No weigh in until next Sunday (I do it every two weeks) but I did make up for missing so much exercise this week due to medical tests. After I dropped off my son at work, I hit the gym both yesterday and today. I’m mixing it up between the treadmill, the bike, and the elliptical machine.
For those of you new to the club, I’ve found SparkPeople very helpful. My username is the same there as it is here, and we have quite a few Dopers there!
Good luck everyone! I found a recent SP motivational blog post very useful…if you forget to brush your teeth one evening, do you give up brushing your teeth forever? NO! You brush extra hard the next time and keep going. It’s the same thing with weight loss…one stumble does not a failure make.
I have gained a couple of pounds in the last few weeks (weighed in at 255 this morning, up from 251 2 weeks ago) but that was to be expected with the incredible amount of stress I have been under for the last month or so. I am doubling my efforts as of today to get back on to the losing side of things. I am going to start walking in the evenings now that it is a bit warmer and staying light later in the evening. I am also going to make an effort to bring a high protein/high fiber breakfast to work with me so that I don’t start feeling ravenous around 10:30 every morning.
207, up three pounds from last week but still 36½ down on the year. Birthday weekend obviously hasn’t helped although I didn’t think I’d eaten three extra pounds of food in total, let alone the calorie equivalent of three pounds in fat… so I’ll blame some of that on water retention and hope it goes away soon. Will have to up my exercise a little, I’ve not been walking as much as par lately although I have been keeping the eating under control barring the two birthday dos (one for the people who could make it last weekend, one who could make it this); still, I don’t think it’s time to panic just yet.
I find SparkPeople really overwhelming for some reason. I just tried to check it out and there is so much information there it made my brain want to explode. Right now I am using a very simple calorie/weight tracker at www.caloriecheckbook.com. And I use the very extensive www.runningahead.com log to track my workouts.
I really want to like SparkPeople. But it just looks like a mess to me. Tell me what you love about it.
I haven’t been very good about watching my food intake for the past week and I had two desserts in the past couple days 'cuz it was my birthday. But I have been working a lot of it off gardening. So hopefully it will equal out and I won’t have gained anything extra, except bulging biceps from all the weed pulling. Well, they’re really more achey than bulgey.
The calorie counter (Nutrition Tracker) has been a godsend to me. I think my problem was I thought I was eating healthy, but I guess I was eating too much. Since I’ve been tracking calories, I’ve made real progress.
The Fitness Tracker is good too…you can log your exercise. SP does have a lot of stuff, and they do have a Getting Started page that I, even after two months, have not completed yet. There’s a lot of interesting articles you can sign up for, (I especially like the Food Showdowns, where they compare two different foods and tell you which one is healthier, like Dunkin Donuts vs Krispy Creme, or Arby’s vs Hardee’s roast beef sandwiches) you can have a SparkPage, join various SparkTeams based on your hobbies, weight loss goals, or health issues.
I mainly use it for Nutrition and Fitness Tracking. I’ll check out the blog posts of other members once in awhile, but I’m not very active on the message boards over there.
There is a lot there, but you don’t have to do all of it at once. Just start with what your comfortable with, and take it from there. I know it’s silly, but the SparkPoints is an attraction to me…the more you do, the more you earn, and I find myself stretching into other areas I haven’t visited to earn more points.
I gained a few pounds in May, about seven. I had visitors, a birthday party, Memorial Day cookout, the usual excuses. So last Tuesday I went back to strict calorie counting, and it’s already helping.
It’s easier for me to lose weight in the summer. I’m a big girl who likes to eat, but in the summer heat and humidity even my appetite gets somewhat depressed.
Today I did a lot of work in the garden, weeding and digging. I don’t like ordinary workouts but if I do an hour or so of weeding, digging, lawn care and the like, I figure that will sweat some of the weight off. This afternoon I was literally dripping sweat, and a cool shower felt so good afterwards!
