Okay, so I have been more than a little busy the last week and haven’t had time to get over here, but here I am right now for a quick post. It’s been a pretty good ride since Ireland. Putting the doctors appointments aside (three this month, one still to go) which are kind of the norm for me every three months, we have had a lot of fun (great wedding Donna & Ron!) and are trying to get back into a routine, or at least I am. I am trying hard to get into an exercise and diet routine that I can stick to this time and work on getting some of this weight off.

I don’t eat a lot, at least I don’t feel like I east a lot anyway. I am trying some of these meal replacement shakes now for breakfast and lunch, since I never really ate breakfast anyway other than coffee. So I have a shake and some fruit for breakfast, a shake for lunch, yogurt for an afternoon snack and then dinner. We’ll see how it works out for meals. I have a couple of weaknesses that I need to get past in order for this to work. I love bread, and I have to stop loving it and I love salty snacks, which I need to say goodbye to as well. Put that along side of any the other temptations that may come up along the way and it gets tough.

Making it harder is that I work from home. Yes, working from home is great because I get to be home for Sean and Michelle and get stuff done, that, well frankly would never get done before when Michelle and I both worked outside the house. But being home all day also means I am home all day with food here, so it takes some willpower to try to stay away from certain things. I don’t want to deprive everyone else of things in the house just because I am trying to lose weight, so there are still things here I shouldn’t be eating. The trick for me is to just stay busy, and thankfully my work keeps me pretty busy lately (thank you Melanie :)).

So the real hard part comes with exercise. Nobody likes to exercise. Okay, I shouldn’t say that, because there are people who do like to exercise regularly. I know I always feel better when I get into a routine of exercising, but it’s hard for me to do. Having problems with my legs and having compromised breathing do not make exercise even remotely enjoyable. Right now, I can go about 20 minutes before my breathing starts to become a problem. I know it will get better over time the more I do it, I just have to force myself to do it. That’s always been the hard part for me, and now it is even worse since I really have a built-in excuse to give up. So I have to be determined and press myself harder.

When I was sick in the hospital, I lost about 50 pounds. I have put that back on in three years plus  some extra. Right now, I am 230 pounds. I think I would feel much better about myself if I can get rid of at least 40 pounds, so that is going to be my goal for the moment. Now I just have to make sure I stick with my goals. I need to do it for a better me. Heck, after going through everything else and making it through, it’s the least I can do for my family to make sure I stick around longer, so I am going to do it. I’ll keep you up to date on my progress.

As for the rest of the blog, I think it will help to keep me busy and away from snacking as well. I want to turn my energies towards things like this anyway, and this gives me a good excuse to do that. I had always set a goal to write at least 1,000 words a day on my blog, but now with 2 blogs, I think I can do that pretty easily.

So tomorrow starts the adventure of the new me and the new blog approach. I am going to start with something simple, just an idea that we have picked up lately as family that you may find you want to do as well. Check back and see what I am talking about. My goal is to make this blog a place where I can provide some information on different things, give some viewpoints and give you a chance to give your views, occasionally vent about what’s going here, there and everywhere, but most of all have some fun.

Fun starts tomorrow, be ready!