Mendrick-- I totally got that... While I, on the other hand, had a loving stay-at-home mom who was totally supportive in every way, and she was just a little bit awkward about how to advise me about that my weight-- and I managed to turn that into a full scale excuse for overeating for the next twenty-five years. I certainly WISH I had had your maturity and insight!

When you get back to the housekeeping one, would you like to come visit me?

LOL! Believe me, it NEEDS to come around again soon! I really need to find a way to do both, but I can not clean three bathrooms before 5:30 AM. When I'm hyper cleaning, that's what I do. I swipe each bathroom every single day first thing. But I just can't do that and get to the gym by 5:30.

Thanks all, this was pretty helpful. I think I've probably already had my moment, it just hasn't been as grand as Jillian and the producers of BL would have me believe it should be. I have an incredibly controlling mother whom I feel the need to please and obtain approval from even at 31 yrs old, a dad who pretty much abandon me and addictive genetics (alcholic grandparents on both sides, and a mother with her own food binging issues). My drug was clearly food and now that I seemed to have moved past that I'm starting to struggle with other obsessive behaviors...right now like the op said I'm completely consumed by weight loss. I think this is where I need the most work because this all needs to become second nature to me so that when I'm done being consumed by it and move onto something else I don't go back to my old habits. Que the pianos, I think I just had my moment

I'm another one who never had a major moment. I'm fat because I'm lazy and I can eat a lot of food if I let myself. I don't even eat a lot of really indulgent food - like I like frozen yogurt better than ultrarich ice cream. But if I let myself, I'd eat a large frozen yogurt cone every night, plus all kinds of other goods plus generous portions of regular meals. And I'm not a naturally active person. So all of that adds up to lots of excess weight.

No dysfunctional family, no big emotional traumas that left me scarred for life. Just too many calories in, not enough calories out. Even this time, this particular weight loss journey, had no special trigger, even though it does truly feel different this time, and I have the confidence that I will ultimately succeed at getting to and maintaining a healthy weight.

i'm not sure i've had my aha moment. i know i have little to no will power. Over the years my metabolism changed/slowed and i didn't change my way of eating. The past 3 years, i turned into a binge eater and had to come to terms with that. i know i can't keep certain foods in the house with having no will power but i can't really think of an emotional reason for my eating except maybe just every day stress. i'll have to give this more thought.

I'm sure I've said this elsewhere on the boards before, but my breakthrough, as such, was deciding that I'd spent more than enough time wondering why I was so fat, and why I couldn't get my act together and lose the weight. Yeah, I have a catalog of emotional horrors driving a lot of it, but just deciding to let that go, and put my mental energy into figuring out what to eat, how much of it to eat, and coming up with a general plan for changing my lifestyle seemed to do the trick.