I guess the initial high I had about Spark People is slowly fading. I didn't track my food as accurately as I had in the past few weeks and several nights just before bedtime, I went on eating sprees, having one serving of this, one serving of that and on and on until I finally broke out of the eating trance I had been in and screeched to a stop. It's like this other person comes out from inside of me and has a voracious appetite. Nothing stops until he has over-indulged in all the different tastes: sweet, tart, salty, etc. What will I do about this next week and the week after that? I know it will be a long haul until I reach my goal weight and I knew sooner or later, that initial seemingly ease in which the pounds came off would fade. It feels like work now and it's gonna be harder than I thought. Reality check - it is not easy changing ingrained habits. Still, I feel confident that it will happen: I will reach my goal weight and surely by then, new habits will have formed and it will be easier to stay on track. It may take longer than I want but I will get there.

On the upside, I have started February out well and I'm that much closer of meeting my goal of dancing 30 minutes or more each night on the DDR game for the entire month. I think I am ready to advance past beginner level and it will be more of a challenge keeping up with those arrows flying up the screen. It's fun to play this game and keeps my focus off of food for at least a little while. My brother sent me a video of my oldest brother and my nephews doing Just Dance 3 on their Wii. It looks like a lot of fun and if I ever get some extra money, I just might invest in a Wii system to do my DDR and other dancing games for exercise. Maybe I can find a second-hand unit on Craigslist...

I just came up with an idea for saving up some money to upgrade to a Wii. Every week that I successfully lose some pounds, I will put $5 into the Wii fund. This is certainly a better idea than spending the money each week sneaking fast food on the way home from work as had been my habit before I started on Spark People. It was so easy chowing down on one of several different varieties of burritos from Taco Bell or having a McDouble and French Fries from McDonald's. I always would feel guilty afterwards because I knew I shouldn't be doing it and it finally caught up to me. I steadily had been gaining weight until I reached 214 and realized what had happened. I didn't want to go up another notch in pants waist sizes. I remember looking in the mirror at myself and it was like seeing my self for the first time. I was admittedly fat and the rolls around my waist were shocking to me. That was my turning point - I finally hit bottom and decided that I would do something to change the direction my life was going. Not only was it unattractive to be overweight, my blood pressure had been rising and my cholesterol levels were also going up despite being on a cholesterol lowering drug. I would not be able to take care of my partner if I were unhealthy myself. I'm glad I found Spark People when I did and now the work begins...

Peace,

Jeff