I’m the same as May 1, 171.5. Frankly, I’m really done fussing about it. If I lose some, I lose. The humidity here will hit hard very soon and it’s horrible to be outdoors in, but the family and I walked around a lake (reservoir) today, 1.3 miles. I did a little jogging, but very little.
The scale was at 167.5 this morning. One interesting thing is that they finally got a scale at the gym and when I weighed myself yesterday it said I weighed 165, in my shorts and T-shirt (I did take off my sneakers). My home scale said I was 167. The good news from that is that my scale at home isn’t way off, which was something I was afraid of. I guess I’d rather have it skew a few pounds heavy than a few pounds light.
I spent the weekend at my sister’s and just tracked my calories from that this morning, out of curiosity, even though I gave myself license to eat as I wished. I was surprised to see that I really didn’t go over by much, and on Saturday I didn’t go over at all, even with turtle cheesecake! We also went for about a 3.5-mile walk Saturday afternoon and were on the go pretty much all weekend! Still, I was thrilled to come home and have the scale say 167. It’s always a relief not to gain after the weekend for me.
Weighed in yesterday and appear to have lost 2.4 pounds in the last week. I think a lot was water, since I gained over 3 pounds the week before due to a weekend of salty snack eating. My jeans weigh a pound–I weighed in wearing them, then in my underpants. I will continue to weigh in wearing underpants!
I did have a radical thinking shift. I love pizza. Lovelovelovepizza. Tomorrow after work is a “go to the pizza parlor for a benefit for some kid with cancer and eat a lot of pizza.” I declined because I am going to the health and wellness center to work out. I’m very proud of myself.
Last night was the Taste of Times Square festival. I went and had very small samples from a few different booths and called it dinner, and while I was there I spun the wheel at a booth and won a free gym membership for 30 days! I get a session with a personal trainer and everything! Huzzah!
I don’t have a scale, but at my physical yesterday, I was at my highest weight ever, which I thought was strange, because I’m not at my highest pants size ever. Whatever.
Junior and I both have been feeling heavy (being happy makes us eat, apparently) and wanting to eat healthier, but that scale reading freaked my right out and made me jump on the diet bandwagon. I went and got some of that Alli to use as a crutch, and bought a grocery load of only healthy food. I still need to go get a scale. I plan to start walking again during the day, which helped me drop some last time.
I tried SP once before, and found it too overwhelming. We’ll see how it goes with mutual support this time - no sabotage, yay!
Welcome, Cowgirl Jules! Being happy made my husband and I fat too.
Some thoughts: Pants size and weight don’t always correlate. It all depends on the ratio of muscle to fat. Take two people who are the same weight, and the one with the most muscle mass is going to be the thinner of the two. That could be why you’re at your highest weight but not your highest pants size. If the scale freaks you out, you may not want to get one, or at least not weigh in more than once a week or once every two weeks. Some people prefer to go by measurements instead. I personally do both, but find it’s the measurements that keep me going when the scale doesn’t show me the numbers I want to see.
Congratulations on the win, pbbth! That’s awesome.
Well, I’d lost around thirty pounds last year and kept it off for the most part until May, when my sister was diagnosed with cervical cancer (it looks like surgery will take care of it, though) and we lost a lot of people at work, so I got switched to working 6+ days a week. I’d crawled up to 158lbs from all of the stress eating coupled with on-the-go munching. Worse, though, is that I seem to have lost some muscle mass, because I look flabbier than I had when I was this weight before.
I’ve been walking at least a mile every day for the past week and have been trying to control my food a little more carefully, though. It’s very difficult when I’m busy at work, stressed, and hey! Look! I’m working in a kitchen! Every brief break throughout the day turns into a battle of willpower.
