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progress

when i work out in the morning, i shower and get ready for work at the gym. my gym has awesome facilities, complete with hairdryers and the like; all i need to bring with me are my toiletries, my clothes and my towels.

now, i don't bring my big luxurious wonderful bath towels to the gym of course. that would be foolish. fortunately we have a motley collection of towels accumulated over the years: that one i bought for my first college apartment, that one we inhereted from friends when they moved, that one i accidentally stole from my dad's house one christmas, that one we bought after that crazy backpacking trip where we had to ford the raging stream ... they're all different colors and sizes and no two are the same.

the past week or so, i've found myself thinking each morning at the gym, "oh, i'm glad i got one of the bigger ones that will actually wrap the whole way around my body for the walk back to the locker room." (you know you've tried to wrap that too-small towel around you before, leaving you with the unenviable decision of what to leave bare.)

this morning, after having that same thought for about six workouts running, i had an epiphany. we don't have that many of the larger towels. it's not that i've been lucky enough to grab the biggest ones, it's that i have gotten just enough smaller that the littler ones actually wrap around me! i may have actually danced in the locker room when i realized that.

i shouldn't be too surprised, i suppose, but i find that weight loss - like weight gain - sneaks up on me. i *know* i've lost nearly 10 lbs. i *know* i've lost some inches. but i can go for weeks on end and feel like nothing's happening. so my towel revelation this morning was pretty uplifting ... and here's a novel concept: do the things you know you're supposed to do, and you will get the results you seek. why is that so hard?

and lest we stray too far from the topic at hand - being john's mom, that is - i'll share the one thought that helps keep me inspired even when i don't feel like i'm making progress:

one day, i want john to look at family pictures from when he was a baby and say, "wow, mom, you used to be fat!"

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