I should mix things up a bit. I have done that before with my eating plan a couple of times and it has made me feel more into it. Maybe I'll add some work with free weights.

Keeping up with the motivation is *hard* and there are definitely times when I slip and my weight will stall for a month. Its miserable!

Here are the things I do to keep my motivation...

- I stand nekkid in front of a mirror everyday.

- I try on my "skinny" jeans that do not fit once every few days and I leave them on top of my dresser.

- I have "fitspo" pictures as my wallpaper on my laptop, phone and tablet. Fitspo are pictures of women who are in shape (not skinny like most thinspo).

- I have videos from youtube that show before/after weight loss bookmarked and downloaded.

- When I am at the gym, I watch music videos, dancing videos, etc... with women who look *great*. It keeps my eye on the ball.

- I log in here every few days remind myself that I am *not* alone.

- I weigh myself twice a day.

- I have hype songs that I listen to. "Yes" by LMFAO and "Good Morning" by Chamillionaire. Songs that make me feel GOOD and HAPPY. I like the "Yes" song because the chorus says "Everyday I see my dream." - and it helps me keep my head in the game, so to speak.

- I watch TV shows about super obese people and their struggle. The show "Heavy" is on instant watch on Netflix. It reminds me of what I was on my towards and what I don't want to go back to.

- Go to the "GOAL!" forum here and look at people who have actually done it. As weird as this is probably going to seem - I have downloaded several people's before and after photographs and I have them on my phone... When I am feeling an urge to go pick up some fast food, or skip the gym - I look at those photos.

.... The reality is there is really very little in life that I want more than to be a fit woman. I want to turn heads. I want to walk into a store and be able to wear what I think is cute. I want to sit down without worrying about my shirt getting caught in my fat rolls. I want to be healthy.

--- The only way for me to do this is to wake up everyday and recommit. And if, everyday, I get up and go back to the gym. And everyday, one day at a time - if I decide to put down the fork, drive AWAY from the fried chicken... then everyday - a tiny chunk at a time, I get closer to my goal.

No matter how frustrating, boring, slow... whatever - it gets. If we keep going back, then one day when you look into the mirror and see a waist (I just found mine!) or hip bones (I'm dreaming of finding those!), it will all be worth it.

Just find your motivation, or your power animal, or whatever - and put it in your face all the time and just keep going back, everyday.

How on EARTH do you only eat ONE time a day?! Is that healthy? Did I read it right?

Obviously I'm no health expert but I would check with your doctor... maybe the way you're eating right now is doing more harm than good. I know that you have to keep your sugar in check but I know that the diet for a diabetic is to keep you stable and eating more often would help that.

I know that for me personally I eat a bunch of times during the day... just a little each time but it keeps me from feeling hungry which is when I get the most frustrated about being on a "diet". Maybe if you re-evaluate your eating habits you will find a second wind of motivation.

You've done a great job so far. You have a great attitude and I think you'll soon realize that this is a way of life, not a diet. Once that sank in for me, my whole attitude changed. It was like, "Well, this is how I have to eat FOREVER if I want to lose and then maintain. Might as well get used to it and be happy with it." Obviously there are off plan days - now and after all the weight is lost. But this is it for the most part. It does get easier. Hang in there. Be very proud of the fact that you found a way to lose in spite of the obstacles you have with diabetes.

Lin

I believe that it is healthy. It is at least much healthier than what I was doing. And I actually think it's very healthy. My husband was also kind of freaked out about it. Not so much about the once a day part, but more about the fact that I go for weeks at a time with no veggies or fruit. (When I cheat I almost always go for a salad! lol) But after the first couple of months he completely changed his tune. We've been together for 22 years and he is AWED by the energy I have now and he's jealous about it. He was a wannabe vegetarian before I started this and had been for many years, eating very little animal products, but looking at me now, he wants a little bit of what I got. And actually, when we went home in july for 10 days to visit family, what everyone kept saying to me was not "wow, you've lost weight!" (they hadn't seen me at my highest, anyway), but "you look so young!" And seriously, I cannot imagine worrying that this is not healthy given how I feel.

