First, thank you for the input, there seems to be a general move towards the notion that the conventional wisdom of emphasizing the physical actions required to lose weight is of minor importance compared to the necessity of tackling the mental barriers that place themselves on the weight loss road. To summarize what we have so far:

Humans are hard wired to stuff themselves whenever food is available, in case there may be famine ahead.

21st century brains are conditioned to associate food with reward.

Deliberately attempting to lose body fat is alien to our nature, as we expect to burn it off naturally while hunting for food.

It's easier to give an excuse NOT to, rather than to actually do it.

Eating often fills a void created by negative emotion.

Some people DON'T actually know what is good for them. (Fair comment, but my OP was really referring to the peeps on this forum.)

In today's world we are surrounded by unhealthy foods, almost to the point that it has now become ABnormal to eat a healthy diet.

If you aren't succeeding, it's because you don't want it enough.

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I identify most with the final point. I have always said throughout my adult life that if you want something badly enough you will end up with it. If you don't end up with it, you don't want it badly enough. To me that is obvious.

Successful people regard failure as simply a stepping stone, part of the learning process that forms the path to success. Others take any form of failure as final, because they don't have their eyes on the prize - which BTW is also one of my favourite mantras - they are not able to envisage how their experiences may ultimately culminate in success.

Please, keep posting, there are some excellent points made so far. Does anyone have techniques or methods for approaching any of the issues listed thus far?

Here's another reason I think that we kick against making the right choices: Even those of us who know we're eating the right foods .. EVEN WE ... call ourselves freaks for it.

Glory, I would ask you ... why does it make you a "freak"?

I don't think eating healthy makes me a freak. I don't think that avoiding fast food makes me a freak.

If YOU think it makes you a freak then you are psychologically isolating yourself and that's a form of self-sabotage.

Seriously, my friends eat pizza and hamburgers and want to go to Chili's and get a fried onion and chips and salsa. And I choose not to eat those things. It's not that I don't want them - I do. But I want to be thin and healthy more. And I don't think that makes me a freak.

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I don't necessarily think I'm a freak, but I know other people definitely think I'm a freak. I was just pointing it out since this I think it's a challenge to living a healthy lifestyle. Who wants to feel like they don't fit in? Who wants to turn down a fun night with friends who want to go to a Mexican restaurant becasue they know the endless baskets of chips are hard to resist? Who wants to be the colleague who isn't pleased when management orders a celebration pizza lunch to say "thanks, good job?"

I have made this choice and I am usually 100% okay with it, but I can definitely see how it might be a challenge for someone new to eating right.

Isn't it funny that 90+% of posters on here are women? Not just on here, either, but virtually all diet and eaing disorder boards.

I'd like to chip in with the feminist side of it too. It's odd that so many eating disorder sufferers are women..well no its not really if you consider that since women have obtained more rights in society, more emphasis is placed on *looking good*, ie Being Thin.

At the same time, life is becoming more stressful, many women have families and jobs, for example. And they do, still, most of the domestic work...you don't hear people asking how men manage both, do you? (cheers, Gloria Steinem!). Also, we have more access to junk food than ever before, and a more sedentary lifestyle.

This all combines together to produce ample opportunity to abuse many juky foods in our environment as a result of such stresses ^, an emphasis on DIETING! which is often done impulsively and falls into a yo yo pattern which usually results in weight GAIN overall..basically because to almost EVERY western woman, food is NOT NEUTRAL. And generally, being thin carries connotations of success/sexiness/beating other women, which might not make you comfortable, and subconsiously limit progress in weightloss efforts. Especially since sex, eg used to sell things, has become such a massive business.

This combines with other factors, obviously, but worth mentioning, I think.

Bolshy and cynical for a 20 yr old, arn't I.

You are so right, Apple Cheeks. I am/was an emotional eater, too, the only problem was that I was not seeing myself as such. But I know that whenever I was upset, I would automatically head for McD's and the frustration would diminish (of course, I did not interpret it that way, but looking back, I know that's what was doing). And sometimes, being excited about something or happy would actually trigger the same - another trip to McD's.
And as you can see in my thread that I posted earlier today, I am still not completely immune to it although I am trying very hard.

