Conclusions

OK, the "No Exercise Experiment" is over. Hooray! Here's what I think I learned:

1. My knees hurt more today--and have hurt more in the past week--than they've hurt since I started working out. At first this made no sense to me. How can they hurt more if I'm doing less? I mentioned it to my mom and she said, "Well, yes! I notice that too when I don't exercise enough. It's the arthritis ... you have to keep your joints moving and then they hurt less." My sports med doc said the arthritis in both of my knees was bad (whose isn't, really, from what I hear), so I'm going to chalk this one up to that. How funny that NOT exercising makes me hurt and exercising makes me feel better. When I was heavy, I used the "my knees hurt" excuse to NOT workout. Hmmmm ...
2. I was not less hungry. I wanted to eat as much as I was eating before.
3. It felt good to sleep later in the morning, but I'm not sure I slept as well at night. Hard to know if that's stress or exercise, though. 
4. Less laundry was good! Not having all the stinky, sweaty workout clothes around is definitely a positive.

Most importantly, my weight essentially stayed stable. I didn't eat anything crazy, but I didn't eat a militant 1200 calories a day, either. I had some candy ... every day. I had an oatmeal cookie. I didn't eat out, though.

And, I learned that I can take a day (or even a week) off if I need to.  I know I feel BETTER when I exercise. I feel better about myself. I feel stronger, mentally and physically. But I don't have to freak out if I end up missing a day. I don't have to panic.

It confirms a theory I had in the beginning ... I knew that getting the 100 or so pounds off was going to be a lot of work and an enormous pain in the rear. But I knew that work was finite, in a way. That I would have to work HARD for a while, but I wouldn't have to work out for 10 hours a day, every day, forever.

I don't yet know what the magic algorithm of exercise and eating is for me to maintain. But I'll get to that a little later.

I need to finally complete those final 10 pounds before I experiment with that.

And, I can't wait to hop on my treadmill tomorrow morning. I promise not to wake you.