Hi. My name is Mayu and I'm 18 years old. Here's some basic information:

I'm 18 years old, 170 lbs exactly this morning and I want to reach 130 for now.

I didn't realize I had gotten overweight before this week actually. I was being measured for my prom dress - and boy oh boy, I tell you. It was hard to go home not being able to fit the dress I wanted. And then stepping on the scale seeing those whooping 170 pounds at 5'7"? Not even 5'7" actually, more like 5'6.75"

I don't know what has caused my weight gain. Or, of course I've eaten too much and exercised to little. I guess I've just been eating like I did when I was a kid - not noticing that school and work left me too tired to exercise and my metabolism, well, not as fast as it used to be when I was growing!

But so be it, I said. I'm now motivated to do something about it. Out with the shy girl, who's always hiding in big black sweat shirts and sweat pants! Out with the Kinder Maxi and subway sandwiches! Out with the embarrassed girl who's too self concious to shower with her boyfriend!

I'm going to lose the weight I want, and I'm going to enjoy every second of losing weight. I want to be healthy and fit and I want to be able to maintain the weight I reach. I'm gonna slide into a beautiful promdress and I'll feel just as beautiful as all the other girls.

So that's what I'm going to do!

But I need help. I want to lose around 1.5-2.5 lbs a week. I'm in a very bad shape, and I don't want to start out with too much too soon, because then we all know how it'll go. I was thinking of doing a low-carb (not super low-carb like Atkin's but around 50-80 g of carbs a day) and combine it with some calorie shifting. But will the small amount of carbs make me too tired to exercise?

I give exercise and stamina a higher priority than weightloss here in the beginning. I think it would be okay to not lose that much the first month but learn to stick to a healthy eating pattern and - most importantly - start and continue to exercise on a regurlar basis.

Quite a while ago I bought some good running shoes but I never got to use them; Now I want to use them, and I think I'm gonna try the Couch-to-5k running program but is there anything I else I should do? I don't have enough money to get a gym membership right now, and I don't own any fitness equipments at all - except for a jumping rope with a jump-counter. Maybe I'll just start out with the running program for a couple of weeks and then see how it goes.

I have fallbreak this upcoming week, and I think it's a great time to start changing my lifestyle; now I have an entire week to figure things out and won't be interrupted by school things in the beginning.

Wish me luck!

Yesterday went fine exercisewise. Not so good foodwise.

I managed to pull myself together, put on my running shoes and then I went out. I walked for 2 minutes, jogged for 6 minutes, walked 4 minutes, jogged 5 minutes and walked the last bit home - around 3 minutes.
I also got some stretching done right after. I hadn't really planned it, but I figured, since my brother had taken over the bathroom I could just as well try some stretching. Didn't stretch that much since it hurt like a motherfucker and I didn't really knew what stretches to do. Oh well.

Foodwise yesterday, uhm, not so good.

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs of 4 eggwhites, 1 yolk, 100 g of mixed beans and a glass of milk (250 calories)
Lunch: Thai-wok-veggies and 150 g of mixed beans fryed with tomatosauce and a bit of fullfat cream (ate only half, wasn't hungry) (150 calories)
Snacks: Apple, glass of milk, can of tuna, very sugary cereal, two bisquits (580 calories)
Dinner: A portion of rice with mushroomsauce leftover from yesterday (400 calories)
Snack: 2 pieces of Halloween Cake, 2 glasses of cocomilk (at least 700 calories)

TOTAL: 2080 calories

And that's around 300 calories more than I need. I'm born with a thyorid disease, but it's not so serious that I need medication for it (also, the medication I was on for a few months gave me horrible sideeffects, so I decided it wasn't worth it) but my metabolism for a normal day with normal activity is on 1650 calories and my BMR is measured to around 1100. I should be burning 2100 calories on a normal day, but I just don't.

My problem is my snacking, I know that. But I have no idea how to end it! If I want to lose weight I really can't eat more than 1000 calories a day and it's hard to eat 6 meals a day with only 1000-1200 calories to spend. What do I do? I'm a part-time vegetarian as in, I normally don't eat meat except fish, but I'm not religious about it, so if I want duck on Christmas then I eat it. I'm just not that big a fan of meat, I guess that's around how far my vegetarianism goes.

