I just read someone's success story who took eight years to lose 94 pounds. She never gave up on herself until she got those pounds off. Wow, this is something for me to grasp. Don't give up nor take my eyes off the ultimate goal. Hopefully, it won't take me five more years to get 20-26 more pounds off, but if it does, I would have stayed with it. The point to her story is that she never stopped with the process even when she had lapses or wasn't losing. I needed to read that story today. Sometimes I feel I'll never get back on track until I read about a person like that. Then I realize that time is not an issue. I'm not running a race like that. I'm running a lifetime race of sorts that has no time limits. It will end when it ends, when the last pound is lost and I start to learn to keep it off for good. Then another chapter in my life will begin, but that will begin a new chapter in my life then.

Right now I am just trying to adjust to 1200 calories which is what it is going to take to get down to my final goal weight. I started out eating 1330 calories which was fine at the weight I was at, but now I have to cut back in order to get at my goal weight. This was confirmed by the WW trainer in class the other day. You lose points as you lose body mass. This is why I plateaued. I wasn't willing at that point to cut down and thus I stopped losing. Stupid, stupid, an stubborn I was !!!! Well, now I am willing to listen to the truth and get with the program. It's just a matter of letting my body adjust to those hunger pains until it gets used to those lower calories.

Should you start off at 1200 calories ? I wouldn't unless you have to. I would do the recommended cals that WW or CK gives until you have to cut back. I don't know the real reasons for the cut back except it probably has to do with your body weight and height adjustment and the fact you don't need as many calories as you get closer to your goal weight. I guess if you start out at 1200 cals you could lose faster, but you don't want to lose faster than 2 pounds a week any way, so you need to keep your calories count high enough to maintain that weight loss range. I think that is how all of this is figured out out any way. I do know when all of this is over my maintenance range will be around 1450 calories with exercise each day. This is not a lot for this 5 foot frame. One breakfast and lunch at Big Macs could blow that away easily or a dinner at TGIF !!!!!!! So you can see why I will always have to be extremely careful.