My back got to feeling better late last week, so I’m back to working out daily with my Wii Fit.

No, wait, let me be even more specific: I’m back to working out an hour per day for five days in a row now, thanks to my Wii Fit. And that doesn’t count the time I spend playing Raving Rabbids, one of the funniest games I’ve ever played, or the time I spend playing hardcore-yes-I’m-grunting tennis on Wii Sports.

You know how exercise is supposed to give you more energy? I’m still waiting for that part to kick in. I’m tired! Every morning when my alarm clock goes off, I am so tempted to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. The only thing stopping me? My arms are too freakin’ sore to move quickly enough to reach the dang thing before that incessant buzzzzzing wakes up everyone else in the house. So, I drag myself out of bed, turn the alarm off, and groan as I shuffle to the bathroom.

Working out barefoot hurts!
First lesson learned — okay, second lesson, since my first one involved not getting too over zealous doing the hula hoop game — Crocs work just fine on the Wii Fit balance board. This was an important one, since my feet were killing me for the first week. Picture a large baking potato bouncing up and down repeatedly on two grains of brown rice and you’ll understand why. So, after weighing in on the balance board, I now slip on my Crocs for my workout. Ah, relief!

Avoid the Wii Wobbles — Wear a good bra!
Next lesson: a good sports bra is worth every penny you pay for it. Seriously. I tried exercising in my regular bra for the first few days and rubbed my right nipple raw in addition to stretching out the elastic on my shoulder straps. Two super-strength sports bras and one tin of Udder Cream later (yes, really, it’s good stuff!) and I’m no longer wincing when I step into cold air, if you know what I mean.

Yoga is NOT a substitute for stretching.
Stretching before the Wii Fit workout is imperative, even if you plan to start off with yoga! Now, despite being overweight, I’m a fairly limber person to start with. I can still do front splits with either leg leading, for instance, and as far as touching my toes… well, I can almost put my elbows on the floor. (Yes, my husband is appreciative of both skills, thanks for asking.)

But I’m also 41 years old, and certain parts of my body are definitely unused to bending, twisting and gyrating, so I’ve taken to stretching for 5 minutes or so before beginning my workout. I have little doubt that the lack of stretching is somewhat to blame for last week’s back injury. I also have little doubt that stretching is the primary reason why I’ve shaved my Wii Fit age from 47 when I first started (ugh) to 34.

Learn to love the jackknife.
My abdominal area is definitely in the most need of help. After 6 years of spending most of the day blogging, I’ve lost whatever abdominal and back strength I used to possess and it shows. Oh, I’ve done crunches and bicycles sporadically over the years, but even when going at them regularly I’ve seldom seen any improvement in the bulge beneath my belly button. Two weeks of doing the jackknife exercise twice daily (20 reps each time) has changed that. Yes, it hurts. But it hurts in a good way… and I am glad to be fitting into a size smaller jeans today because of it.

As an added benefit, the combination of the jackknife and torso twist strength-training exercises and yoga’s triangle pose is great for stimulating the body. (That’s yoga-speak for “you’re finally going to shit out that gum you swallowed in second grade.”) Yes, it’s possible that has something to do with the smaller-size jeans, but who am I to complain?

Don’t have a Wii or Wii Fit? Hurry — Amazon has them in stock!

• Nintendo Wii Console
• Wii Fit

That’s the new catchphrase for Chubby Mommy, and with it comes a whole new look for the site.

Tell me what you see that’s buggy, will ya? After all, typing comments burns off calories, too!

No, I haven’t found a great new snack food or way to lose weight overnight. If I had, I assure you that I’d be far too busy getting a patent on it to bother with blogging anymore.

But, if you find yourself trying to juggle household chores, home organization, menu planning and managing your grocery list, I do have a secret weapon you just might be interested in: my Home Helper Newsletter from one of my other sites, I Think Therefore I Blog.

Sign up and every Saturday morning you’ll find a helpful newsletter containing a 7-day dinner menu including desserts (not necessarily diet-friendly), a copy and paste grocery list containing everything you need to make those meals, a daily cleaning routine that will get your home spic and span in less than an hour a day and more!

