I'm a return participant for Lighten Up 2012.  I came in 3rd place but put some weight back on and still have quite a few pounds to go so I'm back.  I hope to learn from my mistakes since the contest ended and not put any weight back on after this Lighten Up is over!  I can't win anything but being allowed to participate again is reward enough! My main nutritional goal for the month is to go back to keeping track of portions and calories.  I think the first mistake I made after the contest was stopping using my food diary. I used MyFitnessPal but the health dept has hooked us up with Vitabot so I'll give it a try.  I stopped using the food dairy as soon as I stepped off the scale for the last weigh in.  I thought I'd learned enough. BAD choice.  Since I've started using it again I've found that one of my very favorite "It has so much good stuff in it I can eat it 5 days a week" omelet is 930 calories. Yep. That's only for the omelet. My bag of salty snacks? Read carefully, that "reasonable" amount of calories on that little bag was for a portion of only 1/3 of the bag!!! I'm not saying that I'll never have that 930 calorie omelet again but if I do it will be saving half the omelet for another meal or modifying my diet for the rest of the day to make up for the calories.  My fitness goal for the month of February is to get back to more exercise so I'm back to using a pedometer.  The walking really helped get me going and lots of times the pedometer helped me do a "just a little bit more" to make it an even mile or set of steps.  I love the water fitness classes at the Y too.  I'm back to 2-3 times a week.  I have a bad neck and back and I feel so much stronger when I do it and it certainly helps with the pain especially using the whirlpool after class.  I had so much energy last spring & summer the grandkids certainly benefited.  I have literally hundreds and hundreds of pictures of all the activities we did and places we went! We had a blast. I even went on a vacation with my sisters and went hiking and zip-lining.  I never would have had the energy before I started the program last year.  It really changed my life.  I've slowed down a little bit now but hope to get up to speed soon!