&gt;Surely I had earned an extra margarita.<p>You can stop reading right there, that&#x27;s the problem. You have to both eat well and exercise to lose weight. You don&#x27;t get to eat extra things just because you exercised.<p>Focus on two things: First, portion control. I know it&#x27;s wasteful for the environment but I get the single serving versions of (healthy) things (e.g. pre-sliced cheese, single cups of greek yogurt instead of the big tub, etc) so you know exactly how much you&#x27;re eating. Get a kitchen scale and some measuring cups for everything else, the odds are excellent that you&#x27;re a crappy estimator. And bring your lunch to work.<p>Second, blocking out time in your day for exercise, even if you don&#x27;t work that hard. It&#x27;s important to put on your workout clothes and at least go through the motions until it&#x27;s an ingrained habit (1-3 months in my case but ymmv). Once it&#x27;s an ingrained habit it&#x27;s much easier to keep going. I start to feel gross and unclean if I go more than three or four days without some kind of strenuous exercise.<p>It&#x27;s a lot of work and it&#x27;s very difficult, but it&#x27;s not complicated. With these two things I have lost 70 pounds and kept it off for seven years.