@Flamethrowers I'm sorry you're feeling so low, is there anything driving that? It's really good that your taste is for clean food, I suspect that will probably stay with you in maintenance, and dark chocolate really isn't a bad taste to have.
@mumofmanydaughterofone I know what you mean about being impatient, but you're right about needing to learn to make positive choices. On the maintenance threads, the people who didn't do that, and really just relied on the food suppression effect to eat less and lose really fast seem to be struggling to maintain off MJ. Which is logical but seems to have come as a surprise to some of them. The bunfight thread about regaining off MJ that some of us were on was about someone who admitted she entirely relied on the food noise disappearing to lose the weight, and had gone back to eating much larger portion sizes and snacking as the noise came back. For some of us (me included), this journey has to be as much about understanding why we overeat at times and addressing that.
So there's a mindful part of this for me. I've had to acknowledge that I used to be absolutely mindless about how much I ate, I never really thought about calories because I could get away with eating anything I wanted, I was younger, I exercised lots, if a lb or two went on, it came off just as fast. And when I couldn't run anymore, I was just as mindless, hence the weight gain. But I'm older now, approaching menopause, won't ever run as far or as fast as I could before, plus I gain quickly and lose slowly.
So I can no longer afford to be mindless, or to comfort eat when pissed off or down about something - I know I'm probably going to have to think carefully about what I eat for the rest of my life. Which quite frankly is a giant ball ache. But less of a ball ache than what I will have to deal with health wise if I put the weight back on.