I read your Baby Steps plan thread, though I didn't comment. I applaud your decision that you need a plan - something you commit to yourself to follow. You can create your own plan, you don't need to use a commercially based one. What you need is to read around here an other places and come up with a calorie count that will let you lose. To do that you need to figure out the calories of what you eat. There is no need (barring any medical condition) to cut out any food category like carbs. you just need to be aware of the calorie count and of course that you're eating the portion that count relates to. There is a calorie counters area here on 3FC, and I'm sure you can get some good information there.

As for exercise, it sounds like you've been doing what you're doing long enough that your body doesn't consider it "extra" anymore. So yes, you'll need to up the intensity and/or the frequency, or find something else to add in the mix. Sounds like your dog has no interest in you dropping the daily hikes.

And baby steps can still apply. You don't have to jump into changing everything from the first instant! Pick one small thing and change that. When it's a habit, add another, and so on. I'm sure you'll do fine. You've put a lot of though into this, and it sounds like you're read to start.

Calorie counting. It's the best. Sign up for Fitday, the Daily Plate or one of the other food log sites and start logging what you eat--no math involved. It can be a bit labor intensive in the beginning as you add your foods and meals, but it gets to be much less trouble with time. I also cook and never eat prepared meals (except for occasionally in restaurants), fwiw. There's also a learning curve for distributing your calories throughout the day, but as long as you accept that, it's not a big deal.

My suspicion is that you're going to feel a lot better about the process and your ability to make concrete changes once you start losing weight a bit more quickly. My sense is that you're feeling frustrated and restricted without seeing any of the benefits that theoretically should come along with the restriction. A more systematic approach might just be the ticket.

If you do decide to count calories, check out the calorie-counting forum. There's tons of handy info there and lots of people willing to help with menus and advice.

Oh! And just to add to my sales pitch, I recall someone recently citing evidence that calorie counters tend to do the best with maintaining their weight. Anecdotally, almost all of us over in maintainers count calories.

When did I become such an evangelist?

I will reiterate - you don't need to spend money. I bought a few books, but the very same books are available in the library. I have read almost everything there is in the library about weight loss. Every once in a while an author will say something in just the right words, and I finally "get" an important idea.

I cook from scratch every day of my life - well, almost. I have really enjoyed the challenge of finding things that taste really good and are reasonably easy to make and low in calories/high in nutrition.

Just relax and let yourself do this. Don't fight it. You are so lucky that you enjoy exercise, I still don't , but I have come to realize, in my heart, that it is a necessary element in acheiving a healthy lifestyle, just like you are realizing that that you are going to have to put some effort into to your nutritional goals. Isn't there some old cliche about anything good requires effort?

I think fitday will help you understand what the math is about. I think you may be thinking about fat grams, percentages of fat, protein and carbohydrates. They make little charts so you can see what's going on. You don't need to figure anything out unless that's "your bag".

To make a silly analogy, my aim is to feed myself like the label says on the dog food can - a complete and balanced diet to maitain your pet yada yada. I want to be at least as healthy as my dogs.