procedures and minor surgery. He’s doing well. He has one surgery behind him and another coming up (different problems). It seems like a lot all at once, but it is just a coincidence that it is all coming together at the same time. Needless to say, we have already met his deductible for health insurance this year, which is a far too high of an amount!

I haven’t gotten very far on fire mitigation activities. I did measure the inside of my house to provide better numbers for the insurance company of how much area is wood or tile to carpeting. I was only able to provide estimates previously. My next step is to delete old files from my external hard drive before making videos of my house (to place in a safe deposit box at a bank). It is really hanging over my head because the hard drive doesn’t allow deleting (why????); I have to reformat it. No doubt, it is only a few steps, but I’m guessing I won’t be able to figure it out from the manual and will have to call them. I anticipate being on the phone endlessly for such a simple (?) thing to do. Back in the day (decades ago), I know I reformatted floppy disks, probably even when they were floppy, not hard plastic! Procrastination at its best.

Cupcake, I am so happy to be back counseling. I retired when my husband did (earlier than anticipated due to his health problems). I have missed it.

I forgot to mention something! On Cupcake's thread, I mentioned that I liked her having a time line for some goals. Cupcake, I think that you have monthly goals. I think I will state mine for a week (approximately); a month, I believe, is too long for me. I say approximately because the actual time will be between my posts on this thread.

I plan to do the following until I write an update post here again:
-continue with active (paying attention!) intuitive eating
-start to dig into my hard drive to reformat, at least attempt to reformat it by myself, not necessarily to make the no-doubt-needed and definitely-dreaded phone call to the company.

I do realize that writing about my fire mitigation efforts are maybe an odd topic on mfp, but stating steps/goals/updates about them makes me feel a little more accountable for them (and increase the possibility that I will actually do them).

And Becca, I have often thought that I just need to calorie count every now and again, to keep my portion sizes correct in my head. It's an excellent thought and would be even better if I actually did it, lol! I still might. I have often though to just weigh high calorie items, like nuts. Any yet, I haven't!

Hello, ladies, here’s an update on my life and the progress of my challenges…

I continue to exercise most days, at least five, usually six days a week. It is, at this point, just something I do now, a given in my day. I don’t exercise only when there is an early morning conflict. I still use the elliptical 25 min a day, along with some weight-lifting, PT exercises (for maintenance, so-to-speak, I no longer have pain), and stretching/yoga.

I am back to counting calories; I started this several days ago. Intuitive eating was not cutting it for me (a hugely sad statement!). I have 1200 cal/day and I give myself half of my exercise calories. My elliptical machine says I burn 150 calories (recorded: 75) and I am just guessing at least 50 calories for the other exercising (recorded: 25), for a total of 100 additional calories to eat. I had thought that strength training was not assigned any calories by mfp, but I recently read that they put them under cardio. There is no way that I am going to put in the effort to record the various non-elliptical exercises into mfp. It seems like a lot of work for the value and also, I vary those exercises just a bit too much to do this.

Fire mitigation efforts: We hired a fire mitigation company to come and remove the branches that needed chainsawing and to fell some trees. A good dozen smaller trees were removed. Although you can see the stumps (fairly flush to the ground), you can hardly tell that any trees were removed. They also limbed up a whole bunch of trees. Fire can either sweep along the ground (thus limbing up) or along the crowns of the trees (thus fire breaks). I only do lopping (using loppers, long handled scissor-bypass cutters); chain saws are too heavy for me and this work would be too much for my husband, who does do some chainsawing. They also removed my slash pile (branches from my lopping work, probably 3-4’ high. 4’ deep, and 25’ long—a couple years of lopping on my part). The great thing is that our privacy was not reduced at all.

Insurance updating for fire reasons (I live in Colorado in the US, btw): After having measured the rooms, we contacted out home insurer again and, for a second time, increased our coverage, reflecting the accurate measurements of our house and the local going rate for construction. I figured out my external hard drive and have started to make videos of our house and its contents. This will go on the hard drive, which we will place in a safe deposit box in a bank ‘down the hill’ (Denver area, we live in the mountains). So, I am making progress on the fire front. This summer is a very rainy one for us; my area is almost fully out of a drought condition. This is, of course, all better in regards to fire. Truthfully though, even after a week or more of daily rain (short times mostly, but a couple longer ones), a day or two of sun and breeze and the fire risk rating is back up to ‘extreme’.

Earlier in may thread I mentioned that I like the idea of putting closer timelines on my goals like Cupcake does like ( @CupcakeCrusoe ). Right now, I am again, in the Beach Body effort mode (stealing the term, not using that exercise program). My husband and I have a beach vacation in January, which means being very careful around the holidays. I am not sure what short term goals, weight-wise, that I should have, one pound a week? I want 10 lbs/wk!

An additional wrench in my diet are the results from recent blood tests and dexascan. A year ago, my cholesterol was inching higher (still okay) and this year, it is in the borderline high range. I know that the thought these days is that you can’t achieve very much, diet wise, on lowering cholesterol, but I have changed some of my foods. Instead of occasional oatmeal for breakfast, I eat it most days. I continue to eat my high fat Greek yogurt and low fat cottage cheese because they are low in cholesterol, but I am eating less cheddar cheese (higher cholesterol). And now, I always add sunflower seeds to my dinner salads, instead of rarely. I don’t eat too many nuts because of the calorie content, even though I love them. Oh, and I switched my dessert (every night!) from pudding to fresh fruit. I have been really big on vegetables for years, but only somewhat into fruit (although i love fruit, too…I love all food, sigh). I eat poultry and fish more than beef and pork already, so that has not changed that much. Other ideas are definitely appreciated.

