Since September of 2012, I have lost 50 pounds and I still have a ways to go. Right now I weigh at the top end of my normal range.

Vacationing on Maui, 20 months ago, my friend Maria and I went on a zip line. The concierge asked if we both weighed under 260 pounds, “they’re going to weigh you,” she said, looking at me.

“The audacity,” I thought. To think that I weighed over 200 pounds was insulting. But of course, I worried. I hadn’t been on a scale in five years.

I got on the scale and weighed 60 pounds more than I thought I did. I was horrified but grateful for the reality check. At the resort I immediately started working out every day and watching what I ate. Immediately, it seemed, the first 15 pounds came off right away. But then it became more difficult.

I would play games with it and let myself eat unhealthily when I, was under a lot of pressure with deadlines, couldn’t sleep, felt sorry for myself, went to eat out, on “special” occasions. I would avoid getting on the scale, being afraid of what it would say. Perhaps imagining that it would again jump to some ungodly number and my body would explode with shame.

I did that for over a year. But then I decided to get real in December of 2013 because I saw yet another full length picure where I looked like a Mack truck, especially next to a bunch of particularly slender friends.

“I have to get serious,” I thought. Then two very close friends both lost 40 pounds, so I knew one could be “skinny” at my age.

I started weighing myself every day. Sometimes I couldn’t do it, but the days between weighing became shorter. You should only weigh yourself once a day, though. It’s easy to get micro-obsessive, my mother for example, weighs herself all the time. As far as my research has shown, there is no way to determine if you eat too many calories on Friday when will that impact your weight. I mean they can’t even do it on “The Biggest Loser.”

Find things that you like to eat that are good for you. Personally, it helps if I can eat the same thing every day so I don’t have to think about it. In the past I’ve accomplished that by doing a stir fry or a salad. Currently, I buy a big bin of lettuce and then go to the salad bar at “Whole Foods,” and get fixings. I also found this amazing, fat free, frozen vanilla Greek yogurt with high protien and zero fat. I also eat healthy soups in a cup.

I don’t buy a bunch of groceries at once, and keep hardly anything in my refrigerator. This forces me to acknowledge how much is being eaten. If I get voraciously hungry and the stores are closed, I can binge out on lettuce with Balsamic vinegar.

Luckily, I have a workout buddy and we go to the gym in my Mom’s building and geek out twice a week. I focus on burning as many calories as I can, doing the elliptical at the highest weight. I do some weights but I don’t like doing them because I think I suck at it.

I don’t allow myself to beat myself up. This is the hardest thing to do. I’m Irish Catholic and obsessive guilt is our birthright. Guilt is a masturbatory emotion. You feel like you’re punishing yourself for being such a loser but it never seems to work out in the end. By attending a weekly meditation group I’ve actually been able to let go of all my stress and angst that I’ve been holding onto for decades.

Many of us with substance abuse issues don’t want to feel their feelings, and I cringe as I type that because it’s just so Stuart Smalley.