...So, what's going on? Why is it that so many of us fully understand the issues, have access to all the tools, own the motivation, but are still fat?,,,

You know, I think the answer to this is worth a billion dollars and lots of skinny, healthy in shape people!

I used to be super crazy about eating healthy - only whole grains, no sugar, vegitarian,...
As I get older I don't care as much - I just tend to let more stuff go in my life and not obsess over things..

Both good and bad I guess.

for me, i think it's this business of just not accepting that i can not eat like i use to. when i think of being fat, in my head, that means i would have to be over eating. but i still base over eating on a thirty year old measuring stick that doesn't make a lick of sense.

i really don't think i eat any differently than i did thirty years ago...but that is precisely the problem. thirty years ago, i could eat a big breakfast, lunch, dinner, down a bag or two of chips and drink a coupla sodas for a snack, eat some milk and cookies late at night...but i was walking all over campus all day long and evenings too to go to the (cough cough) library to study or (more likely) to the student union to goof off with friends, before heading off ON FOOT across campus to see whatever else we could get into.

and we won't even talk about the parties and dancing like a crazed person all night long, and goofing around in the swimming pool, or playing volleyball. so there's this little problem of continuing to eat like i did when i was twenty, but not being anywhere nearly as active as i was at twenty (no matter how much i try to convince myself that running around from pillar to post with my kids in my gas-guzzling air conditioned SUV equates to being "active"). i just got in from taking a two mile walk in the park and i'll try to walk again in my neighborhood a little later this afternoon. but that doesn't hold a candle to how active i used to be.

plus there's is of the old metabolism slowing, way, way, wayyyy down. and there you have it. a woman who fully understands the issues, has access to all the tools, owns the motivation, but...is still fat.

oh. and that picture. WHO in the world has a belly that looks like that??? my stomach didn't look like that even when i weighed...well, when i weighed a lot less, and before i had kids. is there anyone out there who ever had a stomach that actually looked like that???

I had a stomach that looked exactly like that...when I was eleven. By twelve, the hormones kicked in and the shape changed.

Funny how that works, isn't it?