You’re supposed to eat your full amount of points every day. If you don’t, you will not lose as your body will go into starvation mode.
Bibliocat looks fantastic at her current weight.
Why, thank you. You look wonderful, too.
The little Weird-North kidlet is quite the charmer, too. Even with the drool.
Hey! After gastric bypass surgery, I hit the “Centure mark.” Which makes me very happy. I know that people say it’s the “easy way out” but it was VERY difficult for me to suffer through surgery and have these changes made to my body. And it’s still difficult for em to conform to what I need to do to comply with my new body. So I’m proud of myself for being brave, for doing what I NEEDED to do, for hanging in there…I’m doing great. I hit the century mark…more than 100 pounds lost. I feel NORMAL again. I don’t know if anyone else will understand this word that way I do…I’m NORMAL!!!
I fit in a plane seat…I fit in my desk chair. I’m around 180 pounds, which puts me 50 overweight, but still in the NORMAL range. I’m lucky in that I carry my weight in my bust and hips so I just look overly curvy…like a regular girl, but exaggerated…rather than simply “fat.” I’m SO happy. This was a GREAT decision for me!!!
L
Yeah, I don’t know what’s scarier or more difficult: trying to change your diet and add exercise when you’re extremely overweight and movement is really hard or even hurts, or facing major surgery with all its attendant risks. Good for you for succeeding in the path you chose!
Which reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask, especially those of you who’ve already lost a lot of weight: How’s the skin situation? I see these shows on Discovery Health about people who’ve lost a lot of weight and have “body lifts” done to remove all the leftover skin that never sprung back. One of them was titled, “A Trash Can Full of Skin” or something like that – ewwww.
Anyway, I’m not quite that extreme, but I do have quite a belly (thank Og it hasn’t flopped over itself yet) and the attendant stretch marks/lines. I don’t think I’ll ever show my belly in public again, even when/if it’s flat, but do I need to worry about flabby skin? Mr. S has lost about 40 lbs over the last several years, just from doing more physical work. He went from 170 to 130, so now he’s pretty skinny (he’s 5’6" so about right), but he can grab a good handful of skin at his belt line and flop it around – looks really weird.
What the hell can you do about THAT, short of surgery?
Hi Scarlett!
I think I may be very lucky, although I’m also not finished losing weight yet. I was 35 years old when I had surgery. My FAIRLY young age, combined with a great genetic predisposition to looking and feeling young may mean that I won’t need surgery to correct excess skin.
It’s weird. The places where I would have expected to feel/look “saggy” are feeling rather taught and nice. But I’m getting some major “sag” in my arms. when I wave good bye I really WAVE good bye! Hee hee!!
I’m sort of cool with that. I mean, I know that I will either have surgery or learn to live witgh my saggy flaws. That’s life! When you gain and lose tons of weight yiou can assume you will have these problems and I don’t have such a complex about it.
Of course, if money were no object and I had tons of time off of work and i wasn’t scared to death of needles…
Yeah, fat chance. I think I’ll just learn to be happy with my jiggly arms. 
Honesly, I really AM happy with my jiggly arms. Ii’m now 40 pounds overweight instead of 160. I’m seriously ecstatic. I’m comfortable and happy. I simply can’t ccocmpla99ijn!
L
52 lbs lost - no saggy skin, but I’m only 35 and in excellent health. The “loose skin” issue was actually one of the compelling reasons that got me started on the weight loss train, I kept gaining more and more weight slowly and I wasn’t getting any younger. I wanted to start losing weight before saggy skin became a worrisome factor.
Sunday weigh in day - another week of working out and eating only whole foods (no cheating at all). 5th week at 140!
On the positive side, I spent hours shopping yesterday. For some reason J. Jill thinks I’m a size 8, worked out well for them, I bought 3 pairs of pants. I also bought an adorable black stretchy dress from Coldwater Creek - size small.
