I did Body for Life faithfully from March 2002 till March of this year. In that time I lost 45 pounds of fat and 35 pounds of scale weight. I went from a size 14, busting at the seams, to a loose size 10.

However, I weighed in at 160 for four months. I didn't lose more even when I exercised more. I weighed 160 in November and 160 in December and 160 in January and 160 in February. I wanted to lose more. I wanted to be a size 8 and then a size 6.

I went on Physique Transformation. I did that for twelve weeks, I think. I lost inches, but I didn't lose scale weight. I knew it was good, but it didn't feel good. I wasn't making the progress I wanted to and Physique Transformation is not something I would be willing to do for the rest of my life. It's way too structured for me.

My husband followed this for a while and lost some weight.

Then I did Atkins. That was fun and easy, but it made me very sick the first two weeks. I quit for a week and then went back on it. The second time I did not get as sick. But even though eating was easier, and it was so much fun to be able to eat out all the time if you wanted to, the weight wasn't doing what I wanted it to. I did go from 160 to 154, but it was iffy. Most days the scale said something around 156. That was less than 160, but it wasn't moving as fast as I wanted it to.

My husband lost a lot of weight on Atkins. But not as much as he wanted to or as much as they said he would. I think he lost a little over a pound a week for 10 or so weeks.

Four weeks ago I quit everything and just ate “reasonably” except on the weekends when I ate whatever I wanted.

Something else that happened once I quit Body for Life. I started losing my memory again. This was a huge problem for me two and three years ago and I don't want to go back there. So I started moving back towards the Body for Life program. But I haven't been exercising like I did on BFL for about four months now. It's August. It's hot. It's hard to get motivated to re-start an exercise program.