I finally broke down. On Saturday, I went to go buy jeans in a bigger size since I’m tired of squeezing my expanding waist into jeans that are too small and showing my muffin top. At least the sale at Carson’s overcame my disappointment in having to buy a new size. I bought a $60 pair of door-buster Ruff Hewn jeans for only $18!

My size? I’m not divulging that number! Let’s just say I’m back up to the weight I was when I was taking Tamoxifen, a medication for breast cancer. At least back then, I was able to justify my weight gain by blaming it on the meds. Now, I have nothing to blame this extra poundage on.

We are going to a family reunion this summer in Colorado, and we want to be outdoors; this is going to be a very active vacation. I don’t want everyone, including my two-year-old, to be waiting for me as I huff and puff up the trail.

So, I devised a plan while I was showering this morning. I have a couple of exercise DVD’s that I’m going to use for 30 minutes a day. Just thirty minutes. I think I can spare that much time to exercise, and if I keep it up, then I’ll have more energy to do the rest of the things I have to do during the day.

There’s also portion control. I’ve starting trying this already, but I’m not doing a fantastic job. I need to do better at eating healthy foods, AND I also need to stop stuffing myself. So when we ordered pizza last night, I stopped after two pieces. They were big pieces, but I stopped. (Being the waste-not mom that I am, I did eat the rest of Lily’s piece, too, so I didn’t really stop! But instead of eating three and a half pieces, I had two and a half. We had thin crust pizza. Does that help my case at all?) I’ll admit that willpower is something I need to work on when it comes to food. But that’s just one more reason to join Casey at Half as Small as You, so that I feel accountable to something.

Here I go — Week 1 of HASAY! I’ll tell you how I do next Monday.