The key for me to stay motivated is to have short-term goals ... and rewards. I have high expectations of myself, especially during this Health Quest journey. But I knew I'd need to have some payoffs timed along the way during the 8 months to break it into segments.

I am one of those all-or-nothing types Lange House, YMCA wellness director and my trainer, wrote about in her column on moderation last week. In fact, as I read it I wondered, "Did she write this to me, for me, about me?" I certainly needed to hear what she had to say and I am sure some of you did too.

Moderation is a word I am trying to make part of my life ... like balance. My idea of balance is to go full bore for 12 to 16 weeks and then go on vacation and renew. Then I come home and start the cycle again. It's a kind of balance, I suppose.

So when I set out on this weight-loss program in February, I knew I had my daily job as editor of the local newspaper with an extra dose of work coming. When it's time to produce Magnolia magazine, I go into overdrive. But it's a creative overdrive that adds much more to my life than just extra hours of work. Magnolia -- and its mission to celebrate our lives as women -- just touches something in me. As I meet and write about the incredible women in our community, I am both touched and inspired.

But when the magazine is put to bed, the truth is I'm tired. So I usually schedule a vacation on the heels of Magnolia publishing. I've already got my next two vacations planned and weight loss plays into both of them.

At the 8-week mark of Health Quest, I'm heading to Aruba for surf and sun, some tennis and, of course, scuba diving. The first swimsuit excursion of the season is certainly a motivator to shed a few pounds. And while I do hope to relax and lounge, more and more my vacations are about action and adventure. We plan to explore the island and my fellow "scuba divas" and I plan to check out some of the wrecks and reefs around Aruba and perhaps the others of the ABC islands as well. So the April trip is one reward I'm dangling in front of myself.

But the big one is in August -- about 5 months into Health Quest. A group of us from Rome are heading to Roatan, Honduras, for a week of scuba diving. It's supposed to be some of the best diving in the world and we'll be doing three dives a day.

Here's the thing about diving: The more fit you are, the more efficient you are at breathing from your tank underwater. Being more efficient breathing, means you have more time underwater. On my first dive last year in the Cayman Islands, I was like a Hoover vacuum cleaner sucking up air so fast that I was worried about losing time underwater and cutting the dive short for my dive buddy. Because in diving, you and your dive buddy stay together. If one of you has to surface and get back on the boat, you both have to. So I am intent to be as fit as possible by August so that I can enjoy full days of diving with maximum bottom time (for me and my buddies). Plus being fitter helps with lugging around all that dive gear!

I want to lose weight to feel good, be more efficient at scuba diving and improve my tennis game as I've shared. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to look better too. The truth is we all do.

But I have a little extra motivation. You see Labor Day weekend is my 30th high school reunion. And I want to look good and feel good. I won't be at my goal weight by then, but I want to weigh less than I did at my 20-year reunion and less than I did when I graduated high school.

And, I want all my fellow 1980 Eufaula High School grads to be thinking, "Dang, Charlotte sure looks good!" A girl can dream ....

But even that feeling will be fleeting.

Many of my goals are smaller and pertinent to my daily life: to be able to walk up the steps to my home without my knees hurting; to walk off the tennis court after two hours of play without everything hurting; to look in my closet and not see clothes ranging across six size categories (with six more sizes in storage); to look in the mirror and think "Not bad for 48" instead of "What happened?" and, perhaps most importantly, to look in my heart and know that I am living the divine life I am meant to be living without self-created obstacles and extra pounds weighing me down.

This weekly Tales from the Treadmill blog is sponsored by Georgia Power Co.