Sounds like we have a team! The game is on!

Here's my story: I started my diet last summer, and lost 34 pounds up until Christmas. Unfortunately, that's when I totally went off the diet; it was originally going to be a "planned vacation," but it's ended up spinning out of control.

Now, I've gained three of the pounds back and am trying to motivate myself to get back on the stick. My goal is to lose another 67 pounds before the end of this year. When I stayed on my diet, I was losing at least two pounds a week, so I was doing really well!

My regimen is this:

Breakfast: Cereal or oatmeal

Lunch: A cup of low-cal soup or veggies

Dinner: A chicken breast marinated in low-fat Greek or Italian dressing, and a cup of Brussel Sprouts, broccoli, cabbage or some other vegetable.

Snack: A bunch of grapes; I try to limit myself to 25.

This is a low calorie diet, but it's been approved by all my doctors down here and I did great with it until Christmas! Now I'm just climbing back into it--reluctantly, I admit but I know that it has great results if I can just stick to it!

My two biggest tips are these:

1) Try to walk if you can't exercise. I'm lucky because I live in Key West and can walk outside all year round, but I do have mobility issues. Even so, I force myself to walk at least two miles almost every day. You won't believe how much this helps, even if you can't do any other exercise--and this is the only exercise I do.

2) Don't eat at night. I've been a lifelong professional musician and entertainer, so this is hard for me because I will always be on a night schedule! But now that I'm not able to work anymore, I try to stick to a regimen of daytime eating and cut off the food intake at 8 p.m., except for a handful of grapes if I'm really hungry.

I'm also careful about what I eat. I simply can't start on bread or cheese, or I'll go hog wild! I'm like an addict about nuts and potato chips, so I simply can't have them in the house (we just finished our Christmas supply, which is one reason why I gained those three pounds!)

Gosh, it all sounds so simple, doesn't it? And it's hard, it's hard, it's hard...

It was worth it, however, at the Key West Fantasy Fest this fall when I was finally able to squeeze into a belly dancing outfit for the first time in my life! So I'm climbing back on the saddle and determined to keep riding this horse until I get to my destination!

Hope all of this helps the rest of you. I'll be weighing in on Friday. Just the thought of reporting my weight loss to everyone this week is motivating me to behave myself!