I'm married, 56 years old, and I have a rather sedentary job working for a university. I enjoy my job very much but I'm also looking forward to retiring in a few years. I have a daughter in college who is just one year from graduating. Once she's out of school I'm planning to retire and do some traveling with my husband and our 2 dogs.

Menopause has not been kind to me as far as weight gain goes. So when I turned 50 I decided to take up a new hobby, running. I really enjoy it! I've kept it up now for 6 years, I've run 5K's, 10K's, and half marathons. I've been able to lose 10 pounds and keep it off just by adding my running.

Even with regular exercise, I've realized that in order to get to a health BMI I also need to change my eating habits. So I participated in a 6 month weight loss program that is run here at my university. It was a great program, emphasizing regular exercise and smaller portions. The program stressed fruits and vegetables over carbs and meats and included HMR 500 shakes which helped me tremendously. I lost 30 pounds and I felt great at 165 pounds! Sadly once the program was over my poor eating habits returned and I put it all back on again.

One of the things they said in my weight loss program was to be successful most people have to log their food intake in order to maintain their weight loss. I didn't take that advice and now I'm paying for it.

So here I go again, trying to lose that same 25-30 pounds. And this time hopefully I will keep it off!