The newsletter contain zero calories and zero carbs, and it won’t cost you a dime, either.

From what I can tell on my end, Chubby Mommy is back in business with the exception of the category permalinks. Fixing them is going to take a bit more time than I’ve got available today, but I hope to get them working again this weekend.

Meanwhile, I’ve restored the blogroll and have I’added in the ability to subscribe to site updates via email (over in the sidebar).

Speaking of subscriptions… I plan to offer an email newsletter for this site that will share sales from diet- and fitness-related companies, product rebates, coupon codes and even online coupons. Configuring the service I’ll be using is yet another thing on my ever growing To Do list.

You know, I really wish I was one of those people who lose tons of weight when they get stressed out….

Did you know it’s National Pancake Day? Me, either. Not even when I was making pancakes for the Big-Eyed Boy’s breakfast this morning. (This might be a good argument for why I need a performance management system.)

Had I known (as you do now), I’ve have simply hopped into the car — with him, of course — and headed over to iHop where they’re giving away free pancakes.

Every time I place an order at Starbucks I’m reminded of that scene with Steve Martin in L.A. Stories where he orders a de-caf double half caf, with a twist of lemon and all the pretentious yuppies, clad in their designer label fashions and wearing their diamond-studded Raymond Weil watches, all say “me, too” because they don’t want to miss out on the latest fad.

Not that feeling stupid stops me from sounding like one of them. I’m addicted to Starbucks. In fact, their Carmel Mocchiato is one of my favorite treats, but someone once told me there’s something like a bazillion calories in those things, so I’ve compromised by switching to non-fat latte and hope that the caffeine sufficiently bumps up my metabolism to burn off whatever calories might be lurking in the thing.

The company’s latest announcement makes burning those calories off even easier. Beginning next month, Starbucks is going to use a sugar-free syrup in its lattes and mochas that reduce the calories by 50 percent.

Of course, that only means I’ll sound even more ridiculous as I stand there ordering a grande triple-shot skinny sugar-free latte without foam but with three Equals, please. But, hey, at least I’ll be saving enough calories to balance out the biscotti I inevitably buy, too.

Congressman Chris Cannon couldn’t give up ice cream, despite needing to lose weight. He gave himself permission to enjoy a milk shake or bowl of ice cream daily… and lost over 30 pounds.

His story isn’t the first time I’ve heard about licensed indulgence leading to weight loss. Isn’t that the basis of the whole “French Women Don’t Get Fat” diet program, after all? And there’s a lot to be said for such an approach: it keeps dieters from feeling truly deprived, a condition which — as many of us know all too well — not only derails diets but quite often triggers a binge cycle that packs on the pounds.

I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s any one food I love so much that would make it easier to stick to a diet if I knew I’d be indulging in my food favorite daily.

Chocolate? I’ve never been a really big fan… unless we’re talking a sliver of white chocolate with some beluga caviar on top of it. Yes, I know: Caviar? How prissy! It’s one of those things you either love or hate; I happened to acquire my taste for it thanks to places like Stratosphere Las Vegas. But white chocolate and caviar are two foods, so they wouldn’t fall within the licensed indulgence rule.

Chips? Crackers? Sure, I love anything that goes crunch, but really only crave them once a month, if you know what I mean.

A big, juicy steak? Ooooh, baby, I do miss those. I haven’t had red meat in 2 weeks now, and I admit there are times when I truly do miss it. But I absolutely don’t miss the GI distress red meat causes me, and I can’t imagine that eating a small steak once a day would be good for me, no matter how many steamed veggies I munched on the rest of the time.

Cheese, yeah, that’s it. I miss cheese, but not just any ol’ type. I’m not a fan of what we consider cheese here in America: unholy orange stuff, and I don’t just mean those flat oily slices of American cheese. Our cheddar doesn’t stack up to the European stuff, either. Nor does our Brie, my ultimate favorite, but in the case of Brie I do believe a pale imitation is better than none.

