One of my in-real-life friends, Ashlyn, has now lost over 100 pounds twice. She’s done it without surgery either time, just through good old hard work with exercise and diet. You can see her story–the second time around–in this video hosted over at Bill Phillips Transformation.

Ashlyn’s struggle highlights a few things, one being that “yo-yo” weight for those of us who are fighting battles with weight–it’s impossible to actually “win” the fight. Instead, it’s a fight that has to go on every day, and some days we do better than others.

In a conversation with Ashlyn’s sister on Twitter, I mentioned that I had just seen Ashlyn and how awesome she is and how I’m still “struggling, struggling, struggling.” Her sister expressed surprise at that, but I’ll stick by it.

Every day is a struggle. There are choices I have to make every day that’ll affect my health–what to eat, whether or not to work out, whether to take my medication or not, and even whether or not I’ll watch television–I don’t actually own a television anymore, but my family has several in the house–and lay around for awhile. As Ashlyn found out the hard way, losing the weight is only half the battle. Maintaining the new weight is the rest of it, and that’s a battle that goes on constantly.