Greetings, all. I'm new here and feeling a bit shy, but hoping this can be a motivational tool for me to lose the weight I need to lose.

Because I'm morbidly obese. I have been for a long, long time. In high school, I went to a weight loss camp and managed to lose twenty pounds while there, and twenty pounds after. So I know I'm capable of losing weight. The problem is that it's nearly impossible for me to keep my eye on the prize--that is to say, not being ridiculously overweight.

As of today, I weigh 287 pounds--that's close to my all-time high of 293. I feel ashamed and helpless. Worse than the way my body works, I'm ashamed of my behaviors and the way I constantly jump on food as though I were a starving woman. I wish I understood why I do this, why I behave as though food were a treasure that I must acquire at all costs and then stuff into my body. I spend far too much money on food, and I'd like that to stop too.

Most of all, I don't want to be unable to stand when I'm seventy years old. I don't want to lose all my mobility and self-determination just because I couldn't control my behaviors now. I want the good health and strength I've been blessed with so far to continue into my old age.

So I'm going to try and keep this diary every day. It's going to be hard--I'm bad at follow-through. But I'm going to take one day at a time and try to be consistent. What I'm going to try and do here that's scariest is to write down everything I eat and charge myself not to lie to make myself look better. I've seen how fantastically supportive everyone here is, and I know there's no reason not to be honest with you and with myself.

My present weight loss goal is to be at 275 pounds on May 1. That may be a little optimistic--slightly more than a pound a week--but it gives me a concrete goal and a deadline to strive for.

But to begin the record--I haven't had a very good day today, eating-wise. I had pizza for both breakfast and lunch, a snack of Yoplait yoghurt, and at least a cup of coffee with milk and sugar.

I threw out the leftover pizza, though, when I thought about how bad it tasted (it was really inferior pizza) and how much I would prefer losing a bit of weight to continuing to stuff that garbage in my mouth.

So my dinner is going to be a corn chowder and a small quesadilla with black beans and cheese. It's not fantastically healthy fare, but it's better than more of that frickin' pizza. I also want to have some fresh pineapple and maybe some grapefruit before the day ends.

And, damn it, I'm going to do at least fifteen minutes on my elliptical machine this evening. It's time I got back to doing things that make me feel good.

Welcome to your diary - and to your healthier life! You did the right thing joining this Weight Loss Forum - it is filled with people who can relate, people who are succeeding at changing their own lives, and people who can offer valuable advice! And pats on the shoulder, too

So now you have confronted the scale, and you know exactly where you are at. You even know where you want to be. I like your first goal, and I think you can do it! YOU NEED A PLAN to reach your goal. Have you checked out any of the free health/calorie counter places on line? Pretty simple to figure out how many you are currently eating vs. how many you need to eat to lose weight.

YOU CAN DO THIS!

Cheering you on from
ABBA

Thanks, ABBA, for the support. I'm not great at counting calories. My plan at present is to begin by exercising at least every other day and changing my mindless snacking to mindful snacking, as well as paying much more attention to serving sizes.

As I'm on already, and winding down for the evening, I may as well report on how my plans for the rest of the day went. I worked out for twenty minutes on the elliptical machine at a moderate pace (I was embarrassed at how I felt the beginnings of fatigue after only four minutes!). I then had some baby carrots as a snack. For dinner, I had corn chowder (which was made with evaporated whole milk rather than half and half--a baby step in the right direction) and a small quesadilla with non-fat refried black beans, a smidge of salsa, and an ounce of cheddar. I finished up with some beautiful fruit salad of pineapple, grapefruit and kiwi.

I have to admit, I was feeling a little panicked and obsessed as the evening wore on and nothing more went into my mouth. Just the idea that I couldn't shove buttery popcorn and chocolate caramel tarts or whatnot into my mouth was tremendously stressful. I started fantasizing about rice puddings and such.

I held firm, though, and am now having a cup of non-fat cocoa with half a marshmallow to soothe that empty feeling inside me and try to chill out. I know medicating myself with food isn't the best idea, but I think if I can find a way to "comfort" myself with less destructive snacks, that will be another step towards breaking free of this compulsion to devour unhealthy foods. A better step would be not needing to eat at all to feel calm, but...I'm not there yet.

