Ok...Here goes!

My name is Cassie. I'm 19 years old. I'll be 20 at the end of the month. I live with my boyfriend in an adorable two bedroom townhouse. We've been together since December 19th, 2005. His name is Matt. I work at Starbucks Coffee.

I'm going to lose weight! I've had enough of being so fat. It's not going to work for me anymore. I've battled an eating disorder (anorexia) in the past, but I'm not going to fall into that trap again. I will lose this weight in a healthy manner and keep it off forever!

Stats:
HW: 215 lbs
CW: 214 lbs
LW: 150ish lbs (in 2003...not in a healthy way)
GW: 150 lbs (healthy and fit)

Plan:

• Eat around 2000 calories per day. If that doesn't seem to work, I'll cut from there, but I'd like to at least try it. My brain doesn't seem to think it's possible, but we'll see.
• Exercise. Start small and build up a regular routine. Ideally, I would do cardio 4-5 times per week for at least 30 minutes, a weight routine (2 times per week for lower and upper body), and pilates 3 or 4 days per week.
• Drink water. I used to drink water all the time. Lately I seem to like Starbucks and root beer floats better. Not such a great idea!
• Get into a daily routine. Wake up between 9am-10am. Go to bed between 11pm-12am. Routines are good for me. I like them. I need to stick to one.

Weight Goals:

September 1st: 206 pounds
October 1st: 197 pounds
Halloween: 188 pounds
Thanksgiving: 182 pounds
Christmas: 175 pounds
January 15th: 169 pounds (healthy weight!)
Valentines Day: 158 pounds
St. Patrick's Day: 150 pounds (GOAL!!!)

Good goals, just make sure you keep yourself out of old habits.

Way to go!

Hi Cassie,
Welcome! Good for you for wanting to lose weight in a healthy way--it's the only way to do it.

The bad thing about getting into a routine with eating and exercising is that your body will get used to it, and stop burning fat. So every few weeks you have to mix it up a bit. Your goals are very ambitious--so don't beat yourself up if you don't reach them on schedule.

Best of Luck!

Hi Cassie,

Welcome to the forum. The only word for this place is amazing!

Its wonderful you've decided to lose weight healthily. You are realistic in setting mini goals and they are attainable but ambitious. Don't be upset if you don't meet each of your mini-goals at the exact time you will like... because we can't completely control our bodies.

Good luck on your journey
~Jenna

Thanks! Yes the old habits are not ones I'd like to go back to. Honestly, I don't really think I could if I tried...I don't hate myself enough anymore. All in all I think that's a very good thing!

Oh, I didn't quite mean an eating an exercising routine, but more a "life" routine. i.e. getting up every morning around the same time, showering, getting around, eating breakfast, etc...when i'm doing similar things every day, I'm less likely to be waking up at 2pm and trying to figure out what times I should eat stuff. There's not temptation to skip breakfast if you get up at 9am. Although as a general rule, I eat mostly the same foods from week to week, I am going to check out a couple of cook books from the library and see if I can't mix things up a little.

About the schedule/goals. Those are more like a rough outline of how much I'd weigh if I lost 2 pounds per week. Going from past attempts at weight loss, I usually lost at least 2 pounds per week as long as I was sticking somewhere close to my eating plan. Any exercise was an added bonus. Of course there are parties, holidays, and just days when things don't go so well, but I'm prepared to deal with it!

Wouldn't it be convenient if we could?

Ok, so today has been a pretty good day. I got up at 4:30am and worked from 5am-11am. Not my idea of a fun Saturday, but I wasn't too tired. I got home and ended up taking a nap from 11:45am-3pm. That whole 3 hours of sleep thing caught up to me. Now I'm up and getting ready to go to the gym in a little bit. Today at the gym I plan to do 30 minutes on the treadmill (intervals of walking and jogging...I might die, lol) and then 15 minutes on the stationary bicycle. Fun.

Food so far...
NSA banana nut cake at SBUX...470 cals
Tapioca pudding...100 cals...
Frosted mini wheats (2 servings)...378 cals
4oz 2% milk...115 cals
Running total...1064 calories

I'm listening to Harry Potter books on tape today. I love it. The guy does all these voices and stuff. It's pretty fun. I'm not sure how it will go over at the gym though, we'll see.

I think many of us would be extremely happy if we could

As for cookbooks... EatingWell the magazine has a great series of cookbooks and next to each recipe is the nutrition information. I just got a new one EatingWell for two ... the recipes are designed for you to cook for one or two people. Its really good

Looks good so far!

