I'm 36. I dieted - cycles of restriction and binging for 20 years. I started at 130 lbs and ended at 195 lbs. Dieting made me fat. Sure, it was easy for me to lose weight at super reduced calories every day - I could NEVER maintain it. Two things always happened: 1) my body rebelled against the deprivation and I would eat "out of control" as my body desperately cried out for food 2) I would reach my "goal weight" and stop dieting and return to the unhealthy eating habits that made me heavy in the first place. In either case, I would always gain all the lost weight back AND MORE.

At age 35, I weighed nearly 200 lbs. I was tired, lethargic, I used to fall asleep at work nearly every day. I quit looking at myself, quit weighing myself, quit shopping. I wore the same size 18 loose fit Eddie Bauer jeans every day, the same black loafers. I quit doing anything with my hair - just let it air dry frizzy every day. No make up. I constantly dreamed and fantasized about being thin, about losing weight. I thought about losing weight more than people must think of winning the lottery.

I decided to start eating for my health. No more restriction, no more binging, just healthy foods - 6 meals a day, 1600 calories a day. Wide variety of vegetables, fruit, lean protein, low fat dairy, healthy fats, whole grains. I feel really great - not one binge, not one "out of control" moment since July 2004. Not one day sick, either.

This week, I am celebrating my first year of maintenance at my goal weight. For the first time in my life, I have lost weight and have kept it off.

My "turning point" was a combination of 3 things:

1. My mom was really serious about me coming to spend the holidays with her. She is one of those bona fide genetically skinny people and I know she loves me very much, but I don't think she understands how difficult it is for people to manage their weight. I hadn't seen her for 2 years and she hadn't seen me at my highest weight. I didn't want to go visit and have her look at me with love and pity and not talk about my weight for the entire visit.

2. I went to the bathroom at a movie theatre. When I sat down, I cut my outer thigh on a sharp edged metal trash receptacle. My thigh bled and I cried, because I realized that a normal sized person would have fit just fine. I was moving from "big girl" to "fat girl" and all I could envision was a lifetime of being too big for seats and asking for seat belt extenders on planes.

3. I read this book called Super Foods Rx: 14 Foods That Can Save Your Life. All of my grandparents had died relatively young - diabetes, cancer, heart disease, complications of alzheimers. The book was very exciting to me - the idea of using food to prevent serious diseases. I decided that day, holding the book in the aisle of Borders that I was going to change how I ate forever. My old failed diets - the restrictions, the binging, the gaining more weight than when I started, I realized everything I had done wrong and how I could really do it this time.

All it took, to lose weight, to keep it off for a year, was just a little more planning (shopping, lunch packing) and exercise.

For me, the turning point was getting the results from bloodwork that said my cholesterol was 400 and my glucose was over 400 (and this was after going blind for a few weeks a month earlier which I am almost sure can be attributed to the extremely high glucose levels). At 31, I knew I did not want to take pills or shots for the rest of my life. Now at 32, I have lost over 90 lbs and my cholesterol is down to 237 , but I still have a LONG way to go!

Wow - so neat to read what's spurred everyone on - you guys are all a great inspiration. Thanks for sharing!!!

I've always known deep down that the key to weight loss FOR ME was exercise rather than food, and I'd made several half hearted attempts to get fit. What triggered it this time was signing up for a 1 mile run and realising I couldn't run that far. Not only that but being passed while walking a bit of it by a 60+ year old who was running while pushing a pram. In the goodie bag at the end there were flyers for a gym that was sponsoring the event and I wondered whether I should go along for the free taster day they were offering. Then the next morning I noticed that the gym over the road from my office had a 6 week membership offer with no joining fees and no contract beyond the 6 weeks (and the fees during those 6 weeks were just the normal ones - there wasn't even a premium price for the ability to walk away at the end), so I decided it was worth the money to just try it.

5 weeks later I could already tell how much fitter I was, and I was beating their door down to sign up for another year. I've always known that I should exercie, but made excuses like cost or the fact that the situation wasn't quite bad enough to need to do something about it...