Not a perfect evening, by any means. But it is progress.

Speaking of which, I've made myself a diet ticker! I've set my goal to be my May 1 goal of 275 lbs. because seeing that little ladybug trying to get all the way towards 130 lbs. would be too dispiriting. When I reach this goal (by May 1!), I'll re-design the ticker with my next manageable goal.

Welcome to the forum and for becoming a proud owner of a weight-loss-fitness journal!!

You CAN do this. Very good idea to throw out that pizza. We can ALL relate to how tempting it is to have kept eating it.

One pound a week is an extreme possiblity. Three pounds wouldn't even be too much to hope for. You're goal of 275 by May is EXTREMELY do-able in my opinion.

And we'll ALL help you to try and reach it, I promise. There's more motivation in here than at a Richard Simons workout session.

Again, welcome to the boards and welcome to the start of a new, healthier and more fulfilling life!

This sounds so great! Trust me, when I first started this lifestyle change three years ago, it was harder then heck to forego scavanging in the freezer for a gallon of ice cream that I could eat half of. As the days go by, and time goes on it just gets easier to follow that little voice in your head that says 'No' and 'You know better'. After a while, that little part of your concious takes center stage and it's not so hard to eat fruit instead of sweets anymore.

Truth be told, I use to down a whole pint of Ben and Jerry's in one sitting, and now I can't even down a serving size...thankfully. LOL.

Just keep doing what you're doing, hon. It certianly sounds like you're taking a step in the right direction in terms of starting off slow. Baby steps is the best way. Diving in head first would be crazy, and not to mention frustrating.

Good luck with this!

Thank you, Invariant, for all the encouragement. The baby steps are a bit maddening because of course I want results NOW, but I know this is a better way so that I don't utterly crash and burn later, which would be all too easy to do (and certainly I've done it many times before).

I think the best way, though, is probably to let my excessive ardor for results manifest in exercise rather than in measuring out grapes or whatever.

I don't know. I'm feeling kind of scared by all this, yet at the same time amazed to see all these fabulous ticker counters that have gone down over a hundred pounds! This is possible--other people can do it, and if so, why not me?

And, since I'm on, breakfast was two small turkey sausage patties, a grapefruit with a bit of agave nectar on it, and half a gooseberry cranberry orange muffin toasted with a scrape of butter. I'm hoping to do another twenty minutes on the elliptical machine today and to keep on track with not randomly stuffing sweets in my mouth! I'll weigh myself again at the end of the day because I think keeping track daily is going to be really good for me.

End of the second day. *deep breath*

I did work out on the elliptical today for another twenty minutes.

I had some coleslaw, fruit, and a small portion of lean ham with a tablespoon of barbecue sauce on it for lunch. I had two snacks in the afternoon--two crackers thinly spread with soynut butter and later a little less than a quarter cup of cashews.

For dinner, I made some polenta to soothe the really fierce carb cravings I'd been having. Does anyone have a way to get past the sheer, overwhelming desire for empty carbs? I've been fantasizing about polenta and pasta and potatoes and breads and bread puddings and rice puddings and...oh, every kind of terrible thing. In any event, I only ate half the polenta I made, which wasn't too much. It was a reasonable portion. On top of it I had some spinach and shrimp.

Finally, I made myself a cup of coffee with a little (much less than usual) sugar and some skim milk. It's...well, I'm sure I'll get used to it. I shall have nothing else before bed (I hope).

I hesitated, while packing my lunch for tomorrow, on whether to include my usual single chocolate. I finally decided to put it in because it forms such a central part of my lunch-packing experience (which generally only happens twice a week), and I knew I would feel very deprived without it.

