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Since deciding that I’d start walking occasionally to lose weight, I’ve actually been somewhat good about it.

I didn’t even let the overdressed women who walk scare me off, although I admit I now wash my face then brush my teeth and hair before leaving the house. And, yes, I’m now wearing my “good” sweat suit over one of my funny t-shirts on my morning jaunt.

Now that I’ve been out a few times, I’m on a nodding acquaintance with some of the neighborhood’s walking women. Most hurry past, elbows jutting and hips akimbo, as they speed through their morning power-walking routine. Some, like me, prefer a more leisurely pace which means that we’re in each others’ line of sight for quite some time. That can actually get surprisingly awkward.

This morning, for instance, as I turned the corner onto the main street I saw a senior citizen walking woman coming toward me. I was just getting started so I hadn’t picked up my pace and she, well, she was going faster than any 75+-year-old woman I’ve seen recently but still comparatively slow.

That meant I had plenty of time to wonder: Do I just nod? Wave? Smile and make some inane remark about the weather we’re having? What is the protocol for greeting people you’ve begun to recognize as part of your morning routine without ever having exchanged names? As she approached, I saw something that quickly chased all such thoughts out of my mind.

See, while we were approaching each other head-on, someone behind her called out and she turned halfway toward them. The sun, which was starting to come up behind her, turned her figure into a silhouette. A very strange silhouette which looked oddly fuzzy. At first I thought it was my eyes, so I rubbed them as I continued to walk toward her, and she toward me.

But right about the time we were within a dozen feet of each other, I saw the cause of the fuzz: she was going commando, and her pubes were poking through those tiny little ventilation holes. Gray pubes. Wiry ones. Quite a bit of them, too, from what I could tell before I hurried past.

I hope she mistook my blush for a mid-workout glow.

I also hope she’s not going commando next time I see her walking because, honestly, there are some things I just don’t want to see first thing in the morning, and an old lady’s pubic hair is most certainly one of them.

I’d said before that I plan to get more exercise and hopefully lose weight by taking up walking this Spring. So this morning I did just that: I went for a walk. Oh, it hardly feels like spring around here yet — in fact, it was so foggy outside that I couldn’t see the end of my driveway when I stepped out my front door.

But I’ve been a bundle of nerves lately for reasons I’m not going to go into. I’ve tried long, hot baths and relaxing with a good book. I even gave myself a facial yesterday in the hope that it would mellow me out. Nothing has worked.

So I thought I’d try burning up some of my nervous energy by waking up early and going for a walk before my husband left for work. I rolled out of bed, jumped into the sweat suit and sneakers I’d left on the floor to make things easier on myself this morning, grabbed my iPod and was out the door within five minutes.

About five minutes into it, I heard distant voices in the fog. Women’s voices, all of them sounding far more perky than I felt at that point, having not even paused to for a cup of coffee before heading outside. I tried to take comfort in the fact that the fog would most likely prevent these women from discovering I also hadn’t brushed my hair or teeth yet, and that I’d apparently grabbed a mismatched pair of socks.

They sounded quite a ways behind me, so I hoped to reach the end of the route I’d set out for myself and be on my way home without having to encounter them. But in my hope I’d naively overlooked one thing: I’m out of shape, which means I walk a bit more slowly than those accustomed to moving their butts every morning.

Within moments they’d caught up with me, their skinny hips jutting out at odd angles as their elbows pumped in that odd power-walking stride. Oh, they were slender and fit all right: their spandex walking pants left no doubt about that. Apparently, they’re also incapable of sweating profusely like I was doing. Their hair and makeup remained so perfect that the only thing glistening on their bodies was their designer jewelry and immaculate manicures.

Fortunately, they disappeared into the fog before I had time to feign a cough as an excuse to hide my makeup-free face and cover up my nasty morning breath. I hurried along to my turn-around spot and practically raced to get back to my house, my coffee pot and my toothbrush.

Unfortunately, tomorrow’s forecast doesn’t call for fog in the morning, which means I’d have to wake up even earlier to go on my morning walk, what with all that tooth-brushing, hair-combing and makeup application that seems to be required.

I’ve had bad foot pain for the past two years. So bad, in fact, that my foot problems were part of what led to my diagnosis of fibromyalgia, although apparently the two things aren’t actually related. Instead, I have Morton’s toe, which basically means that my first two toes move upwards as I walk. The result is that my foot wobbles when I walk, much as if I were walking on ice skates all day.

