What’s been something you have been struggling with on your weight loss journey?

My biggest challenge is also emotional eating. However, when I am really stressed or depressed I go the opposite and don't eat enough. My weight loss journey started with the death of my daughter (not a strategy I'd recommend for anyone). Because of the upheaval losing weight was relatively easy. Once in maintenance, it is a problem though. When I am having a tough time my weight goes down and it is a huge struggle to bring it back up again. I am sure this is all a means of control. When I feel like I am losing control of what is around me I take tighter control of what I eat and how much I exercise. I am on a great role though with 4 days in a row of eating in excess! I just hope I can keep it up.

Wishing it didn't go so slow. No matter how many times I've done this, I know it takes weeks and months and years to get where I want. But it is frustrating when I feel I've been working so hard for a few weeks and barely anything has happened. Or I see no change myself in photos or the mirror. Just that desire for it to HAPPEN.

As the scale numbers go down, the amount of effort I have to produce to get the same calorie burn (on my FitBit) goes up.

The mirror. I'm about a quarter of the way to my goal and the number on the scale continues to go down slowly but nothing looks different in the mirror.

Patience. The “I want it off now” mentality doesn’t work for me. Restriction and binging are two sides of the same coin. When I cut too low, it leads me to binge. I’ve finally found success in maintenance after figuring this out.

Nutritional biases. Good food fixes everything but food bias can become a religion. A moral high ground, assigning moral judgment to foods. We're in the IF/Keto/Paleo/Primal/Food Group Elimination era. Has it changed everything for you then?

Gathering your thoughts in the midst of so much dieting bias is a challenge.

Not the short term of 1 or 2 years but over the long haul. Look waaay down the road at the big picture. If it's not sustainable after a year or two, how about 10 years down the road. Less than 5% maintain a large weight loss after 5 years due to dieting and rebound weight gain plus friends. It's only 7% for those with WLS after 5 years.

You can be a cheerleader for any dieting bias agenda until the cows come home or chickens come home to roost. After so many dieting phases and eating it all back, the dawn eventually comes to light. Dieting doesn't work.

Then you're finally ready to Open. Mind. Insert. Possibilities.

You should've never started dieting the first place. Create your own Positive Food Management Plan. Track it.
That way you'll know when you've meandered too far out of your normal river banks. Eat all of the foods that you enjoy and find movement that you really like. Do everything on your own terms.

Embrace your personality, your likes. Rid yourself of huge rationalizations that dieting has all of the answers for you. Go back to your original factory settings. That time in your history when dieting was not in your thoughts or a part of your life. You may have been a child but there was a time when your world was right without dieting for weight loss.