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For starters...
Oh I miss starters! Torilla chips and salsa. Tomato soup and a warm roll with butter. A greek salad with extra olives and feta cheese. A big bastard platter for two with chicken wings, potato wedges, onion rings, chicken skewers, several different gooey dips and some salad somewhere on the bottom....

Yeah, so, you see... this is why I am Heidi, 28 years of age and 129 kilos. Yeah, you read it right. For the British that's 20.3 stone. And for my fellow Americans that's 284.4 pounts. Nothing to be proud of, but that's where I am. But not where I'll always be.

I've created this blog for many reasons. Mostly, because I'm struggling to lose weight on brilliant diet and it's because the way the I'm doing it at the moment is not right for me. In most things I do in my life, I'm successful, or as a minimum I'm at least pretty good. But with losing weight, I'm totally crap, to be blunt.

I'm a competitive person. The only way to keep myself motivated is to compete with others, or to be responsible to someone. If I try to do something completely on my own with no one to compare myself to, I lose steam after a while. Like with most of the hobbies I've taken up. If I have to do them on my own, I lose interest after a while. And I guess I lost interest in losing weight when I had no one to compete with.

Back in December 2007 I started the Lighterlife diet. It was recommended to me by a friend who did the diet and was totally successful. This diet was supposed to be life changing, and the answer to all my problems. And for a short while, it was. I struggled. I honestly thought the diet was going to be easier than it actually was. My counsellor started off great, and really she was a nice person. However, I felt that the Lighterlife diet program lacked room for individuality. Some people can go on the diet, and do 'sole source' from day one and never fail. But many people can't. I often cheated and found it hard every single day, of every single week. To cut a long story short (as this is only meant to be an opening post!), I did not succeed on Lighterlife. It was not designed to accept that it's probably not possible to change 15 years of bad eating habits in 9 months without any problems or struggles. When it was evident that I was not going to be an easy success story, my counsellor told me that I had to shape up or stop the program. She offered me no alternatives. Like going into the 'management' phase which is where you could introduce food for a while. I was going through a VERY tough time in my personal life, and I felt I had no choice but to walk away from Lighterlife. It was too difficult. I lost 3 stone in total on Lighterlife. To date, I have not put it back on.

From there, I went to Cambridge. I started seeing a wonderful counsellor in my local area. She has given me complete support since I started. We've talked a great deal about my struggles and I've been more honest about my struggles with her than I was with my previous counsellor. I get the opportunity in one-to-one sessions to discuss my individual experiences for the week. The way the counselling is set out doesn't 100% give me all the motivation I need, however it gives me the opportunity to address my issues without being berated or belitted, or be made to feel like a failure. I've had that for most of my life from friends and family, which added to the struggles I have. Although I haven't succeeded on Cambridge, yet, I've learned more while I've been on it than I did during my whole 5 months on Lighterlife. To date, I haven't really lost any weight on Cambridge. This is purely down to myself and how I have behaved while on the diet.

Anyway I've been doing these diets for 10 months now. I should have lost all of my weight, but I haven't. There are many reasons why. And gradually throughout this blog I will discuss those. I still have about 9 more stone to lose.

I created this blog for people to read. I created it as a means to gather support. I also created it so I can hold myself accountable to every other person in the world who takes an interest. I don't want to come here every week and tell whoever is watching, that I did not succeed. I'm ready to be a success story. I'm ready. I am so ready.

So, that's the first entry. Brief, (trust me, this is brief for me), but to the point. I hope that anyone who reads this decideds to follow me and support me on this journey. I need to achieve my weight loss goal. And I need to do everything possible to reach it.

What do you need to achieve?