Next week - I’m pulling out all the stops. I am going to increase both duration and intensity of my workouts and keep calories at 1500. 139 will be mine.
Thanks, Ginger. I did realize that could turn into a problem, so I stopped being quite so “fat phobic” and started allowing myself more healthy fats in my diet. This seems to have done the trick as far as getting my daily points to where they should be, but I still only rarely use my flex points. As an online Weight Watcher I don’t go to the meetings, and sometimes it is hard to find answers on the website, so I hope you guys don’t mind my questions: Is it better to use the flex points? I also haven’t started counting my activity points. Is that bad?
Thanks for the encouragement, Scarlett and Glory. I finally started exercising a couple of weeks ago, and so far I haven’t missed a day. I’m steadily losing two pounds per week, and I’m very happy with my results so far.
I also discovered Boca Burgers today, the flame broiled kind. One patty, one slice of 2% american cheese, lettuce, and low-fat honey mustard on Weight Watcher’s whole wheat bread equals only 4 points. Yuuummmm! My first cheeseburger in months!
280/232/160
Oh, and I meant to say congrats, everyone! It sounds like everyone is doing wonderfully.
If you’re willing to eat the Boca Burgers - Morning Star Farms has a great line of vegetarian products. I cook with the “veggie crumbles” all the time, especially in tacos and pasta sauce. Nice way to add healthy, high protein to dishes without a lot of saturated fat. A whole package only has 480 calories - for me that makes 2 nights of pasta sauce for 2 people (120 calories a serving!).
http://www.kelloggs.com/cgi-bin/brandpages/product.pl?product=324&company=23
Though I’ve been lazy about this thread, I haven’t been lazy about the gym lately! I hit a plateau for a bit, having lost about 7-10 pounds, but now I’m back to losing again. I haven’t been weighing myself, because I’m weight training as well and the numbers probably won’t really show me much, but many of my size 12’s are getting on the very loose side of fitting, so hopefully I’ll need to go on a shopping spree soon! Also, I’m a lot firmer than I was before, especially in the arm area.
I have an easier time eating well at work than I do at home/on the weekends. I’m not addicted to sweets like a lot of people, so I can avoid the donuts and pastries people bring in to the office, but I have a hard time with fried stuff smothered in cheese (mmmmm…).
What is motivating all of you? I know some of you have posted your reasons, but I’d like to see more. For me, it’s an upcoming wedding - I saw pictures of myself at my sister’s wedding and didn’t like them very much. I DO NOT want to be a fat bride, not if I can help it. I’ll be dress shopping in the next few months, and though I probably wont’ be down to where I want to be, I’ll have a much better idea of what I’ll look like and what dress to get. It’ll also be easier to fit into the samples.
While my fiance and I probably won’t be having kids for another four years or so, I don’t want to start pregnancy already in the hole as far as my weight goes. I’d rather start out a normal weight and have some to lose when I give birth, than gain a lot and just have that much more to lose. Also, I want to be able to wear a bikini before this summer is over!! I’ve only had one summer my whole life where I was able to wear one (aside from very early childhood), and that was the summer after I had mono, so it’s really not a huge accomplishment.
When I started in July - my motivation was Christmas at my mom’s house. She hadn’t seen me really heavy and she’s one of those truly genetically gifted thin people. Because weight has never been an issue in her life, she has a hard time understanding how it can be really hard to lose weight and keep weight off. I know she would love me no matter what, but I just didn’t want to see that disappointment and have her try to talk around my weight during the entire visit.
Now that Christmas has passed, my current motivation is a big conference I have in June with a bunch of people who haven’t seen me since last June (192 lbs). After that, I’ll use my birthday (Aug 14) as a motivator.
