Santa Ana River Bike Path

Last weekend I took a long walk along the Santa Ana River Bike Path. I got to take some really cool pictures. I don't think I'd enjoy walking all that much if it weren't for photography. Here are some of the photos I took along the way. There is a firefighter training tower, bulldozers at work, Angel Stadium, joggers and a lumberyard. Click on any photo to see the original size.

Walking and Belly Dance and Knott's

Lately I was depressed because I felt like I was getting fatter and fatter in spite of all my efforts. So I was quite happy today when I compared measurements from May 2007 with today. I've actually lost an inch on my waist and my hips are the same. So I'm not ballooning up like I thought. It's small encouragement but it just proves how our mind can trick us.
On Thursday I walked to Knott's Berry Farm and back, which took me an hour. I did have to sit and rest once I got there, so the walk took about 40 minutes. I'm thinking of getting the yearly pass so I can actually walk inside the amusement park. Part of the reason I don't walk more is this neighborhood is boring and about the most unsafe neighborhood I've lived in. But inside the park they have fun things to look at and security. And I can see the live shows too.
I was thinking of walking there again on Friday but it was closed and it rained all day.
Today I spent an hour doing housework without any breaks to get my heart rate up. I did laundry, vaccuumed, took out trash, and so forth. And I walked up and down the alley and did some belly dance moves. One thing I've noticed is my knees are not flexible anymore and any serious bending hurts. I'm not sure if I can fix that by working out more or if my knees are just shot from being overweight and from years of dancing. We'll see. It's discouraging but I can work around it.
My main goal right now is to do cardio six days a week for at least 30 min. with two hours of exercise overall counting stretching, warm-ups, cool downs and so forth.

Oh well

I managed to do the milk, water or tea thing for 27 days. Then I had a relative that was dying in the hospital and my best laid plans flew out the window. It was too inconvenient to stick to the plan, and just days after she died I had to go out of town for a week on business. I thought I'd start again on Nov. 1 but I didn't, and now the holidays are upon us.

So far so good but it's been a long day.

I'm almost through the 2nd day with the milk, tea, & water project. Yesterday I just had water. Today I had milk and tonight I had tea. And even though I was dreading drinking tea without sugar, it actually tasted really good compared to the blandness of water and milk. I find my meals a lot less enjoyable without soda. Hopefully I'll get used to it before I get too discouraged.

The only downside is the horrific headache I've had all day, which may be caffeine withdrawal, or from the argument my boyfriend and I had yesterday that ruined the whole weekend. He's actually mocking my efforts to give up soda and my struggles with the combo meals at fast food places, where it actually costs more to get the meal without soda. Ridiculous.

A new committment

My diet downfall is soda and sugary sport's drinks. I don't even like the sports drinks but my bf buys them and since I'm the one in the apt. all the time I'm the one drinking them.
So last night I decided to do some behavior modification and for one year only drink water, milk and unsweetened tea, in that order. I'm hoping that making that change will lead to me losing 50 lbs. in a year. Wish me luck.

I just signed up for Tagfoot. http://ping.fm/lfV6m Come see all my links and comments and my wishlist.

Want to join ping.fm too? Go to http://www.ping.fm.Use the code 'legendofping' and you could have the luxury of posting to all your blogs in one fell swoop like I do. Way more efficient than doing it one by one.

I'm not sure what 'ping my default' means but I guess I'll find out when I hit send.