Yes to walking. Also get yourself a mini trampoline or rebounder. You can do it every day inside when it's cold out. Move your arms. The bouncing will get your lymph going and that helps with flushing out your system so it's easier to lose weight. The most important weight loss idea is to get your liver and metabolism in good health. Then the weight loss follows because that's the natural way the body works. Your liver will take care of the extra weight and the lymph system sends it on it's way out but you need to help by eating things that are good to your liver and other organs. I started with the book Fat Flush Plan and then read Master your Metabolism and Mastering Leptin. I really like Mastering Leptin because it explains exactly WHY people gain and lose weight. There is no mystery any more. You eat and sleep and move in ways that are friendly to your organs and your body will reset to it's young, healthy weight. If you want a quick idea of some easy rules that work search The '5 rules of the Leptin Diet'. Any of the new books on metabolism will get you on the path but the easiest to read and most inspiring is the Fat Flush plan. Funny name because it's really an easy liver/ endocrine detox book but when you get your organs healthy, the weight loss is just a natural result. I know people say they get hungry, they don't feel motivated to keep on a diet. When your organs are working better and your Leptin is working for you, the cravings stop and your mood improves. I tried it and it isn't woo-woo.

Until a six months ago, our treadmill was in our LR. LR is the main room where we hang out as we do not have a FR at the moment. The treadmill definitely got more use in the LR than it ever did in our workout room (outside pole barn). As soon as the snow season ended, the treadmill went to DB & SIL and we now have a recumbant bike in its place. As soon as the snow stopped we started walking from our home to the local park where there is a 2 mile track. We do a total of 5 miles from home, 2 loops around the track and back home. Plan to do so year round unless it snows. The cold doesn't bother me, the only real need is earmuffs. I have found that I keep a more consistent routine when I can walk outside, which explains why the treadmill got very little use. DB is now hanging clothing from it! I love my recumbant bike and do not mind using that in the LR as I can watch tv or listen to music while using it. I usually try to exercise between 4-5 a.m. I don't own a bike at the moment, and unless/until I do, the bike will stay in the LR. As I sit here in my office, I look over my shoulder and can see my stair stepper. It is positioned to face out the floor to ceiling windows. We live on a heavily wooded property and I like that I can take in the view while getting a bit of exercise. This time of year the birds are out and their babies are learning to fly. So, I say go for it. If you are more likely to use it in the LR, by all means. We had a bbq over the weekend so we moved the recumbant into my office while we had guests, but this morning it went back into the LR. While every other piece of workout equipment is housed in our pole barn, we haven't yet set up a climate control system, so those machines sit for now as it just too hot to use the barn. I've found that I need to mix it up when it comes to exercise. So depending on the time of year (weather) or my personal favorite exercise of the moment, you can find one or another piece of exercise equipment in our LR! It's your living space and that's what you are doing, living, and living well if you are exercising! Heck, you can always move it to another room if you need to get it out of the way for a party. Good luck with your treadmill.