Also, yesterday an other bad thing happened. I smoked 5 cigarettes after not smoking for around 3 days (I used to smoke 20-30 a day) and right now I'm smoking one more. I have one left and I guess I'll smoke it and then that's IT. Done with those ciggies!

I also think I'm about to get the flu. I've been having this weird feeling in my body and felt a bit weak, dizzy and flu-ish for the last couple of days. Oh well. I've decided that my weekly weigh-in will be at Friday mornings. I really hope the weight will go down soon. Even though I know I said that getting into the habit of exercising was more important, then I guess it was kind of a hopeful lie to myself. Losing weight IS important also right now. Guh. I feel kind of.. I don't know.
My appetite is gone. Completely gone. I'm usually near the death of starvation in the morning, but today? Not so much.

How do I deal with my snacking? Should I just stay away from the kitchen? I've tried it before, but the thing is, the familyroom is just besides the kitchen and when I sit in the familyroom I can always see the kitchen. My entire family is skinny. My mum insists on cake every night because she doesn't get fat from them, and there's really not that much support for me to get in this house. I cook all my meals myself because I don't fancy the meat they eat, but it's just so tough. I wish they'd stop buying all those unhealthy and diet-destroying cakes, pies, bisquits, chocolate bars, chips, candybags and shit. And I wish they would buy more organic fresh food (besides apples, apples are the only fresh fruit we have in this house)

Oh well. Guess I just gotta stay away from the food downstairs if I ever want to shed this weight. I just really want to be in the 150's at New Years Eve. I hope it's doable. Is it?

I want my ticker-signature thing to start moving. Well, we'll see in a few days when I weigh myself.

PS: I'm constipated AGAIN. Too much information, I know, but what the hell. I seriously have got to see a doctor about it, it's not like I'm not getting enough fibers. Maybe I'm not drinking enough water? All I drink during the day is like 3 glasses of water, the rest of my liquids are coffee and milk. Hmm.. Maybe today's goal should be to drink 2 L of water.

First of all, welcome to the forum! And congratulations in taking the first step to a healthier you

Quote:

My problem is my snacking, I know that. But I have no idea how to end it! If I want to lose weight I really can't eat more than 1000 calories a day and it's hard to eat 6 meals a day with only 1000-1200 calories to spend. What do I do? I'm a part-time vegetarian as in, I normally don't eat meat except fish, but I'm not religious about it, so if I want duck on Christmas then I eat it. I'm just not that big a fan of meat, I guess that's around how far my vegetarianism goes.

If you want to lose weight, you CAN eat more than 1000 calories a day. And you should not be eating 6 meals a day. You should be eating 3 meals a day, and having snacks in between those 3 meals. At 5'4 1/2" and starting out at 156, I'm supposed to be eating 3 (400 cal) meals and 2 (200-250 cal) snacks a day. This gets me in the range of 1,500-1,600 calories per day. However, I never make it up to that. And it may seem like, HOW on Earth can I eat such few caloies?! It's easy. All you have to do is count, and all you have to do is eat in moderation and maybe not have the whole serving or switch out something for a healthier option. Here is link to figure out how many calories you should be consuming to safely lose 1-2 pounds a week:

Daily calorie requirements for women men by calculating various body factors

If you check out my diary, you can see the types of food I eat and that I really still eat the things that I like - especially CARBS (I see you want to do a low carb diet... if you do it, good luck! I tried it for 2 weeks... worked out great but I was so not myself and gained it all right back once I stopped!)

The best thing you can do for yourself is exercise 5-6 days a week for at least a half hour! Do what you can, but any exercise is better than none at all!

I used to think that I could not go back - I was going to keep gaining weight and that was it. Well guess what - all it took was for me to exercise daily and watch my calories and I've already dropped a size in pants in just one month!!

It IS possible... you can do this!!

Stay dedicated... and good luck!
~ Sarah