Losing Hope

Read this link and all of the blue links in the middle. If you really want to do this, and this works, you have to invest time, and research. This is a great place to begin:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1080242/a-guide-to-get-you-started-on-your-path-to-sexypants/p1

In addition to weighing solid food and accurately/honestly tracking nutrition (not just calories), my advice is to pay attention to the ingredients in the food you're eating. Unless it's a natural food (fruit, veggies, nuts), it could be loaded with sugar, which at the end of the day is the biggest opponent to losing weight. The WHO recommends no more than 30g of sugar in a day (fyi: there's 30g sugar in one small bag of M&Ms) because excess fructose intake causes visceral fat cells to rapidly mature - which is directly tied to belly fat.

The bad news: sugar is hiding in most processed/packaged products and it goes by many names. The food industry's marketing experts have done a fantastic job of posing "raw cane sugar" and other healthy-sounding names as "good" sugars, but truth be told, sugar is sugar is sugar. With the exception of sugar found in fruits and vegetables (which have the adequate amount of fiber needed to aid in digestion and prevent the sugar from turning into insulin), there is no such thing as good sugar. Be on the lookout for these ingredients on food packages before you eat what's inside:

• barley malt
• beet sugar
• molasses
• brown rice syrup
• brown sugar
• cane juice
• caramel
• carob syrup
• castor sugar
• crystaline fructose
• date sugar
• demerera sugar
• dextran
• diastatic malt
• diataste
• ethyl maltol
• evaporated cane juice
• fructose
• galactose
• glucose
• maltodextrin
• muscovado sugar
• panela
• sorghum
• sucrose
• treacle

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but you get the idea. Pretty much be wary of anything ending in "-ose" and a good rule of thumb that I follow is if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it. There's a really great documentary called "Fed Up" with Katie Couric that delves into a lot more detail than I can on this forum - it's available for streaming on Netflix or for purchase on Amazon Instant Video.

I know it sounds kind of daunting to think of cutting back on sugar, but I started slowly cutting back about a year ago and have seen a drastic improvement since: lost waist inches, lost pounds, and increased my run pace. And by no means do I eat fewer calories, just less sugar. If it helps, here's a real-world idea of how you can eat a low-sugar diet without cutting back on food in general (my personal food log from yesterday): two cups of black coffee + two eggs + 85g apple-chicken sausage link + 1 tbsp butter for breakfast; banana for mid-morning snack; 4-oz chicken breast + 2 tbsp bbq sauce + 8-oz sweet potato + salad with tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, 1/4 avocado, 1/8-cup crumbled pecans, 1 tbsp olive oil, and a squeeze of lemon juice with salt for lunch; 2 cups "Heavenly Light Popcorn" for mid-afternoon snack; jalapeno kielbasa + baked tomatoes, mushrooms, and red onion with 1 tbsp basil-infused olive oil + 5-oz glass of wine for dinner. All of that comes to 40g sugar, but if you take out the sugar that came from fruits and veggies, that's only 14g sugar that came from processed foods.

Anyway, I know that's probably a lot more info than you were looking for, but hope it helps!

(Oh, one more thing! Water is key - aim to drink half of your body weight in ounces of water every day; i.e. 150lbs = 75oz.)