It’s still two pounds a week, boys and girls – TWO POUNDS A WEEK!!! Victor is under 200 for two weeks in  a row – he has it and won’t be going back there ever again. If the Calorie Gods are willing, I may make it next week. Regardless, it has been – and continues to be – a rough and rocky and totally worthwhile road.

Friday has become the rough day. Our trainer builds up to it with a myriad of different things on Monday and Wednesday. This past Wednesday, he worked on legs – and both of us were suffering. When we got off the last machine, my legs were literal jello. Try doing a couple of miles on a treadmill when you can barely stand up. I think my walk was measured in feet. although it might have been inches.

Today when we went in, I told him my lower back was still aching from Wednesday – so he had us swinging kettlebells, high planks and low planks, lunges and twists and contortions I never knew my body could make. My back feels infinitely better – but it was not easy getting there. Just keep breathing…

He keeps telling us to breathe – which is fine if you’re the one doing the talking. It’s quite another when you’re gasping for breath because you just lifted a 25 pound metal ball from the floor to the ceiling a million and one times – squatting and stretching with every move. This is not for the faint of heart.

However… it is working. It can be painful and exhausting, but it’s working. And it allows us to keep eating well.

For us, I think that’s really one of the key points – we’re still eating well. I could not do this if I was eating dry salads and steamed vegetables and lifeless boiled chicken breasts. I’d rather be overweight than subject myself to that – we simply enjoy food too much. In a world divided by eat to live and live to eat, we’re definitely the latter.

For our Friday Night celebratory dinner, we went with ravioli.

It was one of those meals that will never be replicated, but that’s okay.

Victor made a sun-dried tomato pesto the other day – basil, garlic, walnuts, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and sun-dried tomatoes in oil – and I used about a quarter-cup of it as the base for the sauce with a jar of the tomato sauce we canned this past summer. I added sun-dried tomato sausage and a package of Mediterranean Antipasto Vegetables from Trader Joe’s. It made a great sauce. Arugula and Parmesan Ravioli were the perfect addition.

The Mediterranean Vegetables were pretty good in the sauce. The pesto was excellent. The ravioli had a lot of flavor and the sausage is always good. All-in-all, a very successful dinner that took all of 15 minutes to pull together – and that included water-boiling time. And we have leftovers for lunch!

Losing weight and eating well – life does not get any better.

Remind me I said that next week when my legs give out and my arms stop working.

Just keep breathing…