Autumn arriving

We took advantage of the last sunny day on forecast to go for a long hike on Saturday. As the map we were using didn´t have height indications, we suddenly found ourselves, well, not exactly in the middle of nowhere, as we could see the city lying below us, but it was a steep incline of some fifty meters height difference down there, and what had seemed, on the map, like a comfortable walk down proved to be a slippery slope full of acorns and pebbles.
Before recondensing, it would have been impossible for me to get down there, even with my walking sticks. And now? I had left my sticks at home, opting instead for a pair of sturdy walking shoes.So, I started out downwards and did indeed manage to get to the foot of the mountain without accident. And I didn´t even have sore muscles the next day!
It´s experiences like this that remind me of how far I have come.
Another NSV this weekend came from the jewellery department. I have a ring that I bought long ago and wear every day. When I bought it, it fit on my middle finger. For a long while now, I was wearing it on my ring finger. And yesterday, it fit on my middle finger again! DH did look a bit astonished when I gave him that time-honored gesture, saying, "just look at this" :) - when all I wanted was to show him where I was wearing that ring...
Weight-wise, the plateau before the next decade is a lot more tenuous than I thought, so, I´m still waiting for the moment I can slide that decade weight down a notch. But I have- in spite of being home all day and a four-day visit with MIL- stayed at my pre-holiday weight. I still journal  every bite I eat, stick to my calorie limit, and hopefully, that will translate to the jump into the next decade anytime soon.

With autumn arriving, I´ll have to do another wardrobe rollover. Luckily, I got myself a couple of blazers for the office on clearance this spring, which still fit me, and I have a couple of coats that are relatively size-tolerant, so I should be fine with them for another season. What is starting not to fit any more is, once more, my pants. Even with the stretchy material, they are beginning to look downright baggy. So, I´ll have to weed through them and evict the worst offenders. On the other hand, I´m glad my waist has reappeared from under the excess weight, so, with a belt I can still cinch my pants up on my hips and am in no danger of them sliding down inadvertently, which means that I´ll wait as long as possible to replace them- after all, I have another 18 kilos to go till goal, and continuously replacing my too-big pants is getting costly, after all, I have gone through five pant sizes in a year already. I am, by now, almost regretting that I threw out those smaller clothes that I thought I´d never fit into again. The jeans, at least, would come in handy. Then again, I kept them in a plastic box on top of my wardrobe for years, and I was, back then, definitely glad to be rid of them. Besides, they were those extremely washed-out styles that haven´t been in fashion for a long time any more.
So, no regrets about these any more. If my present pants get too big, I´ll have the joy of shopping for pants in a regular size for the first time in over ten years. And until then, I´ll wear my baggy pants like a medal. After all, it hasn´t been that long ago that those same pants were tight.




Julia