I have not lost any weight, but I have been maintaining my weight.

I am tired of not losing weight, and I really need to tighten up my belly. This means I have to exercise regularly.

I am on the right track. I have added biking and walking to my regular routine. When I drive (and I do this a lot), I have started sucking in and holding my gut, letting it out, and repeating, hoping that this will help me tighten that particular body part.

Hubby and I have been walking pretty regularly, and I am biking. For the most part, biking is going well. I can tell that it is still a new activity, however, when I sit down on something hard like in the bathtub when I shave my legs.

I am not where I want to be in my weight-loss journey. It is discouraging. The only thing for me to do, however, is to just keep trying and to step up the exercise.

Easier said (typed) than done, but still. I need this. I can do this. I will not give up.

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.

On Monday, I leave for a four-week writing workshop. I’ll be home on the weekends, but I’ll still be gone four to five days a week, and I will live in a dorm.

Today I have to pack, and I am worried about what I will wear. I want to be comfortable, and I’m not sure what the temperatures will be, but I suspect it will be hot. And possibly rainy.

And it’s not like I have a lot of options to select from. I would say that I no longer fit into a majority of the clothing in my closet. And yet I don’t want to buy more clothing because I want to lose this weight.

But I did go shopping the other day, and it just made me feel bigger and fatter. I left the store feeling very down and depressed about my size.

It has been months since I lost any additional weight. I tend to fluctuate between the same five pounds. The thing is I can tell when I am at the highest rather than the lowest. With just those five pounds, my body feels differently. Yet why haven’t I lost any more weight?

I’ve done some exercising but not as much as I should be doing.

It’s always been so easy to hide my excess weight before. People would be surprised to hear how much I really weigh. But now they aren’t surprised. I look fat too.

I know what it takes to lose weight — exercise more and eat less, but I have a hard time doing that. My biggest problem is that I don’t know how to figure out calories and portions for food I make at home.  I wonder how much I really am consuming, and I have no way to figure it out. How many calories is there in two pieces of toast with butter and peanut butter spread thinly across the toast’s surface? Why peanut butter and butter?

This week I have been thinking more about exercise short cuts than real loss. I investigated the new diet pill — Alli. It sells for $44 for 60 capsules at my local store. The bottle contains 60 tablets, and the instructions say take one pill with every meal. It warns against taking more than 3 a day. That means the bottle contains less than a 30 day supply. Plus there is all the nasty warnings that go along with it. I’m not (desperate enough) ready to accept “uncontrollable bowel movements” as a side effect of any weight loss program.

I also logged onto lapband.com  to find out about that. You need to have a BMI higher than 40, which I don’t. Or, you can have a BMI 35 or higher (I do) along with a severe medical condition (I don’t).

I guess it’s up to me, along with diet and exercise. When will I think I’m worth it to do something? Why doesn’t the weight just come off? Shouldn’t thinking hard about losing weight burn some calories?

Will this new realization that I am fat spur me into losing the weight? Fourteen pounds is not enough to lose. I am behind in my goal. I wanted to lose a pound a week. I should have lost 24 pounds by now. Remember when I was ambitious enough to think maybe I should aim for 2 pounds a week? What happened to that motivation?

Ten pounds. I can do it, right?

Steve and I started walking again. And we were talking about how I was going to be able to keep walking next week at the workshop. It goes from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and in my off hours I have other commitments such as grading student work. Will I be able to find time to walk? I am going to try. This has always been my downfall — I fill my schedule so much with things that require just sitting that I don’t get the exercise I need. This is how I gained my weight in the first place.

In recent months, I realized one of the main changes in my life is the amount of exercise I do as a natural part of my life. I’m not talking about artificial means of getting exercise, like setting aside time to go to a gym. I mean exercise that is a secondary benefit to something I already do because I enjoy it.

When I was a kid, I had a lot of secondary-benefit exercise built into my day. I was the drum major of the marching band. I was a cheerleader. I had ballet, tap and jazz lessons. I didn’t do these things because they were great exercise. I did these things because I liked to do them. The fact that by doing them, I was exercising, was something I didn’t even consider.

As I grew older, I became more sedentary. This past year, especially, I have spent a lot of time sitting with a computer on my lap. I had things to do. And while I enjoy writing and working on my computer, exercise is not a secondary benefit.

So I’ve been looking for opportunities to work exercise back into my life as a secondary-benefit. One thing I enjoy doing is spending time with my husband, and we both really enjoy starting our day by taking some time for just the two of us and going for a walk. Except hubby broke his butt, and the kids are still in school, so we haven’ t been doing a lot of walking.

But last night, after Steve had retired to the couch, he asked me to help Autumn stop the riding lawn mower. And I did, but after I shut it off, I tried to push it into the garage. As I was turning the wheel, I turned it too far and ended up breaking the steering arm that guides the wheels. This, Steve said, is why he is the only one who mows are lawn.

Today, I reminded Steve that I like mowing the lawn. We still have a push mower, and it would be a great way to mow our lawn, do something I enjoy, and get that secondary-benefit.

And so, this afternoon, I changed to jeans, tennis shoes and a tank top. I went into the garage, retrieved the mower and started it up. I mowed around the flower beds in the front yard because you can get closer to them with a push mower than you can a riding mower. When that was done, I went to the far side of the house and began pushing the mower back and forth. There was a big difference from what it felt like when I was pushing the mower in the shady areas of our lawn, and when I was pushing our mower in the sunny areas.

Zeus, our chocolate lab, watched me while relaxing in the shady areas.

I had just stepped under the trees in the back of our yard, and I was seriously considering mowing just under the trees for a while, when I saw something move in the corner of my eye.

Earlier, I had inadvertently pushed a stick with the mower, and when I saw the stick move, I thought “snake.” But it was just a stick. This time, I was thinking “stick,” and it was a snake. I do not like snakes. I really do not like snakes. Especially when they are crawling into my bed (which is what actually happened a long time ago, and no I don’t mean a guy who is sleezy and acts like a snake. I mean a real snake, the gardner variety, and after I put on my winter coat and gloves, I grabbed the snake by the tail and threw it outside. Unsatisfied, I followed it outside and grabbed a shovel, and let’s just say that there are many reasons I don’t like snakes, and I shared those many reasons with that particular snake.)

And that’s when I decided I enjoyed mowing in the sunny areas of the yard too.

I mowed for an hour. I am sweaty and hot and a blister formed and popped on the palm of my left hand. And the yard is still not completely mowed. (Did I mention we own approximately an acre of land?)

I have not given up. I came inside to get a much needed drink. And to relax just a bit, and then I will go back out and finish mowing. Or at least do some more mowing.

I already have proof my idea is going to do wonders for my ultimate goal — losing weight. I am already more attractive (wait for it) to horseflies. I have the bites to prove it.

So what are some other ideas for natural exercise? Things like taking the stairs instead of the elevator and parking further away from where you want to go instead of circling for a “good” parking spot. Any other ideas?