I love this place so, so much. I've been a member here for five years, with no loss to speak of in the first couple years, but even in the no loss days, the insight and inspiration of this site was helping me look at myself differently.

I don't really look at this as a "battle" anymore. I'm not fighting my body and my self, I'm learning to work with, not against myself. It really feels great to put "the war" behind me. I'm not exactly sure when the "fighting" stopped. Some of it was pretty early. Even in my late teens and early 20's, I was starting to look at myself beyond the tradtional diet and fat girl mentality that I was raised with. I resisted the notion that I had to put my entire life on hold until after I'd lost every ounce of weight that I needed to. I think I realized pretty early that if I put off all my dreams until I was thin, I could die without having had much of a life.

I don't exactly regret my life path, at least not most of it, but I do wonder what my life would have been like if I'd learned some of these lessons earlier.

SO HAPPY for one of my favorite posters! Seriously, I have been watching your ticker so I could scream for you when you hit 60.
Sounds like I don't need to wait until 60...

SO YEAH ON YOU!

I've said it too many times, and probably am beginning to sound like a weirdo - but I adore all of your posts and wry witty humor.

I called my family tonight, and talked to my Mom and sister. When I was talking with my sister, I started to tell her about my weight loss accomplishment and the phone went dead - we're out of Skype minutes! Aaaaagh.

We don't have a landline, we use Skype (sort of like a cheap Vonage) and we buy our incoming and outgoing separately. For incoming calls, you pay a flat rate and for outgoing calls, you buy a bunch of minutes at a time, and when you run out, you buy more. Well, hubby has the credit card and he's out with the guys, and so I'll have to call my sister back tomorrow after we've bought more minutes.

I love the money we save with Skype, but I have to remember to keep track of the minutes before I make my phone calls - or at least get the important stuff into the conversation first.