Yes, Brie it is: that’s what I’d choose to have as my daily indulgence, the one food which would make three other calorie- and fat-restricted meals so much easier to endure simply for knowing that at the time of my choosing I could sit down with a nice wedge of gooey, room temperature Brie and enjoy it guilt-free.

What would YOU choose?

All day long, I’ve been running to peek out the front door in the hope of seeing the UPS truck roll up and deliver my juicer. Lunchtime came and went. Dinnertime came and went. By 7:30 p.m., I figured the driver must not have seen the box.

Then suddenly, it was here.

Did I mention that I went on a produce shopping spree this morning in anticipation of my juicer’s arrival? No? Well, probably because I’m still getting over the shame of being “that woman” with two — yes, two — grocery carts at the Army Commissary, one full of produce and the other half-filled with the stuff my husband and son insist on eating. But not me.

I’ve got a juicer and a cookbook on eating raw foods, and I’m not afraid to use them.

In fact, I’d already peeled a half-dozen oranges earlier today. In they went, too, the instant I’d taken the juicer out of the box and washed it. Oh, my. I’d forgotten just how good freshly-squeezed orange juice tastes! Why, I almost couldn’t detect the vodka in it at all.

Hey, I said it arrived well after dinner, didn’t I?

In the 10 years that I’ve known him, my husband’s weight has never deviated by more than 5 pounds. Not once. Not even with a nightly routine of eating a half-gallon of ice cream topped with hot fudge sauce and a quarter cup of brown sugar. (Really.) Not during the holiday season when he washes his ice cream down with a quart of store-bought eggnog.

Not once.

Not more than 5 pounds.

You can imagine how incredibly jealous this makes me. Some nights, when he’s snoring particularly loudly, I sit up in bed and plan on ways I’m going to spend the huge life insurance payout I’ll get after those lunchtime double-cheeseburgers with bacon and his nightly post-meal snacking combine to clog up those arteries… just as I’ve always told him would happen.

Last week, he stood on the scale and discovered he’s somehow gained 11 pounds. He claims he has no idea how this happened, and I know better than to suggest perhaps it has to do with his meat-and-sugar diet.

I know, I know: I should be worried about his health, but there’s only so much nagging a wife can do. If the man won’t eat vegetables and give up ice cream, there’s not much I can do about it.

Except grin.

Yeah, I’m enjoying it. Does that make me awful?

My husband has a serious ice cream addiction. Every week he buys a fresh container of Chocolate Ripple, one in the ginormous “family size” that requires its own reinforced handle. Thing is, he can polish off that entire container by himself — with chocolate fudge sauce on top, mind you — and yet does not gain one single pound.

My daughter is a candy addict. Now that she’s out of braces, she’s a chewy candy addict, with sour Gummi Bears and Laffy-Taffy being two of her favorites. She almost always has a 2-pound bag of one or the other somewhere in her room, and judging by the empty wrappers I see in the trash she goes through at least one bag each week. She, too, indulges her habit without gaining one single pound.

My little boy loves bread above anything else. Bagels, rolls, buns, sliced bread: it doesn’t matter to him. If I didn’t insist on him eating protein, fruits and vegetables occasionally, he’d be a snap to feed: hand him a slice of bread and let him have at it. Then Hoover up the crumbs when he’s done. One thing I’m certain of: this child would never survive if I were to put us all on a low-carb diet. Not that he’ll ever need one — he shares his father’s metabolism.

Me? Give me salty snacks with a crunch or give me death. I’d be perfectly content living on chips, crackers or popcorn. Were it not for the need to feed the other members of my family, I’d gladly trade in all of my kitchen appliances for one of those home theater popcorn machines. But unlike my family, I pack on the pounds when I excessively indulge my cravings.

Which is why I have had to learn to buy rice cakes for my munchies, then close my eyes while eating and pretending they’re chips instead. But somehow, even that manages to pack on the pounds. It’s not fair, I tell ya.

Sure, I could wean myself of my addiction to all things that go “crunch,” but what’s the point of living after that? Didn’t someone famous once say “Give me chips or give me death?” No? Hmm…. well someone should have.

How about you? What’s your big weakness?