3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community

Hi, I'm new here, too. There's lot of motivation information and a lot of support from various groups. I've been sort of sticking my toe in the water in several of them, trying to find the best fit for me. I still have about 145lbs to lose myself, so you shouldn't feel like the "Lone Ranger"...

I started on South Beach Diet, but it was, imho, horrible.... I knew there was no way I could live like that...so I changed to low fat/calorie counting and I'm happier. After being on SBD and switching to LF/CC, I don't even feel like I'm on a diet. :D But that's just me.

I think that the most important thing of all is to find a way of eating/diet that best suits your culture, food likes and dislikes, and your lifestyle. If, for example, you are from the south (I am) and you like foods such as potatoes, cheese grits, pigs feet, gravies, greens cooked in fat back etc....you are probably not going to like or be able to stay on a diet that removes those foods and forces you to eat in a way that is totally alien to your taste buds. However, you MIGHT like a diet that allows those foods, but cooked differently (with less fat) or restricted in calories, while slowly adding new foods and new ideas. I'm just using that as an example, because that's what I'm doing right now and it's really working for me.

Also, if you hit a "plateau"--do something ENTIRELY different. For example, when I plateau, I "do" South Beach for a few days and it knocks me out of the plateau and I lose again. Then I go back to the LF/CC.

After a few weeks, dieting gets "easy". You are seldom hungry, you feel great, you are in control--you feel like "I can do this!" Believe it or not--that's when you are in the most danger of messing up. When you think you are in control and can eat wrong or too much "here and there because I'm in control", it only takes a few days of that and you've not only fallen off the wagon, but rolled into the ditch.. :(

So when you are doing great, that's when you have to be most on guard, because you are likely to sabotage yourself unintentionally.

Now some other things to do:
1) Keep a Journal--write everything you eat down, "talk" to yourself about what is going on, day by day. You will be surprised how much you learn when you go back and read those posts a couple of weeks later.
2) Keep a food Journal--sites like "dailyplate" and "fitday" have a place to that keeps up with calories, fat, carbs, protein, etc... and also have a place to journal and chart your weight loss.
3) Start a blog. Put what you want in it.
4) Get into a least one thread where you feel supported. I like the thread here in Calorie Counters--April Chat-- but there are many others out there that are supportive. By visiting several times a week, you learn about the people in that thread, and they about you. They'll help pick you up when you fall and congratulate your successes--not just weight wise, but with whatever life problems you choose to share.
5)This website is a tool...just like Splenda, Pam, counting calories, various diets, Ally, and other weight loss tools. You have to decide where it fits in you way of dieting/eating and figure out what you need from it--then look! I'm sure you'll find most of what you are needing in the way of motivation and support.

You apparently are already motivated to a certain degree, or you wouldn't be here. As for finding more motivation, what's important to you? WHY do you need/want to lose weight. And is that reason more important to you than overeating or eating the wrong foods? Only you can answer that. :hug: