Math has never been my strong suit. Or any suit.

I've said before that I'm using loseit.com to track my intake and output.  If you think about this type of "program" (or if you are one of my brothers), you'll know that it's pretty much straight math.  If you take in less than you burn, you lose weight.  It's really that simple (ha!).  Ironically, the girl who had a long ago AOL screen name of DontDoMath is now losing weight ... because of math.  This week has been all about the maths:

Last night my husband walked into the living room and said something like, "not to throw a wrench in the monkey works .... but you know you're losing weight because of math, right?"  Funny guy.  Yes, I get it.  Math is saving the world.  Whatevs.

Saturday morning, my neighbor (not the pregnant one) and I started out on a "long walk".  I described to her where I thought we could go, and that I thought it would be about 5 or so miles.  However, when we got to the place where I thought we'd turn in and go through the neighborhood, she suggested we "keep going, cross under the highway, take the bikepath up along C470, and cut over on Alameda".  It sounded rather long, but like a good challenge.  Plus, it was still plenty early and we were under the influence of a nice cool morning breeze.  Let me just say that it was a good challenge.  It also kicked our butts!  We walked 9.5 miles!  (click here for the walk we did)

After I got home and looked at all my data on MapMyWalk, I was sitting at my desk feeling rather smug.  We walked almost 10 miles!  10 miles!  That's straight-up crazypants!  Hey, we basically did the Bolder Boulder!  Gosh, I'm impressed with myself.  Then it hit me:

OHMYWORD!

The Bolder Boulder is a 10 K!  K!!
(that's 6.2 miles for those of you not familiar with foreign measurements)

Bolder Boulder?  Bolder Schmoulder!  We just kicked the Bolder Boulder's butt!  Yeah, we did!

And then I got to thinking about the year I did the Bolder Boulder (2010).  A group from our church did it to raise money for Living Water International.  Some people ran, some walked, and some did a combination.  I started it with two other walkers, and then one of them left us at the 5K mark to run the rest.  I seriously thought I could die at the end.  Or at least just lay down on the pavement and never get up again.  We finished, but boy were we tired and slow.  This really shouldn't be a surprise - look how round and lumpy I was!

The BB is always on Memorial Day (Monday), and I remember being stiff, sore, and rather miserable for a good week after doing it.  I had big plans to get into shape in advance - I never thought I could run it, but I knew I needed to do some training.  It should come as no surprise to anyone reading that The Girl Who Cried Skinny had grand plans ... and didn't do them.  Yup, story of my life.  So on that day, I was woefully unprepared.  And although I'm smiling in these pics at the end, I am exhausted on a molecular level, and it took a week to recover.  Oh, and I haven't even mentioned that that was an XL or maybe a XXL shirt that I had to cut up the sides to wear.  Sad.

Fast forward to the day after I walked 9.5 on a whim:  I wasn't even sore!  I was a little hungry (!), but honestly, not stiff or achy.  I could feel it a bit in my ankle, but that's a ligament thing (I'm getting PT for that), and has nothing to do with the shape I'm in.  Honestly, doing 9.5 miles sounds HUGE and AMAZING to me.  But far more amazing to me is that I am no longer in the shape I was in.  I was fully functional and able to live my normal life on the very next day.  Yay, me!

Friends, if you need encouragement, think about this:  today is only Week 13 for me.  I have been working on this for 13 weeks.  Here I am last Friday - I took this pic because the lumpy saddlebags I'd been seeing were finally starting to go down :)

The Girl Who Cried Skinny has been gaining weight since the week after our honeymoon (not kidding) in 1991, and she is finally reversing that process.  By walking!  You can do it too.