Not to forget about discipline. Motivation with discipline is the Key to success in every walk of life as well.

I love food too, but there are a lot of amazing lower calorie foods that are just as pleasing as well-- my favorite that feels like a cheat but isn't at all is when i cook onions, red peppers, and mushrooms with a light spray of pam in a frying pan and eat them over a salad.

Crystal,

I said some of this on another thread but, like Fiberlover, this is one of my favourite topics.

Commitment is the only thing that makes this journey doable for me. Before I was committed, I felt like I was walking a tightrope and every meal, every unplanned encounter with food, even the drive home from work past all the fast food outlets and bakeries, felt fraught with risk. Would I give in and eat something I shouldn't and then blow all my heard work? End up fat and unhappy? It all felt so dangerous and important.

Then last year I started eating less and planning my meals and lost about 45 pounds. After being at a healthy weight for about 6 months, over the holidays I gave up on all of my healthy commitments and went back to my old way of eating. At first it didn't show up on the scale and I became convinced I could still eat unlimited amounts whenever I wanted and still fit my new clothes. So I stopped weighing myself and started doing all the things I had stopped doing a year ago. Guess what? I gained back about 15 pounds over a couple of months.

It became really clear that I had to take this seriously and I thought about what I had done last year to make me successful. Commitment was the thing that kept me going for the six or eight months it took to lose the weight.

When I started looking at that issue and how to remake that commitment, I stumbled on the Beck diet book here on 3FC. It talks about exactly how I make those kinds of commitments in my life and it requires me to move decisions about food, especially spur of the moment decisions, out of the category of "I have unlimited choice" and into the category of "NO CHOICE". Now I know almost exactly what I will eat and when and nothing else even enters into my decision making process. If I'm unexpectedly hungry, I just tell myself that hunger isn't an emergency and even if it is uncomfortable it will be tolerable if I get involved in something else. If someone brings a treat to work, I don't even consider it as something that I would eat because I have thought through all things my mind has told me in the past about why I should eat unplanned treats and I have responses already in mind and practiced for those tempting thoughts. As a result, the thoughts are so much less tempting. I can usually dismiss them even before they fully form in my mind.

This is so freeing because I don't have to make decisions over and over all the time. For me those decisions are where I fall down. By saying "NO CHOICE' there is no decision to make and I just move onto something else.

Since reading the Beck book, I am so far (three weeks or so) really happy with the commitment I made. I make food for my family that doesn't really tempt me. I love the smell of fresh bread and cinnamon buns and fried foods but haven't felt any need to eat them. Not even licking the beaters after making frosting for the buns. I used to eat some of every loaf of bread I baked just because I LOVE it. But now I get my grains elsewhere in my diet and can make much smaller batches of bread!

I feel like I am evangelizing for the Beck book but it has made such a difference to me in this really important area of commitment that I feel I have to tell everyone in case they react the same. I've done it at work, too. I think I'm starting to annoy. Sorry, if that is the case here.

Good luck, Crystal, in keeping going. I have a close friend who was on the heart transplant list for 3 years and she had to lose about 100 pounds before they would put her on the list. After she lost most of it she went on the list and her health improved so much that she was taken off the list and doesn't need a transplant any more. I hope your health improves like hers did.