I start teaching again next Monday, and while there will be back to school shopping in my household, it will not be for me. I will not be wearing a new outfit when I arrive to class Monday.

And this made me think about my clothing options. I have a wide range of sizes in my closet, although some are stored for when I get back to that size. I don’t know why I do this. The last time I wanted to lose weight, I kept my size 12 pants. When I finally fit in them again, the pants didn’t last very long. They ripped easily like the threads had dried up or something.  I think that was after my last pregnancy.

I try to avoid putting off buying new clothes because I think they won’t fit when I actually lose the weight that I plan to lose. And then I end up being fat and frumpy.

I’ve learned that there are some places I just can’t shop. Have you ever actually looked at the selections at places like Walmart or Kmart? Do they think that every overweight woman is over 65 years old? In all fairness, I just logged onto walmart.com to find proof of what I’m trying to say, and the selections there don’t look that bad. However, those are not the shirts my local Walmart stocks. Locally the shirts have lots of things on them — beads, ribbons and ugly stuff that will fall off after a couple of washes anyway. Nothing I actually want to wear.

I do like places like Target and Fashion Bug, especially when they have sales. Some of my favorite shirts are the Medona brand from Target.

I admit, there aren’t a lot of places to shop near my home, and being plus-size makes it even more challenging. For instance, I have to drive an hour to shop at a Target and about 45 minutes to reach a Meijers. Walmart and Kmart are even about 15 to 20 minutes away.

So, being overweight, I find I have a tendency to not shop for new clothes. And I find the selections tend to be frumpy, which means that I become a horrid fashion statement. It is no wonder that I rely primarily on jeans and t-shirts.

The hardest thing to stay current on in my wardrobe is my shirts. I try to have a wide range of shirts, most that would pass as dressy/business type shirts. And it seems like they either shrink quickly or my chest grows quickly because they never seem to fit well across the chest. I hate gaping buttons.

So how do you keep a nice wardrobe while struggling with these issues?

Aug. 18, 2006, I went to an amusement park with my children. It was the first time I was confronted with the possibility of being too big to be the parent I want to be. I had already been writing about my weight since January 2006, so it was on my mind. The humiliating experience ended up being the first chapter of my memoir, Fat Man’s Daughter.

This past weekend, the date, Aug. 18, 2007 arrived, and I wasn’t at an amusement park, but as the day went by, I also realized I wasn’t where I wanted to be either. I have talked and talked about losing weight, and I’ve tried to do something about it, but I haven’t had a lot of success in actually losing weight. I have a lot of up and down the scale within about a 10 pound range.

So I am recommitting to my weight loss journey. I am not going to be discouraged by what I haven’t done. Instead, I am going to focus on what still needs to be done. I don’t need to do the math and think about how much weight I could have lost. I need to do the exercise and be better about keeping the calories done. I’m starting again and maybe by Aug. 18, 2008, I’ll have something more encouraging to report. But I’m not going to wait until then. I want to see some results — maybe not on the scale but at least in my behavior — by Sept. 18, 2007. I want to exercise regularly. Key word there — regularly. I can do this.

One of my major motivators for losing weight is helping my children develop an honest body perception. I want my children to be able to recognize things like a healthy portion, weight and lifestyle. I want my children to develop healthy habits now that will serve them when they are adults. Although I wasn’t overweight as a child, I had already learned bad habits.

There was that recent study that found the people in your social circle can impact your weight and body image. OK, so I haven’t actually read an article on the subject, so I don’t know anything about the actual study. I’m just thinking of my own experience. I know I never thought of my dad as fat, and he weighed in at over 400 pounds. I know that I often think of myself as skinny, and I am really 80 pounds overweight. In other words, I have a tendency to be delusional about weight.

And, I also know that I am more successful in my attempts to lose weight when I have someone to join me in losing weight and/or exercising. My husband and I have made pacts in the past to walk regularly, but when 6 a.m. rolls around, more often than not, he resets the alarm for 7 a.m. It seems so many times, we will tell each other, “we’ll walk tomorrow.” But lately I’ve been trying to change that. If we don’t walk in the morning, I have tried (a couple of times at most) to get him to walk at night. It’s hot though, and afternoon/evening walks aren’t very appealing.

But on Monday, I made a deal with another family member — my 13-year-old daughter. We have committed to walk at least 5 times a week, and to begin with, we are walking 2 miles. Teens can be persistent, and so far it has been pretty successful. We grab our iPods and off we go. Yesterday my two younger daughters joined us. The girls jogged part of the two miles, but I’m not up to that yet. I’m not sure if I ever will be. I’ve never particularly liked to run. We shall see.

The thing about the walk? We’ve been going in the evening, usually after dinner, when it is still hot out. Last night when we arrived back home, I immediately took a shower because I needed it.

I have also started exercising to my exercise DVD. Mind you, I haven’t managed to do the entire workout yet, and that is usually because I have to do other stuff, but it is a start. I am doing what I need to do to lose weight — exercising. Because I find I can only talk the talk so long before I expect results.