Walking Challenge 2012: Through June, I’ve literally walked 353 miles in my own shoes…

~Saturday~ 
 

May’s Challenge Entry | All Challenge Entries | July’s Challenge Entry
So! It’s been a half-a-year now of daily walking for at least 30 minutes, with only having missed a couple of weeks during May due to my knee surgery recovery.

A few fun facts in summary:

Total number of days in 2012 walked to date:	159 (of 182)
Total amount of time spent walking over those 159 days:	6431 minutes (or 107 hours)
Number of miles walked during that time:	353.5
Number of calories burned walking during that time:	38,765
Number of pounds 38,765 calories represents at 3500 per pound:	11

Walking

My knee surgery recovery continues to be slow—I still have pain on a regular basis, albeit less intense than before and with actual very short periods of being pain free—but it has definitely taken a toll on my outlook on health and aging, and that’s something that I’m now having to work really hard on changing.

In the inimitable words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, “It’s always something—if it ain’t one thing, it’s another.”

Here are the walking numbers for June:

Background photo: An early morning in June on my walk from my car to my office, passing by the Raleigh Little Theater Amphitheater. “And it echoed… in the sounds… of silence…”

Eating

I have to stay pretty much at, or below, 2000 calories per day to continue to lose weight, and as you can see from this month’s calorie intake chart, I haven’t been doing that.

Weighing

With summer being here, and me being the “social butterfly” that I am, I’ve accepted the fact that I’m probably not going to lose weight over most of the summer.

To that end, I’m moving into a “maintenance” frame of mind, where I’m going to work my hardest not to let myself gain more than five pounds before I start seriously dieting again. (Ideally, of course, I’ll break even by the end of summer.)

Here are the June weigh-in numbers:

Background image: I’m a work in progress.

Reflecting

Here are some reflections about this month's experience:

• I’m happy that I have this walking goal, because it’s keeping me (so far) from doing what I’ve done time after time after losing 25 or 30 pounds over the past several years—which is to put it all back on.
• I have got to get a grip on my attitude about chronic pain and its seeming ability to give me glimpses into that abyss known as depression.
• At the beginning of May I couldn’t walk on the beach, because my knee hurt too much. At the end of June, I did walk on the beach, and although it wasn’t a pain-free walk, it was “miles” better than it was back then. Progress.
• I am now doing my 300 ab crunches with 20 pounds of weight added to the bench, and I’ve increased the weights on almost all of the upper and lower body machines I’m doing regularly. More progress.

Concluding

Calculating those “fun facts” at the beginning of this entry was very empowering.

I’ve come a long way this year to date.

No resting (literally) on my laurels, though. On to July…

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May’s Challenge Entry | All Challenge Entries | July’s Challenge Entry