So, after shifting around what I eat for the higher cholesterol, I then got a body scan for bone density (I am 61 years old, and last year and this year, I have lost a total of 1/2”, more on this later). I have osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis. Now I need to increase my calcium (and maybe something else, my doctor hasn’t gotten back with me yet and I have not yet consulted Dr. Google). I have purchased calcium enriched OJ yesterday. Input on this would be great, too. The X-ray lady measured my height and came up with 5’ 4.5”. I was 5’ 4” until a year ago, then 5’ 3.5” last year and this year, per my family doctor. The X-ray lady said to go by her number and that she believes nurses don’t give time for people to fully stand up before measuring. I have to disagree; I always have sufficient time to stand up and think, ‘stretch!’, when being measured. I want every mm for BMI! Truly, it is far more related to reliability and validity/calibration of the equipment. I will use the X-ray lady’s number, because, well, again, BMI. I just put in my #’s into my BMI calculator with my weight from this morning; I am at exactly 25 BMI (147.8 lbs). My goal was 135 lbs (and had gotten down to 136.3 lbs), but I have reduced my goal to 130 lbs, to help with cholesterol numbers. I have 19 more weeks before the trip to lose 17.8 lbs. Doable, but I’m not pleased about it, haha.

Oh, and reading on Google, I found out that people at higher elevations (I’m at 7,850’) have higher cholesterol due to their hemocrit increasing to cope with the lower oxygen. Something related to the measurement/calculation of cholesterol. I’ve read research on this and yet to understand it (pubmed (US) gov). Of course, the maximum guidelines for cholesterol are not adjusted for elevation (probably for very good reasons, yea, I get it (pout, pout)). Both of my parents had high cholesterol, but their diets could have been better, too.

So, another longggg post. Do know ladies that I read every one of the posts in this group and I am rooting for all of you. Maggie

Going camping for six days…goal: not gain weight…stretch goal: lose one pound.

I had a minute, sipping coffee, and thought I would post an update on my challenges.

First off, I had an epiphany (for me). It is truly one of those obvious (duh!) thoughts. Background: well over a year ago (2 years?), I realized that I had no excuse to not exercise pretty much every day because I am now retired. A big excuse while working, raising kids, getting another degree, (and, and, and), was that I was too busy. I was busy (like we all are) and I would exercise for a few months and then not for a few months, back and forth, literally for decades. So, I am now a pretty much every day exerciser. I schedule my various activities to work around this, as well (I have impressed myself with this last one!).

Logging is another thing. I lost weight (10-15 lbs) by logging; it works for me. Not logging, seemingly, does not. I really don't fully understand or accept this because I never had to keep track of what I ate at all when I was younger. (Oh, well, suck it up, Buttercup). I regained my weight (which you knew, if you read my rambling posts). I don't like logging because it slows down my cooking. I am not one for following recipes, as I go off on riffs, based upon the food that I need to use up / have in the house (again, like all of us, I would think). Thus, logging takes a good moment for me. I dislike reading other people's posts saying it only takes a few minutes each day because, well, it undermines my excuse to not log my foods. So, my epiphany today was that even though it may take about 15-20 minutes to log each day, I am retired, so I don't have the excuse that I don't have the time. So blatantly obvious, but I did not translate thoughts about exercising to logging my foods. (Slow on the uptake, evidently).

I have been sporadically logging for a few weeks and am getting nowhere in losing my weight again. I really think that this epiphany (for me) will make a difference, because it did for exercising. I have the goal to re-lose this weight again by mid/late Jan, when we go on a beach vacation. I have incentive!

A disincentive for me (which I need to ignore), is that my clothes from my lower weight still fit. And yet, when I was within 1.3 lbs (1.3 lbs!!!) of my goal weight (135lbs), l realized that I could lose more. I'm aiming for 135 right now, but my new goal (previously shared) is 130 lbs. A few extra pounds off may/should help my borderline high cholesterol. I was 125 lbs 'before children'. Maybe I could go down to that, but I am not sure. I will judge that when I get to 130 lbs.

Insurance / fire mitigation project: Slow progress, but progress...I continue to take videos of the house; I just completed the kitchen, video'ing the overall kitchen, opening all of the cupboards and whatnot. It is a doable, but big, project. I have three more rooms, garage, my husband's workshop, and the outside of the house to do. Then, I will upload all of these flicks to the external hard drive and get a bank safe deposit box to drop it into. I plan to occasionally drop thumb drives in the box, when we do significant updates. (I'm not touching that external hard drive again; it is an irritating thing, lol).

I doubt that any of my posts inspire anyone, but I hope, at a minimum, they may be a bit amusing. I read everyone's posts and wish you all well with your challenges. I am saddened that some of the members in this group are not actively posting, possibly not logging into mfp at all. I wish them the best, as well. Maggie

Not gaining is awesome! Your tracking, no doubt, is critical. 10K steps/day is also awesome! And so is working on your decluttering goal. Now I wonder how many ‘steps’ I get in with my ellipticating!

Decidedly so, Morticia!