Resolving and Resolutions Updates

This is the next in the planned posts I had prior to the craziness of a couple of weeks ago.

Last year I made some resolutions. While most of these were not yarn-related, they were about my life and this would affect the yarn and the knitting.

The first big resolution I made was to lose weight. Now I know, lots of people make resolutions to lose weight and then flop after a month or so. I'm guilty of that many times before. But this January, something was different. I determined that I was not going to go on a diet. Yes, I would count calories, but I would eat the calories it takes to maintain a healthy weight for my height. The number that I chose was somewhere between 160 and 165 pounds.

So, I hopped on the scale to get my first weigh in for 2009.

240 pounds.

I cried. I won't be too ashamed to say that. I was embarrassed and ashamed that I had let myself go that far bad. I was sick and tired of always being sick and tired. Here is a picture taken in February that probably has me closest to the heaviest I have ever been:I was shocked to find this picture the other day. Especially when I compare it to this one that was taken in the middle of December:It's hard to tell, especially since I have on heavy winter clothing, but you can clearly see that I accomplished the goal of losing some weight. In fact, I weighed myself on the same scale that weighed me at 240 pounds on January 1, 2009. I weighed on January 1, 2010 at 52 pounds lighter. I've since lost another 3 and am now down 55 pounds. I'm within 20ish pounds of being at goal weight now and I can't even express how much better I feel and how happy I am to start seeing pictures like this trickle in to show that I've slimmed. I went from a size 18-20 to a size 12-14 so far. Ultimately, I'll probably wind up somewhere between an 8-10, which looks good on my 5 foot 10 inch frame.

Plus I think my hair looks a lot better in the second picture :oP

The other resolution I had was to run in a 5k race and beat my last time of 43 minutes. Well, in November, I did that and ran 5k in 33:03, blowing my last record out of the water.

So how does all this relate to knitting? Well, it now takes significantly less yarn to make a sweater for me. I'm making the M-L size instead of the XL or XXL or higher sizes! That equates generally to at least a full ball of yarn less per pattern! Saving money and knitting away!

Tomorrow: updates on the works in progress, or, a blanket grows...

Knit on...