When is a loss a victory?

Food is still winning the fight, but I'm about to make the battle a little more public.

It's no secret that people gain weight over the holidays, but I thought maybe I'd be the exception. After all, my part time job is at a fitness center and in December I started a "butt busters" program with some of the members.

Then I started to feel a little thick. And my wonderful new pair of slacks got tighter. The holidays created shorter hours at the fitness center, so I went a week without working -- or working out.

Today I stepped on the scale. Four pounds more than when I weighed two weeks ago.

So here's my plan: I'm going to hit it hard every week, regardless of whether I work or not, and provide weekly updates through this blog. You'll get to know how many times I worked out in a week, how many pounds I've lost -- or (ick) gained -- and how my inches are going. I won't give out my starting weight, just the difference from week to week (give me some dignity, please!).

There will be blog posts that have nothing to do with this new challenge, but there will be at least once a week updates on how things are going.

To keep it honest and keep me accountable - somewhat - here are my goals: to lose 10 pounds by my birthday in mid-June, another 15 by Christmas 2009 and to drop two pants sizes over the course of a year.

So here we go -- the journey starts on Monday! Feel free to play along -- post a comment with your goals and we can trade weekly results.