Happy Monday, faithful MBP friends and readers! I hope you had a beautiful weekend, and are gearing up for a wonderful new week. As I sit here, typing this morning, I have to be honest- I'm not feeling very motivated. That is probably because I'm not feeling all that good about myself right now. When I was on vacation with my family a couple of weeks ago, I had a fabulous time, however, I ate like I was on vacation, and though we did a lot of walking, I didn't keep up with my exercising very well. I ate a lot of delicious foods... including a lot of bread, and a lot of pastries, which I hardly ever eat much of on a regular basis. Gone are the days of being able to sit down and eat whatever I want! There are serious consequences to my eating a bunch of junk, and bread seems to be one of those things that just really packs on the extra pounds.

For me, it's not so much about gaining a bunch of extra pounds. I know I haven't. It's more about staying trim and toned. When I'm seeing cellulite in places I'm not used to seeing it, I know I have some work to do. So, today I am challenging myself to eat very cleanly this week. I have made a family meal plan, and we're going to stick to it, so we're not going out to eat. I'm going to make some desserts with fresh fruit, skip the bread, which also means skipping the delicious NJ bagels we brought home. Back to granola! I'm also going to get back into my regular exercise routine. I'm not doing a very good job of sticking with the Couch to 5K program, because the jogging has really been killing my bad knee. I found a fabulous, intense, yet low impact Pilates program, which is 35 minutes a day, and works the whole body. I love Pilates! That combined with family walks after dinner, should get me back into shape within the next 2-3 weeks.

Will you take this simple challenge with me this week? Let's all eat a little cleaner, and get our 30 minutes of exercise in each day. I'd love to check back in with you all next week, just to see how we're all doing/feeling.

We can do it! Are you with me?

Here's hoping you have a beautiful week, filled with good for you food, fun, a little hard work, love, and laughter!