I agree with all of these points!!!!

• I weigh in the exact same way

• I too struggle with the thought of not havinbg a normal relationship with food. I constantly worry about after meeting my weight loss goals ill not be able to eat normally and insist of doing my "diet" way of eating. Also the fact that ive went to culinary school, and my husband is a chef...freaks me out. Ill constantly be afraid of feeling guilty.

• Of course the third point is good as well =] Not so much of making them jealous, but i want people to see how i look now, versus how they remember me. It makes me feel good knowing my hard work and dedication has paid off and makes people notice!

Confessions, here are mine. First, I am terrified of maintaining. I know how to gain weight. I know how to lose weight. However, there has been very little time in my life when I just maintained a weight, any weight, and I'm scared that I won't know how, that I'll gain a bunch of weight back. Sometimes, the weight loss feels precarious, like any moment something could tip and I'd be back to where I started from. Second, I'm not sure if I'll ever be happy with the way my body looks, even when I'm at my goal weight. My stretched out skin is the biggest cause for concern. Even though the scale tells me I'm losing, I feel like the general shape and flaws stay the same. I've never been thin, so only time will tell.

tuende i KNOW how you feel. I go through something similair...

another one i forgot to mention was i TRUELY believe my scale is lying to me.
Granted im about 93 lbs lighter than what i was 2 summers ago, i feel like im just as heavy. I noticed some differences in my collarbone, wrists, fingers, a somewhat flatter tummy....but not enough for me to say wow...i only weigh 188? i look good in clothes, but when i look at just my body..just ME..i feel and see things the way theyve always been at my highest. my legs seem huge thn when i put jeans on they seem to look slimmer. maybe its just that my perception of my own body has been sooo distorted, especially since ive never been thin...of course with the exception of being in the process of blowing up =]

Jackie, I know just what you mean! My skin is all stretched-out and I'm riddled with stretch marks and cellulite, so even though I'm almost 60 lbs slimmer than I was in August when I started, I still think I look terrible naked. My thighs are the worst. They're like bloated bags of cottage cheese and still look humongous naked, yet when I put on jeans they look skinnier than I thought. I guess I've pretty much screwed up my body for life with my constant yo-yo gaining and losing, so it's my own fault. I guess I'll have to learn to be satisfied with looking good in clothes, if I can't look good naked.

I also am just like those who mention weighing in first thing in the morning, before I've eaten, after I've gone to the bathroom, naked. Well, scratch the naked for now because I used Wii Fit to weigh-in and it helpfully subtracts 2 lbs for clothing, so I wear my lightest pajamas every time.

Actually, this whole thread is pretty much full of my own feelings about weight loss. I'm scared of maintaining. I feel like I've finally gotten good at losing, and I'm scared that going back to a higher calorie count to maintain will trigger my bad binging habits. Luckily I still have about 20-25 lbs until I have to stop losing, so I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Oh jeez, I have lots of confessions. I have been far from perfect on this whole maintaining thing. Here are a few that came to mind:

1) I lost weight for vanity reasons only...health, and even fitness, was always just an added bonus. I wanted to lose weight to look good, plain and simple.

2) I've never lost my desire to eat junk and a lot of it. I still prefer the greasiest fried chinese take out over a healthy grilled chicken breast. I've learned a lot about healthy eating and have gotten to be quite good at preparing healthy meals. But I still like junk food more.

3) I'm actually rather disappointed with my body now that I'm at goal weight. I'm not sure if I was truly expecting to look like a Victoria Secret model or something after I lost so much weight, but I did think that I would look...better. Sure, I'm skinnier, but now I'm just a deflated wrinkly lumpy balloon (who is still fat in areas, mind you) with smaller boobs. I'm angry and sad that after all this effort I still don't have a "beautiful" body.

Just a few, there are many others.

Jackie and Kirjava... it's almost a relief to hear that you both have the same feelings. I feel like I'm going crazy sometimes, because I literally can't see the changes. I weigh 50 lbs less that I did in Sept when I started, and I'm no longer "overweight" but for the most part, I can't perceive the difference, especially in my stomach and thighs (which are the worst!). I did have to video tape myself a week or so ago and seeing myself from more of an objective distance, I could notice a difference. It's just so weird...

-I don't weigh with wet hair.

- I will never weigh with clothes on and never ever with shoes on!

-I only weigh after using the bathroom, never ever ever after eating or drinking and always right after the gym when all the sweat is out of me.

-I hate to eat most days (but I do anyway!) because I know that if I eat, then step on the scale, it will be higher than it was on an empty stomach. The thought of the scale doing anything BUT going down is disheartening.

