I am a big girl. I can take it.

Given that I am in your club of having lost 100+ pounds, I know that everything you've said is true. I get the same questions and the expectation is that I discovered a magic wand or the food fairy left all non-caloric desserts, pizza, etc. at my house. We all want easy. The fact is, it isn't. It never will be. And until we internalize that as fact, we won't do what needs doing to lose the weight. I know...I searched for that darn wand for a very long time. I don't get angry because they are doing exactly what I did for years and the frustration is for not being able to get them to see that there really isn't a wand...only their ability to control their intake without regard to the obstacles.

Thanks for posting and I hope that you've obliterated some folks thoughts about finding that non-existent wand.

I am so happy to hear another person say they will not "cheat" or use terms for it. If you want a brownie, you eat the real thing. I know what my calories will be each day, if I decide I gotta have a piece of pizza that day. I know I will hit the TurboFire, treadmill, Zumba 10x as hard because that's how simple it is. Depriving myself to lose the weight will never make for a life long change. You an inspiration and I look forward to the day I hit 100lb lost

*chuckle* It's funny how some people GAIN sympathy, and some people LOSE sympathy when they succeed. I used to think that I couldn't lose my weight, either. I didn't have excuses like, "I can't cook," though. It had more to do with the fact that I had spent years trying. I once took two solid years of an 1100 calorie diet to lose 30 pounds. At the time, I was working out 4 hours a day, six days a week. I got sick several times during that time frame, and even then, the only way that I lost ANY weight was when I supplemented with MaHuang, which has since been banned from the market (I also stopped using it once it got to the point that I got chest pains and shortness of breath whenever I did so). Since that debacle, I have developed thyroid issues, gone menopausal, and become borderline insulin resistant. Needless to say, I honestly BELIEVED that I COULDN'T lose the weight. I've learned, of course, that the grotesque over-doing was my real problem, but I have tried a bunch of things before coming here. Some things made me dysfunctionally tired. Some of them made me sick (Atkins, anyone?). I am only in my third week, here, so I can't say, for certain, that my body won't fight me, here, either, but, for now, I'm losing. Because of all that, and because I understand the despair and inertia that comes to someone who has failed many times for many years, I am more inclined to tell people what I did that was so wrong and share my knowledge. But, I don't get frustrated with people. "Not having time," for instance, is a legitimate excuse, when you talk to parents of young children. "I just got a hip replacement" is a legitimate excuse for someone who is retired. The journey, and particularly, keeping it going, long-term, when the effectiveness of just maintaining a deficit tends to decrease, is a significant commitment, and there are people who simply can't commit to more than they already have. I'm not saying that you are wrong. You're not. A LOT of people make VERY lame excuses. It's just that, well, being older, in a less-than-fully-functional body, a single parent (of young children), and in a job/field that tends to have 60+ - hour work weeks, I have a deep understanding of how big a mountain adding "weight loss" can be. I've managed to get started, but I am juggling a lot to manage the obstacles. I'm a big cheerleader for people who, like you, have overcome it all and surmounted it.