topaz, I like the Helen Forster book - lots of yum recipes in there. I tend to use my recipe books as a guide now as I've been doing it for so long.
If you want to know about my motivation, I'll give you a bit of background.
Prior to a few years ago, I think I was fairly typical in that I stayed within a certain weight range - so I'd put some weight on perhaps, but if say I'd let a couple of stone creep on, that wasn't too horrendous to diet off.
However, 5 years ago, my Mum killed herself when I was pregnant with ds1. One of the effects on me was that I began to comfort eat (very badly). In 3 years I piled on around 8 stone - Ok there were 2 pregnancies in that time, but my weight was out of control.
I found it really difficult to shift, and also, for a long time didn't have the energy or willpower to do it, it felt like such a mountain to climb. I was also doing things like not really eating properly during the day and then gorging on all the wrong things when the children were in bed.
Last year (August) I think something clicked in my head - I knew I had to stop letting Mum's death get in the way of me living my life and being happy. I decided I was going to tackle my weight and that it didn't matter how long it was going to take. I'd found out about GI through a friend who is diabetic, so started to adjust my eating around the basic ideas. Then, the GI Diet started to be publicised widely and I was able to get more ideas and recipes to help me.
It is really lovely now, to have people I haven't seen for a while, tell me how great I look! A couple of times I've been bemused because my hair is greasy and I'm wearing my scruffiest t shirt , but they are quite astounded at the weight loss.
I haven't lost weight every week, and sometimes I have put on (6lbs once during a weekend in Barcelona, eating loads of lovely bread !), but I find GI easy to get back on track with.
Good luck with it, we will be here to offer support .