So, it's the first day of May. I find myself weighing the same as I did the first day (I weighed myself, the 4th) of April: 195.6 lbs. Eek. Actually, I had expected worse; we ate at Texas de Brazil last night, and as I've described before it's somewhat of a meat orgy. So it could have been worse, but still. Obviously, I've made utterly no progress at all in the past few weeks. So I'm trying to regroup (again, I know, it's getting a little silly) and try to figure out a way to motivate myself.

Here's my thinking: from today, there are fifteen weeks until school starts (oh, the horror; there's nothing worse to think about for a teacher who isn't even out of school yet than the fact that school starts in a few months) for the next school year. Here's my idea. Apparently just cheering myself on to lose weight isn't nearly enough to get me going. Maybe I can bribe myself. I've got two separate plans.

Plan one has to do with the actual weight loss. Each pound I lose will be worth some dollar amount ($3 is what I'm thinking of so far; $1 seems too small and $5 seems a bit much, at least it did when I first started thinking about this, but maybe $5 might be more motivation!). The money I accumulate over the summer will go towards buy the new clothes that I'll hopefully need for next school year.

Plan two has to do with the exercise. Each day I workout will also be worth money. The first day is worth only $1, the second day $2, the third $3, and so on. If I were to work out for seven days in a row, it would be worth $28 (and maybe I might reward myself by rounding it up to $30). I might even consider adding a dollar to each day that I work out twice. I don't know; I haven't ironed out all the details.

Now, I haven't quite decided what to do about any possible weight GAIN I might run across. Maybe if I end a week with a weight gain, obviously I wouldn't get any money from the weight loss, but I could possibly penalize myself by removing half the money I earned from working out. Hmm.

Ultimately any money I get from all this would go towards the clothes shopping I will hopefully need to do at the end of the summer to prepare for the start of the new school year.

Any suggestions as to how I can fine tune this plan? The good news is I've started out well; I managed to run this morning, despite every urge to the contrary.