Claire, that comment by your MIL really horrified me. Not just her cruelty to you, but good golly, a young girl doesn't need to hear a message like that, especially from her own grandmother. Grandmas are supposed to cherish and nurture kids, not make them feel bad about normal eating!

I hope you had a talk with your daughter about how wrong that was and how a true lady eats until she's not hungry anymore. And I hope the MIL's next visit isn't too traumatic. She sounds like a real piece of work. If she pressures you to talk about your weight loss plan, you could get your own back by just saying over and over how HEALTHY it is and how HEALTHY you feel, and how much better it is than some awful starvation diet, while giving her unhealthy figure enough skeptical looks to get the point across. I guess I'm a petty person because that's what I'd do!

Back on topic, my kick-start event was pretty mundane compared to the stories here. A coworker told me that he was planning to do Atkins, and talked to me a lot about how it worked. He got me thinking about how badly I had let myself go, which I didn't think about that often. (Lots of denial going on.) I thought it would be easier to do the plan if I was doing it with someone else who I saw every day. So I started on the same day as he did.