Does the fear of hunger seem ridiculous to you? I mean, really, who is afraid of hunger? In developed countries you can get take-out at all hours of the night, convenience stores are open 24 hours a day, and many restaurants stay open until 2:00 a.m. But even with all of that, there is often a very real issue with emotional hunger when you lose weight. Oftentimes it is not physical hunger that we are afraid of, but emotional hunger. As a 300-pound woman, the feeling of physical hunger was unfamiliar. I literally grazed on food from the minute I woke up in the morning to right before I turned in for the night. I never, ever got truly physically hungry during those 10 years of morbid obesity…

I have maintained my 150 pound weight loss for almost 18 years. In fact, next month it will be 18 years. How? By doing one very simple thing. When I first started losing weight, I determined that whatever I did to lose weight needed to be the same thing I did to maintain my weight. I had tried so many plans that were not conducive to weight maintenance that I knew I had to lose weight in a way that made moving from weight loss to weight maintenance seamless and easy. In other words: I wanted to lose 150 pounds by doing what I would eventually need to do to keep that 150 pounds off forever. (Hence the title of my book which came out a few years ago.) That’s …

Losing weight is a frequent topic of conversation for me, as you can well imagine. In my real life, people who know my story invariably fall into one of two camps: They want to talk about their weight issues, why they eat more than they mean too, and ask for advice. I give advice (when I know the answer) when I can or just listen if that’s what they want. My other friends say nothing about weight — mine or theirs. When my first category of friends and acquaintances talks about weight loss troubles, there are a lot of common questions: Some of them are: Why does my weight never seem to go down? Do I have to exercise? How do I handle family that pushes…

Willpower has been one of the buzz words in the weight loss and dieting industry for years now. You might have used this term yourself from time to time. I know I often did. I’d often say, “I just don’t have the willpower to stick with a diet for very long” or sometimes I’d say, “My willpower isn’t strong enough to resist chocolate cake.” I would blame my lack of willpower on my 513 diet failures, on my lack of commitment to exercise, on my lack of resistance to fast food, or any other unhealthy lifestyle behavior I chose to attribute my lack of willpower to. Friends of mine who lost weight seemed to have almost magical willpower. They did seem…

Sometimes I look at Facebook or Instagram (I hope you will join me at both!) and think that everyone’s life just seems to be sailing along without any problems. Then I remember that people put things on Facebook that they want others to see and often times leave off the negative things. I do that too. I think a lot of us do. Our Facebook/Instagram persona and real life can be quite different. Real life is sometimes smooth, sometimes rough, and a lot of times it is a bit of both. That’s true for me lately. We’ve had some really busy times with school getting closer to finishing up, kids going on trips, musical performances, and financial challenges (think replacing a very…

I’ve talked before about the fact that I didn’t feel as though I was losing things while I lost 158 pounds, rather I felt as though I was gaining health, fitness, and improving my self-esteem. In the midst of all the good things that happened there were some unfortunate consequences, or “fall-out” from my weight loss success. There was the loss of my best friend of over 10 years. Our relationship didn’t survive my weight loss success. She said mean things to me so often that I finally believed she didn’t want to be my friend at all.  There were times where I felt isolated in social situations where fattening food was all that was offered. When I refused to eat any…

I’ll be the first to admit that fashion is not one of my strong suits. I can get dressed up and look decent when I need to but on a day-to-day basis, I tend to live in jeans and my favorite oversized fleece. There are some days where I don’t have to be anywhere and the kids and I are home doing school, practicing instruments, and just doing life. I really love those days. However, there are days where I’m not just hanging out at home. Sometimes I forget (or ignore) that fact and still don’t put on clothes that fit very well. Usually I don’t get my picture made on such an occasion but recently I did. And then …

Are overweight people really treated differently or overlooked? Some people say no. Some people say yes. I am a person who says yes and so is Kathleen Brooks, who is a writer for The Huffington Post. She wrote an interesting article on the site a couple years ago that echoed much of my experience and feelings about being fat in America. She, like me, was not always overweight. She gained weight from medications after a kidney transplant while I gained weight from overeating. No matter the method of weight gain, the result is the same in terms of how you feel.  I went from being an average size woman to a morbidly obese women in about 3 years. The difference in my appearance was startling to myself and…