Hi! I'm Melanie and I'm New and Desperate!

I've become a little bit of a zealot... Sorry in advance for all the long-windedness

Here's how I started:

1) tracking for a couple of weeks before I worried about losing.
(although seeing what I was eating I couldn't help but rein back a bit)

2) seeing where I could make small changes on things that weren't that important to me.
(Don't even think of taking chocolate out of my diet!!!)
--Reducing quantities where I won't notice it so much
--Swapping out things instead of eliminating them.

3) Look at my diary and started adding foods that had positive healthy effects specifically for the health issue in my family.
I found most of the things I "should" add were really yummy too! salmon, avocado, oatmeal, mango, red grapes....
(Sort of think of food as medicine to deal with family history of various health issue oatmeal is good for heart health, mango and red grapes lower cholesterol, tumeric and cinnamon good for arthritis)

4) every couple of weeks I see where I can make another couple of small changes.
If you completely revamp your diet, it's way easy to revert to old ways in times of stress. (and who doesn't have stress?)
If you make a series of small changes, food still offers you some sense of comfort.
sort of a comfort continuum, and after a while the first small changes will seem comforting in themselves.
You don't have to be perfect you just have to do better.

5) also rather than being uberstrict with the target MFP set for me I did the math to find out the calories needed to maintain my goal weight and my current weight and I gave myself a range with 1200 as my rock bottom, lose 1 lb/wk as my target*** and maintain my goal weight as the top of my range. As long as I keep within in this range I'll lose. I tend to naturally zig zag my calories 3-4 at very close to my target and then a higher calorie day closer to the top of my range.

As long as I stayed under maintain my current weight calories I won't gain. So no need to throw in the towel, just pick-up where I left off.

Once I found ways to lessen the stress, I found it way easier to focus on the process and let the results follow. (It's what worked for me some people need the stress to get them motivated. Me I get scared and overwhelmed and don't see the big goal as acheivable. I only worry about it 1 lb at a time.)

I did have to take a break for a month due to a health scare, but otherwise I kept with the slow and steady approach. Took me 9 months (including the month off) At first I lost at the rate of about 3 lbs per month, but the closer you get to the goal the slower it goes. So be patient and hang in there.

***also once my lose 1 lb/week target was down to 1200 calories I switch to lose 1/2 lb/ week (1200 cal rock bottom, 1/2 lb/week as my target, maintain goal weight as the high end of my range.)

Food is not the enemy.
Oddly enough on my journey here I've reduced guilt over food.
I have the occassional treat and I fully enjoy it with no guilt involved.
The thing is since I'm not eating crap all the time the occassional treat is just that a TREAT it's special and I enjoy it so much more than when I was unconsciously shovel junk food into my face.

I figure if I've got a good plan that I can actually maintain I can keep this off for a long time to come, without feeling deprived.

Good Luck

One of the things I really like about this site is that it gets me thinking about food substitutions, lower amounts of snacking and getting into habits of good choices.

I've been "off" my diet a few times since starting, and while I don't keep losing, I don't really gain it back, either.

And I find getting back on the diet train is much easier when I get into the habit of recording what I eat...then it's not dieting..it's a number game.

You can have that light corona on Friday night. You just work it out on your food diary for the day. That's the problem with real restrictive diets, you can't live with them forever. I've only done MFP for a couple weeks, but find the posts and friends really help keep me on track. You can friend me if you want.