I actually just started working out and joined my very first gym. I'm in the military, so I have to keep a certain minimum, but my weight's been slowly creeping up on me, so now I'm about 15 lbs above my ideal weight and freaking out.

I do PT 3x per week for work, then go to the gym every night and do 30 min to an hour of cardio. My biggest problem is how much I love food, so I've been using this cool website called SparkPeople. It's got a meal tracker which lets you realize how many calories you're eating each day. It was a real wake-up call for me. I used to eat a bowl of popcorn for dinner some nights, thinking it was a light meal. Turns out to have almost 900 calories. I've definitely started looking at labels more closely.

Good luck, everyone! I think our society tries its best to make us fat, and it takes a lot of fortitude to go against the flow.