Good Day for A Walk

The sun is up,
The sky is blue;
It's beautiful,
And so are you.
- The Beatles ("Dear Prudence")

It's a nice Sunday here in my part of the world. We're finally getting a break from the Arctic cold that had hovered over the region the last couple of weeks. During that time, the temperature had averaged in the negative single digits. It was tough getting up in the mornings (I wake up at 5 a.m. daily to make it to the morning train that would take me to work.) and feel the Arctic cold the moment I stepped out of the house. It was also tough having to spend a good 10 to 15 minutes each morning putting on several layers of clothing to fight the bitter cold.

Well we're getting a break this weekend and according to the weathermen, the break could last well into the coming week. It's a "warm" 6 degrees Celsius outside right now. The sun is out in all its fine glory. It is making me miss the weekend walks I used to do over the summer and early fall months.

Early last year, I resolved to lose quite a bit of weight by reducing my carb intake and by doing a bit of exercise. Hopping on a treadmill doesn't work for me for the simple reason that I easily get bored by it. I just feel that if ever I need to do some walking or running, that I will be better off outside the house doing some real walking and running. And that exactly was what I set out to do.

A bike path snakes around my part of the town. It makes its way through a number of housing developments, skirts a golf course, goes through a wooded area, passes by a horse farm, and circles a park. Measured from end to end, I estimate that the bike path is about eight miles long, or roughly 11 kilometers. I follow that bike path whenever I go walking and it takes me about a couple of hours to cover the whole distance. The area is quite hilly; the path rising in certain sections and sloping downward in others. Needless to say I work off a good amount of sweat walking it especially in the summer months.

The results from my walking were immediately felt and noticed. I lost close to 20 pounds in three months. My waistline lost a good couple of inches. Old pants that had been relegated to the back of my closet were pressed back to active service. The same with old shirts.

However, with the onset of winter I was worried that I might gain back a lot of the weight I lost. I felt that the cold would force me to stay indoors and cut back on a lot of the activity I had gotten used to. I also felt that I might lose control over my diet and start overeating again.

Well, I'm happy to say that so far that hasn't happened. Though I haven't walked the last month or so, my weight has managed to hold steady. My control over my diet has held. I'm especially proud of the fact that I had managed to stay disciplined with my diet through the Christmas holidays. It's been 10 months since I started this combination of mild diet control and exercise and I must say that I feel a lot better and a lot lighter. Gone is the old bloated feeling that I had. I just hope that I would be able to maintain this control and discipline moving forward.

So folks if you won't mind, I'll just take a nice and much-needed long walk outside. Have a great day.