It's a constant struggle ! You have to get used to this being hard, might take a long time .... then when it gets easier, you wonder why you were having trouble in the first place. Now for me it's really normal when I feel hungry, it's the norm, it's pretty rare that I feel like I am completely full, even tonight after my dinner, I thought I could have had twice as much food as I did have, but it was cool, I cut up a celery and a carrot into lil' pieces and had 'em in the evening with plenty of water, it wasn't so terrible.
I was hungry for months in a row or so it seems, I am used to it now. I just have the minimum required to do my exercices and fight the worst cravings and that's it, barely anything extra. I fail sometimes but then I am double-green'ed until I make up for it, that red day ...
Motivation and focus. You are motivated to do something and then you do it. You don't deviate from your chosen path. It's harder when you have lil' kids and a busy social life though. If you went to a few barbecues in a row, it's understandable you gained some weight, that would be worse than X-Mas week for me. The other day I was freaking out when pizzas were supposed to be ordered, I was thinking of making up an excuse to get the hell out of that party, lol ! I didn't of course, but I was goooooooood, I had a lot of water and veggies and by the time the pizza arrived I wasn't so hungry anymore so I had just a piece in the end.
I guess the most difficult part for me is really to get started. Once I have done that (The 2 times I lost weight it was the same process) I don't stop, I just keep going. I make a graph and I do everything I can to remain under the line. After I've picked the date, the results on the scale, in front of the mirror ... that's enough to keep me motivated really.
I have all those tools, graphs, charts to help me as well.
I like to imagine how much I will weigh later too.
I remember in february, looking at my graph and thinking in 3 months, I'll weigh 223, wow ! (Back then I weighed around 245) 3 months later, I was right on, not sure if that's another trick but I was doing that for a while, even now, I look at my graph, I see in 2 months, I should be down to 205 ... 205 (!!) ... 5.2 pounds away from seeing a '1' as the first number. This is a good way to make me want to BE GOOD and GREEN long term. The motivation is there, 100%, no turning back or half doing it even if it's tough.
Also just smelling food is another one of my tricks, I have a bottle of chocolate syrup in the cupboard, I rarely eat any of it but I often pop the top and then smell the odor of the syrup, yum ! That helps as well, I didn't have any but it's as if I had really. I do that once in a while, seems to help. Micro-biting, having just a tiny bit of something to get a taste, but not all the calories ... a tea spoon of ice cream for example, you tasted it but it doesn't hurt you at all. I have so many tips and tricks,
The main thing is I am motivated so I don't really care if it's hard, I say if it's hard it means I get better results, like when I push myself while I'm cycling, I could do it half as hard and there would still be benefits but I prefer to push harder and get better results as well.
As I said before living with kids who may want to have junk food, it makes it a lot harder though, plus, do you work out ?? You feel so good after a work out and it helps youout a lot. Your body gets more muscular and you burn more calories even when you are resting.
Don't despair though, a weigh in like that after a bad weekend is really not permanent weight. You have to weigh 48 hours from now after 2 good green days in a row and then you'll see maybe that you haven't gained that many pounds back. If you gained 4 pounds of REAL weight, you may take a while to lose that of course. It might take a whole month of course, at least 3 weeks.
You could try starting over and have your current weight as the starting point too, this way you wouldn't feel too depressed. You start over, with your new scale, and then you get going, may 26 ... you decide how many pounds you have to lose and the time frame, all that ... that's what I do on day 1 personally.
Red days are tough, especially 2 or 3 in a row ... I do everything I can not to have one, I'd be pretty depressed having two, but then even if it happened, what would I do ?? I'd be green for 3-4-5 days in a row and then it's all forgotten and I feel great for having been so strong as well. I could easily have stopped in march where it was really harder for me, end of winter blues ... but I pressed on and then april and may have been relatively easy in comparison (Especially adding the cycling to my routine, it really helped a lot, great exercise and I have notice a big improvement since I've started cycling mid april). If I had stopped and went back to my bad old ways I could weigh 235 right now, maybe more who knows ...
Cheers !
Marc
Disclaimer : I am following a more extreme version of the 'No-S' diet.
I made my own personal modifications to the original plan (Diet & Exercise)
What I am doing should not be misinterpreted as being a typical 'No-S' diet experience.
11/01/2008 : 280.0 pounds - - - 05/23/2009 : 216.2 pounds
6 months 23 days / 63.8 pounds
I took it as a "gain". I WAS down 16...
WAY too much food. I need to regroup and get on track. I am real charged for the week. The kids have no school today, which is usually very hard for me, but I'm so pumped to have a green and yellow only month that I WILL NOT go red today. 
I'm feeling pretty confident for today too. Jill, I do think the habit is starting to kick in for you, especially if you are down 15 since you started, remember it needs to be a life long program!! 
so it looks like I've lost 3 pounds less than I actually have.