I will have to keep an eye out for that! I was hoping that there will be some cookbooks with nutrition info...but that looks like "normal" food so my boyfriend will still eat it! He's picky...

Thanks hun!

Ok, so I had a decent day. I ended up having Taco Bell for dinner. But managed to stay under 2000 calories.

Except I haven't been counting the calories in watermelon. Which I suppose I should. It's just that calorie counting sites say the calories are so high. Is that really possible? It's 90% water...how can it hold so many calories?

Anyways, I did my workout. It was not so exciting, but I went so that's good. I have to work at 5:30am tomorrow. *sigh*

I guess I'll go listen to the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (on tape) and go to sleep! I've only got one chapter left on the first book.

Scratch what I said in your welcome about starting a diary. I see you already did. lol. I'm late in the game.

Sounds like you're doing good so far. Only advice I'd give is to try and stay away from the taco bell (it's my weakness too. lol), which I'm sure you know already. :]

The Harry Potter books are simply amazing. I've read all of them and as dorky as it sounds, I'm sad there's no more.

I've gotta run (gotta try and get some sleep) but I'll catch up with you later I'm sure. :]

Fast food is evil, yet I love it. I need to stop being so lazy and cook for a change! HP is great. I read the first few books when they came out, but I got sick of waiting for the series to finish and decided to wait til they were all out to read anymore. Now I'm going to listen to them instead which is fun. I love to read, but audio books pretty much rock...especially for Harry Potter. Thanks for coming by!

Ok, so work went ok. I have serious killer cramps and I might just die. Well probably not, but it still sucks. I had a small chocolate milk (nonfat...but with whipped cream). *sigh* Still, not too horrible. I'm going back to bed now. I'll wake up later, go workout, and hopefully do some laundry!

hahaha! I can definitely relate with you on everything you just said. :] Fast food is my absolute weakness. I haven't had it in almost 2 weeks though and it's amazing how different my body feels. I don't feel all sluggish and gloopy. :]

Cooking is actually pretty decent. I cooked chicken for the first time last night and I felt accomplished afterwards... grossed out, but accomplished. lol.

Hope yesterday went well for you and you're feeling better!

Ok...so the last few days have had their highs and lows. I had one horrible day, one great day, and the rest somewhere in the middle. I think I've lost a pound, which is encouraging.

Today I had a little bawling breakdown about being fat. It wasn't so much fun. I think what brought it on was the fact that my jeans (size 18..ugh) are super tight and look horrible, and that my boyfriend now weighs about 33-35 pounds less than I do. To make a long story short, he went from a desk job to a very active job in a biscuit factory and the weights just sort of melted off of him. I believe his highest weight was 235ish. Now he weighs around 180lbs, which is 55 pounds if you do the math. This has been in about a 9 month stretch, with the first 30 pound coming of in the first 2-3 months...but yeah. Needless to say it doesn't help my own feelings about my weight. In fact if I never again knew how much he weighed I don't know if I'd mind. He just excitedly announces his weight and it doesn't help me out so much. Ok, so yeah. My head hurts like a bitch now from all that crying.

School starts a week from Monday. I'm a senior in college if I didn't mention that. Anyways, my schedule is going to change drastically so next week is kind of a practice week for me. Currently, I get up around noon-1pm unless I have to work earlier. I tend to go to bed around 2-3am. When school starts, I will be getting up at 6am on Monday's and Wednesdays, and the rest of the week, I will likely be working at 5:00am (which means a 4:30am wakeup call). This is a huge change, so next week I'm going to try and go to bed every night around 10pm, get up by 8am, and just generally get in a routine.

I also need to go to the gym and test out the classes I want to take when school starts. I'm planning on doing Pilates/Yoga (it's a mix of the two) and Water Pilates. I used to take pilates and I loved it, so I think this should be fun. And once I'm in the gym, I'm likely to do cardio and weights and stuff as well.

Congrats on losing the pound! Hey, don't worry about weighing more than your boyfriend. I think I've weighed more than just about every boyfriend I've ever had! lol I've never weighed less than my husband. The closest I've come is maybe within 20lbs of him. At my fattest, I weighed 100lbs more than he did. And amazingly enough, he still found me attractive. So unless your bf gives you shit about it, don't worry. And if he does give you crap, dump his ass!!