Okay, I have tried and tried and TRIED for the last year or more to become serious about diet and exercise. I had a baby three years ago, and not only have I not lost the baby weight, but since I met my current boyfriend a year ago, I have gained back what I had lost before I met him. I am horribly out of shape, extremely overweight, and I am really starting to just feel bad physically. I never thought I would let myself get to the point where I was really feeling bad, but I have, and now it is time to do something about it.

This blog is a contract to myself. Well, its more than that. I guess it is a way to hold myself accountable, as well as being a contract. See, I want to get serious about this. I’m tired of being overweight, and I’m tired of feeling bad. I want to exercise and go on a sensible diet and lose this weight and fit into all of those skinny clothes that I have stashed away in my storage shed, just waiting for the day when I can wear them again. I want to wear them again! I remember the cute stuff I have in there!

So this is my plan. First of all, I will not go a day without doing at least thirty minutes of some sort of exercise that gets my heart rate up. EVERY DAY! Even if it something as seemingly lame as the walking dvd that I have – I have to do SOMETHING EVERY DAY! And at least every other day at this point it needs to be some sort of strength training so that I can build up my muscles and increase my metabolism. Second, I will cut my calories. I have already started doing that, but I slipped a few times this week. I really, really need to make sure that I’m not hungry when I get home from work, because that is when I blow it. But those protein bars I ate on the days when I didn’t slip really helped so I need to make sure I eat one of those every afternoon. And third, I will record in this journal EVERY DAY how I did with my workouts and my eating. I will do the recording in the evening before I go to bed, after I eat dinner. That really shouldn’t be that hard.

That is my plan. I hope to lose 20 pounds by my birthday, which is in February. After my birthday I will set a new weight loss goal and perhaps adopt a more structured eating plan, but right now I am going to focus on starting to exercise and just cut my calories. That alone shouldn’t be too hard, and it will be a better starting point as far as keeping track of things. I need to make this exercise a habit before I start trying to write stuff that I’m eating down all the time. I am going to weigh myself weekly and take my measurements monthly. I guess I will use today’s date as my point of measurement, but I would really like to weigh myself on Thursdays. I don’t know why. When I lost all that weight before my best friend’s wedding, that was my favorite day to weigh on, so I guess I will use it again.

I am looking forward to this, and I hope that this journal will keep me motivated as well. I really want to succeed this time!