This thread is dangerous! lol.
Just my two cents (don't mean to rain on the parade. I apologise in advance
)...
I'm on Cambridge now but I first tried Lighterlife a couple of yrs ago..and tried and tried. lol. Any way, my counsellor also tried it many times and failed, so we had a lot in common. She finally went on to lose her weight by doing a mix of LL, eating healthily and a lot of exercise but eventually started to put it back on because as soon as she almost reached her goal, when she started feeling good in her clothes/skin, she fell back into the same habits as before. Just before she started her 'journey' again she was talking to counsellors and psychiatrists connected to lighterlife (as part of her training) and she realised something and told me that when you want to lose weight, on any diet, you think about the fact that you can't wait to eat whatever you want again and imagine all the things you're going to eat. Not only can that sometimes cause you to fall off and go and eat all of those things, but if u do stick to the diet and more or less deprive yourself of food because (1) you can't wait to get it off and 'out of the way' and (2) you're thinking so much about what you're gonna stuff your face with when you're done, (because you think that you'll be looking good so you can eat whatever you want) then you're going to put the weight back on cause you haven't taught yourself anything - what are your triggers for overeating? what of the wrong foods did you eat and how often? how are you going to change that when you've reached goal? do you really want to have to go through this again?...basically, you have to educate yourself about food and teach yourself control while you're on this diet. So that when you come off you know that eating healthily, maybe treating yourself on the weekends, starting some form of exercise will keep the weight off.
This isn't just a diet, it's a new lease of life and who the hell wants to do this more than once? What's the point in losing all this weight if you're gonna fall back into the same habits of eating all the wrong things? There are a lot of people on here who have lost a lot of weight and are back again because they put some if not all the weight back on again...and a lot of them know that the second time is always harder. Some got to a certain weight (which was not their goal) and felt good so decided to stop there or take a break and then before they knew it the weight was creeping back on.
Some reach goal and then think the journey can end there but because they are still eating what they ate before the diet the weight creeps back on because they didn't do management (food edumacation. lol). Being skinny does not make us exempt from weight gain. Make sure you reach your goal and then do management. I know in some cases things happen - family crisis etc but let's not allow food to control us anymore. We have to be in control.
We all love food here and we all eat it for the same (or different) reasons. Bottom line is that food is not our friend. It doesn't solve our problems and it doesn't do any wonders for our figures. lol. I love food but put my weight on during each of my 3 pregnancies but doing this diet this time around (I never got passed day 2 :sigh: ), has forced me to start educating myself and I don't think about what I'm going to eat when I've reached goal. I think about how the journey really begins after I've lost the weight. I think about keeping it off. I think about what I'm NOT going to eat cause I sure as hell don't plan to lose almost 8 stone just to put it back on again (just because I love the taste of food...and believe me, I love the taste of food!!!). The reason I had so many false starts on CD was because I constantly thought about food and what I was missing out on. Then I'd eat it and feel like crap. I don't eat because I'm depressed, I eat cause I love to taste food. Simply! Actually, sometimes I eat out of boredom. This CD journey is also like going to see a shrink on a daily basis. lol.
So, try not to think so much about what you're missing and what you're looking forward to eating. The real test is changing your habits because it's the only way it's going to stay off for life.
Lecture over...
xxx