I love the bright colors in this Reverse Inspiration look featuring a mix of floral print and stripes.
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| From puppiesandpretties.com |
My bright colors are a lot more pink, and my dress is a lot shorter.
I don't know why Target makes their dresses so short--maybe they are focusing on a younger demographic that really likes wearing short dresses. It's not that my legs are so long that coverage should routinely be a major problem, but I seem to have an issue with waist-to-hem length with Target dresses all the time.
In this particular case, though, I wonder whether this is actually a petite sized dress that was not properly labeled because the waistband (which clearly is the kind that should be at your waist) is also very, very high, like an empire waist. It is pretty bizarre and awkward and increasingly uncomfortable to wear.
I'm not sure why I bought such an ill-fitting dress to begin with...
*Bright pink bird dress (thrifted, Target), $5.00/wear+
Pink/black floral jacket (thrifted, Dress Barn), $1.67/wear+
Black cloth mary janes (Walmart)+
Except that I am sure. See the little birdies on the dress? They look like stylized barn swallows to me. I obviously got caught up in the cuteness factor and figured that some vague thing could be done with the fit. But now that I've worn it, I don't think that's going to happen. Bye-bye, birdie. You are going back to Goodwill again for a much shorter woman to wear.
I don't know what the pink flowers are on my jacket or in this photo from the wildflower center and bird sanctuary, but I think it's probably for the best if the big-ass bumblebee stays in the photo and not on my clothes.
In other news...It's been a while since I've done a Life Style Challenge update. Long enough that I've forgotten what week it is. I guess the updates will be intermittent from now on.
However long it's been, it's long enough that exercise has become routine and habitual and not a big deal. I no longer have to bribe myself with fruit crisp even! Although I took most of the week off following our exhausting birding vacation, I've exercised this week every day Monday through Friday.
I'm taking off today only because after doing a TON of weight lifting/exercises for my knee/etc. last night, I'm a bit sore. I felt inspired by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar/Venus Williams to work on my strength, and I think I might have overdone it just a bit. What's weird is that even though my strength training has been irregular and not as frequent as I would have liked in the last several months, I'm already noticeably stronger. Like, at one point I was doing squats with my normal 8 lb dumbbells and I realized, Oh shit, I just counted 50 for this set, I think I should stop and do something else.
The idea of doing 50 squats in a row would have astounded me during the time I was walking 5 miles per day, not managing my omega 3/omega 6 ratio (with the result of having more inflammation), and not doing any knee-strengthening exercises. My knees are in a lot better shape these days. I think rotating among treadmill, exercise bike, and strength training is a good approach. Cross-training, who knew? (Well, George W. Bush, for one. Remember how he warned one of the Supreme Court nominees about the dangers of not doing enough cross-training?)
This week I discovered that I really prefer exercising right after dinner instead of later in the evening. Right after dinner is the time that minimizes my risk of a sugar crash, with the benefit that I don't have to figure out an appropriate snack to eat first. I also like getting the exercise out of the way before I've fully settled in for the evening; it is somehow psychologically much easier to do this planned task closer to the time I've been working as part of a general "wake-get ready-go to work-come home-check email/etc.-eat dinner-exercise" routine rather than as an interruption to my downtime in the evening.
I also got back on the flaxseed/cod liver oil regimen again this week after a two week hiatus for the birding vacation and my parents visit.
I abandoned my food and exercise logging after about 3 days because I realized that it was causing me a lot of anxiety. That seemed really strange to me, but I decided to respect that feeling and back off from it. I later decided that the reason it was making me anxious was that it was triggering the miasma of bad thoughts and feelings that accompanies dieting--the idea that you need to lose weight, fear that it won't work and a sense of failure, generalized inadequacy, fear of deprivation, constant (mostly negative) self-evaluation, concern over getting hungry but not having "earned" the right to eat (WTF) [which is particular anxiety-provoking when you are prone to both sugar crashes and hunger-induced major digestive problems], etc.--because I associated logging food and exercise with dieting, even though that was not the reason I was doing the logging this time. I'm all "fuck that" to that messed up mindset so I'm not going to be collecting the food intake/exercise data for now. Maybe I can try again later and see if I react differently, but it's not very important.
Are you happy with your exercise routine these days?
2 comments:
The flower in the picture is a wild rose, I think. We had one growing (wild) by the SW corner of the house in the backyard for a while. We had to dig it out since our neighbor to the south just cut off all the branches that were hanging in her yard.
That's too bad! They are pretty.
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