I, personally, think that I got fat because my body could not properly metabolize the amount of carbohydrates I was eating, not because of any deep psychological reasons. Once I learned what the problem was and cut way back on the carbohydrates, I started losing weight without any problems. That is not to say that I think I am perfect -- I am just as neurotic as anyone else -- it is just that I don't think any psychological issues contributed to my weight gain.

However, having said that, I think that losing a large quantity of weight creates psychological issues that we need to learn to deal with. I've been fat for almost 20 years (since my first pregnancy) and now I have lost over 100 pounds. That is a greater physical change than I went through at adolescence or during either of my pregnancies and it has raised some of the same issues for me that my body changes at adolescence and during pregnancy raised. I need to learn who I am in this new body and I need to learn how people react to me in this body. I think that is something all of us in the TDC need to be aware of -- if we are not comfortable in our new bodies we risk that create psychological issues that lead to us gaining the weight back. Occasionally, recently, I have noticed men watching me or flirting with me. That never happened when I weighed 360 pounds, and doesn't happen all that often at my current weight and age, but it does happen sometimes and it is something I need to learn to get more comfortable with as I continue to get smaller.

The body changes were a bigger issue for me in the beginning when I was losing more rapidly -- changing a size every couple of months. I'd look at a piece of clothing or a restaurant booth and have no idea if I would fit because I didn't have a good conception of how big I was. One advantage I see to my weight gain having slowed to a crawl is that it is allowing me more time to adjust to my current size before it changes again. I seem to be going down a size about every six months now and that gives me a little longer to learn who I physically am before it changes again.