I am sticking with my weight loss plan, and actually enjoying using the SparkPeople website to track my food and exercise. I get good feedback from it everyday, and it really makes me think about what I’m eating. If I’m thinking of having a snack, I can look at my page and see how I’ve done so far, and if I have the calories to spend, and I really think about if I want to spend them that way.

I’m also working out walking on the treadmill nearly every evening, and doing strength training every other day. I’m trying to work in other exercise too. Yesterday Dave and I went to the park and he jogged while I rode my bike alongside. The bike was going faster than him though, so eventually I parked it and just walked fast while he jogged the loop. I love riding my bike, I can’t wait to get it out again. When I was a kid my bike was always a substitute for having a horse – blasting along with the wind in my hair. I love that feeling – and it’s darned good exercise for the legs!

This still feels different from previous attempts to lose weight which were half-hearted at best. I feel very devoted to this, and I feel encouraged and optimistic that it is going to work. I lost 5lb the first two weeks. I stalled last week though when I hurt my back – skipping! I felt so good I went skipping down the hall just to see if I could and pulled something in my back! That’ll curb your enthusiasm quick! I’ll leave skipping to te children from now on! After a couple days rest I am back to my workout routine and hopeful I’ll see some more progress on the scale next Monday.

A friend who is also on this journey asked if I’d like to join her for a 5K walk, so I said yes.So in March I’ll be doing my first 5K walk – it’s only 3 miles, I walk half that on the treadmill every night. Should be interesting.

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Probably my main goal for this year is to get my weight under control and get back in shape. I am exercising every day, and trying to eat right. Eating right is the hardest part, because I do a poor job of watching my portions, and guesstimating how many calories are in something. I went looking for help online, particularly for something to help me do a food journal, and I found SparkPeople.

SparkPeople is a free site dedicated to helping people lose weight. There is an excellent Daily Food Plan section, where they suggest a plan, and let you edit it and change it, and at the end of the day they give you a breakdown of how you did – did you eat enough carbs, enough protein, too much fat? All laid out in nice little pie charts. I logged all my food yesterday before dinner, and I was feeling guilty because I had snacked on a piece of bread with cream cheese and nutella. Not a great choice for snacking, but when I logged it and looked at my breakdown, it wasn’t exactly the end of the world either – in fact I ended the day right in the range I should have been for calories, but could have done better on the amount of fats (too much cheese). So it actually made me feel better, and get back on track instead of descending into one of those negative self-hate spirals that so often sabotages my diet plans!

SparkPeople also has an exercise plan section, where they suggest what exercises to do on what days. I’m going to use that for the first time tonight, but I have been walking on the treadmill every morning and I was able to log that as well. It seems like a very flexible system. And there are tons of other features to inspire and motivate and keep me on track.

With this new motivation, I took the big step of stepping on the scale. The number was about 30 higher than I was expecting. But instead of going off in the corner and crying, for the first time ever I felt more inclined to say ‘fine, let’s do this’! I’m ready to take it on – and take it off. I’ve had enough. I want to spend my summers out hiking and bicycling, my winters out snowshoeing, I want to ride horses, I want to be in shape and have balance and stamina and feel good and not feel tired all the time. I’m ready to do this. I’m doing it.

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