Also, the original reason that I started eating this way was to help with my blood sugars. The once a day thing was a natural evolution from that. Eating small meals more often does not keep a type I stable (I don't think it would do that for a type II either, but I have not BTDT), but puts you on a roller-coastery up/down cycle which is very exhausting and not great for your long term health. It has been WEEKS since my last low blood sugar (just realized that now, I haven't even thought about low blood sugars in like WEEEEKS!). And low blood sugars used to happen many times a week. Usually if you have one in a day, you are more likely to have a second. So, even though I didn't have them every day, I think it was pretty common for me to have them 6 to 10 times a week. Not having low blood sugars is probably really helpful for my weightloss, because when you have a low, your brain thinks it's starving and every cell in your body is screaming for the junkiest carbiest muck you can get your hands on, and lots of it.

I actually rarely feel hungry eating this way. The problem is that I still have the *habit* of food. I assume for some people food is a good habit. They eat for nourishment and energy. Not me, though. I eat because I love the taste of crap, I love the way it feels going down, I love that overfull feeling (even if I also hate it). I have been that way for many years, and a couple of months of eating better isn't enough to get over it. I think it is probably going to take as long, or longer, than getting over the habit of smoking took. I don't know exactly how long that was, but it was years. I quit 15 years ago and I no longer feel even a little bit of that habit. So hopefully it will go that way with that unhealthy sort of eating, too.

Lin, I have been thinking so much about that these last few days, about it being a woe for life. I have to say it is so unfair that it takes so long to lose! It just seems like once you prove you're serious and putting in a good effort your slate should be wiped clean and you should be allowed to proceed as a normal healthy person. Gah!

Anyway... I feel like part of what was/is making me feel like it's such a long road is wanting to be thinner. It feels like there's a lot of work and time between here and there. But ya know, I've been thinking about why I want to be thinner and if that is really so important to me and whether or not it's just icing on the cake. I feel so much better now than I did six months ago. I have changed in HUGE unforeseeable ways. An important one for me was that because I had never been able to lose any weight before, I was afraid I would just get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. And I feel free of that now. I don't have the fear I used to have.

And physically I feel so much better than before. I am running after my kids in a fun way. I'm not avoiding physical play with them and I'm not making myself do it because I should. I'm enjoying it and them! And there's a dozen other reasons, I'm sure that I am very grateful to be right where I am, here at 175 pounds.

It would be great to be thinner, but I think maybe I need to put that on the back burner for a while. I think it's quite possible that further weight loss will be easier and maybe even faster if I stop focusing on some goal weight and start focusing on how I'm going to live my life. Kwim? Because living my life on this eating plan is really liberating and wonderful for me in itself. In every way except for the fact that I don't get to eat chocolate cake and pints of ice cream. And I think if I choose it for just for the benefits it gives me TODAY, I will be in a better position to choose to do it each day.

Ok... sorry that was so long you guys. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this.

Oh, and GonnaTurnHeads, you said some very interesting things! lol First, thanks for recommending the show "Heavy". I gotta say it is a terrible show! But also very motivating. I only watched the first episode, but I think I will have finished the first season in a matter of days. Anyway, you talked about looking at other women's bodies in several different contexts -- the before/after pics, the fitspo, music videos of fit women, shows like Heavy. That's really interesting to me because I have found looking at women's bodies in the last year a really enlightening thing. I started with naked pics of fat women online, they were much more arty than porn, I swear! But they really made me feel more normal. Like, I think in our culture we learn not to really LOOK at fat women. I don't think I really knew what other fat people looked like and I was so surprised to see that there were other people who looked like me and I wasn't a freak. And then I looked at a lot of the "fatshionista" stuff, which I love -- fat women embracing it and dressing it up, just awesome, because we deserve to feel good no matter what our weight is, imo. And then there was the museum of fat love http://love.twowholecakes.org/ , which might be more awesome than all the rest. And now I find myself drawing a lot of inspiration from the before and afters and other stuff along those lines.