I am currently a nursing student, and have two more years to go. I spend a lot of my time right now sitting and studying, and not a lot of time being up and active. This has caused me to gain about 10 lbs in the last year and a half, which I have slowly started to get rid of. My husband and I have been married for about a year and a half now, and we like to go out to eat, which I am sure has contributed to lot of my weight gain. My husband would also like to lose about 20 lbs. Although we are doing this together, I thought I could also use the support of an online community.

Hi Tracy!

Welcome to Healthy Pals. I have a friend who has been a nurse now for about a year. I know how much studying she had to do while in school!

Where are you from? What kinds of active things do you like to do when you have time? Are you currently a member at a gym or do you have access to one?

I live in Minnesota and do have access to a gym, it is just a basic treadmill, eliptical, bike, and stair climber kind of place, with some weight machines and free weights. All that I am missing is the motivation to get there most days. I do like to walk outside, but that doesn't always happen and my husband doesn't like that as much as the treadmill, because he doesn't feel like he gets as good of a workout.

I think I am the same way as your husband. I feel like I get a better workout on the treadmill only because I can set it to go a certain speed and then I have to make myself keep up with that speed. If I go outside, I feel like I slow down and go at a much slower speed. But, I also know other people that feel they get a better workout outside, so I think it is just preference.

I'm a regular when it comes to working out at the gym, but I also have the days where I feel no motivation and don't want to go. What I have found though that is if I can just get myself to the gym, then working out isn't that bad. The hardest part is getting there sometimes...

I also found that if I go straight to the gym from work instead of going home first that helps a lot. Once I get home after a long day, most of the time I don't feel like leaving again, so to by pass that feeling I found that it helps not to go home until I got my workout in.

I've always worked out at home. This is as much due to not liking 'chrome and fern' gyms as anything. I also live out in the sticks, and the constant travel becomes a drag - an hour long workout can become 2 hours and more with the travel time, and that's a bind. Not to mention expensive - fuel is damn expensive here!

I've also been considering returning to judo - I did a year or two of it about a decade ago, then redundancy and a new job with different hours forced me to quit. My only problem is my ears - a strange thing to say, but true. During the last ten years, I stretched my earlobes, and don't fancy getting a finger though them during training and having my ear ripped off. Thus I will have to retire the stretches, but don't know if they will shrink enough. If yes, then all is well and good, and off to judo I go. If no, then I have lost my stretches (harder than you think- they become part of you, literally and figuratively) and still no judo.

It's quite a dilemma for me.