OK, Madeyna, maybe I can help. I think it's possible you are confusing assessed value and appraisal value and market value (aka sale prices). Assessed value is the basis of property tax. In most places it only has an approximate relationship to appraisal and market values. It's main purpose is to establish a fair relative value among all the properties in a given taxing jurisdiction. Since it is often loosely based on sale prices, if all the properties that could sell for the same price have the same assessed value, then the assessed value is accurate. It doesn't matter if the $500K houses are assessed for $5 or $500,000 it only matters that all of the $500K houses have about the same assessed value, at the same time. And for assessment purposes 100 years has, in some jurisdictions, been determined to be the functional end point for judging how much a house's value should be reduced due to age alone. (Also age beyond a hundred years is often difficult to discern with the precision needed to compare age among houses as records are less accurate in the 19th c.) It doesn't mean that a house has no value after 100 years, just that after 100 years it stops mattering so much based on years alone. A 125 year old house and 175 year old house are both functionally really old houses! A side note: some tax jurisdictions are supposedly at "full market value". A noble goal and one rarely achieved since it's impossible to recalculate the value of all properties based on new sales data every time one of them changes hands. Plus some people are more aggressive in seeking reassessments than others; some people make secret improvements; some people just get lucky breaks. (And as historical note: At various times in history sale prices weren't the basis for determining assessed values, window panes or number of stories were. The mansard-style roof was originally a tax-dodge as it created valuable finished living space in the untaxed "attic" story. Humans are such clever, creative species when figuring out how to manipulate the rules!) Appraised value is a value set by a qualified appraiser of what a particular property is likely to sell for in the near future (or occasionally for some different end point). It presupposes that each party (both buyer and seller) are equally knowledgeable about real estate matters and that neither is under any undue pressure to complete the sale. The value is derived from a (sometimes complex) comparison between the subject property and recent closed sale prices (data usually gleaned from public records and real estate broker reports). The complexity comes in because rarely are two houses perfectly identical, so a method must be made to note and appropriately weight the different features, locations (distances) and slightly different time frames. Appraisals are about looking at the near past to predict the near future for a particular property, as best as possible. They are used in the process of getting a mortgage to make sure that the lenders weren't lending more money than the house was likely to be worth. (Big OOPs there, as we can see now!) And sometimes appraisals are done for other valuation purposes such as settling an estate. Market value (and its illegitimate, and much more often gossiped about, sibling, asking price) are about what money actually changes hands from buyer to seller at closing. It takes into account not only the actual house, but also the eagerness of each party to do this particular deal, for this particular house, at this particular time. It's those last caveats that are so individually driven which can make market value different from appraised value since they have a lot to with personal factors that have nothing to do with the property itself. Sellers that have finally reached the end of their tether, or are over a barrel financially are highly motivated to cut prices. Buyers who are novices or just ga-ga over a particular house will often pay through the nose. And until recently everybody fancied themselves as real estate sharpies or mini-moguls, so they thought that the sell/buy bigger/sell higher/buy even bigger merry go round could never fail. Another big OOPS! And so there you have it. Just one other comment: I wouldn't count on recouping all the money you put into remodeling an older house. That may have been the theory behind the flipping and fix-up crazes, but I doubt that it really was true in most cases, particularly with medium to really old houses. Money put in to older houses to bring them up to snuff is not usually realizable profit on sale. It's simply the difference between the orginal sale price (generally lower with old houses) and the costs of bringing the house to the living conditions the owner wants to have. Say you buy an old house for $100K, and invest another $25K remodeling, upgrading, etc., you still may not have a house sellable for $125 (disregarding the current plummet), you just have a $100K house that you needed to put another $25K into to live happily in. If you can afford to spend the money, and it gets you more of the features and life-style you really prefer, then it's money well spent, IMO. But only in irrationally appreciating markets (like we've just lived through) does it seem that if you pay $100K for a house, and then put $25K in (and usually a lot of sweat equity, even if only in the inconvenience and time spent dealing with a reno), then you have an asset worth $125K++ down the line. Basically, you still have a $100K house that you spent $25K customizing. If you're lucky some of the costs of customizing (like, say, indoor plumbing where there wasn't any) are likely to be recoup-able on a dollar for dollar basis. But because people often want very different things in old houses, that isn't always true. For instance if someone had spent $25K putting new double-pane, tilt-in windows in my 165 y.o. house there's no way I'd want to pay $25K extra - actually that would be a sale price downgrade, IMO. So, with older houses, many (costly to fix) things will turn out to be just for your own pleasure or comfort, and not for the resale value you can ever hope to get. I'd decide what you need to do for your life (sell or wait it out), and not try too hard to time the market. If all houses in your area are down, then maybe it's better to wait, if you can. But don't kid yourself that waiting has no risk of further across the board price-slides, or even of a weakening in the potential sale prices of older houses as the glut of newer ones (with features many more people want) flood the market as the Great Unwinding unfolds over the next few years. I wish you good luck in whatever you decide to do. L PS: Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. There is also the CMA, or whatever its current name, which is the a figure offered by various realtors to prospective listing (selling) clients to encourage the sellere to list with them. While these can be accurate, there's often some extra windage built in there as an appeal to the seller's greed. Agent agent "A" says, "I'd list the property for $100K"; Agent "B" comes along and says, "I'd list the property for $150K". Neither is really talking about what the deal may close for. Which do you choose, as no one would like to leave $50K on the table unneccessarily,not to mention the effect of the differences on marketing scenarios and timing? The cure for that dilemma is one (or more) private appraisals. Then you have a better idea what the property may sell for, not the initial listing price which is a meaningless number. Sure, appraisals cost a few hundred bucks, but with thousands at stake it seems like a worthwhile investment. Unless of course, you are a real estate sharpie. Then you're good to go!

My husband and I are both 50, and a few months ago we joined a 6-week crossfit "challenge" at a local gym. It included a full nutritional component, where they gave us an eating plan for the 6 weeks, and as many 30-minute trainer-led workouts as we wanted to attend each week (they recommend 3-4). Even though it is a gym, and their goal is to increase membership, they told us that getting fit and losing weight is 80% diet and 20% exercise, which I have heard before. In the 6 weeks, I lost 9 pounds, and my husband lost 28. We both lost LOTS of inches, my husband's BP has gone back to an acceptable range, and we have a lot more energy. The nutritional component was mostly no or low carb (depending on the week), with one cheat meal a week on Saturday. Cheat meals were included so that we would be less likely to feel deprived, and also for a little carb cycling. For our cheat meal, we might have two tacos or a slice of pizza or a sandwich or gluten free pasta. Guess what? We felt terrible after the cheat meal! If we happened to have it at lunch, I was worthless the rest of the day - all I wanted to do was lay around and sleep off the carbs. After a few weekends of that, we tried things like eating beans, quinoa, or even a few servings of fruit. We felt less sluggish, but still a little sleepy. We felt so great after the 6 weeks were up that we joined the gym and have continued to go 4X weekly. We still mostly adhere to the low-carb eating plan because we both have some additional weight to lose, and we also figure it is (hopefully!) our lifestyle now - we don't want to go back to lazy eating. The crossfit sessions are hard work, but a ton of fun and we feel so good and energetic afterward. The exercises switch up all the time, the sessions go fast, and best of all, I feel stronger and I'm developing muscles I haven't seen in 20 years. :)