I stepped on the scale this morning and scared myself. I weigh way too much at 162 pounds. My size 8 pants are like so tight, and I saw myself in the mirror the other day and I had a poochy belly! Spooky! That poochy belly of mine wasn't there in November.

So now I'm back to counting calories again, and doing my 10,000 steps per day. I worked out on Friday, and finally went to the gym on Sunday. I had to force myself to go, since de-habited myself and didn't go the gym at all in December.

Maybe this time I'll get to goal weight of 135-140 pounds. I watched a Dateline NBC program on losing weight, and all the diets they tried worked even hypnosis. They rated the marathon runner number the winner and the Atkins dieter second.

I tried Atkins and since I've been a partial vegetarian since I was 19 years old, Atkins was really, really hard. My body just can't handle all that protein, and I was only eating chicken, fish and eggs. If your body can handle eating all that meat-eating, then Atkins does work.

Counting calories and exercising everyday worked for me the last time, and I'll stick to that. I'm going to modify my eating a little bit by consuming more salads and fruits as meals. I'm kind of on a raw food kick.

At least I didn't gain all the weight I lost back, and although my jeans and pants are super tight, I can still wear them. 27 pounds doesn't seem like much, but we'll see.

What a drag it is to be at work today.

I took the day off after christmas and new years, so I had two four day weekends off in a row. It was so heavenly.

But now I'm back at work and it will be my first full week of work in two weeks. I need more holidays!

Maybe if I print my monthly reading list, I'll make myself find the time to read more books.

For January my reading list is:

Golf in the Kingdom by Michael Murphy - I just started this book, and found it after reading reviews of "The Legend of Bagger Vance". It's written by the founder of the Esalen Institute at Big Sur.

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley - won the pulitzer prize in 1992 (for award winning books)

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane - the book is supposed to be better than the movie.

It's kind of fun and interesting to look back and go over everything I've done in the past year. Sometimes I think I do and see so much that if I don't write them down, I totally forget about them and they all become one big blur.