So the walk that I pooh-poohed this afternoon (“better than nothing”) turned out to be quite the workout. I walked (quite briskly) for about 90 minutes through the nearby local gorgeous redwood forest. Toward the end, I was really warmed up, and a song came on my iPod that really is physically impossible to walk to. I mean, it’s run or nothing. So I broke into a run – not even a slow run, a pretty fast one – and it felt really, really good! I wasn’t out of breath, or sore, or feeling like “I can’t do this.” I totally COULD do it. This is the difference dropping a dozen pounds make (and more regular exercise). This would have felt SO BAD a couple months ago. I was actually shocked at how natural and good it felt. Of course, I only ran for three minutes (!!) because that’s how long the song lasted. But those few minutes gave me a huge burst of confidence and turned around my usual “dread” feeling about running. And when I came home, the total calories burned came to over 500. Whoo hee!!

Celebrated with a very delicious sashimi dinner. Yummmmm.