Things That I Would Tell My Younger Self...

 As I get toward the end of my life, there are things that I can look back on and say "Wish I had...".  Here is my list:

1.  Spent more quality time with my husband, children, and family. 

2.   Worked harder at maintaining my weight.  

3.  Spent more time doing strength exercises and stretches.

4.  Tried harder to eat a healthy which would have helped with item 2

You might ask, how does this relate to sewing?  Well, item 1 is a blessed life thing.  Quality time can never be regretted.  Really who cares if the house is perfect.  As for the other 3 items, they affect your sewing.  All affect fitting ability.  The more curves the harder it is to fit in my opinion and I have plenty of curves.  The strength exercises and stretches help keep things inline.  You got a tilted waist (I do), you have weak abdominals and gluts.  Your shoulders rotating forward.  You can bet that there is a muscle or two or three that need to be worked on.  

I have been to physical therapy three times in the past five years.  That is a lot of time and money.  Believe it or not all of it have been the same leg from the ankle to the knee to the hip.   Therapy for the ankle had exercises and stretches all the way up the leg.  Therapy for the hip had exercises for the abs, the glutes, the leg muscles.  Therapy for the knee had exercises for the entire leg along with the abs and glutes (admittedly, I had a fractured kneecap and braces slow you down a little bit).  

So, I am going to work harder to lose the weight.  At 20, I weighted about 115 pounds.  I do not necessarily want to be at that weight again but 120 to 125 would be good.  Just to give you an example of not maintaining weight.  If you gain two pounds a year, at 60 I would have weighted 195.  Two pounds does not sound like much of a weight gain but two pounds a year for forty years is a lot of weight gain.  I am not saying that is how much I weight but you can see in my pictures that I do not weight 115 lbs anymore.  I was one of those people who gained weight while I was pregnant and could not get it to go away.  I honestly gained too much weight while I was pregnant. 

I am going to start working on exercising again.  Moving half way across country stopped my daily exercise routine.  I could not find a gym that I liked working out at.  Even though it terrifies me to get on my knees, I am going to start doing my yoga and stretching routines again.  I will visit some gyms again and see if I can find some where that has machine availability.  The last gym I joined I could not find a time when machines were available.  There did not seem to be a limit on how long some one could use a machine and frankly, I can walk and ride a bike at home.  I like doing a circuit.  Now, you have seen my excuses let's see if I can get started working out.

Happy Stitching!