[TyraBoots]

This past fortnight or so my body has started really giving out. I am having to push or pull myself out of chairs. This week my knee went. I am afraid to put any weight on it at all.
All the usual bollocks I spouted about going on a diet for the new year fell by the wayside. Today I weighed myself in Boots, and I have gone up from 20st 4 to 21stone in about 3 weeks.
I am so completely out of control I cannot believe it.
I catch sight of myself in mirrors and the reflected screen of the TV or this monitor I look like a monster. I barely resemble a human being anymore.
I am just locked into this body.
I went to an obesity clinic and I hated it. I couldn't follow the milk diet I went on. I went to a group meeting which comprised of people who I didn't feel I could identify with.
I read loads of magazines and follow people's success stories looking for inspiration, but I don't get it.
My child starts school this year. She will probably get it in the neck because of me.
Why am I motionless?

[kykaree]

It's totally overwhelming. When I was 19 stone, I felt like I was going to live and die fat. I couldn't see how I possibly could lose a stone, let alone 9 of 'em! It's not easy, anyone who tells you any different is selling something.

Diets don't work. Not in the long term. Someone morbidly obese like I was and you are now, needs to change their lifestyle completely.

I read a great comment in the Times this week (oooh get me - it was a colour supplement about healthy living) about how it's a shame the New Year starts in January rather than July, that it's so much easier to do this in warm weather when we don't feel like hibernating.

What I did was take a few months to think about losing weight, to put strategies in place, and work out how I was going to set about targeting this huge mountain of fat on my body. And I set a goal of losing the weight over 2 years, minimum.

I know you want it gone tomorrow, but small, permanent changes are the way to go. You will do it, you may not every get slimmer of the year or anything, but you will give yourself and your family a gift of a happier and healthier you.

We're all here to support you. And all of us have been where you are now.

[2frustrated]

I don't know *why* but that's not the important thing.

Forget about how and why and "it's not fair" just push yourself out of your chair, get up and do something. You've already posted here, so it looks like you're on the right path.

Corny cliche coming up - The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Make that first step today, take less sugar in your tea or go for a 10 minute walk or eat an apple instead of that Mars bar. Gradually introduce changes to your lifestyle and it will change you too. Rome wasn't built in a day (just in case you haven't had enough cliches).

It took me a LONG time to get over the junk food habit. But today, after almost all my lifetime of snacking on sweets and chocolate, I am snacking on a bag of carrot sticks! And you know what? I don't miss all the chocolate and crisps and stuff that I filled my body with. In fact it makes me so ill now, not just in my stomach but it makes me shake and feel dizzy.

So you can do it, if you ever think you can't think of your beautiful little girl and being healthy for her, to set a good example for her and make sure she grows up healthy too. Don't beat yourself up about your body, love it. It gave you your little girl after all - isn't that something to be amazed about?

[veggie]

Tyra I don't know what to say I'm in the same boat so I don't have any answers. I think I'm such a yo yo dieter now I'm not even bothering to lose the weight as I know it'll go back on.