Although yesterday was a non-fasting day, I still managed to lose a pound. It’s become obvious that I need to behave on days on which I get to eat; not eating the day before does not mean that I can just eat whatever I want. I’ve known that all along, but for some reason it hadn’t really crystallized in my brain until this past weekend. I’m still kicking myself for the weight gained on Saturday and Sunday—it still doesn’t seem possible to have gained so much weight in such a short period of time—but I’ll be much more careful this weekend and hopefully will continue the (latest) downward trend.

While diet is the primary driver behind weight loss, exercise obviously does help, and I think maybe I need to be exercising more. Because my body has gotten somewhat rickety with age, I tend to make my workouts relatively short and exert myself only moderately. Yes, I do break a sweat, and I usually get my heart rate up to 140 or 150 beats per minute, but I’m wondering if I need to increase both the duration and intensity of my exercise regimen. My fear, of course, is that I’ll injure myself (with my arthritic shoulders and neverending foot and ankle problems, it’s not that hard), and then I’ll have to take a few days off to recover. I guess I just need to try working a bit longer and harder and see what happens.

I’m bad about following the same workouts week after week at the gym. My muscles have acclimated to that sort of routine, so while they might be toned (sort of), they’re not really growing. I need to change up which muscles are being exercised and how they’re being exercised. I should feel sore (in my muscles) the day after a workout, and that isn’t happening, so none of the microscopic tearing of the muscle fibers that results in bigger muscles is occurring. Muscle is highly metabolically active, so building muscle is good for maintaining or losing weight. A new benefit of muscular contraction has been discovered recently as well: muscles release “hope molecules” that have mood-boosting properties when they’re contracted (see https://tinyurl.com/5n88r4j).

Anyway, I’ll try to add more exercise and change it up a bit to burn a few more calories. Although the type, intensity, and duration of exercise I do doesn’t burn a ton of calories, it does still burn some, and since I’ve discovered that every calorie does indeed count, I’ll mix things up a bit more in the gym and see what happens.