So true. The real key to weight loss is experimenting, tweaking, and tuning until the correct, personalized formula is found. No two of us is exactly alike in this journey.

And I think glib generalizations like "eat less, move more," "calories in, calories out" and "any diet works if you work it," can prohibit a person from experimenting, tweaking and tuning. Instead, they keep on trying to get onto the same horse that threw them, instead of trying to find a different horse.

I know the main reason I kept failing for more than three decades was that I kept trying to get back on the same horses. I never even considered the "low carb" horse, because everything I read and heard said that it was a "bad" horse.

It wasn't until two doctors suggested lower carb for my insulin resistance and found out that lower carb helps reduce my fibromyalgia symptoms that I started experimenting with low carb. Now, I still keep falling off, but at least I know what does work, so I'm confident that with practice I'll get beter at it.

I don't know...I "only" lost 70 lbs but I usually feel pretty comfortable posting in this forum (heck, I've snuck into the 20 somethings threads a few times!). The journey may be different or shorter, but there are a lot of similarities for losing weight - whether it's 5 lbs or 100 lbs. It is interesting to see so many perspectives, how one person can see it as "black and white, calories in calories out" but when some of us look in our bodies/hearts/minds we can see it is THAT and more.

In some of my earlier trips through the great dieting roadtrip, I might have thought it WAS calories in/calories out for me, but that wasn't what it ended up being.

Trial and error. Stop and start. Lose and regain. Eat non fat. Eat fat. Eat protein. Eat dairy. All the conflicting information we are bombarded with! The whole process has been a journey of discovery I am different now than I was at the beginning.

I do understand what irishsarah is saying though. Not that anyone isn't welcome "here," but that getting "all you need to do" advice from someone who has less than half the weight to lose can seem judgemental more than supportive.

I try not to read emotion into others' posts, because I know it isn't always meant that way, though I definitely do feel a vibe of "judgement" coming from the "all you need to do," type posts that I don't feel from the "what I tried and it worked for me". I can cut more slack to someone who has as much or more weight to lose as I do, but when someone with less than 50 lbs to lose tells me "all you've got to do," advice - or advice that implies that there is only one way to succeed, well, let's just say I tend not to take the advice very seriously (some eyerolling may be involved).

I don't post very often in the featherweight posts, because our issues aren't the same. I don't even read them, honestly because reading "I can't be seen in a bathing suit, until I lose 5 lbs," kind of drives me crazy (since I love swimming and never deprived myself of the pleasure and the exercise, even when I was a smidgen under 400 lbs).

Yes, there are a lot of similarities in weight loss, whether it's 10 lbs, 250 or 500 - but there are also issues vastyly different. Any time a person attempts to give advice to a situation more severe than your own (whether it's weight loss advice, financial advice or advice on any other topic), they risk being perceived as being judgemental or naive.

I am fat because I like the way junk food tastes. As much as I enjoy healthy foods, I won't lie. I would eat cookies and chips and burgers all the time if it didn't affect my health. And because so many other things in my life have sucked, I turned to making myself feel good with those foods I liked.

Example: My first husband left. That's when I became OBESE. I was so sad about the divorce and the poverty. A donut made me happy.

I have 3 kids with chronic health issues. Each diagnosis was so painful for me that the only thing that made the pain stop for a little bit was food. Ten minutes with a bag of Cheetos was better (in my head) than ten minutes with that pain.

My reasons for being fat evolved over time. To begin with it was underlying health issues, insulin resistance and thyroid. Being a stay at home mom with access to more food didn't help. Growing up we didn't have more food than we needed so we didn't gain weight. I love to bake and the diabetes that runs in the family makes me really crave sweets. I bake for a living so that is really not helpful! Low self esteem/ depression runs in my family as well. That combined with the weight piling up turned into eating to soothe. There were lots of family problems, divorced parents, males in the family that were abusive, oh lots of reasons. I figured I was fat and couldn't lose it so I might as well enjoy the sweets. This was fine (not really, but I rationalized) until my health started to go. I agree that weight problems are so personal, everyone is different. It is never right to pass judgment on someone not knowing all the circumstances.

Gee this really was a great topic . Thanks for sharing everyone

Here's my little story. Went off to college to a very difficult, very stressful engineering university known for its exceptionally high standards. That is not a brag, it is an explanation because that's where it started. High stress... easy access to lots of beer... lots of study... not much time to eat... pizza delivery... no time to exercise (very lame excuse)... easy access to beer...

So a lot of my weight was put on in college. Then, I didn't lose it before I got married and had kids. Put on more weight after the first one, more after the second one. Then, just way overwhelmed with working full time and putting kids/husband needs ahead of my health.