I’m trying again, here’s hoping I can actually stick it out. My main problem is I’ll do really good with my diet and exercise for a couple weeks, not see much progress and give up. I started a new plan sunday and hope to lose 15 pounds by the end of july. My weight is still the same 180 it’s been for a while. (I was 185 februaryish, dropped to 170 and then climbed back up)
Okay, I’m finally jumping in and posting. (I blame you, ivylass! ) Been watching the threads for six months or so, and not posting, because I kept thinking “I’ll start, and then not keep going, and then I’ll feel bad about starting yet another thing and not keeping up on it, and then I’ll eat, and yadda yadda yadda…”
So, in late March, I was at 180. I’m 5’2 or 5’3, depending on who you ask. I started a new psych drug, which forced me to change certain habits, which led to some weight loss… and now I’m riding that trend to see how far I can push it. So far it’s a success - I’m at 163 and counting. Eventual goal is the 130 - 135 range.
I’ve tried SparkPeople a few times over the last couple of years, and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. I think that’s more a problem with my follow-up abilities than with SparkPeople, though. The NutritionTracker and FitnessTracker are really helpful once you get past the initial glut of work in establishing your commonly eaten foods and your exercise routine.
One thing that’s helped me a lot in the last couple of weeks is WiiFit. It’s helping me remember and keep track of doing strength exercises that I might not otherwise, as well as yoga and balance stuff. Cardio I have covered with DDR, but strength and balance are my weak points. We’ll see how well that goes. I’m trying to hit a new goal of 3 - 4 days a week consistently (up from 2). Maybe some increased accountability will help that.
I’m at 94kg, after a while stuck at 95kg and a weekend of not really good eating. We were running a chocolate fountain on saturday, and didn’t eat properly (I didn’t eat any chocolate/dips, but we had an early setup so did not eat a proper evening meal), and then on sunday I ate too much fruit (leftover strawberries, melon, pineapple - but I did make a killer smoothie). Exercising has been hard (from a motivational point of view), but I am still running as well as hitting the gym. So it will just take some time to hit that 93kg no-longer-obese-but-overweight point.
On a more positive note (but slightly sad), I had to stop wearing my wedding ring yesterday - it was too loose. And I had it enlarged 3 years ago. I’ll wait till I have stopped dropping weight before I get it resized, though. I just miss it, though my wife decided that I was about to try my luck with my semi-svelte body and the ring would be a hindrance.
Oh, and our local pubs landlady told my wife that I had to get some smaller, better fitting clothes, too. I just prefer to cinch my belt tighter and make do.
I’ve been in and out of these threads, much like my efforts, but now I’m happy to join in, minus 32# from the start of March. I’m into another size, I can run now, not far or long mind you, but I can, and fast (6.8mph) too, which ain’t bad for a dude my size. It’s been a mix of fixing the REALLY poor eating habits of many public safety personnel, daily exercise (started with walking, just ramped up from there). Weight training and supplements. The fat is dropping off my gut, and there’s definition in my arms, legs and shoulders for the first time in years if ever. I’m getting that v-shape to my back and torso. I’m excited and subscribing to this thread. You know when you hear those dipwads on TV say “if I can do it, anyone can?” well, I feel like one of those dipwads. I was NOT fitness oriented at all, until, of course, I started getting fit.
The paperwork I got on radiation treatment today said to NOT try to lose weight during the treatment. I don’t want to stop what I’m doing…it’s working! I don’t want to go back to the way I was! We’re going to talk to the surgeon tomorrow, and see if there’s a way I can maintain where I am, or do I have to gain weight so my body can better tolerate the treatments and fight the cancer.
Stupid cancer. I told Ivylad I’m canceling it. :mad:
Hey Ivylass, you can maintain what you’ve done w/o violating those guidelines. And I would think that keeping up your fitness routine would help you feel a little more in control during a fairly uncontrollable time in your life.
As for me, I’m logging calories again. When I log, I maintain just fine. When I don’t, I get scope creep aka scale creep aka my clothes don’t fit so well.
) Been watching the threads for six months or so, and not posting, because I kept thinking “I’ll start, and then not keep going, and then I’ll feel bad about starting yet another thing and not keeping up on it, and then I’ll eat, and yadda yadda yadda…”