Posts by bairn

Original Post by jas_cuzzie:

Original Post by bairn:

Walking is good.

1200 calories is probably not enough for you... what are you eating currently? I found it was a lot easier to "clean up your diet" before getting too specific with the calories. Cooking healthy stuff, taking your lunch to work etc, means you're full and you tend to eat a lot less calories, win win! What you don't want to do is make yourself miserably hungry if you have a tendency to binge. So eat lots of good, filling, healthy stuff. Veggies and soups and fish and seafood and massive tasty salads and big breakfasts to fill you up for the day.

I lost 50lb (over several years) by making small manageable changes one at a time - you can look in my gallery for pics - small changes tend to stick whereas big life upheavals last four weeks and make you more depressed in the long run.

Hope that helps.

 thanks for the reply! however i am only 5'2. so I'm worried eating more than 1200calories will impede my weight loss process... and I really admire you for losing so much weight.

could you tell me what kind of exercise and how much you do? plus what's your daily calorie intake?

 How are you getting on with your walking? Hope you're managing to eat enough. There are a lot of horror stories on here about people messing up their health and weight permanently by starving themselves or undereating... not to mention of course the binging problem...

I eat around 1800 calories a day - I am maintaining. I might possibly be able to eat a bit more than that and maintain. However I am NEARLY THIRTY (omg! I am not getting my head around this) so you should be eating a lot more than me to maintain. I would imagine you could lose weight on around 1500-1800 calories a day, and that would give you strength to exercise and keep you full enough not to binge.

In terms of exercise, I do stuff I like, I'm not a gym person. I usually walk around 3 miles a day (just to work and that), I have a fairly active "job" (med student, well it involves as much work as a job!), and I like to hike at weekends, which means climbing up and down hills for about 20 miles! I also chuck in a little bit of simple weight lifting at home because that's good for feeling strong and slim rather than weak and thin and still somehow flabby.

Good luck. Please make sure you're eating enough... I know I keep saying that, but I really know that it doesn't help to undereat. I was ill a couple of months ago and only ate about 900 calories a day. I lost about 6lb in a few weeks (not deliberately). I felt weak and miserable and depressed and too tired to exercise. I looked pale and unhealthy (and I wasn't underweight, it was just the lack of food in my body, the colour in my cheeks). I put it back on as soon as I was better and had my appetite back. I didn't eat a lot to put it back on. Just sensible, healthy normal amounts. Less than what I'm eating now. But it still came back right away. Starving just doesn't work...

Nice one!

I agree with the tea... I also drink hot water a lot... cook big healthy stews to keep you warm and full! Salads are not for this time of year. Soups are good though. I cook a lot of vegetable curries.

When I am cold my mum makes me drink whisky or mulled wine... she rocks

I lost 50lb and have always had big boobs and they were a bit saggy last year but after maintaining for most of this year they aren't saggy any more

I hope that gives some of you hope!

ps. get a well fitted bra, part of my problem was I couldn't bear to part with my beautiful, expensive bravissimo 34E bras! But they were just too big and I looked rubbish in them. Got some well fitted (cheap, sigh) 34Ds and DDs now and I look a hundred times better. (I also have made every female friend who has been to my house in the last few months try on my gorgeous now-too-big bras becuase it's too sad to see them sitting in a drawer - Ellie finally took them last week!)

Walking is good.

1200 calories is probably not enough for you... what are you eating currently? I found it was a lot easier to "clean up your diet" before getting too specific with the calories. Cooking healthy stuff, taking your lunch to work etc, means you're full and you tend to eat a lot less calories, win win! What you don't want to do is make yourself miserably hungry if you have a tendency to binge. So eat lots of good, filling, healthy stuff. Veggies and soups and fish and seafood and massive tasty salads and big breakfasts to fill you up for the day.

I lost 50lb (over several years) by making small manageable changes one at a time - you can look in my gallery for pics - small changes tend to stick whereas big life upheavals last four weeks and make you more depressed in the long run.

Hope that helps.

Sometimes, I get people who haven't seen me in a while saying how much weight I've lost and how I don't need to lose any more - it's great  Sometimes they say "don't lose any more" and I'm like, "your round, then?" heh.

Any kind of jealousy I seem to experience is that sweet matey kind - like if your mate did well at something or landed a great job "ooh, you bitch!" *big hug*

Though, I am at a healthy BMI, so I can see why it would be annoying if you were overweight. I also have a friend who is at a healthy weight and is trying to be underweight and I basically refuse to acknowledge her weight loss or sometimes I bang on about how great it is being a size that SHOPS ACTUALLY SELL. I don't know what approach is best, any ideas? I don't think she has an actual fullblown eating disorder, unless being engaged is an eating disorder - just some awful idea about skinny looking good (it doesn't, or not on her anyway) and eats nothing but soup.  I fret, but she's not a close mate.

Depends how you feel about I guess, chuck. I know a few people who eat like that all the time (they are pretty big!), it's not binging just bad eating.

I think it's more the quality of your food than the quantity that's the problem... but hey, fastfood tastes like cardboard to me (cardboard with salt)...