Other things that motivate me:
- Shopping, everything looks good (compared to a miserable shopping trip I had last year where I left the stores depressed because I could find nothing that fit and looked nice)
- Increased energy, just how good I feel all the time compared to how lousy/tired I felt when I was heavy and eating junk
- Before pictures (and trying on my “before” size 18 pants and watching them fall down)
- Comments from friends
Thanks for the link, Glory. I will definitely give those a try. I was thinking how good a crumbled Boca Burger would be to use in a recipe, but pre-crumbled is even better.
My motivation is just not having to think about my weight all the time. It is seriously always on my mind, and it affects my self esteem. When I was thin, I felt that others mainly judged me by my words and actions; when I got fat it felt like people judged me based on my size before they knew anything about me. I felt like I couldn’t do certain activities because of my size and what other people would think. When I ordered something fattening in a restaurant I felt ashamed. Just things like that. I was sick of having it on my mind from the time I hauled the weight out of bed until the time I got back into bed aching from carrying it around all day.
Plus, I put the weight on when my marriage started falling apart and now that I’m divorced I’m not drowning my sorrows in food anymore. I felt trapped before…as in, yes, I married him but he didn’t care about me so why should I have cared about myself? I finally realized that I didn’t have to stay in that situation, and I don’t have to stay in this body, either. It was just a process I went through. I had to teach myself that there are bigger joys in life than a comfy couch and good food. I am also working on not giving a damn what other people think of me, but hey. One thing at a time.
Sorry I rambled. Hope some of that made sense.
I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, when I was bumming about being stuck just above 210: thinking that It’s Just Not Fair that other people seem to be able to eat whatever they want and stay thin, while here I was working up a sweat every damn day and (seemingly) eating like a bird instead of the things I really like, and barely holding ground.
But then I realized that everybody has their cross to bear, something that they have to (or at least should) manage to keep their life on an even keel. There are alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, diabetics, people with kids, people with disabilities, people with money problems, and these things affect their daily choices. THat’s just life – you can’t always do whatever you want and get away with it.
I’m in the process of changing “thinking about my weight all the time” into “thinking about managing my weight all the time.” It’s a major mindset change – learning to choose the red sauce instead of the cream sauce for my pasta, being satisfied with a taste of some rich dessert instead of ordering a whole piece for myself, reminding myself that the endorphins from exercise (as well as the knowledge that I’m doing something good for myself) will make me feel better than a nap or a TV session when I’m tired/crabby/whatever.
I don’t care how crappy I look at the gym. I’m wearing tank tops and shorts now that show my (slightly) flabby upper arms and my tubby knees, and emphasize my belly, but they keep me comfortable and cool. But guess what? I’m there every day, doing my thing (and damn well, I might add), and I’m not there to pick up guys or show off or impress anyone except myself. I sort through the log file every day to find my log sheet, and I see the same logs for other people who did a week or two and then obviously quit, while I’m on my third log sheet.
Motivation? Just tired of buying bigger clothes all the time, and having nice stuff I don’t fit into anymore. I’m glad to say that I got beyond being ashamed of my weight, mostly because I have a fabulous husband who has always said (in response to my occasionaly self-pity) that if I were to try to lose weight, he would want it to be for myself and not for him. In the meantime he can’t seem to keep his hands off me. I think he deserves to have a wife with a nice body.
Food: I find it easier to stay on track during the week, because (1) I work at home and don’t have to try to find healthy things “on the outside” – good luck with that here in “Beer ‘n’ Fat Central” – and (2) I can easily eat the same small range of healthy thing, because then meal planning and cooking is one less thing to worry about when I’m busy, which is often. In exchange, I allow myself to “have fun” when we go somewhere on the weekend or whenever. On Saturday I had a fabulous vegetarian Indian buffet lunch, and I didn’t beat myself up over whether anything was “bad,” because I knew I’d been “good” all week. Life’s too short and all that.
Exactly! I am making healthy eating and exercising second nature (like eating comfort foods and vegging out used to be).
OK, how’s everybody doing? Glory, have you gotten off your plateau yet?
