When I finally decided I had to do something serious, and give this a go again, for real, and not just play at it, I told my husband that I would have to have the single minded determination that I had the first time I did Atkins.

I was a machine.

I logged everything I put in my mouth, made sure I drank tons of water, and got lots of exercise (well, a lot for the shape I was in anyway ).

I lasted three months and lost 30 pounds in that time. I used to wish I could just wake up and all the fat would have fallen off in the night. Well, I was getting my wish and it scared me....a lot. It was melting off me at such a rapid rate and I got scared. That seems stupid when I say it out loud, and even more stupid when I read it back to myself, but it's true. I was also afflicted with confidence and complacency. "Look at me, I'm doing so well, I'm feeling better than I have in 10 years (or more) and everyone says I look so good. I can ease up a bit, just a bit, and enjoy myself."

The beginning of the end really.

My idea of enjoying myself is what got me all that trouble in the first place. So I went off the plan and joined the real world and even though it took a LONG time (over a year), the weight started to creep back. Not all of it, but enough that I started to get scared again, but for the opposite reason. Not because I had lost the weight, but because it was coming back. So I tried it again, and again, and again, and alternated between low carb, and starvation, and excessive exercise, and in between just giving it all up and binging for weeks, sometimes months on end.

I had lost my edge. My magic bullet had left the gun and nothing was working. I would gain and lose, and lose and gain. I am the poster child for yo-yo dieting! Not the claim to fame I ever hoped for myself!

So, I needed to do it again. One last time, with single minded determination that would get me through each day. One day at a time, one meal at a time, until......until when? Well there's the rub. There is no until with this plan, this program, this WOL. It's for the rest of my life. Not until I've lost 30 pounds, or 60 pounds, or until I can fit into that little black dress I have hanging in the back of my closet and can't bring myself to get rid of, or those jeans I wore when I was 22 that I WILL wear again.

It's for the rest of my life.......

And I'm hoping, with the help of Dr. Atkins, that the rest of my life will be long, and healthy, and full of energy.

I will get there, but only with a single minded determination. And when I finally think I'm there, to remember that I'll never really be there, and not to give up and join the real world again. This is the real world....my world.