I always thought my calves were big, but I just measured them and they're 13.5, wa-hey! The problem is more that they are covered in scratches from my mental kitten...

Weight loss always fluctuates and plateaus... you don't lose it evenly. It's a long term thing... so eat more, 1000 cals/day is a miserable diet that will make you weak and not able to sustain any sort of a long term plan...

A lot of people say this, but I never quite understand it. I eat very healthily, and I am always shocked at how much money people spend on unhealthy food, my food bill is about half theirs. Things like biscuits and desserts and icecream and ready meals are crazy prices! I buy about £10 of veg and about £15 of "other stuff" (pasta, rice, fish, occasionally meat, milk, bread, yoghurt, cheese) every week for me and my boyfriend - that covers both our breakfasts, my lunches (which are mostly leftover bits of dinner) and both our dinners. (I don't snack really, I prefer full meals 3x a day.) I don't buy "health foods" I guess - lowfat this that or the other, just fresh stuff. I do have a massive standby stock of spices/condiments/flour/yeast etc though in my cupboards from all the years of cooking...

I agree that supermarkets are expensive - grocers are much better price-wise and quality-wise if you have access to good ones.

^ Yeah! Last time I went to the doctor's and got on the scales he said, "perfect." Yeah baby!

My boobs went a bit smaller and a bit saggier for a bit, but now the sagginess has gone (and they're still DD) - don't know if that encourages anyone who is worried about boob issues when losing weight!

I like clothes shopping. I like parading around the house in my underwear. I like that my "healthy" food tastes better than restaurant food and I'm known in my circle as "chef bairn" not "dieter bairn", never that.

I don't like... um, I don't like the stupid psychological stuff, like caring that I've put on 2lb when I went most my life quite happily not even knowing how much I weighed.

And I don't like being cold all the bloody time!

I have a similar body shape, just a bit taller - 5'3", 128lb, 34DD, little waist

I think it's great you've realised your goal is a bit unrealistic - you'll probably still have the boobs anyway, mine never went away losing 50lb! - 100lb sounds a bit miserable to me, don't think many body types look much good there. 

I think GI jane is right and your clothes is the answer. Fashion mags are idiotic and all think everyone is the same shape. There are things that look much better on us midgets with t&a, but if you try and wear skinny jeans and shirts, yeah, you'll just look like a pale imitation of a tall girl. I don't even have that great legs, but I enjoy wearing slouchy tops with naughty short skirts and short shorts - fitted tshirts look spectacular on girls with boobs - dresses are your friend. I wear lots of short shift dresses. I mostly avoid shirts, but if you want them, I know bravissimo.com do (pricey) shirts for specific boob sizes, so they come in properly at the waist. Smart for the hospital I wear long sleeved, slight vnecks with wide leg trousers  and flats mostly. Fitted tops without buttons are very flattering especially with wide leg trousers on our shape, I think.

Bye some nice bras and admire yourself in the mirror a lot. Haha, I do that.

And you know, for the party season you've got the boobs to fill the dresses with!

Good luck sweetheart, hope you have a think and work something out, sorry about all my ramblings.

This public service announcement brought to you by My Name Is Bairn And I Love My Boobs

Breakky - congratulations on your weight loss, you look lovely in your picture and not fat at all.

I too lost around 50lb over several years and am now trying to maintain at around 125-130, which is a BMI of about 22.5 for my height. I also really enjoy food and am a keen cook, and I eat brilliantly healthily and hike a lot (and still drink wine every night, yeah yeah!) One of the hardest parts of maintenance I find is wanting to stop. I know I am slim. I am smaller than many of my friends. I wear S and XS in shops. Being thin is a pain for clothes shopping, really. I'm not thin, I'm slim. You can look at my pictures if you want.

I still get the bad days and the niggly thoughts. I still bristle at the girls on this site who have a BMI of 20 and want it to be 18. I know they won't look better underweight but it still seems like a slap in the face sometimes. I still have "fat" days. I suspect as women in this society bombarded by invitations to be unhealthy and underweight everywhere we look, I would also have these days whatever size I was.

You have done an amazing thing for your health and your appearance. If you can learn to maintain it now you will be set for life. I like the sound of your eating and your exercise, it sounds healthy and most importantly enjoyable. If on the other hand you find you are permanently fighting those "last few pounds" - you could go a number of bad ways. You could stop enjoying your food and exercise. You could get underweight. You could start a cycle of yo yo dieting, which is terrible for anyone's health or selfesteem. It's not easy - I have exactly the same struggles as you.

This is a way I try to think of it sometimes: people vary of course, but for over 21s, generally a BMI of 20-25 is "ideal". A BMI of 22-23 means you can lose a stone, put on a stone, and you are still ideal. It is perfect. I do not think a BMI of 23 is fat.

^ if you are "skinny", that means you're unhealthy too, surely?

Of course someone could be unhealthy and happy. Not all of the population is gifted with perfect health, and plenty of them are happy. I'm pretty sure there are happy asthmatics out there!

I don't want to be fat or skinny, so I'll take the happy one at least, I guess!