And just like Glory, I am used to people peeking into my tupperware to see what I have for lunch and often hear comments like 'oh, that looks very healthy' ..... but what they [i.e. my co-workers] are not saying out loud but I think I can finish their sentences for them , is "but boring".
Yah, salad or steamed broccoli is probably more boring than a trip to Wendy's or to Harvey's or what have you. One of my issues with my ex-boyfriend was that he spent a ton of money on lunches because he would never want to eat any leftovers - it's too boring - those were his exact words.

Because we're creatures of habit and habits are difficult to break. I truly believe that all things in life that are worthwhile are the most difficult. It's that simple.

This really struck me.

Definition of Freak from allwords.com: (context, of a person) An oddball, especially in physiology; unique in a displeasing way.

Being consistent in making healthy choices and bringing in your own lunch and snacks does make you an oddball and unique and stand out. :( For me I found that I couldn't be successful long term eating lunch out at work with my group. I had to pack my lunch, eat in, find other like-minded folks who for their own reasons were packing their lunches. I'm out of the loop with my old friends because we now work in different groups and I don't catch up with them at lunch any more. That was a really hard change to make and stick to. But I had to and have to. In the big picture, I'm happy and committed to the change. Does that mean I don't feel like I'm missing out and like an oddball sometimes. No.

Back to the definition - if being an oddball in terms of physiology means I weigh 40 pounds less that I did and how many more than 40 pounds less than I would weigh if I hadn't changed, then I'm OK with being an oddball. Being within a healthy weight range makes me different than a lot of folks I know in a good way.

With the medical industry changing its collective mind and disagreeing among themselves over the past 30 years about how to lose weight but solidly convinced losers are unlikely to keep it off, I don't think it's fair to say that people know exactly what they need to do to get the weight off and keep it off. I think 3FC members on the whole have a better idea than the general public.

And I think we are here seeking the mutual reinforcement that being "freaks" is ok.

A little freak story:

Let's go back, oh I don't know, 5-6 years ago. I worked with a woman named Michelle. Michelle was a very slender, toned girl with great natural strawberry blonde hair. She was always working out, studying on the side to get her certification to be a personal trainer. She was on my team at work, but she never ate with us at lunch because she always brought her lunch. I always saw her in the breakroom, nuking a sweet potato, cutting up chicken, stirring fruit into yogurt. Weirdo, I thought.

We had to take a work trip together, we spent about a week traveling together at two different locations (Fargo and Valencia, CA). God, she was such a pain in the ***. When we landed in CA, we couldn't go straight to the hotel, we had to find a grocery store so she could get a salad for dinner (sheesh, I thought, order ROOM SERVICE we get a 75.00 per diem and I always ordered steak and wine and dessert when I traveled because traveling was HARD and I deserved a treat).

Fargo was the toughest, she could never find anyplace to eat. It was a lot of aimless driving to find someplace she could eat. She didn't want the call center provided for lunch, so we had to find some place where she could get a lunch to take with us. We were LATE one morning because she couldn't just eat a donut from the hotel's free continental breakfast, she had to order an omelet and it took FOREVER. She drove me absolutely crazy that trip.

Fast forward to today, I would be the Michelle on a trip, making somebody else crazy.

(this is a 100% true story)

Ok, see .. hm. Let me preface this by saying that I am not putting anyone down or trying to be mean or ... I dunno ... negative or nasty.

I think all of those examples that you gave are examples of people selfishly pushing their dietary needs on other people ... and possibly being a little "in your face" about it.

To me (and again, please please understand that I'm not being mean here ... I'm just offering my thoughts) ... to me this says more about YOU than about her. I'm bothered by the fact that you then and still now this of this as "weirdo" or "freak" behavior. To me there is nothing freaky or weird about this any more than it's freaky or weird to get a sandwich from the deli or get a personal pan pizza from Target or whatever. I don't understand why someone who brings lunch and eats healthy is branded "freak" in your mind - even up to including yourself as a "freak".

Ridiculous. There's no reason she couldn't have ordered a salad from the hotel - w/out dressing or w/ dressing on the side. She could have ordered a plain grilled chicken breast from the hotel. Obviously money was not an issue here as you said you had a food per-diem. And forcing you to spend time driving around *before* you go to the hotel is just selfish and being "in your face" with her diet. Why not go to the hotel and then tell you "hey I'm gonna take the car and go find a grocery store so I can get a salad - do you want anything?" Why force you to participate in her diet in that way?