I was stuck at 206 for a week or so – I think maybe because it was a stressful week and I wasn’t as tight on my fod plan as I could have been. Again, no bingeing or anything like that, but just a bad balance, not enough veggies, etc. But on my last weighing this week I was at 204.5. Still heading for 200 by Memorial Day!
I had lunch with my mom today – first time she’s seen me since last fall. I wore my “new/old” smaller jeans to see if she’d notice – I hadn’t told her I was trying to lose. And she said I look “skinnier”! Then I told her how much I’ve lost in weight and inches – probably not enough to look thinner, but maybe I’m looking more toned. She poked me in my mooshy hip a few times to check, and agreed that yeah, I still had plenty of squoosh in me. 
Maybe I can motivate her by example. She’s been battling the scales for as long as I can remember (although there’s a photo of my dad carrying her in his arms at the beach, so she was skinny only a few years before I was born). She said some ladies she knows have mentioned Curves, and I told her that I’d checked it out, and while it was too much of a “granny” workout for me, it would probably be just right for her.
Unfortunately she has severe food issues, and food is pretty much the only thing she gets any pleasure out of at home. She’s told me that when she’s eating dinner, she’ll be mentally planning what she’s going to snack on AFTER dinner. And I don’t mean “Hmm, I should cut up some carrot and celery sticks in case I get hungry,” but “Should I have the chips and dip or the cookies?” 
And she also has severe money issues – she’s not poor by any means, but she just hates to spend “too much” on anything. More than $5 for lunch is “expensive” to her. She was shocked that our lunch bill today came to $27 (I was buying!), even though the food and service were excellent. Cheap wins over quality every time. So I don’t know if she’ll be willing to invest in the Curves membership to better herself – she might just think it’s a ripoff.
Congrats! You know, you should be really proud of yourself. A couple pounds can be a BIG deal. Especially if it was a difficlt couple of pounds for you and therefore a big moral victory. Actually, I’M proud of you, even though we’ve never met.
I’m a cheater. Or rather, I should repeat what I’ve said before that I’ve had gastric bypass surgery.
It’s Friday night and I’ve had a bit of rum, so I feel like bragging/gushing.
I’m not a terribly religious person, but GOD BLESS my surgeon.
I’ve lost more than 110 pounds in around 7 months. So here’s the big headline: I CAN MOVE AGAIN!!!
I’m all…well…normal and stuff. I’m very proud of myself because I really stuck to my regimen and was very good about making wise choices. I still DO have a choice…I can decide between grilled chicken breast and chocolate. And I’m doing awesome! I feel totally in control, which I know is partly due to my surgeon and partly due to just having my head straightened out before surgery.
Today I dragged a bunch of clothes out of the basement. I’m a misses size 12-14. So my very OLD size L and XL clothes fit me GREAT. See what I mean? NORMAL!!!
I’m comfortable in a seat at the movies! My desk chair has grown. My bathtub (and my bath towels as far as that’s concerned) have grown. A woman at CVS asked me if I had a fat sister!!! I’m serious!
Anyway, I know this may seem a bit like “cheating” since i had the advantage of having an insurance plan that would pay for me to have this advantage. But I assure you all, this was a terrifying and difficult decision anyway. When I awoke from surgery, my first words to the recovery room nurse were, “Did I die?” That’s some serious shit!
Anyway, I had this little self-improvement lecture a few months ago about figuring out what your probably, most likely future was if you remained on the same course. I really feel that I did a great thing by switching courses and realizing that i had to get off of the path I was on.
I feel totally in control of what I put in my mouth now, which is the MOST amazing feeling ever. I could get even SMALLER! I’m a 14 or so (maybe a woman’s 14, so a misses 16-18? I don’t know for sure…sizes are so weird and I have clothes in SO many sizes.) and that feels so NORMAL to me. I can ride roller coasters if I want! (which I do!). I can have sex with the lights on.
Now…who wants a photo?
Seriously, thanks for giving me a place to simply VENT and brag. It feels great!!!