Still 287 on the scales, but I shall hope for better things. I'm actually...I don't know how I feel about this. I feel at once frantic at the thought of not being able to eat all that I want (and don't want, very often), and yet I also feel as though I'm not dieting nearly strictly enough to see significant results. Yet I feel that if I restricted my food any more than I have done, I'd be a basket case inside a week. Besides, I really am consuming far fewer calories than I normally would, as well as exercising far more. Since I haven't been gaining weight, doing this ought surely to make me lose weight. But then why do I feel so guilty over (relatively) small things like the mayonnaise in the coleslaw or the teaspoon of butter in the polenta?

You're restricting plenty; I'd guess you could probably eat more if you counted calories. (It's hard to tell what calorie level you're at just by reading descriptions.) I lost my first 25 pounds just "eating less" - I was having foot problems that kept me from doing any exercise.

The guilt you feel is emotional guilt, not logical guilt. You shouldn't expect it to be susceptible to logical analysis. At some point, you'll probably want to figure out the emotional reasons behind your food choices, but there's no need to go there now.

I'm not a binge eater, so something that's always worked well for me was to have a small portion of whatever I'm craving, but to make sure it's really good quality. Knowing that if I really want something badly enough, I can *always* choose to have some makes it a lot easier to decide if I *really* want it or if I'd just as soon pass. So I keep the chocolate I like best around, and if I really want chocolate, I'll have a square.

As far as carb cravings, the best thing for me for that is lots and lots of lean protein, and relatively few carbs other than fruits and veggies. Not necessarily low-carb (because you can get plenty of carbs in fruits and veggies, if you're so inclined), but a lot lower than I'd have eaten when I was gaining or maintaining. Not necessarily something that works for everyone, but I find it works for me.

Oh, and it took me forever after I started eating better (and less) to see any movement on the scale. Like 3 or 4 weeks. Some people see a really fast initial loss, but not me. So if that happens to you, hang in there. The scale will move eventually.

For breakfast, I had a smoothie with protein powder, pineapple, kiwi, and spinach. The spinach was kind of horrible—I think I'd better not try it again. At mid-morning, I had four crackers and a bit of roasted soynut butter. For lunch, there were non-fat refried black beans, brown rice, about a tablespoon of grated cheddar, salsa, some little bit of pineapple, a mini-muffin, a small coffee with about a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of milk, and a passion fruit chocopod (YUM—on looking at the nutritional information, I was very happy to see that my chocopod had only fifty calories, which it was well worth in terms of making me feel normal and not deprived).

I had a thai peanut butter granola bar on the way home (high fat, but it was the last of them, happily) and in the early evening, a 100-calorie mini-bag of popcorn with 30 calories worth of POM light tea.

Quite late, I had my supper, a little bit of chicken and spinach curry over some brown rice and quinoa, with a romaine salad with some light caesar dressing. I'm finishing up the night in good style with a plain baked banana and a cup of coffee (with fat-free half-and-half and a bit of sugar).

It's been much easier today not to obsess over food—largely because I was out and about and had other things to think about, I suspect, rather than being home with this everlasting Dickens novel and nothing else at all. I didn't get to the elliptical machine, but I did walk to and from my car rather than taking the shuttle, which is about ten minutes each way and is something, at any rate. Scale said 287.4 today, which is a little disheartening, but I know that if I keep doing the right thing, it must and shall reflect that sooner or later. I just have to not lose heart.

Allyphoe, thanks so much for all your good advice. The reason I don't count calories is that I'm a frequent and rather improvisational cook, so that I'd have to keep a graphing calculator in the kitchen to try and see what it all added up to!

You may be right that my guilt is mainly emotional. But when I try to think of what my childhood experience of dieting was—well, one may well say that it was wretched. My stepmother was a very bad cook with a penchant for severe diets that involved a lot of plain brown rice and microwaved frozen vegetables and boneless skinless chicken breasts cooked in the microwave. And anything like chocolate or sugary or fatty at all was absolutely anathema during this hideous diet. I used to sneak candy with my allowance, eat my friends' bagels at lunch, do anything to get something good to eat. So I have this feeling that if I'm eating a bit of chocolate at lunch and putting some sugar in my coffee, then I'm not "really" dieting, even though I am reducing my caloric intake substantially.

