Posts by holsfisher

I want to feel motivated to straighten my hair, put on makeup and look in the mirror before I go out in the morning, instead of getting dressed, scraping my hair into a bun and avoiding the mirror... Or to feel like if I don't do these things I look good anyway. Just now, a lot of the time I feel like its kind of pointless to make that much effort when I'm still going to look chubby.

A lot of people have said that they want to wear fashionable clothes - I want to not wear fashionable clothes! Just now being really overweight steals all of my confidence, so I wear conventional simple clothes (not ultra fashionable, but well within the normal range). When I was thin, if I likes a purple pair of trousers and a green jumper, I'd wear it, and still feel good! My taste in clothing has calmed down but I'd still like to wear things that might stand out a little and not care if people look at me, instead of avoiding drawing attention.

I need knee replacement surgery, but I'm putting it off as long as possible - I'd like not to be in so much pain all of the time, and losing 40lbs would make a massive difference.

My bf tells me I look beautiful, and I know he genuinely means it, but I'd like to feel like it was true, and not something he thinks because he looks at me with rose-tinted glasses.

I never ever want my mother to tell me that I look pregnant, or to ask me if I'm sure I'm not again (even if I am wearing an unflatteringly puffy stomached outfit!).

Well done linz78!

Welcome new people - we all weight in every Wednesday, and to start with we all tried to set a minigoal each week too.

Heres my weigh in

LW - 177

TW - 174

This looks way better than it is - the week before last I was 174.5, so really I've lost half a pound, plus managed to deal with my water retention a bit better!

Goals for this week - lose 1lb, drink water when I'm at work (not just at home), and take my own lunch to work at least four days out of five.

Good luck everyone else!

I have to day, in the past when I was a lot thinner than I am now, I drank a lot of coffee - in my final year at secondary school (aged 18) I had a coffee machine with the water basin full and fresh coffee in ready for me to switch on when I woke up first thing each day! I must have been drinking a minimum of 15-20 mugs of coffee a day. It definately replaced breakfast for me, and snacks a lot of the time.

However, it has caused me problems with stained teeth (for quite a while I had to brush about 4 times a day to deal with it) and also contributed to me ending up in hospital with a stomach ulcer last year :S

Re dehydration - I beleive this misconception comes from the fact that PURE coffee beans would dehydrate you, but when you drink a cup of coffee the amount of water in it massively outweighs the dehydrating effect, so you still experience a net gain in fluid. On the other hand, some people find excessive caffeine encourages fluid retention.

LW - 174.5

TW - 177

Aargh!! I haven't had a good week, but I haven't had an extra 4500 calories!!!! I have really bad water retention this week - will need to buckle down for next week. I'm going to see U2 tomorrow - early start and a lot of standing so going to take it as a bit of a cheat day then get back on the wagon properly at the weekend.

Well done everyone else!

I think one of the reasons that exercising doesn't make people lose weight (I mean in practice - of course it does in theory) is that people have a poor understanding of how may calories you burn exercising and how many are in food. Until I started trying to lose weight I wouldn't have beleived that an hour on my exercise bike is only enough to burn off a mug of hot chocolate. People think, I've done tons of exercise, on - McDonalds/Subway with double cheese etc etc isn't going to do any harm - and if you are restricting calories and exercising, it can be pretty hard to stick to both. Its easy to tell yourself, I can have this treat, I'll make up for it in the gym...

That said, I did lose more weight when I used my exercise bike - but I also rewarded myself more often. Thats fine if you know how many calories you've had, but if I was only exercising for fitness I'm sure I'd end up eating back all the extra calories - as you should, otherwise you'd keep losing weight until you were underweight.

I do the same thing. I worry about my appearance, but don't actually try to improve it, because I think its my own fault I look bad (since I eat too much). I'm working on this just now - have invested in nice makeup, hair accessories etc to try and improve my self image without wasting money on new clothes that soon won't fit.

I think about food all the time when I'm dieting, regardless of whether I'm hungry or not. Even when I fall of the wagon I think about it all the time. Its strange - before I started trying to lose weight I didn't think about it and didn't snack very often, I just made really bad food choices (too much cream, cheese, not having time to cook so eating a big bag of doritos for dinner etc). Now I'm dieting though, the very fact that I'm consciously trying not to snack or overeat makes me think about snacking and having seconds and the more I think about it the more likely I am to give in. Because I think, well, thats a 60cal snack, why not just have one? And then eat something I didn't even want..... Which leaves a lot less margin for error each day, and I often end up at maintenance instead of with a deficit. Plus I go way overboard once I've gone over maintenance - I think, well if i'm going to have a bad day I might as well enjoy it, and end up having extra servings of everything even if I wouldn't have if I wasn't dieting at all.

I think its the nature of dieting - we're designed to eat and drink when we're hungry, once you start eating according to a plan your whole relationship with eating changes. It becomes a treat in some ways, even if it wasn't before, and you can't just have a sweet without thinking about it, so it becomes an issue every time someone offers you a polo.....

Hey guys, well done everyone who's posted so far!

