Bravo!!

Well done!!

I hope to be joining you soon, in the GOAL CLUB!!

Thanks for all your kind words everybody- you are all so sweet!

I am convinced, with 100% certainty, that I could NOT have lost this weight without this forum. I have benefitted in so many different ways from being here. People's willingness to share both their successes and their setbacks, their questions, advice, recipes, struggles, funny stories...all of it has inspired me and kept me on track when I otherwise might have run out of steam and given up. I'm going to stay very close to the forum as I try to maintain my weight, because I suspect it will be a major factor in keeping me from falling off the wagon. I am sending lots of hugs and good wishes out to all of you and to those people who do the hard work of keeping the forum running. You guys are the greatest!

Congradulations...love to hear about success

DDaniels

Would you please tell us the words of advice that really made the difference to you in your weight loss journey.

Gee...I don't think I did anything really special, other than trying to stick closely to the plan, but I guess there were a few things I did that made things a little easier.

I had two sort of simple "rules" that I think helped me out. The first rule was that I didn't ever let myself get too hungry. The times I am most likely to stuff myself or make bad food choices is when am really hungry, so I tried to make sure I didn't skip meals, and I kept some snacks in my purse, like almonds, to hold me over until I got to have my next proper meal.

The second thing I did was to make sure I never felt deprived, or like I was on a diet, so I tried to eat very yummy foods, or foods that felt indulgent. If I started to feel "sorry" for myself for being on a "diet" I would make sure I ate one of my favorites, like crab legs and butter, chicken wings, steak, stuff like that. It's hard for me to feel deprived when I am eating like that, so that made it much easier to stick with a LC way of eating.

These two things helped me to not eat off plan and made it so I rarely ever "cheated". It's not that I am a disciplined person, because I DEFINATELY am not! I just made sure I was enjoying the LC lifestyle so much, that I didn't get tempted to cheat!

I'm hoping that these two rules help me stick to this way of eating. There are areas that I have not been very successful at and they continue to be a struggle for me. The biggest one is with exercise. I am having major difficulty with becoming an exerciser, and am failing that one big time! I also have not done very well with remembering to take vitamins, and I know I need to. I've also not done well getting into the habit of drinking enough water. So, I have plenty I need to keep working at, and I will continue to turn to the forum for advice and inspiration.

Gongrats!!! Good going. Good you mentioned you bust did not get smaller. There are actually a few women afraid to lose weight because they have a fear their bust line will shrink! Girl...you get curves AFTER you can skinny.

RachelRatz- You're certainly an inspiration! How have you manged to keep your weight off for all these years??

DDaniels...thank you for your sharing your wisdom! It is encouraging!

Rachel, wow! What have been the things youve learned on your maintenance journey?