{"id":2517,"date":"2010-09-04T23:44:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-05T03:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/?p=2517"},"modified":"2010-09-04T23:44:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-05T03:44:00","slug":"the-perfect-dress-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/?p=2517","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Dress: Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now that we&#8217;ve all had a chance to marvel at the wonder and beauty of The Dress, the real question is, will I fit into it in time?<br \/>\n<!--more A long entry about what happened in the last eight weeks is under the cut.--><br \/>\nI bought the dress on July 10th.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.browncoatball.com\/2010\/\" target=\"blank\">The Browncoat Ball<\/a> is the weekend of October 22nd.  After trying the dress on, I decided I&#8217;d probably have to lose about 25 pounds to fit into it, although it&#8217;s tough to say whether that&#8217;s the correct mark to hit.  The tag reads &#8220;size 10?&#8221; because of course, the woman didn&#8217;t make it to sell, she made it to her own measurements.  Also, I have no idea whether 25 pounds would put me back into a size 10, a 12, an 8, or what.  I think it&#8217;s the right target, but who knows?<\/p>\n<p>So.  25 pounds in 15 weeks would be 1.6 pounds a week.  Not a lot of forgiveness in that schedule if you slack off for a week when, for example, you go to the beach with your family as I did a couple of weeks ago.  To stay on track, I should have lost 13 pounds by now.  How am I doing?<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve lost 9.<\/p>\n<p>So no.  I&#8217;m not on pace, and I probably will not be able to fit into the dress for the Browncoat Ball.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ymcacharlotte.org\/harris\/facilities\/facilities.aspx\" target=\"blank\" title=\"It's fun to stay at the Y...MCA!\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ymcacharlotte.org\/images\/branches\/Harris\/Facilites\/HA_08_facilities_0001.jpg\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" align=\"right\"><\/a>But you know what?  Surprisingly, I&#8217;m okay with that.  Sheath dresses like this are notoriously unforgiving in the chest area, and even when I was a svelte size 6 that was an issue for me.  It&#8217;s possible that even if I got down to a perfect 10, as it were, I wouldn&#8217;t have been able to wear the dress.  I&#8217;m okay with it because in working toward this goal, other things happened.<\/p>\n<p>I joined <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ymcacharlotte.org\/harris\/home.aspx\" target=\"blank\">the YMCA<\/a> because they have an indoor track, very useful for a runner in the summertime in the South.  And until I started work this past week, I was running every day or so.  I do the Couch to 5K program and downloaded an excellent app for that onto my iPod.  I can listen to my music and it verbally cues me when I should walk and when I should run.  I&#8217;ve achieved a higher level than I ever have before.<\/p>\n<p><a ref=\"http:\/\/www.tvini.org\/images\/misc\/exercise\/MtDoom1.jpg\" target=\"blank\" title=\"Mount Doooooom!\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tvini.org\/images\/misc\/exercise\/MtDoom1sm.jpg\" height=\"200\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" align=\"left\"><\/a>While I have been too tired after work to run, I did make a special effort to get up early and run on Thursday since the weather was beautiful.  This isn&#8217;t easy &#8211; as you can see from the picture at left, there&#8217;s a hell of a slope on our street.  We don&#8217;t call it Mount Doom for nothing.  As I get into the swing of things with the job, hopefully I&#8217;ll be able to work out some kind of balance between work and exercise.  It&#8217;s all too new to say just how that&#8217;ll work out.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ahealthyjd.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"blank\" title=\"Very filling: apple slices dipped in almond butter.\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ahealthyjd.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/06\/0615snack.jpg\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" align=\"right\" height=\"200\"><\/a><br \/>\nI was worried that weight loss would stop with the new job, but actually, it&#8217;s keeping me so busy I don&#8217;t really have time to eat.  There is also no snack machine there, so as far as food is concerned, if I don&#8217;t bring it, I can&#8217;t eat it.  I&#8217;m making a point to bring healthy foods.  And my job requires me to walk a lot more than I thought it would, so I&#8217;m probably moving more in the course of my every day work than I was before I started there.  For instance, my rear end and shoulders sore today from holding myself in a particular way while leaning over a piece of equipment on Friday.  Go figure.<\/p>\n<p>Even at just 9 pounds of weight loss, I weigh less now than I have in five years.  I&#8217;ve gone down a size.  I wore a favorite pair of khaki pants to work on Friday and I had to keep hitching them up.  I&#8217;m definitely out of the plus size department for everything except my bras.  What can I say?  &#8220;The Girls&#8221; have always been larger than life.<\/p>\n<p>But most importantly, since I began exercising regularly, my blood pressure has dropped from 140\/95 to 112\/80, putting me <a href=\"http:\/\/www.highbloodpressureinfo.org\/normal-blood-pressure-range.html\" target=\"blank\">back in the normal range.<\/a>  I&#8217;m off my medication.  If nothing else happens, buying that dress will actually save me money since I&#8217;m not buying drugs.  This dress is paying for itself!  Furthermore, now that my blood pressure is normal, my frequent headaches have stopped.  I thought there was a link, and it seems I was right.<\/p>\n<p>Will I wear the dress at the Browncoat Ball?  I don&#8217;t know.  If I had to guess, I&#8217;d say no.  But buying that dress was the first domino to fall, causing me to take actions that have markedly improved my life.  Unbelievably, buying a dress that I couldn&#8217;t fit into was the smartest thing I did all summer.<\/p>\n<p>Behold the power of fitness, of fashion, and of Firefly.<br \/>\n<br clear=all><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now that we&#8217;ve all had a chance to marvel at the wonder and beauty of The Dress, the real question is, will I fit into it in time?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[90],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kissmyknits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}