Starting out...

[Lady_Disdain]

Ok, here I go. I stepped on the scales this morning and it confirmed what my pants have being saying for a while: I need to lose weight. I am at 70kgs, when my personal ideal weight is 60kgs. Ouch.

Can you believe I have never dieted before? Just watching what I ate and doing some exercise always worked for me. But I hit 30 and things aren't so easy, specially since I am addicted to chocolate (eating a 150gms bar every day is easy). I am feeling a little lost. I am tempted to do something drastic, which I know isn't healthy. At the same time, I know that I am going to be so tempted and I have such low self control.

Help, please?

 

[marcy]

Hi Lady Disdain, just deciding you want to lose weight is half the battle. It is amazing how easy the extra weight creeps on and sadly it takes a long time and hard work to get it off but all you can do is work on it one day at a time.

My words of advice (for what they are worth) is to find the program that works for you. Fad diets especially can give you quick results but sometimes they are unhealthy and don't teach you how to manage food everyday. I count calories. I know a lot of people who do weight watchers (they count points) and some people can increase their activity and watch portion control. It's all trial and error to find the lifestyle changes you can live with. I have a major sweet tooth so I had a mini chocolate bar after lunch and after supper we have slow churned ice cream. It's about 120 calories per serving. I don't think I could stick to my calorie range if I couldn't have a treat. Of course some people would view that as empty calories but that method works for me.

I would get a food scale; you want to make sure you are getting every gram of food allowed and also make sure you aren't giving yourself more food than your portion allows. I use lean meats and use little to no oil in cooking. If we go out to eat I try to find nutritional information online beforehand and figure out what I can eat. I cut my meals in 1/2 when we get there and only eat 1/2 of it taking the rest home for lunch.

There is a website sparkpeople.com where you can sign up (for free) and it will help you determine a weight loss goal based on current weight, desired weight and activity level. You can track your food and activities there. It is full of helpful information and suggestion plus team discussions to help out. They say losing about 1 pound a week is a reasonable expectation but I found where I would kind of lose in spurts - a few pounds then nothing for awhile I found that I would be losing inches when I wasn't losing weight.

I participate in the Healthy Living Thread. We have dropped to only a few participants recently but we'd love to have your join us. We just post what we did / ate for the day and we are certainly there to help and cheer you on. We say slow and steady wins the race. Deegee (another lady who participates daily) lost her weight by doing weight watchers. I hope you stop by and join the thread.

I weighed 360 plus pounds at one time and lost over 1/2 of my body weight. I have gained some of it back but I continue to work at it every day. The worst problem I've encountered is some of my extra skin tightened back up and added inches back. It is really a struggle for me but I don't beat myself up over it and continue to try and live each day as healthy as I can.

Good luck! Keep in touch.

 

[Lady_Disdain]

Thank you so much for your reply, Marcy. I am heading over towards the other thread, where I will bug everyone with ridiculous questions

 

[marcy]

Bug away.

 

[Lady_Disdain]

How many calories in a bug, Marcy?

 

[marcy]

Ew, at least they should be protein.