On January 6, 2009, I weighed in at 260 pounds on sparkpeople.com. I had previously been a member of sparkpeople, but I started a new account because I wanted a fresh start.

The past several years of my life have been filled with diet excuses: "It's so hard to eat healthy when my husband wants pizza every night", "I can't afford to eat healthy", "I don't have room to exercise in my house". The past month or so I've been thinking about these excuses and I can discount each of them:

"It's so hard to eat healthy when my husband wants pizza every night."
This one's easy – the first time I lost weight it was 70 pounds and Patrick only joined in towards the end of that time. I tracked absolutely everything that I ate. I exercised regularly. I agreed to go out to eat only if it was at a place that had something healthy for me. Further discounting this excuse is my current situation – I live alone now, and I have lived alone since November 7th. I've been lazy and I know it.

"I can't afford to eat healthy."
Actually, I can. I've got a handy spending report from my bank account that says that my average restaurant spending since November is almost $150. It goes back to laziness – I have food in my house, I bring food to work for lunch almost every day. I could easily cut $100 off of that total and add it to my grocery budget instead.

"I don't have room to exercise in my house."
Wrong! I am a separated woman living in a two-bedroom apartment and when my husband moved out I moved into the bigger room… so actually I have a multitude of space for exercising. That space just isn't in my living room where I would prefer to exercise.

I cannot think of a single good excuse to avoid working towards a healthy lifestyle. The only thing that stops me is fear of failure, but I know for certain that I will fail if I don't even try.

So I will start slowly – this week I am going to eat as I have been, but I'm going to keep track of everything that I eat. That means measuring portions and writing everything down. I will work on a specific plan for what I want to do and what I'd like my goals to be. I am making a promise to myself to do this and to keep it simple because I know that, in the past, making things more complicated only leads me to give up.

Finally I'd just like to add a little success to the mix. I weighed in today at 251.6. I am 8.4 pounds lighter today than I was a year ago – it's not much, but it's a start.