Hi, I've been away from this site for... oh, a year and 35 pounds. And only on sporadically for a year and 35 pounds before that. Basically I lost 90 pounds about 4 years ago, kept it off for 2 years, and then gained 70 pounds back over the past two years.

That's an awful lot of weight to gain back! It's tied into cravings and binge eating, and emotional issues. I don't want to gain the last 20 pounds back, though!

So, I bought DietPower, and started food journalling. First week I lost 3 pounds. Second week I ate just as healthy and gained one. Third week I decided if I was going to gain while eating healthy might as well eat unhealthy and gained 1.5! So, er, that's a bad plan.

I've found in the past that if I post my food journal online it helps a lot. There used to be threads, in various groups, for this. That's what I'm looking for. Anyone know of a group online here that posts daily food journals?

My mid-length goal is to reach 190 pounds by Christmas (which is a big loss, about 43 pounds in 6 months) and then 150 pounds by this time next year. But, I dunno. Really my goal is to get in shap for the Avon 3-Day Breast Cancer Cure walk in DC next May. That's my fitness goal. Also, I'm going on an extended (like, 6 month) round-the-world trip at the end of next year and want to be in shape to go hiking and stuff.

So that's me. Anyway know of any journalling threads to help me? I'd rather not start my own if there are some out there. Oh, and I'm just calorie-counting, really, and exercising. That's how I lost all that weight before.

Sometimes the groups start them up, but they tend to die after awhile, from what I can recall. A lot of people seem to journal on other sites or blogs or just report what they ate and did for exericise in their usual thread. A poster named Morrigan (where ARE you, Morrigan?) kept a food log going for a long time here and people would join in, so maybe the mantle has fallen on you.

Dietpower looks like an interesting product. I've asked them if they'll ever do a Mac version but the answer seems to be no. I've never found a good, comprehensive and modern weight loss software for Mac, so I just made up my own based on spreadsheets. I journal in a colorful notebook and daily and weekly plug the numbers into my spreadsheets (also featuring colors, sound effects, graphs, etc.) and I get a really good picture of the relationship of what I'm eating, what exercise I'm doing and whether I lose or gain.

I totally agree that journaling food and activity (online or off, but there's lots of fun and benefits in sharing the journey) is a major factor in successful weight management. I guess I think that sometimes the journal threads that pop up here tend to become unfocused by people like me who use them as a place to do a primary post instead of just name, rank and food/exercise down & dirty quick journals. As a writer, my tendency is to want to write, write, write, as you can see, so I'm hopeless.

I'm also a backslider ... lost 100, maintained for approximately five years, gained back approximately 20, but want to lose 30 so I can reach the original goal I never reached before I started to lose focus again. I'm now posting on the 21-Day Challenge thread.

Good for you for taking the matter in hand and planning on how you're going to turn yourself around once more!!!! Gotta be done, that's what I keep telling myself, don't want to go back to the way I was so reversing the thing's the only option.

Good luck!!!

Where did you find DietPower? I have looked at Circuit City, Best Buy and all other stores that sell software and I can't find any dieting software anywhere????

It's an online thing. It can be found at:

http://www.dietpower.com/

You can try it first for 14 days, and you can renew to try it another 14 days for free. Then it stops working. I bought it after a week, for $49.99. Turns out that if you wait until the end, they'll probably send you an email discounting the price to $44.99. I got the mail after I'd already purchased it.

Lots of my friends at work use it, so I decided to try it. It does lots of graphs, at least. I like graphs. Reminds me of DietWatch, which I used to use. I think that's similar to fitday (which I believe is free, and at http://www.fitday.com/, though I'm not sure.)