Thank you so much for posting this, Allison; this was exactly what I needed to hear. I feel like the magic has gone out of things for me the last few years -- I'm not depressed, I don't think, but things I used to love, like fireworks and Christmas, I'm just kind of meh about. Oddly, this seems to have come about since I've stopped trying to diet -- for some reason, even though I was completely self-obsessed and miserable doing the diet/binge thing, there was also this kind of heightened quality to life, so I was wondering if that would be lost to me forever doing this program (along with a ton of pain, of course!). It's really nice to hear I might be able to have balance and steadiness *and* those sparkly moments too. :)