You don't have to make other people crazy to accommodate you. It is possible to eat healthy w/out making other people crazy or acting like you're doing something better than they are.

Again, this seems to be awfully selfish and in-your-face motivated here. If there is something I cannot (or don't want to) eat at a party, I don't force everyone else to participate in whatever passive-aggressive form of protest I'm going to throw. I just don't have any patience for this kind of behavior. If knowing that she was going to order an omelette was going to take longer, then it was her responsibility to get up a little earlier, order her omelette a little earlier, so she'd be ready when the rest of the group was. If she didn't want what the call center provided, there's still no need to make the whole group drive around aimlessly. There are plenty of chain restaurants where you can order a plain salad, a plain grilled chicken breast, etc.

And sometimes you just have to suck it up and eat a little bit of something you'd rather not eat and make up for it later, especially when other people are involved.

The "freak" part is when someone makes it impossible for those around her to be comfortable and forces other people to suffer (to be late, to drive around aimlessly, to be uncomfortable) in order to accommodate their eating.

A normal, thoughtful, careful person can eat well and not be a "freak" or totally rude and selfish ... as those people in the examples you gave were.

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Photochick - I think you missed this sentence at the end:

"Fast forward to today, I would be the Michelle on a trip, making somebody else crazy. "

Glory was saying that she thought this woman was a weirdo THEN - but today she is just like her.

As for the eating out thing - I have made a decision that the way I eat now is going to be the way I eat for the rest of my life, plus a couple extra hundred calories to make it a maintenance diet rather than a weight loss one.

This does not mean however that I am never going to eat out ever again, or never eat something unhealthy ever again.

If I want to eat out, I will eat out - if I want pizza, I have pizza. I don't feel guilty about it or consider it a failure. The difference is that after I havemy meal out, I just go back to eating heathily again. This is what I intend to do for the rest of my life.

I am going out next Wednesday for our work summer night out - I am having garlic mushrooms, pizza and I'm even having a dessert. During the day I will be very careful, and on Thursday I'll be back on my diet.

I think if I looked to the future and saw a future where I could never have anything like that ever again, I'd be very depressed. But I think it's perfectly possible to have the odd treat and still lose weight or maintain. This is what normal people do. I can be a normal person too.

I don't view this as freak behavior now, I realize (due to my own experience) that OTHER PEOPLE may find this freak behavior.

When I was working with Michelle, I had NO IDEA at all about what long term weight loss looked like. Michelle said she used to be heavy, but she was such a slender person, at the time I imagined a 10-15 lb weight loss. Who knows how much she lost and kept off in reality? I never asked her.

I was trying to convey that I didn't understand her, her motivations and at the time BIZARRE food choices were very weird to me. Now, I understand her much better (she could have dropped me off at the hotel before going out to get salad or ordered her omelet earlier), but I understand her motivation to stay healthy even under the difficult circumstances of traveling.

I was a very different person 5-6 years ago, my views of dieting and how to eat were nothing like they are now. I did think she was a freak and all of my coworkers thought she was a freak. Now I don't think she's a freak, but I wonder if my coworkers, friends, family think that I'm a freak. It's a fact that I do make things more complicated for other people sometimes, although I try not to.

I eat differently than I would guess 90% of the American public, I am the one swimming upstream. I know why I do it, I believe in why I do it, but it is very hard to make a decision to be different. It takes a lot more work, coordination, planning - I can't expect work functions to have healthy snacks, I can't expect a vending machine to have an apple, or to find a healthy quick meal on the road.

It's a challenge, but worth it.

We can buy apples from vending machines.

I never have though - there is always somewhere to buy an apple.

Hmm - just c&p-ing my post here into my blog in case this one goes *poof* too.

I hate that!!

If a thread gets argumentative, lock it, for sure. But to delete a thread for no apparent reason? Bit nanny state!! Mods take note.

I"m confused .. what went "poof" and when has a thread been deleted? :)

I don't think this one is in any risk of being removed. We're just each presenting different points of view and clarifying communication! :)

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