Can't ignore it forever, so better late than never, I'm starting again.

***WARNING: If you have an eating disorder, please be careful reading this. It may contain some triggers.***

I was an emotional eater. (I say "was" because I am no longer.) I gained most of my weight during my first year of teaching. I was in a low-income, critical teacher shortage school in one of the worst districts not in just the state, but in the entire country. I seriously believe my principal had an undiagnosed bipolar disorder. It was Horrible (with a capital H) and all I did was eat. I gained 70 lbs. in nine months.

Way before then, though, I struggled with eating disorders. I was not a fat kid, but I did have boobs and hips by the end of 4th grade. This was in the days where all my outside role models were boobs-on-a-stick. I started "dieting" (really, starving myself) when I was in 7th grade. I managed to get down to 103 lbs. (I was 5'4") and NO ONE told me I was too thin. It was just the opposite - they all told me how great I looked! Of course, once I started ingesting more than an apple and a can of Tab every day, I gained it all back. (And by "all," I mean I weighed about 130.)

There were also some sexual abuse and abandonment issues that I was never allowed to deal with as a child and wasn't equipped to deal with as an adult for the longest time. I yo-yo'ed for years, alternating between anorexia (that I hid verrrrrry well) and binge eating (that I hid equally well). In my worst anorexia spirals, I went days without eating anything at all. During one of my worst binge spirals, I ate an entire package of bologna, a sleeve of saltines, a half a box of Cheerios with milk and tons of sugar, and about 10 pieces of bread and butter in one sitting.

It took a long time to make piece with myself. It took a long time to come to the realization that, yes, I'd been very, very hurt by some people I should have been able to trust in my childhood, but that ultimately if I continued to treat food as my drug, those people still had power over me.

So now I'm here, doing it for real, for good. And I will never speak this story again because, frankly, it makes me shaky.

I think you sneak in my mind sometimes Well said. I have bitten my tongue in reponse to a couple posts already.

I am fat due to many many reasons. OBVIOUSLY I ate more than I burned off. But WHY I ate more was another story.

My parents used food as a substitute for attention when we were growing up. If we'd go and watch a movie, or go play we were rewarded not with a small BAG of chips but a BOX of chips. So I learned to eat big from an early age. I also snuck food often as a teenager and ate alone.

I went through a really traumatic time when I was 19. My boyfriend was mentally abusive so I dumped him and turned to a new man... who then after finding out I was 19 weeks pregnant, beat me up, threw me in the back of his truck and proceeded to dump me out the back at about 30 K per hour. I gave birth to a stillborn little girl later that day

I then lost my job, locked myself in my apartment and went from 160 lbs to 300 lbs in 1.5 years. I only left to head to the corner store to buy more and more junk food.

So the REASONS I ended up this large were depression and poor choices.

And the REASON I want to lose the weight is so I can live.

I wish I could say something concrete, like a crappy childhood or abuse of some sort, but nothing of the kind is true. I was loved, nurtured, encouraged to be myself, accepted in all things, valued. I was never teased or belittled because of my weight in my family, I was always told I was the pretty one and the smart one. My sister is thin, my brother a bit heavier. I had awesome parents. My dad loves to eat BUT he hikes and chops wood and is very active; my mom doesn't eat as much, but she hates to exercise. Luckily I got the combination of loving to eat like a starving wolverine and hating exercise LOL I'm not a 'stress eater' during bad stressful times I can barely get a cracker down. I'm a 'celebratory' eater, I think of food as a 'treat' still. I think I'm fat, no i KNOW i'm fat, because I'm lazy and self-indulgent and I have no urgent NEED to not be fat. I have a good job, money, a loving husband and tons of friends, my health is good. I love the way good rich food tastes, I also love the way crap tastes LOL. And I somehow have a weird sense of entitlement, that I should be the exception to the rule, I should be able to eat whatever I like, who's the world to tell me otherwise? nutty I tell ya, nutty! But my rational mind knows that the clock is ticking - that good health isn't going to last forever. I want to live a long life, I don't want to leave the party early because of food, I want to stick around and grow old with my DH

because I am addicted to food. It makes me feel euphoric and happy. so I want more. I will always have to be conscious of this fact. (it might be what keeps me in a size 14 for the rest of my life - not that i'm complaining)

I eat too much, no exercise. Emotional eating. I started blogging about this today and after a zillion words, I still wasnt a 1/3 of the way through. Ill finish tomorrow. I have some serious issues behind why I eat, at least I think so.