I'm not eating the same number of calories I did when I was 100 pounds heavier. When I was 100 pounds heavier I ate three meals a day plus a couple of snacks. The meals I ate then were bigger than the meals I eat now. I have pretty much given up snacking except on days when I get more than an hour of exercise and I'm excessively hungry. Even 50 pounds ago I could snack on nuts and still lose weight; now I cannot. However, I am probably not eating 1750 calories less than I was 100 pounds ago -- I have no way of knowing for sure because I have never tracked calories. I try to listen to my body and only eat when it is hungry, and it is a lot less hungry than it was 100 pounds ago. I don't think I can go down to eating less than I am eating now without being ravenously hungry and I'm not willing to do that because I don't think I could sustain it and I would just end up binging and gaining the weight back. I'd rather maintain where I am now than do something that could potentially cause me to balloon back up again.

I do exercise a lot (brisk walking, swimming, hiking, some biking), and I exercise longer and harder than I did 100 pounds ago, but I don't do weights. Perhaps I should. As a 46-year-old woman who was raised at a time when girls never got near weights, I find them somewhat intimidating. I went through a training at my local YMCA on how to use their machines, but I found it totally overwhelming and never went back.

Does anyone have suggestions for a good book or video that might orient me toward free weights I could do in my basement? I think I would find that less overwhelming than trying to master 15 different machines at the Y.