By the end of most days, my feet and ankles feel like someone’s been beating on them with a baseball bat. Which makes sense, if you think about it: with every step my body weight rests on the outer edge of my foot, rather than being spread evenly, so my ankles and outside edge of my feet are getting quite the workout.

Not long ago, a friend suggested that I try foot exercises to strengthen my feet and ankle muscles, including one in which I basically walk around picking up things with my toes. Yes, it’s all a little odd-looking, but they’re definitely helping. My feet ache less at night, and most mornings I can actually set foot on the floor without breaking into tears.

So today while I was doing my little foot workout routine, a friend called to talk about her latest diet and exercise woes. As someone notoriously bad at calorie-counting, I wholly sympathize with her frustrations. At one point during our conversation I must have grunted or something, because she asked what I was doing.

“Uh, I’m working out,” I told her, not wanting to actually go into the details of how I was trying to wrap my toes around Bic pens and lift them from the floor. “Lifting stuff, you know, nothing strenuous.”

“OMG!” she blurted out. “Don’t you worry about bulking up and getting even bigger? I’d never, ever lift weights until I first shed some fat or else I might not be able to fit in my jeans.”

Suddenly, I imagined myself having big, beef toes rippling with muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biceps, toes so mighty and strong that I could wrestle or hoist dumb bells with them. Toes so skilled at lifting things that I could operate the remote control or use them to pour coffee while I type. Toes so prehensile that I’d no longer need to wish I had a spare set of hands, so long as I wasn’t encumbered by footwear.

Which is why I’m now looking into bladder exercises. Because chubby women with weak abdominal muscles should never, ever laugh that hard.

I’ve always loved the thought of jetting off to one of those fancy weight-loss spas — the kind where a 4-star chef turns ordinarily salads into culinary masterpieces and, between rounds of seaweed wraps and Swedish massages, you still manage to drop 15 to 20 pounds. Unfortunately, my budget can barely stretch to cover the cost of travel supplies, much less the actual travel to such a location.

That means I’m actually going to have to work at weight loss. Fortunately, with Spring just around the corner, I’m hoping that becomes a bit more easy to do.

See, I plan on taking up walking this Spring. I figure that it’d be a good thing for my son and I to do together as a break during our homeschool day and, besides, it doesn’t require any extra equipment. After all, I already own a pair of feet so why not use them?

Besides, I’m pretty inspired by Becky Tuttle’s success: she’s lost 44 pounds by cutting out Coca Cola, eating 5 servings of fruit or veggies each day, and walking 10,000 steps.

To boost the number of steps she takes, she parks as far away as possible, wherever she is. She makes two trips by foot at home when one would do. She takes the dog for an extra lap around the block (the dog has lost weight, too). If she’s still short at the end of the day, she runs up and down the steps at home. And “If you go to Wal-Mart and Sam’s on the same day, you’re almost guaranteed to get 10,000 steps.”

I’m pretty certain she doesn’t mean going to Wal-Mart to stock up on Doritos and Sam’s for a gallon of Ranch dip, though.

I believe it was Einstein who defined insanity as repeatedly trying the same thing in the hope of producing different results. Or something like that.

Well, my friends, I confess that for years now I’ve been insane.

I’ve tried cutting calories only to find myself standing in the gaping, incandescent-lit maw of the refrigerator at 2 a.m. shoveling down cheese and wheat bread (hey, it was whole wheat, and aren’t I supposed to get my grains?) and telling myself that the calories won’t count because, geez, I’m hungry.

I’ve tried cabbage soup and all of its ignominious symptoms. I’ve tried Alli and its less-than-attractive “treatment effects”. I’ve even ordered — dare I confess it publicly — Venom diet pills (14 pounds in 9 days… and 11 regained the week after I ran out, in case you’re curious).

I have tried everything but moving my butt.

Regularly.

Religiously.

Regardless of whether I want to.

And so, as of this morning, despite having had the flu since midday Tuesday, I dragged my flabby, cellulite-riddled ass out of bed and sat down on my exercise bike and I rode even though three days of bed rest had left me with ankles so swollen my gold anklet nearly cut off my right foot.

I rode.

Even though that damn exercise bike still cuts into my otherwise ample ass to the point where, honestly, I wonder how skinny chicks can stand it, I rode.