SW: 177 (16 Jul 09)

TW: 175.5

Usually in my first week of eating really well I lose loads of waterweight, but this week I've eaten well calorie wise, but had way too much salt etc, so I'm hoping I'll have a big drop next week as all the water goes.

Mini goal - I have to go a funeral this week, on a small Island, so I'll be travelling from London to Glasgow, and then from there to the Island - its a lot of travelling and a lot of opportunities to end up just grabbing something unhealthy instead of eating something thats good for me. My minigoal therefore is to not eat crap just because I'm not at home.

Hey Guys!

I joined the group back when it started, but I've been on and off the wagon so much that I see theres loads of new people now, so hello, and I thought I should post as if its the first time I've posted...

I'm 5 feet tall exactly, and I weight 177 lbs. I originally weighed 190 when I joined cc, and got down to 166 last November (was feeling really good too). I took some time off for Christmas, and since then I've been back to yo-yoing. So this is a proper attempt to get back into it. I have a knee problem which I'll need knee replacements for eventually so I find it difficult exercise, and when my knees are bad I get into a bad cycle of comfort eating, then wieghing more puts more pressure on my knees so I comfort eat more.... and on and on. So I'm on a "feel good" wagon at the moment. I'm trying to get my wieght moving down again, eat lots of fruit, make more of an effort to look nice/do my hair etc so that I feel more positive and less like curling up on the sofa with a big bag of crisps. Taking my current weight as my starting weight since its so long since I logged my cals.

SW - 177

GW - 150 (130 in the long run, but 150 to start with)

Mini goal fo this week - to get my 5 a day fruit and veg, up my fibre intake and drink a lot of water.

PS great to see the people who have stuck with it are all doing so well!!

Welcome new people!

I'm having such a bad week this week that I'm skipping weigh in until next week. Too much bad food, to much salt, not enough water, I feel crappy.

My motivation is not very high at the moment.

Good luck everyone else!

Lol, btw, a double yoke doesn't mean that two chicks would have grown in the egg! The yolk is food for the chick, not the chick itself!

I'd count it as one egg - double yolk's occur when one yolk splits, so I don't think it'll have any more calories.

Original Post by verucavelveteen:

I just found out that I'm 4 weeks pregnant. I am completely floored! My boyfriend and I are very excited and welcoming of this in our lives, but it kind of puts a stitch in the whole weight loss program. :/

 Congratulations!!!

I know you are trying to stay cool, but a thick pair of tights always stop chaffage between my thighs, and I'm pretty sure I'm a lot bigger than you!

Urgh, this was a bad week.

LW - 171.5

TW - 174.5

I'm sure I haven't really put on a whole three pounds, but this week I was terrible. It was my birthday, so I went out for dinner at an incredible restaurant, and I've eaten take away food at least twice.... And lots of cheese.....

Oh well, every day is a new day, and today I had to walk up a zillion stairs because the escalator at the underground was broken, so I guess I've had a good start! I'm kickstarting a seek of being good with some steak and vegetables for dinner tonight.

Mini goal - to cut down on carbs this week, because I don't know when to stop, and one slice of bread or one serving of rice always turns into four or five.....

Hey guys,

I am in the UK so I can't be very helpful about where to buy clothes, but I've found buying really carefully is helpful. I was 190 when I started, and I'm 171 now but I managed to buy a lot of clothes that I can keep wearing as I lose weight, like a couple of floaty summer dresses with ties at the back that I can just tie tighter as I lose wieght (the kind that are almost see through with an underdress that shows at the neckline - I just replaced the underdresses with white cotton slips in the size smaller) and a couple of tunics to wear over jeans which are fitted enough to look good, but when I lose weight I can wear as dresses (benefit of being short - tunics are not indecently short when I wear them as dresses! they are knee length!). I've also gone for stretch fit tops, cardigans that look fine a bit loose, and a really good belt to cinch in loose trousers. Plus I never use to tuck tops into my trousers, but I've started to do that with a couple of looser floaty tops I got for work, which makes up for them being a bit baggy. I've had to replace jeans and black trousers though - its unavoidable sadly, but I've gone for simple and cheap, since I've got plenty of tops that will keep fitting for at least another 20lbs of weight loss.

Edited to add - I also find it helpful to buy skirts with wide waistbands (no beltloops or anything) which are snug at the waist, as losing a couple of inches means that the sit comfortably where most low waisted skirts would sit. Only works for certain shapes though, the more loose, flowing shapes, and is best with just above knee length.

Hi to all the new people!

Well, I did not do well this weekend. My boyfriend made delicious low fat/cal homemade soup, so I figured since we were having that with dinner/lunch my overall calories were going to be quite low and I could be a little naughty and have some nice things... But a few nice things always turns into loads of nice things! So I ate way too much cheese (cheese on toast on saturday and homemade quesedilla's on sunday), plus some crisps, and yesterday at the cinema a TON of popcorn. Sigh, hopefully if I'm really good today and tomorrow I'll balance it out a bit....

Hope everyone elses weekend was more successful!!

Hols