-Sometimes I don't want to drink liters of water because I know the scale will also be up after that and I need to remind myself that its not "real" weight - there are no calories.

I think I'm overly obsessed with just wanting the number to GO DOWN!

i am absolutely horrified as to how my skin will look when i lose the weight i want to lose. stretched skin was something i didn't think about till i came on this site, and i was like, omg...now i kinda don't want to lose weight

i dream about eating my favorite fatty greasy food. and then when i wake up, i get all sad that i won't get to eat it

I am *very* particular with weighing myself: no clothes, right after I wake up and go to the bathroom and before breakfast, and I also try and "hold" myself lighter. I know that sounds silly, but I hop on the scale and think to myself "light light light" and stiffen my spine and just hold myself up in the hopes that it will give me a good number.

I also hop on several times a day, usually just to see how much eating and drinking can affect my weight. Also silly, I'm just curious!

This might sound strange, but I have a negative bias against really overweight and obese people (who aren't dieting and being healthy and trying and actually losing weight, that is). The reason being is that when i was a junior in college, I move into a sorority house and there were at least 10 women who were obese who I lived with. They would eat and eat and eat and before, I had really healthy eating habits, I was overweight, but only by like 15 lbs or so. So I could have easily lost it back then and gotten healthier and yadda yadda (going into college I weighed 163, moving into the house i weighed 170). Anyways, I developed their poor eating habits and they would encourage me and everyone else to eat and snack and go to jack in the box and would basically guilt-trip people if they said no. It was weird and it was bad.

So my point is that I want to lose weight to make people like them feel bad but also to encourage them that they can lose weight and be healthy. I know it sounds mean and it's prejudiced but and I know I could have said no, but peer pressure, it sucks.

I also have this friend from high school who stopped talking to me because I voted for Obama who is reeealllllly overweight and she just pissed me off because she would complain about being overweight, say how she's at risk for diabetes, complain about how her family all lost weight and yet she wouldn't do ANYTHING about it. I would give her advice like to ask her mom to buy certain things like low-fat yogurt and the likes and she always made up excuses like her mom wouldn't buy those things (yeah right) and that if she bought her own groceries, her brother would eat them (yeah right) and so I suggested she buy a mini-fridge for her room and she said there was no room and her parents would say no. And that her brother would sneak in and steal her food (yeah right). So it just really pissed me off that she would just sit there and complain and not take any advice. So I want to lose weight and rub it in her face if she goes to our 10 year high school reunion in 3 years.

Oh and I also HAVE to weigh myself every morning after potty and every night before bed. I feel that if I don't, then I'll have some huge unexplainable weight gain. It has happened in the past. sometimes I weigh myself during the day and if I haven't gained yet, I feel that I'm OK.

I know how you feel! When I was in college my dad was going through culinary school. I ended up eating really light at breakfast and lunch (like 200-300 calories total) just to leave room for his gourmet meals at night. The worst was when he was going through chocolatiering class!

I don't think I have a confession that hasn't already been mentioned. I pretty much do all the things mentioned at least from time to time. I too mainly want to loose weight for vanity reasons although I really do want to be healthy too. Really it is because my husband does not look at me the way he used to and right now that is more important to me than being healthy but at least I get two birds with one stone!

1) This is bad...but when I'm figuring the calories for something, like from a restaurant without calorie counts online, I'll find the lowest estimated option on Sparkpeople sometimes and count it. I'm lucky I haven't gained any so far.

2) I hate my body. I, too, never considered what would happen to it once there wasn't a ton of fat on it. Loose skin and saggy boobs weren't in my plans at all. I can't stand to look in the mirror unless I'm clothed. I won't let my husband see me naked. Do I feel better? Some days. But self-esteem wise? I had more when I was nearly 230 pounds than I do now.

OK OK, Ill confess!

I loooove the fact that I'm now smaller than my friends! I hope they stay that way! I was always that fat girl with the cute skinny friends. Guess I made them feel better about themselves.

I don't like to eat in the mornings. I usually eat my first foods around 1pm.

I'm a coffee addict!

1. I weigh myself all the time, not just in the morning, any time after I eat a meal, I weight myself to make sure my weight it hasn't gone up very far, when it gets to a certain point I don't allow myself to have anything else.

2. I don't allow my friends to bring junk food into my house lol!!! (most of the time )

3. I've lost 42lbs so far and I have stretch marks and cellulite on my thighs - even though I go to the gym all the time I still don't feel that great about my body. I'm sure I'm better than I was, but I guess I just don't see it.