Hey thanks for checking up on me I kind of obsess about my weight loss and I hate to keep bumping the thread by myself.
I have been plateauing at 140 for the past 6 weeks. After a disappointing Sunday weigh-in last week, I’ve decided to banish the scale until July. Worrying and obsessing about seeing 139 was making me slightly crazy - I wasn’t enjoying how good I looked now, I wasn’t happy with how much I had accomplished, I just wanted the scale to go down.
After 10 months of reduced caloric intake, my body has figured out it can get by on fewer calories, it is efficient. I guess that would be a good thing if I were starving in a wilderness someplace. I applaud my body’s “can do” attitude, but the timing is really sucky to leave me stuck at 140 lbs. I can’t restrict my calories anymore, I don’t want to teach my body it can get along on even LESS.
I’ve decided to up my calories to 2000 a day for the next couple of months, get my body used to maintaining at a higher level. I’m going to do everything exactly the same - super food goals, eating every 2 hours, working out - just increase the calories I consume. On July 15, exactly one year from the day I started, I’m going to try again to lose the last 5 lbs.
This will be a good thing for me, I do great in several ares but I have some serious issues with food still to resolve. I need to deal better with “dessert” portion size, handle temptation and initiate some cheat days. I heard a lot of advice about plateau busting and eating more seemed to be the most fun option, definitely going to try it for a bit, I need practice eating at a healthy maintenance level, anyway. I’m not going to GAIN weight on 2000 calories a day!
I’m still absolutely rock solid on diet - I’ve switched almost completely to whole foods, no processed food, no fast foods, no sugar - and no cravings for any of that stuff. I’m still menu planning, making healthy snacks in bulk on Sunday night, making special trips to the store - couldn’t be happier with my diet. Exercise - well, I’m working on it. I added a toning tape to my routine and since I worked out 5 days this week, I got a new skirt
I was invited to a big event in June, with people I haven’t seen since last June (192 lbs) and I have this huge temptation to increase cardio to 10 times a week and reduce calories to 1200 a day to look as thin as possible, but so far I am resisting. I look amazing RIGHT NOW - I need to enjoy and celebrate what I’ve done so far. Let’s see if I can stay off the scale on Sunday, that’s the real test.
In just 3 days school is over for the semester and I begin my weightloss plan. I’m not going to count or restrict food per se (at least, not at the beginning), but I’m going to try to cook mostly with vegetables, lean meats and whole grains, and make enough for dinner and lunch the next day. Most importantly, I’m going to try to bike a lot - for the first week I’ll be taking a bike path near my house to the end and back every day, roughly 12 kilometers.
I’m also setting my goal as a fairly unrealistic goal for the summer, rather than a final goal, as I don’t know what my situation will be, exactly, come September.
(175-180, I haven’t obtained an exact starting weight yet)/same/140
One step forward, two steps back.
On Saturday, one day (ONE DAY!!) before my two-month mark, my back went out. I was putting in a little fence around my iris bed to keep the dogs out. I had pounded in three or four sections of fence, these little cedar stake things that weight about half a pound each, and was carrying the next one over. Bent over about 10 degrees to put it in place, and CRICK! I wasn’t doing hardly anything, I swear!!
At least walking and moving around are possible, if painful when I strike just the right position. It’s not radiating down my leg as much, at least. I’ve been hitting the Ben-Gay, hot baths, aspirin, and heating pads in heavy rotation. Today was my first day back at my desk, and it wasn’t any picnic. I couldn’t take it for much more than an hour at a time.
Obviously any kind of weight training is out for the moment. Tomorrow if I’m feeling any better I might go in and try a little treadmill time, at a much reduced pace, of course. I don’t expect to get back on the weight machines for at least a week, and then at much reduced weights/reps until I can assess how much I’ve regressed.
Damn, damn, damn. This was the week my workload let up a bit, and I was going to start increasing my gym time. Damn. Oh, and damn.