It’s now been nearly eight months since I started going to the gym and I’ve lost just under 9kgs now. It’s certainly not going quickly but at least it is shifting. It’s funny that I bought a pair of 3/4 length black denim pants last month to wear to the Neil Finn/Paul Kelly concert and it is already getting rather loose around my waist. I think I may find it more difficult with the cooler weather as almost all my clothes for winter are larger sized…I am going to try to manage with only a few new additions as I don’t want to invest too much in clothes I plan not to fit next winter.

The exercise is mostly going okay although I seem to have a bit of an injury to my calf muscles at the moment. Yesterday I was using the glutes machine (you stand over the machine and push back a pedal with one of your feet to lift the weight) and was finding it quite uncomfortable to do the weight I’ve been using for a while. My calf muscles were a bit sore beforehand but I suspect this might have pushed me over the edge. The unfortunate part is I have a tai chi workshop in the morning and I’m worried it’s going to be painful to work on the moves I need to focus on. It isn’t painful with every step so I’m hopeful resting today will allow me to feel okay in the morning.

I’m continuing to mix up my workouts every so often to keep from getting bored with exercise and it seems to work for the most part. I backed off from rowing workouts due because it almost always exacerbate my shoulder pains. But i tried it out again a couple days ago and it felt pretty good. I probably just need to keep the times shorter than I’d been doing to keep on track. I also tried out a step class I hadn’t done before and it was mostly okay. I didn’t stick it out for the full class because I got rather mentally exhausted trying to keep up with the choreography but will go back to it at some point to try again. I also tried a bit of a boxing class yesterday just to see if I could do it…again it was a matter of the moves overwhelming me so I quite after about ten minutes. I had tried a shorter class before but didn’t find it gave me much of a workout…this one seems like it might do a lot better if I can learn enough to get through the class. I’ve found the classes can be a sort of challenge to overcome so taking little steps will hopefully allow me to reach my goal.