If I had to fill my home with excersise equipment... The Total Gym, the Bow Flex, and a couple of dumbells would be the only few pieces of equipment I would need in my home. With either one of these / you cannot go wrong. I have been through 2 total gyms.. Awsome equipment!!!!!!! All you need is personal commitment, dedication, and 20 minutes per day. I love the Total Gym -- I am 50 years old and have been using the Total Gym since I was 42..I have had 2 of them and I am now looking for a third;.. so this must say something about the Total Gym. I have never used a Bow Flex (couldn't afford one) but if I could... I would have had one without a doubt. From the first time I saw the Bow Flex on TV I knew it was a sculpture worth having.

Spark people was a huge help to me in learning how to get the weight off. I have hypothyroidism so it is doubly hard. I'm not using them now, but I do keep a food diary. That is the most consistent thing you are going to here from people who have lost weight: they keep a food diary. Just knowing you have to write it down when you swallow it is a huge help. and you need to be willing to write it down immediately too, not at the end of the day. Too many things get forgotten that way. I have a food diary that goes back to last July. I print it out every month. I don't even expect it will ever get read by anyone. Here is a sample: 3-17-09: [165.1] 9am: 2 oranges. 10:30am 6 oz. baked ckn, 4 oz baked sweet potato, 6 oz steamed cabbage. Like others, I'm became a complete sugar/empty carb/ white flour addict when I quit smoking. I just changed addictions. So that is an all-or-nothing thing with me, and I had to go with 'nothing'. I don't have it in the house. I also don't use any sugar substitutes because they are worse than sugar (most of them) and ALL of them set up the same chain reaction in your body that sugar does. What is surprising is that you really can get used to having a life of no sweetener except what is naturally found in fruits & veggies. I second the comment about how your cloths fit. Muscle is heavier than fat and is a boon to good metabolism, so you have the hardest part under control. I WISH I could exercise like that. Half is won't, half is can't. Between worn out knees and weak wrists, and general age & wear, there is a lot of exercising I just can't do. Even more that I won't lol. Go to sparkpeople.com. It's free and is the greatest place on the web for all kinds of support and education. Another good site is radiantrecovery.com (I think. Google it if not) where they can help you detox from sugar. Don't give up, you've got more than half the battle licked, being as active as you are. j

I'm with those who've suggested creating a dual-purpose room. It sounds like you would use the crafting/project space, so why not set up half the room (or at least a corner) with a work space for yourself, and find some (gently used) fitness equipment your husband wants? Then you could see how you end up using the room before devoting more space than necessary to one purpose or the other. When I'm ready for another area to have to clean and maintain (which won't be for at least a couple of years), we'll finish our basement. We have the floor plan roughly worked out, and one room will be a combined fitness and project room. Right now the fitness stuff is set up in a corner of the unfinished basement and only sees use on the coldest mornings of the year, or occasionally when the kids are playing down there and it's too hot to run outside. I'm not sure it will get much more use even when finished as I'd much rather be outside moving around, but it's nice to have during periods of extreme weather. My sewing machine is now in a corner of our bedroom that's not ideal, but better than having it shut up somewhere. Projects end up all over the house, spread out in the living room or dining room. There's a kids craft table spackled and ready to be sanded sitting in the middle of the living room as I type. I know I would use a project space if I had a designated one, but the thought of having to clean (and decorate!) the basement when I'm still working on the main floors is too much for me at the moment.

You all bring up great points. This is a totally voluntary weight loss challenge – informal invitations are emailed out to 3 departments comprised of about 80 people. It is not officially sanctioned by the company, but not discouraged. We have had various versions of the challenge the last 4 years, and we have found out some things that work, and some that definitely do not – regarding participation. 1st, we needed a $20.00 motivation fee and prizes. Most will not stay involved if they have nothing monetary to lose or gain. Giving it to charity did not work - got the same participation drop out rate as not having a motivation fee. Winner-take-all caused some to drop out if they knew one person was really successful – so then we had 1st, 2nd, & 3rd prizes at the end (splitting the motivation fee proportionally 1/2, 1/3, 1/6.) Furthermore, to sweeten the pot, we had an anonymous donor grant a $5 weekly bonus to the person who lost the best percentage each week. That way, you may not win one of the top three, but you could win a couple of weekly bonuses. Surprisingly, the finalist winners rarely won most of the weekly bonuses, because they were the slow and steady losers, not the quick up and down ones. 2nd, having journals, counting steps, recording exercise minutes or any other form of “measurements” did not work. There were lots of hard feelings about them – some accusations of “fudging” or being too personal. Some people were WAY too competitive – and that also caused hard feelings. We had people chose to lose the way they wished by reducing calories, increasing exercise, or both. We have only one person officially record weights, so no else would know anybody else’s actual weight. We just announce the top finalist’s losses – not current weight. 3rd, we found 4-6 weeks to be too short of a time, and some ladies did silly things to win. 12 weeks was too long and we had a lot of dropouts. 8-10 weeks seems to be the sweet spot time wise – too long for “crash dieters” and short enough not to “burn out”. Now we try to have a 10 week diet challenge, then a 6 week maintenance challenge before another 10 week weight loss challenge. (The maintenance challenge is to kick in $20 and you get double back if you do not gain anything in 6 weeks – normally held over a holiday season.) 4th, we haven’t had many men compete, so that has not been a big problem (of them losing faster). Since we have a wide range of weights (135 – 340), we have tried various versions of % loss or total loss. Last time it was the weekly % bonuses coupled with prizes for the top three total weight lost. This time the main organizers wanted it to be total percentage for the final three prizes. I think this does favor the thinner ones, but I was just asking all your opinions in the hopes to fine tune this continuing completion in the future. Personally, I have lost 35 pounds last year in several of the competitions -- and I hope to do more in the next one. They do keep me motivated. Thanks for your thoughts.