Brrrrr...Chilly Willy, and Weight Loss Numbers

It's been sooooo cold here! Under 10 degrees for the past 4 days. I'm ready for the temps to pick back up. I thought I was sick of the reoccurring snow, but I am more sick of the low temps b/c I don't feel comfortable taking Annabelle outside at all. On Thursday I had a Mountain Mama hike scheduled and it ended up being so cold that we took the kiddos into the Lookout Mountain Nature Center and held and impromptu playgroup. We had a lot of fun chatting it up in the warm Nature Center, while it looked nasty cold outside!
In other news, I had an appointment with Prudence the dietitian on Monday and I hit my goal weight! 142! The most amazing part is that on 10/2/06 I had 29.5% body fat, and now on 1/8/07 I have 22.4%! That's a loss of 7.1% body fat! In my case that is 16.3 pounds of fat! I also lost 4.9 pounds of lean muscle mass (the good stuff), but this tends to happen. Apparently we have muscle that supports our excess fat, so when we shed the fat, the lean muscle that supports it doesn't need to be there either. I went shopping for a new pair of jeans and was able to buy a size 8 at Old Navy. In October I was wearing size 14, so that feels really good. My original goal was 20% body fat and a weight between 140-144. So, now I will continue to work on decreasing my body fat % while trying to build more lean muscle mass. Sometimes you can do this and your weight will actually go up (but body fat down). I am 100% okay with that, so we aren't going to focus on weight, now just the fat %. To tell you the truth, I am feeling pretty hot to trot. I feel good, I fit into my clothing, and I am loving the new tone I have developed with all the exercise I am doing. I absolutely love going to my new gym (I don't think I shared that I joined the gym). I do a lot of spin classes which is really building my leg strength, my endurance, and my speed. I love the Palates Mat classes for my core strength, and they have treadmills that have little TVs in them with cable! We don't have cable, so this is a huge treat. I must admit though, my favorite is that I get to sit in the hot tub that is inside the women's locker room when my workout is over. The thing is like the size of my living room, and it's such a treat to relax and let the worries of the day pass over.
I have started putting together a list of all the races that I want to do this summer and it's getting a bit insane. There are so many possibilities, it's hard to choose. They all look so fun! Adventure Races, Triathlons, 1/2 marathons, I just know that all of this is possible for me now. I am lucky that Troy is so supportive and loves to come along to races and hang out with Pookette in his arms and cheer me on. Lucky, lucky me!
Ooh, as a last note, apparently channel 9 news showed the following photo of Annie and I on the news several weeks ago. Troy sent it in during the blizzard, and a good friend called several days ago to tell us that she saw us on the news. So here is our famous photo: