101,510

101,510 is an odd title for a blog post. What the hell does it represent? Carol conspired with our youngest son John and got me a fitbit. It looks like a wrist watch without a face. It hooks wirelessly to my iPad and keeps track of my daily activity and sleep pattern. It is my electronic fitness nagger. Well, actually the fitbit and Lily. The number in the title to this blog is the number of steps I walked this week. According to the fitbit it was 45.86 miles. Since Lily walks with me every time I go she also walked that far. Since she has four legs does she get credit for 203,020 steps? I'm not sure how that works. My goal for the week was to surpass 100,000 steps. It wasn't easy especially since yesterday was cold and windy. The cold wasn't so bad but the wind was kicking up the fine sand that is everywhere here. Walking around with grit in your eyes is not fun.

The fun part of this has been Miss Lily. She gets excited after we get up and start getting dressed because she knows it is time to go for a walk around the Jaycee Park. When we get back home it is time for breakfast. She gets a treat or two and then takes a nap until lunch time. She and I usually take a long walk after lunch. It is generally about 3 miles and around an hour long. We usually stay on the north side of U.S. highway 80 but seeing the same scenery (for me) and smelling the same ground (for Lily) is getting a bit stale. We may have to venture more on the other side of the highway. The good news is that tourist season is over and this has become a sleepy seaside town once again. It is good because the streets here are narrow and their are very few sidewalks. You walk along the side of the street and hope nobody driving is texting or drunk. There is plenty of texting and driving going on down here. After the second walk Lily settles in for another nap. See a pattern here? After supper we generally take another short walk and call it a day. Lily is excited each time before the walk and is jumping up on us to encourage us to hurry up and get out there with her. She is getting better about other dogs. The things she dislikes are people on skateboards and bikes that come up to her from behind. Oh, and cats. She really has a thing about cats.

So the plan was for this to help with my diet. Everyone talks about diets. Low fat, low carb, high protein, vegan, paleo, and on and on and on. The real answer is simple yet difficult. It is why we always look to the fad diets. We don't like difficult. The simple thing is eat less and get up off your ass and do something. Surprisingly sitting on the couch watching TV and eating potato chips does not burn calories and cause weight loss. If it did millions of Americans would be losing weight. The other interesting thing when you start paying attention to what you eat is the size of restaurant meals. Do we really need a whole days worth of calories on our plate to feel like we got our money's worth? Is it necessary to stuff ourselves into an almost comatose state because we are at a buffet? I'm not pointing this at anyone but myself as I have a long history of doing all those things. I started dieting a couple of months ago and so far I am down about 25 pounds. Before you or I start thinking that is great keep in mind that I still have 75 to lose before I reach my goal. Will that happen? I don't know. If history is any indicator then the answer is no. The things I have going for me this time may help since Lily and fitbit are dragging me off the couch and out on the street. Good lord, I've become a streetwalker!