Thumbs up, everbody!
Here's the first day of my weight loss diary. I'm 32 years old, 5 foot 5 inches (165 cm) and weigh 161 pounds (73 kg). My first goal is to lose 6 pounds of the 12 that I've gained during the last 6 months. I hope to achieve that in 4-6 weeks. My idea is to add some more exercise to my schedule and try to eat more regularly&less. My long term goal is to lose 28 pounds (13 kg) and reach 133 pounds (60kg) by January 2008.
I'm hoping this diary will keep me on track and maybe give me that extra boost to keep me going in the more difficult&less enthusiastic times ahead.
I found this forum in the internet while searching for some support for my weight loss dreams. This is day four of my quest, and although I still feel the beginner's enthousiasm, I felt kind of unorganized with everything and needed to put something on paper, for other people to see. I hope beeing accountable not only to myself but to everyone here also will help me reach my goals.
In the last episode: Three days of added exercise, twice an hours worth of nordic walking, once going to the gym, that's cardio&weight training. Quite happy with that. Less so with the eating.. It's proving really hard to eat often enough, even when I'm painfully aware of going on this "unsatisfiable hunger" mode, when I don't eat regularly.
Coming: Gym day today, it's raining outside anyway.. Managed to eat breakfast, let's see, how the rest of the day works out.
To be continued...

Sincerely yours,
Juliette

Hi there!
Time goes very slowly when your counting, doesn't it.. I have managed to stick to what I promised to myself for four days. Exercise every day, eating rationally. Couldn't sleep last night, that's my only worry for the moment.
I started going to the gym in November. Already in the beginning I noticed, that it was difficult to sleep the night after gym, even when I went there in the morning. Anyone with similar problems?
Otherwise I'm happy as can be. The scales in the gym told me that I had already lost a pound and a half, so I actually have hope of losing two this week.
I'm a little worried about how this all will work, when I go back to work next week. It's easy to work on weight-loss now when I have holiday and have all the time in the world. I'm trying to change my life for good, not to be on a diet, so I'll really try.
All the best to everyone,
Juliette

I find it the opposite - it's easier for me to stick to proper eating and such when I'm working and not when I'm off. If I'm at home, there's too much time for me to spend thinking about food. If I'm at work, I can eat only what I brought with me, and I tend to ignore the "bad" stuff better.

You're doing very well! Keep up the great work, Juliette!

Thanks for your encouragement, txturtlegirl! You are so right about the eating at work, what you don't have with you, you can't eat. It's only the exercising part that I need to worry about.. Will I have the time and energy to keep up this pace.. I hope so!
Juliette

Unbelievable, the sun is actually shining. After solid two months of rain and clouds! I'm definitely taking my exercise outside today.
It's also quite astonishing, how the weather affects my mood. Yesterday I didn't get almost anything done, today I'm full of energy. It was easy to wake up, I just jumped right out of my bed.
And it's about time too, this weekend is the end of my holiday, and there were so many things I wanted to do, that I still haven't touched. But now I have two days to go and with this energy I'm going to get something done before Monday.
So see you all tomorrow, this girl is literally out the door first and attacks the holiday chores after a good two hour walk!
I'm sending some of this sunshine out to everyone of you, in case it's not shining chez vous!
Juliette

Here we go, last free day.. Yesterdays sunshine gone, rain is back.. If this weather continues, it's not bad going back to work. There the days go by and I don't really pay attention to the weather anyway.
The thing is, I don't really feel like doing anything good and productive today. I have no urge to go to the gym, I couldn't care less about what I'm going to eat, don't want to do any of the things I had planned for today.
It's dark and gloomy outside and I've about the same feeling inside.

Juliette

Managed to do something...
Look down!

Hello there!
Haven't been here for a while, but I've kept busy.. Have managed to lose some weight, though. You can imagine how happy I am about that. I actually already see and feel the difference. Went shopping today to find a nicely fitted skirt. None of my old ones are the shape I'm now.
In my previous posts I didn't tell any details about my weight gain last year. I lost a lot of weight quickly about a year ago, after a very long period of keeping the same weight, about 67-68 kilos. The sudden weight loss left me really tired and I was in a really bad shape physically. In the summer I started to slowly get myself in shape, a lot of aerobic exercise and good healthy food, In the autumn I noticed that I had gained all the lost weight back. I felt better in myself than earlier, but didn't want to be "officially overweight". So in October I started to go to the gym regularly. And managed to gain even more weight. And I wasn't convinced that I had only gained muscle mass..
That's when I decided to lose some of the kilos, while still maintaining my good feeling and health. I figured, if I keep up the gym and add some more aerobic exercise and keep on eating healthily, some fat is bound to drop of me.
There's my history, now to the future.
My goal was to lose 3 kilos in the first couple of weeks and here I am, 2.4 kilos down in 14 days. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!
Good work, all of us here! Keep it up!

