Unexpected Challenges

You know, it's the strangest thing... Logically I can grasp and understand the process of losing weight: you eat/exercise off enough calories to keep a deficit under the amount required to maintain your current weight and voila! You lose weight. I grasp it, I have a good handle on what it takes for me personally, the best way to go about it, calculating in my head, keeping myself accountable, etc. I have all the mechanics and all the tools to make losing weight a fairly simple process, and thus far it has been fairly simple. CICO... And yet... There's a part of my brain that stubbornly refuses to accept the thought of me at my desired weight as a reality. Maybe it's because I've never been there before, or because I've spent so much time daydreaming about it that it seems just that - a dream, a fantasy that is unrealistic and far fetched. I doubt this phenomenon is limited to me, I'm sure others have experienced it. I think the most difficult process is not in the diet or exercise, but in ignoring the voice in my head that says "You CAN'T, you never have and you NEVER will." It's not even as simple as chalking it up to poor self-esteem, because truthfully I'm fairly equal and honest with myself; I know my worth, my strengths and weaknesses. Yes I have areas I'm working on, but apart from basic feminine insecurity I'm fairly chill with myself. No, this is something different, It's like my brain has been trained in the way it pictures itself over the past 25 years of life, and healthy/fit/attractive doesn't fit anywhere in the manual. I can fantasize all day long about my goals, but when I try and tie those goals down in concrete reality my mind balks. It's like the difference between imagining I can fly, and physically standing at the edge of a ten story building saying, "Come on now, this is reality, lets fly!" My brain says "Nah, bro!"

I think we all expect the biggest challenge to be sticking to a healthy diet or to an exercise routine, but what about those challenges specific to our individual battle? I think we probably all have challenges that were completely unexpected, or that were never mentioned in the billion and one "How to lose weight" advice blogs we've read. What's yours?