It's not hard to get motivated. When I look at my self sideway 3/4 turn, I look like Humpty Dumpty. I attribute some of it to bloat because of my period but I think a lot of it is my out of shape stomach muscles and fat around my middle.

I never knew if I was the pear shape or the apple shape type they talk about. Now I know. I'm definitely one who accumulates around the middle. Although my thighs and hips and shoulders are no slouch at accumulating!

It was really true, not an excuse, that the reason I didn't exercise was because I lacked exercise pants. One pair of sweat pants developed a hole in the crotch. That reduced my collection of pants I can wear to the gym down to one. The number of pants needed to be much higher to hit critical mass for me to go to the gym regularly. Before, when I could and when the pair was clean, I'd go to the gym.

Now, I have 5 (6 if I can find that one pair I had left) pair of exercise pants I can wear to the gym. My sister helped me shop for them off the clearance rack of Burlington Coat Factory. I would have never thought to go there. What I realize though is I need a couple casual slip on dresses to wear after the gym so I don't have to wear pants and shirt, etc after the shower. I just want to slip something on after the shower and get the heck out of there. Not try to balance on one foot trying to put pants on in the shower.

At the gym tonight I sweated and it felt good. Working out at the gym without a child really reduces the pressure for a quick workout and I can get to a good sweat. And later I can take a nice shower at home if they're asleep. I think night time can work if I can get to the gym at around 8pm so that I don't have such a late night like tonight. Still totally worth it tonight.

Food-wise I was okay but not great. Part of what motivated me to go to the gym. This morning I had oatmeal with half and half. That probably was more caloric than need be. Still, it was fairly good. Then I took the kids to Costco and made my mistake there. I ate a hotdog - bun, ketchup, mustard, relish and onions - all of it. I heard that's like 350 calories or something. And I ate part of Lila's pizza. That's like an additional 200 calories at least. So it was a big lunch. It didn't leave me much for dinner and I was so hungry at dinner time I was feeling headache-y. So while I didn't gorge I did probably eat more than 1200 calories today.

But I'm not calorie counting yet. I mean I do but my main thing is choosing healthy foods, eyeballing portion control and eating until satiated but not totally full. I consciously eat less than I would normally eat - and I drink 4 bottles of water a day - that's my calorie reduction plan. If that's not good enough, if I'm not losing weight with that method, then I will start counting calories.