My name is Morgan, and I'm a mother of 3. My children are 6, 10, and 11. As you can probably imagine, I put on a ton of weight after having 3 kids. And it stayed on, too, for a very long time. Having 3 children to take care of, I had little interest in taking care of my own self. I just wanted rest whenever I could get a minute to myself. So my diet suffered quite a bit, and I never had much time to do exercise of any kind.

For a long time my husband, Steve, and I haven't been able to get much time alone together, but even when we were, he would seem reluctant to come near me. He eventually admitted to me that he was finding himself less attracted to me because of my weight. I felt conflicted, part of me wanted to slap him in the face, knowing what I'd been through. The other part of me wanted to cry for hours. We talked it out though, and I came to my senses - we both agreed that something had to be done about my weight, because it wasn't healthy for me.

The problem just seemed so daunting, I had gotten a lot bigger than I used to be and I didn't know if I could really do anything about it - I've never had much of a work ethic. But that was kind of kicked into high gear when I had kids. All of a sudden I had to push myself all day long, every day, to make sure I was raising them right. All of that was draining, but I learned to be able to focus myself on things for longer periods of time than I used to be able to. I knew I could do better though. I saw all kinds of other moms in the neighbourhood who were so much thinner than I was, and I wanted to be like that... they seemed to have so much more energy. I thought that if I could get thinner and do some physical activity, that I would have more energy to deal with my kids. I was right, but the problem was time - I had none. But I figured that since there were two of us - me and my husband - we should be able to pool our resources to help out. Steve agreed to help because he was concerned, concerned about my health and my self-esteem.

Together we worked out a plan. Every second evening, Steven would look after the kids and do what needed to be done for them and the house - including cooking meals, driving them to baseball practice, etc. And they would all leave me alone to take care of myself. I spent the time as efficiently as I could - I would make several small healthy meals for that night and for the next day. They would be salads, bagels, maybe some chicken or pork. That really helped to save time, so that I could still be with the kids AND eat healthy. The other thing I did was hole up in my basement and