Welcome Anne, We're happy to have you here. This is an amazing forum filled with helpful and non-judgmental people. We've ALL struggled with our weight and we understand where you're coming from.

In addition to the suggestions above, if you haven't already found your way there, I highly recommend the dietdoctor.com website. Lots of great recipes, inspirational weight-loss success stories, plus educational videos based on solid scientific research, that will help you understand why we get fat in the first place (it isn't due to some defect of character!) and why low carb diets like Atkins work to lose weight and help to heal a plethora of illnesses -like RA - that are often associated with excess weight.

You can join for free for 30 days to get access to everything on the website. They don't have any annoying pop up ads and they don't sell any diet books or packaged diet foods or anything else so, in my opinion, it's well worth the $10.