I recently read somewhere in an inspirational thread about weight loss and a piece of advice I took away was never go more than a day without exercise so you can take a day's break but the next day, you need to be right back at it. That gets me through because I didn't do anything yesterday so today I just *had* to exercise and the whole time I kept saying "make it through this and you can take tomorrow off" In reality, I'll be telling myself that again tomorrow while exercising.

Cassie-I have a totally different philosophical approach to exercise so I'm not sure I would be helpful to you. What you eat has more to do with how much you lose than how much you exercise-there's good science behind that statement, not just my opinion. However, exercise is good for you for a whole lot of reasons. I am one of those people who says-find something you like and do it regularly but coming up with some rigid formula I don't find helpful. I prefer to really focus on the getting the eating thing down and viewing my exercise as something relaxing and enjoyable I GET to do-not a chore I HAVE to do has part of my weight loss program.

Do you have a dog? Walk the dog. I imagine you will enjoy it more if you make it part of spending quality time with your dog. I know you mentioned you live in a pretty rural area but there are still lots of options-the videos like you are doing, walking, biking, rollerblading. If you live somewhere it snows a lot, there's skiing and snoeshowing. Think outside the box. And then there's the Wii. I don't know if you have one of these nifty devices but might be a good Christmas gift if you don't. I know if I play tennis on mine, I'm sweating in about 10 minutes and the possibilities here are also almost endless. Snowboarding, Boxing, Golf, sports you would never take up otherwise. Now you won't burn as many calories as you would if you were doing it "for real" but it's more fun and it gets you moving at that's the point-isn't it?

I never plan to take a day off, either. It happens because life gets in the way (or colds, or vacations), but my goal is a work-out every day, regular like clockwork. One day off turns into two, which turns into getting out of the routine for me.