I think what worked best for me was a two prong strategy: the first was that I didn't try to do everything at once. I started calorie counting in July and at the beginning I only focused on logging accurately and staying under my daily limit. Now that I (usually) am eating the right amount of food/calories a day I'm working on slowing changing and improving what I eat (more veggies less crap). If I had tried to do everything at once it would have been even more overwhelming and difficult for me.

The other big thing that helped me was making a deal with myself that some days I'm going to mess up and go over my calories, either because I wasn't paying attention or I couldn't say no to a slice of cake, and that's ok. I don't beat myself up over it or even feel that bad about it because that would probably just start a downward spiral back into emotional eating. And some days I did go over, and I even just took a break for the holidays, and that's fine, because even though its a day by day struggle to eat healthy/right I know that its the long term goals that are the most important.

Good Luck!!

For me, the only way I can consistently stay on track is to pre-plan my food intake for the day. Then I stick to the plan as much as I can.

Spetty is completely right: sometimes we mess up, even when we have a plan. The important thing is to get back on track and keep moving forward instead of trashing the entire day/week/month over it.

My plan is similair to Spetty & Audri.

What was different from the other times is that I wrote myself a letter and I answered a some questions.

-Why do I want to lose weight?
-How will I do it?
-What is my goal?
-How will it make me feel
It was very emotional writing the letter but it speaks to me. Since I started a couple days ago I open the word document daily and its helped me to stay motivated. I started my lifestyle change in the summer and I lost 15llbs but school started in september & I was good for the first month but when October came everything went out the window. My excuse was that I had no time because of school. I realized I was just making excuses. It is tougher because my schedule is hectic but I know that if I put in the work to plan it will pay off. I just have prep & plan.

When I got ready to start losing weight I took two or three weeks to read and work through the exercises in several books about the mental side of weight loss. It was a lot of inventorying habits and thinking about when and why I got fat and why I stayed that way. I took the thoughts and tricks that resonated with me, or answered things that I'd struggled with.

I spent those two weeks also working on what diet choices worked best for me - how I'd felt on various eating plans, what was sustainable and fit my lifestyle...

I've been much more content (for lack of a better word) with this weight loss effort. I don't fuss when my scale weight bounces. I don't get upset if I eat something I "shouldn't". I just work the program, and when working the program gets hard - I do the best I can and try to be better than I used to be.

I took two weeks off over the holidays (I had company and was traveling) and I -missed- my usual way of eating. I couldn't make it fit my travel plans and that upset me, so getting home and diving into it again has been remarkably relaxing and reinvigorating.