Central Canal Towpath

This afternoon's walk took me 4.5 miles round-trip along the Central Canal Towpath, from Broad Ripple to the edge of Butler's campus. Spring has definitely sprung, as I saw three baby geese with their parents, all in hot pursuit of...a turtle.

The Towpath has always been one of my favorite walks to take here in Indy. There's lots of scenery, with ducks and geese, trees, cute little houses, and not much in the way of traffic -- vehicles, people, or dogs. While there are a few stoplights at fairly busy intersections between College and Meridian, the overall atmosphere more than makes up for it.

The canal itself has a really interesting history. It was dug in the 1830s, and was meant to transport goods between Peru and Martinsville. Anyone looking at the canal today would surely wonder how the heck anything beyond a small, Huck Finn style raft could navigate the canal. Obviously, the canal didn't amount to much beyond the sort-of scenic waterway it is today -- less than 10 miles of it ever got dug. So says the informational sign posted at Westfield Blvd. and Illinois St.

As for my actual walk, it felt really good to get things started. I've been walking 2-3 miles a day, almost every day, for the past few weeks -- after a winter that saw me doing relatively little. Now it's time to step things up a bit, and try to get back to the 4-5 miles a day I had been doing a few years ago. The difference this time will be that I approach my diet/exercise a bit more realistically.

Sure, I was at a normal weight then...for the first time since I was 9 or 10. But I was miserable -- obsessed with food, and thoroughly panicked every time I couldn't fit at least a 3 mile walk into my schedule. So not surprisingly, when I met Janie and discovered that she liked all the goodies that I had banned from my kitchen, it didn't take long for me to relent, in the spirit of communal cooking and eating. In the space of a little less than two years, I gained nearly 70 pounds. I was getting closer to the weight I had been before starting that hyper-regimented diet/exercise program that had helped me lose over 100 pounds over a period of 10 months in 2000-2001 (and keep off the weight for a few years after that).

This time around, though, I do let myself snack on occasion...while eating low-fat, reduced-calorie meals and keeping my daily calorie count at or near 1800. And I don't have an absolute fit when I can't walk the way I'd like. Since January 2006, I've lost 55 of those pounds that I had gained. Now it's time to get rid of the last 15, plus another 5, to equal 20. I've given myself until the end of August to do this -- much more manageable than the two months it's taken me on previous occasions to lose 20 pounds.

A sensible diet and daily walks -- including these 3-5 mile excursions into different Indianapolis neighborhoods -- will help immensely. And what did I eat for my "sensible" dinner this evening? A chicken breast and some sugar snap peas.

I'd say I'm off to a good start....