I don't know what the solution to this is, or how I'll ever feel like I'm doing right if I'm not martyring myself with a few cold shrimp for lunch and one of those everlasting golden delicious apples that I can't even bear to look at—I'll eat a crisp pippin, a macintosh, a gala, a braeburn, but don't ever show me a golden delicious! I had to eat them every day.

No wonder dieting freaks me out.

Breakfast—Grapefruit with a bit of agave nectar, one small turkey sausage, half a muffin with a scrape of butter
Morning snack—half a serving of pineapple, grapefruit, and kiwi; Yoplait light yoghurt
Lunch—Romaine salad and light Caesar dressing, non-fat refried black beans and brown rice with salsa
Evening snack—chocolate-covered almonds (140 calories)
Supper—Sauerkraut and fresh cabbage with lean pork and a smidge of smoked sausage

I did twenty minutes on the elliptical machine today, which was good. NPR is a lovely accompaniment.

Best of all, I've seen progress! Dropped two pounds on the scale. It may be water weight, of course, but it's something that was there that now isn't—hurrah!

It's good, too, because I got two boxes of chocolates in the mail today—one a gift, one that I'd ordered before I got serious about dieting. But I'm determined to keep moving towards my goal, and so I haven't touched them. I will eat them, but they will be eaten slowly in very small portions and not all in a binge!

Breakfast—oatmeal cooked in low-fat milk with apricot sauce
Snack—Clif Nectar Bar (160 calories)
Lunch—Curried chicken and spinach with quinoa and brown rice, fresh pineapple, a mini-muffin, one ounce of Pont-Eveque cheese, a banana chocopod, 2 cups of coffee with half-and-half and sugar
Snack—100-calorie bag of popcorn, 30 calories of POM light tea
Dinner—Sauerkraut and cabbage with lean pork and a bit of smoked sausage, fresh cantaloupe
Snack—100-calorie ice cream sandwich

I definitely slipped a bit at lunch with the coffee—I need to buy a carton of fat-free half-and-half and take it into the department lounge, because I absolutely cannot pass up half-and-half for my coffee over milk, if it's around. So I'll do that on Friday.

I did, however, resist a much worse temptation in the form of an evil box of fresh doughnuts that were brought in for my afternoon seminar. Despite being pretty hungry (I only had one snack with me for the day, which was a mistake—if I'm going to be out from nine to six, I need two snacks), I did not touch a single crumb of doughnut.

Also did twenty minutes on the elliptical machine this evening, something that's usually very hard for me after a full day out and about, so I was really proud of this.

I can make this work, and I will.

Hey there and welcome!

You are so bravo for doing this! And I know you will succed, because you cannot fail with that amount of determination. Putting only your mini-gal on the tracker might be a good idea, I think I am going to change mine to that too. And what a cute lady-bug :-)

Just keep your head high and keep us updated.


Much love.

Breakfast—one cup coffee with a bit of sugar and fat-free half-and-half, quinoa cooked with low-fat milk and apricot sauce, grapefruit with a bit of agave nectar
Snack—one carrot and two crackers with a smear of devilled ham on each
Lunch—salade nicoise with spinach instead of lettuce and fresh cantaloupe
Dinner—Sauerkraut and cabbage with lean pork and a bit of smoked sausage, roasted asparagus, fresh blueberries
Snack—Coffee with some sugar and fat-free half-and-half, two chocolates

Another twenty minutes on the elliptical today, and I feel like I pushed myself harder than usual. I did three high-intensity intervals of two minutes each, and believe me, those worked up a sweat!

My lunch was a little bit high-fat, but I needed a meal that would really fill and satisfy me, as I've been feeling hunger in varying degrees both yesterday and today. And I wanted to get some green stuff and protein in at the same time. Anyway, none of it was bad fat, which is something.

Thanks, skimmilk, for the kind words. It's good to know I seem determined to someone, since I sure don't feel it all the time. It's funny—I've been at the university for nearly the last eight years straight, getting degrees, making goals and reaching them, and yet I still think of myself as someone who's bad about sticking to things and following through.

