Now or Never - Looking for support!

Hello there! I am in no way new to this, but I believe that my frame of mind is much different than it has been in the past. Being 28 years old, I am finally starting to see the negative effects of my unhealthy life choices. I have been married to my husband for almost 2 years now and in that 2 years I have gained around....35 lbs. Gaining that much weight so fast has depleted my life of so many things. I either don't have the energy to see my friends or I am embarrassed by my weight gain so I avoid being in public too often, which means that my social life has taken a nosedive over the last couple of years. In addition to exhaustion keeping me from my friends, it also keeps me from doing pretty much anything else. I can muster up the energy to go to work and that's about it. I've even seen a decline in my job performance because I don't have the energy to put in 100% like I used to, and not doing the best that I can leaves me feeling depressed. Depression has certainly been something new in my life. It's not that I never felt sad before, but this was all out depression to the point where nothing made me happy and I had trouble even getting out of bed in the morning. I knew something had to change, but finding the energy and motivation to do so was very difficult. I eventually got excited about "clean eating". The main thing that attracted me to clean eating was it's ability to retrain your body/mind to crave the right foods. I am a food and caffeine addict -- I have no doubts about that, but I wanted to change.... I needed to change. I felt myself growing weaker, increasingly depressed, and lacking any type of self control so I discussed this with husband (who has always been loving and supportive) and he said he was feeling unhealthy too so he would jump on the "clean eating" train and go on this journey with me.

The first 10 days were great! I honestly felt like I had changed my life. My craving for caffeine stopped immediately. I was exhausted for the first few days, but from what I understand that is completely normal as your body tries to adjust to not getting processed food on a consistent basis. I had went from having a large latte with extra espresso and 4-5 Coke Zeros each day to having only water. After the first 5-7 days, I started to feel great. I noticed my mood was improved, I had more energy, and I just felt better about myself overall. My husband and I have talked about having a child for some time now but I refuse to move forward with it until I feel my body is strong enough for a safe and healthy pregnancy, and I really don't want to have a child after 30 (the statistics scare me), so I am seeing my small window of time to get pregnant closing in on me rapidly which is very scary. This is the reason I say it's now or never. So, when I found myself falling off track this weekend -- consuming copious amounts of the same food that had caused me to feel so awful before -- I started to panic and immediately telling myself that I had, once again, failed at getting healthy.

It's now Monday morning and my body is VERY unhappy with the decisions I made over the weekend. I feel tired. I feel grumpy. I feel...defeated. I found myself thinking, "Who cares. I've failed again. I might as well have my typical latte and a danish for breakfast."....and I did. However, I also found myself feeling increasingly sick while I consumed it...not just physically but mentally. I realized that as they say, "It's win or learn, not win or lose." I didn't have to be defeated. I had to learn. I am not at a point right now here I can have "one slice of pizza' and go right back to my almonds and fresh fruit in the afternoon. I have to be strict with myself for now, and that's okay. I poured out the remainder of my latte and tossed out the last few bites of my danish, filled up on water, and I am now ready to recognize this weekend as a learning experience and move forward in a much better direction.

Another thing that I've learned is that I need a strong support system -- someone or more than one person who I can turn to and say, "Help me! I'm about to binge!" and they can talk me down off the ledge or offer me some advice on how to turn things around. So this is me asking members of the MFP community who feel that they can relate to me to friend request me so we can be one another's support system. I currently weigh between 185-190 and I would like to be around 145, but my focus really is on getting healthy and having more energy. I know that a support system is a two-way street and I promise to do my best to help all of my MFP friends to stay on track and reach all of their goals. Hope to hear from some of you!