Hi,
No great steps forward here, just pretty healthy eating and some exercise the last two days. Not really thrilled and expecting huge success, but I'm done more good than bad things.
I thought maybe I should try to weigh myself every Monday morning. That way there'd be a good steady goal, especially for the weekend, so it would bring the extra motivation to think about what I put in my mouth and how much I exercise when I have free days. Going to test this right away, so I'm eagerly preparing for my first Monday morning weigh-in.

Here are my Monday morning measurements:

Weight 70.5 kg
Body fat 29.5%
Muscle mass 33.4%
Body water 51.4%

Those can only get better..
Have a good week, everybody!

I have reached my first goal!!!
I have proved to myself that this is something I CAN do. You can perhaps imagine my feeling right now...
I have dropped 3 kgs off me in just three weeks.
I guess, this would be the time for setting my next goal.. Well, now, let me see... How about I try to shed the next three kilos in the next four weeks, that's by February 23rd. I'm considering here that this might get more difficult on the way, so setting my goal a little bit further in the future will give me the extra time I need to reach it, if it's impossible to keep up this speed.
Also, I'm going to set myself a smaller goal: my birthday is on February 10th, so I'd like to be able to comfortably wear a certain skirt in my birthday party. I can get into the skirt now, but it's about as far from comfort as ... Well, let's just say, I don't want to spend the big day in agony.. I reckon it'll take me about 1.5-2 kilos to be able to breath and eat in that skirt, so I'm hoping I'll get that far by then.
I've been really into loosing weight lately (not that you've seen much of my enthuasiasm on this diary, though). I got some advice from our health and fitness angel Steve that got me thinking seriously. (http://weight-loss.fitness.com/178339-post118.html). And so I've been thinking. So far I've tried to write down what I eat and how much energy I get daily (not something I've done before, believe it or not). With interesting results...
I've tried to figure out what I really want from this thing I'm doing. So, I've come up with a plan: 1. Get my weight down further three kilos to get my BMI to "healthy" range. (4-6 weeks starting now) After that 2. Have a go at trying to build some muscle (unknown period of time, I'm going to decide on that, when I see how it works out) and during that time use tape measure rather than scales to measure success. 3. Try to work out a way to maintain the body and/or weight I've reached (somewhere between 60 and 67 kilos)(for the rest of my life). Thanks, Steve, I'll get back to you soon..
So here I go, at the same time well on my way to better life and in the very beginning of the rest of my life. To be continued...

Monday morning once more! And here come the measurements:

Weight 69.7 kg
Body fat 29.2%
Muscle mass 33.5%
Body water 51.6%

Wishing everybody a very good week!

Wow, you´re doing so great! You´re such a good motivation!

Hello, fellow cyberspace aliens!
Days fly and it's difficult to have time to do everything. Thinking never stops, even when I'm not very active in my diary..
I'm finding it amazingly easy to eat quite low calories daily. I've added so much fruit and vegetables to my already quite vegetable rich menu that I feel that I'm eating all I want and getting only about 1300 calories a day. In fact, this has been so easy that I'm starting to wonder if this might become a problem later on. If you think I'm stupid worrying about this, be my guest, but some days I have to think what else I could eat to get my calories over 1000. And I feel happy, extatic, like I was on something else than carrots.. My only drug, cup of espresso coffee, I drink in the morning. I don't even crave that later in the day. I'm loosing weight steadily, happy about that of course, but that's only to be expected on my current activity level and calorie intake. So no immediate cause for euforia there.
It's been such a 180 degree turn from how I used to feel, and so sudden, that I can't help but wonder, what's really going on inside me???
Anybody gone through something similar? Ideas?
Or am I just going slightly mad?
Your
Juliette

Hi Juliette!
It´s great to see you´re doing so well and your positivity is fantastic! I don´t think you have any reason to worry about - thinking right is one of the keys to succesful weight loss and you have it!
I´ve noticed there are people who take the whole process of losing weight as a chance to improve their lives and face the challenges with a smile, focusing only to the positive. These people tend to lose weight faster because they are not so easily tempted and stay focused better. You seem to be one of these people
And of course there are people who mostly think of what they can´t have any more (that yummy pizza or a litre of ice-cream in one evening) and tend to give in more easily. That´s me. But I´ll try to improve
Just keep going the same way and you´ll be 60 kg-s in no time!