I had some inspiration today, though—I was looking at some Lilly Pulitzer dresses and thinking, for the first time in many years, "I could fit into one of those someday." I need to remember that when it gets hard to keep up with diet and exercise.

Breakfast—Yoplait light yoghurt and one slice whole-grain toast with a scrape of butter
Snack—Special K Bar (90 calories)
Snack—Cup of coffee with sugar and fat-free half-and-half
Dinner—one small crab cake, large helping pasta alfredo with broccoli and scallops, mixed-green salad with full-fat Italian dressing, one butter cookie, two glasses lemonade
Snack—half a serving of blueberries

I ended up having a cup of low-fat cocoa with half a marshmallow last night before bed because I just felt too hungry/empty to get to sleep.

Did twenty minutes on the elliptical before going to school.

Tonight's splurge was, I think, not too detrimental since I'd planned for it, knowing I was eating at a friend's house and would just eat whatever she cooked. I did eschew the garlic bread though, and limit myself to one cookie. It was amazing how full I felt, too, just after eating my pasta. My stomach has definitely gotten used to smaller meals! I just hope this doesn't slow me up at all. Ideally, I'd like to be down another pound when I weigh in tomorrow, even though I know two pounds in a week is nothing to sneeze at!

hun we are in the same boat. I weighed 320 last Christmas, not 2007 Christmas, but 2006 and am now at 283.8 pounds. I was 292.2 January third, but I started reading this book about food addicts and ways of overcoming my increasing appetite for things that were not so great. Its all in my mind. I am not really hungry. I just eat when I am "mouth hungry", not "stomach hungry" and I eat out of boredom, procrastination, depresssion. And I feel disgusted when I binge, which I haven't done much of since reading the book half way. Its a training manual on how to stop feeling and eating the way I do ...and why I do it... I still eat chocolate in small quantities once or twice a week ...but I am feeling better about my body and losing weight ..
and YOU CAN DO IT TOO!!
Try not to feel disgusted in yourself, because that can turn into a downfall. Stick with this. There is so much support on this forum. I don't know where I would be with out it. They all hold me accountable...they are such beautiful people.

I plan to be 275 by the Beginning or End of May. May is my goal, but I know I might not make 275, but I am not going to die over it or stop dieting and thinning myself. I am going to keep trecking, just like you. Don't let yourself get down when you don't meet a goal. And just remember you are human. Sometimes we mess up, but just get back on that wagon and keep jumping onto that exercise machine. I don't have a gym or machine. I have a weight bench and managed to lose nine pounds by February 14th on the VDAY Challenge. Look out for the challenges and try not to weigh yourself everyday ... maybe once or twice during the week I do it ...just to keep my head up... it might take a couple weeks for signs of weight loss to show up, its not going to be all fast and furious ... remember, take one day or week at a time. I take one week at a time because I am on a challenge, right now I weigh in on Tuesdays... I actually gained some of that nine pounds back, but I lose it again and plan to lose more ... now its time for me to conquer over my demons .. I am not so obsessed with food .. I have cut out a lot ...
you will too ..it takes time to change your lifestyle, but remember you have already taken steps and be proud of yourself. When I first started losing weight again this June I felt disgusting .. I mean it hurt so bad to just walk... now its not too bad, my ankles and feet hurt because of the pressure of my body on top of them, but thats more reason to keep walking, so some day ..it doesn't hurt to walk, or go out into the open and do my walking ..

the point is to become a healthy you and I believe you can do it .. you are cutting the way you should ... cut the food out slowly ..very slowly ...very very slowly ..that way it will be permanently cut ..and sometimes you will have set backs ...but always remember we are here and you can do this, we believe in you ... and I am doing it ...why can't you!

We can do it together ...
I weigh about the same as you and my goal is 275 by May ... thats .5 pounds a week for me ..and if I only get down to 279... I will still be pleased ..because that is still less pounds that before ... no worries ...

Keep going girl ..
You will reach your goal

always
natalie jo
I will stop in your diary as much as I can ...