Oh, I only rode for 15 minutes, followed by 10 minutes with dumb bells (and, no, I am not referring to my husband) and another 10 minutes of yoga. But I rode. For fifteen minutes. Fifteen long, freaking minutes during which I realized how inane (and commercial-filled) my morning new show is. But still, I rode.

Certainly 15 minutes is not enough time to qualify as “regular exercise” as defined by any of those sensible, bran-eating, cheese-eschewing health-related sites mean when they tell us Chubby Mommies to engage in “regular exercise”.

But it’s a lot more than I do on most days.

And right now, as un-PC as that may sound, I’m pretty proud of that fact.

So let us agree on two things: first, that I’ve given ChubbyMommy.com a reprieve because you said you enjoy it (and, well, let’s face it, I wouldn’t write here if I didn’t think you’d read it); and, second, that in my book you don’t have to follow their book about how to lose weight.

Every bit counts.

That’s what I’m telling myself today.

Every. Bit. Counts.

Know what happened as a result of my decision that 15 minutes (when it could have been zero) mattered?

I opted for All Bran cereal and skim milk for breakfast instead of a Pop Tart.

I had a green salad with low-fat vinaigrette dressing for lunch.

I ate a broiled skinless chicken breast (albeit, with my “Never Say No More” marinade) for dinner, along with steamed broccoli.

By choice.

Those 15 minutes on my exercise bike might not have been enough to satisfy the exercise gurus but, you know what? I know how much commitment they took on my part, especially on my first day out of bed after having the flu. I know I didn’t have to do them… but then every day would have been just like the day before during which I wondered why am I still overweight despite all of these things I keep denying myself?

I’m not denying myself a darned thing.

But I AM about to start giving myself some credit for even small efforts.

Because I’m convinced that today’s 15 minutes (which isn’t sufficient if you listen to Exercise Gurus) is still More Than Enough compared to what I was willing to give yesterday.

So my question to myself — from here until the day when I decide to retire ChubbyMommy.com not for the money but because it no longer fits me — is this: What are you willing to give tomorrow to being thinner the day after that?

I ran across an article this morning which really sent my blood pressure spiking. Doctors, it turns out, commonly prescribe placebos to patients, with over half the doctors in a Chicago study admitting that they’d done so in the past.

Sure, there are valid uses for placebos. Take, for instance, the recent study that put haloperidol and risperidone, two longstanding Johnson & Johnson drugs, to the test. The study found that placebos were more effective than the two antipsychotic drugs commonly prescribed to treat aggression in mentally disabled people. The results proved that the medications were ineffective and, since they both have significant side effects, shouldn’t be prescribed in most cases.

But surely the practice raises questions about medical ethics and maybe even contributes to the rising cost of individual health insurance? After all, thanks to this practice, both patients and insurance companies wind up paying prescription prices for what’s essentially sugar capsules, all because some doctor decided to go with his/her hunch that a patient wasn’t really sick to begin with.

That’s a bad thing, right?

Then I ran across a study about the placebo effect, exercise and obesity that blew my mind. In it, psychologists studied a group of hotel maids and found that those who believe their job involved little to no exercise were heavier and had higher blood pressure and hip-to-waist ratios than maids who believed their jobs were physically demanding.

But, wait. It gets better!

The experts, led by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, split the maids into two groups. One group was educated about how many calories they burned walking, lifting, carrying things, etc., in the course of their daily work. The other group was left in the dark.

One month later, Langer and her team returned to take physical measurements of the women and were surprised by what they found. In the group that had been educated, there was a decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio — and a 10 percent drop in blood pressure.

That’s right: the only change they made was believing they were getting more exercise and — voila! — their weight and blood pressure improved. Those are actual physical changes brought on by nothing more than changing a person’s perception of themselves and their activities.

For those of us struggling to lose weight, this study emphasizes just how much our mental outlook can work for or against us in the process.

If your mental tape constantly plays a message in your mind that says you’re a lazy slug, that you don’t get any exercise, that you’re fat because all you do is go to work and come home to sit around all evening, perhaps it’s time to swap it for one that recognizes the activity you do get. Walking from your car to your desk, spending your day on your feet giving presentations or running after children, folding clothes, lugging briefcases or groceries or laundry baskets: those things add up.

Giving yourself a pat on the back for the activity you do naturally fit into your day isn’t just a great way to stretch those triceps and deltoid muscles. It might also be the key to whittling your waistline, too.

