I'm a  soon to be 50 year old (August 24th), married, mom of one 27 year old son and step-mom to one eighteen year old son and a twenty one year old daughter. I live in Atlanta where I am currently a housewife looking at going back to work in the near future. I have been a addicted to everything related to fitness/health/nutrition since I was 30 years old. For years I maintained a healthy weight by eating healthy and exercise. Over the last couple of years (since I've been a housewife) I've put on some unwanted pounds merely out of relaxing and munching a wayyy too much! I am a pretty healthy eater but I am also a person will eat out of boredom which is the reason I have gained some additional weight!  I have noooo excuse for being overweight because I have all the tools necessary to work my body out totally without leaving my house...lol! I am not a big birthday celebration kinda girl but I wanted to do something special for myself for my 50th Birthday!  I decided that I would give myself the best birthday gift EVER...THE GIFT OF A HEALTHY, TRIM & SHAPELY BODY!!!! I have been talking about getting back in shape for some time now and for me there will never be a better time than right now! I have a large collection of fitness/diet/health books in my closet (love to read) so I decided to pick from that collection and start a plan that I knew I could stick with and live by. I'd had THE 17 DAY DIET book for some time and I had done a lot of research on the plan. I liked what I read and the food eaten on the plan was a lot of what I loved anyway so I decided to put it into action! I started the plan just a couple of days ago and I am going to hang in there until I shed the 20 pounds that I've gained and the 20 that I needed to loose BEFORE I gained the 20...lol! I look forward to sharing this journey with you guys. I have BIG PLANS for the second half of my life and being overweight is NOT PART OF THAT PLAN!!!