I knew I would lose, I know I will reach goal and I know I will keep it off (although not without some bumps in the road). It didn't feel like dedication or will-power or determination, it felt more like a premonition.

I'm not at goal yet but I guess I could say I'm maintaining my loss so far.

I didn't really have a 'click' feeling, more of just a calm realisation. I was sad about my life and the things I couldn't/wouldn't do because of my size.

I still struggle daily - the immediate 'happiness' (what I know to be FALSE happiness!) that is found in a bag of chocolate vs the happiness of waking up the next morning having completed another day on plan.

I just make myself think of Rockinrobin's phrase that when willpower fades, commitment stays. So sometimes it's not a case of thinking about going to the gym etc; it's just doing it - head down, feet forward.

I didn't really think I could do it. I don't even know the exact date I started!

But, as others have said, something was different this time around. I had a long term resolve I had never had before (to be fitter when I was 50 than when I turned 40) and a sense that if I didn't do something, I was in for a harder life (falling down the stairs and bruising my coccyx made me realize the hardship of pain and immobility).

OMG Meg, I can't believe how much I can relate to this. It's only 12-14 pounds I've been struggling with, but they're making me miserable. And the fact that I regained them SEVEN years ago and STILL haven't managed to lose them makes me feel so, so bad. I think I must have started dieting... an average of 6 times a year in the past 7 years? So 42 times? Yeah, about that. I started again on January 19th and I feel exactly the way you described (in bold).

As for my original loss 13 years ago, to answer the question, I was 100% sure I'd get to my goal that time. From day one. And hopefully maintain. I've kept 2/3 of the weight off.

With me, fear was a great motivator. After eating rather too heartily at my company's annual offsite meeting, I woke up in the middle of the night in a hotel room in Las Vegas with night sweats, chills and a nauseated feeling. I'd been diagnosed as very near diabetes a few weeks before & I was convinced this was a blood sugar problem. That also caused me to have what I now think was a panic attack. My heart felt like it would pound right out of my chest. I imagined getting very sick, in a place where I knew no one, and having to be hospitalized. And this would all be because of my weight & my eating habits. I finally fell asleep near dawn, but through the rest of the trip, I was extremely wary of eating anything with sugar in it. (I didn't know much about diabetes at that point.)

Not long after I returned from that business trip, the doctor gave me a six-hour glucose tolerance test & said again that I was borderline Type 2. He warned me that I'd be diabetic in six months or so if I didn't change my ways. That scared me to death. That was what I needed.

I had lost a great deal of weight years before, but developed an eating disorder & an obsession with exercise. This time, I was motivated to do it correctly, in a healthy way. I wanted to look up my weight & height on a BMI table & read the word "normal." And I wanted to see "normal" after my A1C test & my cholesterol readings. This was a different numbers game entirely. This time it wasn't so much about fitting into a size 6 or getting down to 110 (as I'd been striving to do, years before). Those goals aren't sustainable for me. But a healthy endocrine system still might be.

I can't explain it, but yes, I really did know it was going to happen this time. Something clicked, and my thoughts and actions aligned to make it happen. Granted, I had recently experienced a major life change (quitting my job and moving to another state), so that may have had something to do with it

I didn't feel it until after I got pregnant after having reached 144, 4 lbs short of my original goal weight of 140. I piled the weight back on and blamed it on the pregnancy. A week after I gave birth I was disgusted with myself to find I'd gone back up to 190 - only 23 lb short of where I had begun!

I lost all the pregnancy weight in 8 months and carried on. I hit 140 last September and began to maintain. By Christmas I had lost another 4 lb on my maintenance plan and have just started again to try to lose more weight, revising my goal to 126.

It was after I had my baby and had to start again that I really decided I was going to do it and keep it off! I began running in November last year and that has helped in a big way.

Also having successfully maintained now for over 7 months has really helped my psychological state. When I got pregnant I was going to try to maintain but I just pigged out totally and I was terrified that when I really did get to maintenance weight, I wasn't going to be able to do it. But now I know I can, which helps an awful lot.

My join date says Feb/2008. I joined this forum still looking for that magic pill. At the time I thought it was metformin. After a lifetime of doing battle with my bulges and multiple eating disorders I was getting ready to make changes. I knew in my deepest depths that there was no magic pill.

I had gained about 50 pounds with my third pregnancy, more than with my twin pregnancy. By the time my last was almost 2 years old I had settled, after about a year of "trying to diet" and not being able to stick to good choices, into fairly comfortable obesity (well, 1.5 BMI points from obese.)

It was time to get fit. I knew that I had tried and failed more than I wanted to acknowledge. I was unable to run and didn't want to play and chase around after my 4 very little boys. It was exhausting and uncomfortable to run and bounce places on my body that are not meant to bounce.

I reached a point where I knew the next time I was to attempt to get fit that I would be successful. I knew it because I knew in order to be successful I was required to change my entire lifestyle. But I was not quite ready to make the changes that needed to be made.

Then I found the cool runners thread and the 5 pound challenge threads, and of course the entire forum in and of itself . And I started to change my ways. My daily plate weight tracker starts at the end of march 08. Today I am down 40 pounds and feeling fabulous.

I was looking to get to 130/135...if I could. My screen name is kittycat40-- the forty was a pie in the sky weight loss number to me. hee

I hope it's okay to pipe in here, I'm definitely not near maintaining.

I know EXACTLY what you're talking about. Something inside me just gave, and I came to the conclusion that I would NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER give up - I would keep trying my ENTIRE life, if that's what it took. So I figured that if I tried, it wouldn't actually take that long. I was right. I lost almost 50 lbs over a year. It was amazing.

I gained the weight back, almost watched it come back on (long story). Now, I want to get back down to where I was originally with those 50 lbs. But I don't feel that fire or passion, I don't have the sheer knowing burning inside me. Sometimes it feels like I'm willing it through; whereas last time I was soaring, this time it feels like a push with every other step. I'm concerned that without that fire or passion, I'm not going to succeed Silly, right. I'm telling myself I will push myself all the way, if that's what it takes. But I wish I wanted it nearly as much as I did last time.

I don't think i KNEW. I think...I had always been fat and couldn't even visualize success. The girl who oriented me at Curves was like "ok! 50 lbs and 50 inches! That's the goal!" And i just said, "ok. sure, that seems like a lot. And not that much at the same time, oddly. Let's do it." After the first month when I lost 3 lbs, I said to myself "this week I will lose 1 pound." Then I started to say "This month at weigh in I will have lost 4 pounds." Once it started happening, I KNEW I would do it. It was like I just needed to see it was possible. I have to say, though, I hit a plateau. And one saturday morning about six months in, sitting in the Curves parking lot in my car, I said to myself "Your mom may have made you a fat kid, but you made you a fat adult. Only you can undo it. It took you 22 years to get this way, and it may take a lot longer than you think to change--but ONLY YOU CAN DO IT. YOU DID IT, AND YOU CAN UNDO IT." When those words rang through my head it was like something changed. I stopped blaming my mom and owned my lifestyle for the first time. I became so light-hearted because I saw that I really could do it. I think if you think you are a victim--of advertising, pregnancy, stress, abuse (whatever it is you think made you fat) then you can never change your life--you can't undo something that someone else did to you. You can get over it, you can move past it, but you can't change it. However--no one but me made me fat. I did it. I made my body the way it was, no one else did that for me. I was not a victim after all. that was my "click" moment.