My fingers resemble Vienna sausages, swollen round little pink things that refuse to type without misspellings. My eyes feel like I’m peering through a big glob of Vaseline on my contact lenses, but even when I switched to glasses the haze didn’t disappear. All day long I’ve felt like I’ve had a hangover, although I only had half a hot buttered rum last night before deciding I was too tired to bother finishing it. I was in bed by 10 p.m. but feel like I haven’t slept in days.

In other words, I did not want to exercise, but I did it anyway.

Oh, I didn’t do anything strenuous, probably not even enough to appease the fitness police much less my physician. I spent 10 minutes doing stretches and yoga, and another 15 doing squats, lunges, crunches and working with hand weights. After that, I stretched some more because it felt surprisingly good.

Then I napped.

Ok, I’m no doctor, but it seems to me that something more than Motrin is called for if I need a nap by 9:30 in the morning. Now here it is, 3:30 in the afternoon, and I’m wondering whether I have time to take another one before I make dinner.

I. Feel. Like. Crap.

For years now, my doctor and I have been sporadically trying to pinpoint the reason for my fatigue, aches and pains. I say “sporadically” because my pain itself isn’t a constant: there are days when even brushing my teeth seems like a Herculean task, and weeks when so full of energy my body practically vibrates.

Naturally, I only call the doctor when I’m in quite a bit of pain but she rarely has an appointment available until the following day. Inevitably, I’ll wake up the next morning pain-free. Isn’t that the way things always seem to work, just like how an awful hairstyle will suddenly look perfect on the very day you’re seeing the stylist to get it cut again?

Finally, lacking all other explanation, my doctor has announced last week that I have fibromyalgia, which I’m pretty certain is Latin for “We don’t know but we know it bothers you.”

Her recommendation? Try a memory foam mattress to help ensure a more comfortable, better night’s rest, and exercise.

Exercise when every bone, joint and muscle in my body hurts? When walking the short distance between my bed and the bathroom produces a long stream of grunts and groans? When I have to actually rest up before making the bed so I don’t just climb back into it?

Great. Just freaking great.

Of course, I’m fully aware that recent studies have shown that exercise reduces symptoms of fibromyalgia, but being told that the best way to combat pain and fatigue is to do something that ordinarily produces more pain and fatigue seems, well, counter-intuitive.

I want drugs, dammit, and not just Tylenol (which I can’t take due to liver problems, anyway). I want bona fide 21st century pharmaceuticals that will wrap my pain receptors in a nice, hazy narcotic-induced blanket of indifference, freeing me of the wincing agony that accompanies every movement when I’m having a flareup.

I explained this in detail, with rather more colorful language, to my doctor. She finally agreed that, yes, she’ll prescribe me something — she didn’t say what — just as soon as I’ve tried exercising daily for 30 straight days to see if that has any positive effect on my pain. And I, being in the midst of one of the worse flareups I’ve experienced in quite some time, am actually thinking about following her direction and working some moderate exercise into life on a daily basis.

I think I might just begin with kicking her ass, then seeing what I feel up to doing after that.

While I was sleeping last night, the Mess Fairies must have raced through our house. Or maybe it was the cats chasing each other. Hard to say.

Regardless, I woke to find my sofa throw blankets strewn across the living room floor, vases knocked over, shredded newspaper throughout the kitchen, and a box of my son’s favorite toys spilled all down the staircase.

Naturally, no one else was interested in helping me pick up the mess, so I wound up spending a good 30 minutes first thing this morning trying to set the house straight.

The good news? I’m pleased to say that, chubby or not, I can still lean over and reach the floor without bending my knees.

The bad news? After repeating that, oh, five or six dozen times, I now feel like my midsection’s been caught in a vise clamp. Talk about an abdominal workout!

I may have to start paying the Mess Fairies (or the cats) to do that on a daily basis until my tummy’s finally flat again.

Office workers — and even bloggers — find it difficult to fit exercise into their day. Let’s face it, when you’ve got a hard 8 or 9 hour workday, putting in another hour sweating at the gym just doesn’t always sound like that much fun.

But what if you could combine the two, turning your work day into workout time?

Now you can, thanks to the PC-Sport from Gamercize, a nifty little gadget that fits under your desk. Use it as an independent step machine to burn calories while you work and speed up weight loss while getting paid. Need more motivation? Connect the PC-Sport to your USB hub and you’ll have to exercise to keep your keyboard and mouse working.

At roughly $290.00 USD with international shipping, the machine’s guaranteed to lighten your wallet, too.