Such words of wisdom above!
On my first few returns, I felt ashamed, felt like a complete failure. Now I just follow the lead of a friend who had been out seeing the world for five years, returned to his mother's house, let himself in and yelled upstairs to her from the pantry, "Hi, Mom, where's the peanut butter?" (Some folks you just can't top for style, right?)
I liken this to quitting smoking, to which evil vice I surrendered myself for several years. You look far too smart and sensible to have done that, but perhaps you know someone who has struggled with this? When I quit, I was thoroughly addicted, and I tried several-several-many times to quit. Sometimes I didn't even make it through a day. Yet, like Batspit said, with each attempt was a learning process, and I took some nugget of knowledge of the enemy away from each battle. And then one day, one quit, was the one that took. No different, really, than any other time, but I just kept on abstaining on that go 'round.
Even that (to make a short story long and boring) didn't happen perfectly--over the course of 3-4 days, I tapered, until by the end of the week, I wasn't smoking. Then my father died a few months later, and my first response was to light up. I smoked a cigarette, started on another, looked at it and said, "What ___ am I doing?" and threw it away and haven't smoked since.
But if I'd quit trying before I got to that go-round, if I labeled myself a failure and stopped there, I'd probably be dead by now.
Same with the weight. I've been trying to win this battle since I was a teenager. Any sensible person would probably have given up long ago, but because I didn't, I'm now a whole lot closer to my goal, and much happier than I was a few years ago. And like my last `quit' with the cigarettes, it was a lumpy start, like a flying dream where you can't get off the ground at first.
I feared another struggle, dreaded trying to muster up the mental, emotional, and physical stamina for the battle. What ended up evolving out of that was what I think of as an additive rather than subtractive approach. I started including food that I knew would nourish my body (I used a sort of Low Carb Meets SuperfoodsRx approach) and drinking more water. I wasn't taking anything away, so I had nothing to fear. And over the course of a few weeks, I found I was making primarily LC choices, and then I felt so much better it was easy to let the other stuff fall away.
It was *not* what anyone could call a clean induction--but I had a few other folks who have been wildly successful here tell me that this was what they had to do also--ease into it. I had just far, far, far too many enthusiastic launches followed by a crash and burn to my name, and simply didn't have the heart to wake up and "Just say no."
I also continued, and do to this day, to incorporate foods that many people would shun: whole-fat yogurt, raw nuts at will (roasted ones are trigger foods for me), dark chocolate, berries, and a bounteous salad each day w/spinach, tomatoes, avocados, red peppers, cheese, blue cheese dressing and cottage cheese--and I feel so nourished in body, mind, and palate--not to mention enjoying the bright colors. I see fast food my co-workers bring into the lunchroom, and there is no regret whatsoever for my choices--it never occurs to me to think `I wish I could have that'. Give yourself the gift of time, and trust the process. You'll be wahooing off on that marathon a year from now, for sure.
No shame. No blame. Just happy to see you back. Gotta step outside and kill the fatted calf now.
Last edited by kathleen24 : Sun, Mar-14-10 at 09:23.
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So its time to get busy going food shopping to get all your low carb favorites and cook up a storm. 
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