I knew when I started that this would be a difficult journey.  Here it is February 2nd and I fell off the wagon right around Christmas time.  We traveled and I didn't make the time to exercise.  Eating right was hard.  In fact, it was pretty much eat wrong or go hungry.  (Not that I went wild or anything.)  And when I returned home, I got sick, and then sick again, and really, only in the last 2 weeks was I well enough to have actually exercised.  I did manage to ski twice, which was very encouraging.  I will say, though, that I could really, really feel the lack of exercise on the last ski day (1/27/08) and even as I bulged through the slats in the lift chair, I resolved to do better.

On the plus side, I didn't gain all the weight back (maybe 3 pounds), but I didn't lose anything either.  And because this blog is all about quantifying progress, I'm going to post exactly what that cost me.  Friday should have been a painful but much anticipated milestone.  I should have weighed almost 15 pounds less than I do today.  Why was that particular weight significant?  It would have transported my body and self-esteem back to a happier time, as it marked the spot on the scales where I stood when I became pregnant with Garrison (the lost pregnancy). 

 While it is key not to dwell too much on failures, it behooves me to count the cost of those evenings sitting on my fanny in front of the TV when I could just have easily been watching from the exercise bike.  Sadly, the date in which I could reasonably anticipate reaching my goal is moved from  to August 15 to Oct 13.  That's a heartbreaker.  

And let me go ahead and tell you there are some challenges ahead for me.  When the King leaves town, I often crawl into bed as soon as the kids are asleep -- craving quiet, craving comfort, and craving rest.  It's a mental health thing.  And alas, the King has some major trips planned.  

Secondly, our every-other-week housecleaning services have been discontinued, so I'm going to have to figure out how to work that extra load into my daily routine. 

My strategy then, must include to get into a healthy pattern THIS WEEK, before the King leaves.  Secondly, I'm going to go enlist in FlyLady's plan right now.  She breaks the housework up into Zones and short spurts of time.  Liberal use of timers.  I've tried it before and had some success.  Blogless Adele also recommended a book to me called Managers of Their Home, by Carrie Maxwell.  Evidently, the premise of that book is to break your day into 30 minute increments.   Plus, I'm pretty sure that neither Carrie Maxwell nor Blogless Adele sleep in until their baby wakes up, like I do.  (He usually wakes up around 8:30.)  So that brings me to the third strategy:  I must get up earlier!  I need to look at this motherhood thingy as a regular 8 hour a day job and start at the regular time.  Even though we all know it is really more like an 18 hour a day job and I'm not going to be finished until I hit the sack.  But my goal needs to be to keep up the intensity for at least the regular 8. 

Any ideas you have, suggestions, motivators, recriminations, etc?  Bring 'em on.