Ever have this sinking feeling that says, "Don't take this for granted?"

I've been promising myself that I'd write some kind of two-month summary on the workouts. Admittedly, the weight loss is sliding in right before the deadline, but changes really do happen in sixty days. My blood pressure and resting heart rate have dropped (the latter, significantly). I've dropped two full dress sizes. My hair and nails have begun growing with a vengeance that I have not seen in many, many years.

Conversation today:

Me: "Hey, it's, like, a moral imperative that I get new shorts to work out in."

Misty: "Did your pants fall off at the gym today?"

Me: "Almost! I looked down and there was this nice big stretch of purple and I thought, 'Oh, that's REALLY not supposed to be there.'"

(Black shirt, denim shorts, nothing purple in the outerwear list, you get the idea.)

I take a great deal of satisfaction in saying that I think Jeff and I have finally found the trainer that we need to be working with. Only after I communicated this fact to a few friends did I realize how worried they were for me as I struggled to make it through the workouts of trainer #2, Becky. They were afraid that I would assume that my bad experience with Becky was my fault, not hers, and quit two months in.

…and I thought about how sometimes I go to such pains in my writing. If I have made any promise at all to myself, it is that I will not live an unexamined life; I will not stumble blindly from event to event, from year to year. Even then, with that promise in hand, I find myself more often than not standing toe-to-toe with truths I don't always like—and more often than not, I'm the one to back down. It's easier to choose humor over honesty.

Far be it from me to jump on the bandwagon of the insanity of dress sizes for American women. What is an 8? A 12? A 16? Is a 16 the same as a 16W? Why do women have to just instinctively know that an 8 in one manufacturer is a 12 in another, while men have to remember nothing more than (very concrete) waist and inseam measurements to find a pair of jeans that fit?

That's another rant for another day. Surprisingly enough, I'm not in a ranting mood. Quite the opposite, actually.

I've been holding off talking about this past week, hoping that I'd have some changes to report. Something worth celebrating - heck, at this point, I'd settle for 'worth writing about.' It's not been a good week. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I think I can safely say that it was worse than the first week I worked out, and that's saying something.Becky's weights regimen is not working well for me. I've suspected this for most of the past week, but wanted to give myself at least through Monday to make sure that it wasn't just me bellyaching over new work. Sure, I am, to some degree, but that's not all it is.

Becky asked me to start all the exercises at three sets (see link in previous paragraph), with no instructions for increasing weight, reps, or sets over the next couple of weeks. It was just, 'do this, and if you can'd do it at this weight, drop down until you're able to finish the reps.'