Well I have been on MFP for 140 days. As I flick back through my food diary to January, I can see how my habits have changed.

For the first month or so I struggled on 1200 calories - which eventually brought me to the plateau that I remain on to this day - gaining and losing the same 3-4 pounds. Even raising my intake to 1500 calories did not help matters much. However I am going through something of an epiphany at the moment - on Wednesday I raised my calories to 1800.

I have learned in my time on here that there can be no quick fixes - I did not put on this weight in 6 months, so how can I expect to lose it in six months? Looking at the community pages, and even some of my MFP friends, there are many people on 1200 - 1500 cals who are exercising, not eating back their calories and losing weight. Well of course they will - but how long can someone sustain that lifestyle, really? And how long will that weight loss continue, on an undernourished, overtired, overstressed body? Are the fast rewards really worth the long term anguish of messing up your metabolism, putting all that weight back on (and more) when more normal eating is resumed?

I have learned that it is good to take my time and tweak and change things, try this exercise or that one. I have tried 1200 cals, I have tried 1500 cals - it does not work for me! I found a great website called fat2fitradio.com - and everything they say on there makes sense to me. Simply put, you do not need to starve yourself to get to your goal weight. You simply need to eat the maintenance calories that a person of your goal weight and level of activity would eat (be realistic - you can always change it later). So my goal weight is 133 lbs and I am currently "lightly active", therefore my calories should be 1805. On fat2fitradio.com, they state that if you start eating like that now, you can continue to do so for the rest of your life. That way you don't fall into that whole yoyo diet thing of starving yourself for months, exercising yourself to death, then going back to normal eating and activity and putting all the weight back on again.

The other thing I have changed is the way I eat, trying more frequent but smaller meals, and really staying away from high carbohydrate foods and increasing my protein. In the past few weeks that I have been doing that I have felt fabulous - less bloaty and tired. Now that I have taken the step of eating for the 133 lb woman inside me who needs her 1800 calories, I reckon I will have even more energy, and be able to take in more nutritious and healthy foods.

So I guess I would say to all you fabulous ladies - stop starving yourselves. Eat for the woman you want to be and stop punishing yourselves for getting fat! You deserve better. Go to fat2fitradio.com and take a look, listen to the podcasts (you can download them to your Android or iphone on their app).

I have learned that is a slow process, and I have learned to be OK with that. It felt awful being on this plateau, but I realise that it gave me the time to reflect on my eating and exercise habits and make the necessary changes that will give me long term and permanent success. Bring it on!