WEEKLY STATS  Weight: 150   Waist:  32.5″  Hips:  40.5″  Thighs:  23″

This past week has been full of “every days.”  One after another, in fact.  Days when there is barely time to cook dinner let alone wash the dishes, days when the work of running my business feel rather overwhelming and barely manageable, days with temper tantrums and muscle spasms.  That sort of every-day-hum-drum.

I am continuing to make progress with my tailbone issues which has required a fair amount of tender loving care.  Saturday I woke up with a gnarly back spasm and today I had a migraine  but kept on teaching.  So.  My practice has suffered a bit.  The photos didn’t happen.  But I’m still in the game.

Amidst all of this, I’ve done Pilates every day.  It has become a habit now.  And that’s great.  I had to lighten my workouts to accommodate my physical ailments, but that only stopped me from doing a few exercises overall.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could still do even with severely restricted motion of my neck (from the muscle spasm).  All I had to do was move with more lightness and less emphasis on really making my muscles work through each stretch.  The reward was a sense of accomplishment and feeling better overall in spite of my acute issue.

There’s another point that I wanted to raise about the every day and I believe that it means a slight addition to the grace plan.  In my practice I’ve know many people who “woke up one day” to find twenty extra pounds that were surprisingly difficult to shed.  I’ve already made the point that caloric intake has something to do with this.  Now that I’m testing out the effects of exercise alone on my outward form, I realized that I really ought to add that to the list.

Those pounds really do go on one at a time, a little bit every day.  So paying a little more attention on a regular basis, and exercising regularly – for all sorts of good reasons – are two good ways to keep the calories-in and the calories-out in balance.

I’ve learned that my clothing is the best indicator of what my shape is.  And that it does not do me much good to get down when my clothes get tight.  Better to get moving.  Often when I’ve lamented my expanded self, people have encouraged me to accept myself as I am.  That’s great.  And when I face up to my tight clothes by making a plan to slim back down, that is precisely what I’m doing.  Self acceptance is not synonymous with self denial or neglect.  If the pants are tight, the body is bigger and unless a change is made it’s probably going to keep going in the same direction.  There are all sorts of good reasons to be careful about weight gain.  It’s different for each of us but an important life skill to practice for a lifetime of good health.

Here’s to good health every day, starting with today.  Now I’m off for a workout!