Even Rapid Weight Loss Takes Forever

It's dawning on me that even rapid weight loss takes forever when you have a lot of weight to lose.  While I hear lots of stories of people on VLCDs being able to lose 100 pounds in 100 days, I don't think it's going to be a realistic hope for me.  It is hard for me to lose weight.  Even when I stick to the strictest of diets, the weight doesn't seem to want to come off very quickly.

I figure I'll be lucky if I average 3 pounds a week over time.  If I lose at that rate, it will be almost 41 weeks before I'm at goal.  That reaches into late February of next year.

Right now, I'm mostly sticking to shakes.  On the days that I don't, it's because I have social obligations that center around food.  I don't want to tell everyone I'm dieting, because it inevitably results in comments that I don't want to hear:

• You're losing weight too quickly.
• You're not making much progress, are you?  Are you sure you aren't cheating?
• Should you be eating that?
• My cousin lost weight by doing x.  It's much healthier/better/etc. than what you are doing.

Since my restart, I'm down 10.9 pounds in 17 days.  That's an average of just over .6 of a pound per day.  At that rate, it might be possible to finish by the end of this year.

We'll see how it goes, I guess.  All I can do is keep doing what I'm doing.