May Weight Loss Challenge (Closed)

Would anyone be interested in starting a weight loss challenge of 5-10 people for the month of May?

I want this to be an intimate group of similar sized people, this way we can really get to know eachother, support eachother, and most importantly, feel accountable to eachother. 

Name:Kathleen

Age: 22

Occupation: Student

Weight, 5/1/2009:167

Goal: 155

I would love to join this.  I'm Rachael, 19, and a student as well.  Here are my stats:

Height: 5'4"

Start Weight: 181

Current Weight: 168

Long term goal: 130-140

By the end of May: 155-160

I try and eat about 1300 most days, although I zigzag my calories by eating 1600 wednesdays and 1500 saturdays.  I also exercise for about 20 minutes a few times a week when I have time by playing DDR, which I am completely addicted to.

I'm in !

My name Is Jessica, 24 y/o mother of three, and college student.

Starting weight 208-(6 months post partum- Oct.2008)

current- 171 (wooohooo!)

current goal- 150

height 5'7 ish

Hi Guys,

I am in.

I am 5' 5" , 33, current wt:176 by end of may 166 lbs. Ultimate Goal is 130.

I would love to join !

Name: Julia

Age: 21

Occupation: Student

Height: 5'9

Current Weight: 150

Goal: 135

I could definitely use some extra motivation !

I'd like to join as well.

Name: CC

Age: 27

Occupation: Security Coordinator

Height: 5'5

Current Weight: 190.4

Goal: 135

I'm getting married in May of 2010 so I'm trying to get to my goal weight by April, with other goals along the way (180 by May 30th for a Vegas trip, 150 by November to begin dress shopping, 140 by Valentine's Day 2010).  Are we going to have weekly weigh ins or something? 

Hi, can I join too!

I'm Rachel and a 21 year old student! My stats are:

Height 5'5"

Start weight: 170

Current: 145

Goal: 132

End of May: 135-140 hopefully!

I did get down to 141 but revision wreaks havoc with my dieting! I get serious attacks of the munchies. At least we there are a lot of us in the same boat, with lovely summer exams to look forwards to!

GREAT!  We have eight people, I think thats a great size!  Plus, it looks like we are all in a similar weight loss situation.

First, lets deal with the details.  I think we should  do our weekly weigh-ins every Monday, starting this Monday May 4th.  Personally, I am a fan of Monday weigh-ins because they keep me motivated over the weekend--when I tend to relax my diet and exercise.  Hope there are no strong objections!

Second, I hope you ladies will use this group for more than weekly weigh-ins.  If we all share  our daily mistakes, frustrations, and triumphs we can keep ourself on track.  I don't have someone in my life that I am comfortable running to when I feel like I'm on the verge of eating something I know I will regret later or skipping a workout when I know I'll feel better after I go.  In fact, when I do enlist friends and family to keep motivate me, they end up being a bigger source of frusturation than encouragement.  Not to sound cliche but, they just don't understand.  We understand!  So, when that carton of ice cream keeps taunting you from the freezer, write about your frustruations here, and we can encourage you to stay away.  When you skip a workout, write about it here, and we can encourage you to get back on the treadmil tomorrow!  Best of all, when you went to that family birthday party and weren't even tempted to touch the cake, write about it here, and we will congratulate you!

I hope you are all on board with this community approach to the May Challenge!

Yay, I'm really excited for this group! 

mkmove, I completely agree that trying to get support from friends and family often just gets way more frustrating than helpful. I feel like there's nobody I can comfortably talk to about it. I've always been a skinny girl and never had any issues with weight but for some reason in the past year I have steadily put on about 15 pounds. I don't know wehther it's due to going on the pill, metabolism slowing down, stressful semester at school or what but while I am still okay with my body I know that it's time to make a serious change and reverse the unhealthy weight gain pattern going on. 

I've counted calories and been good about diet before but never for more than just a couple of days. I really hope that this is just the type of motivation I need to make a permanent change.

I am a student too.  At the end of my freshman year of college I hit my highest, 200.  I graduated college at my lowest, 145.  Over the summer, I gained a little bit of weight but was happy to start law school at 155.  Today, I weight 167.  I, like you, need to make a serious change.

My biggest challenge is over eating (or binge eating).

My pattern, especially during finals, seems to be that I only take study breaks for meals.  So, my meals last a long, long time.  Plus, I have a single dorm room, which means that no one sees how much I am eating.

My friends, family, and boy friend, who were so proud of me when I initially lost the weight are starting to be critical.  So, as much as I need someone to help me through this, I know they are not the right people.  If I called my boyfriend at 3pm and told him I had just taken a bite of ice cream and wanted to finish the entire carton, he would think I was crazy.

I needed somewhere else to turn, and I think this group can be that place!

Anyways, there is a little background on me and my life as a dieter!

Weigh in day #1!

I'm afraid I'm heading in the wrong direction already! I weighed 149 (up 3) this morning. It really hurt! At the beginning of last month i was about 142 so ive put on half a stone!

Not really a surprise as I have had quite a rich week. There was cake in the flat at one point, a cavery with my dad, an italians with my friend who got back to uni, and a bbq by the river. Unfortunately Ive been purging and taking laxatives to get rid of it (I always regret it but i go into "that place"). One or two days I've starced myself into a headache and then binged on carbs. If I would just stop doing that it wouldnt be doing so badly! Eat normally girl!

Any way, sorry for the rant and the issues. This week Im on a sweets cake and biscuits ban (with the exception of Thursday night which is college formal so will be having strawberry roulade) so hopefull that will get me back on the right track. I hope to god I'm just retaining water.

Good luck to all of you for your weigh ins! Hope you get some nice surprises!

GuyS,

Help. I am stuck at 176. Don't know what I am doing wrong since 2 weeks. Although I got my period this week. Is this normal ? I am making sure there's a calorie defiicit of atleast 1000 cal/day?

malomadame, it is amazing how similar we are!

I also have a habit of binging and taking laxatives.  I know it is a completely stupid habit because (a) it is extremely dangerous and (b) I usually end up weighing more two days later, when I put all the water weight back on.  Bottom line, I need to control my binging.  I am slowing building a list of my trigger foods. So far they are raisins, dried pineapple, peanut butter, cereal, chocolate chips, and ice cream.  Two days in a row I binged, Friday on raisins and Saturday on chocolate chips.  I know some of my trigger foods are technically healthy but for me, one bite leads to hundreds or thousands of calories, that is a binge.  So, this week's goal is to not take that first bite, of any trigger food.  Hopefully that will have some effect first, on stopping the binges and second on reducing my craving for the trigger foods.

I weighed myself this morning and am up to 3 pounds to 170.  Really disappointed in myself.  I think/hope I am pmsing.  Plus, I am studying for law school finals, which means a lot of stress and very little time to work out.  I know I know, there is always going to be an excuse and I need to stop justifying my bad habits and just start changing them.  Hopefully, owning up to them in a public forum will help me do just that!

I weighed in at 166.4 this morning which was quite satisfying.  My extra exercise finally showed up.  On the downside I tried a more accurate scale this weekend and found mine is about 2 or 3 pounds off so i'm really around 168-169.  Still, i'm going to keep going by the one I have at home because I've been using that all along and just adjust my end goal to 128 by my scale instead of 130.

malomadame I totally understand where you come from on the binging front, that reminds me of myself a few years ago.  I've found though, as tempting as it may be to restrict harsher after a binge that just leads right up to the next one.  Instead of trying to ban certain foods it helps to try and have just a really small amount but force youself to eat it really slowly, enjoy eat and every bite, and drink water between each bite so you fill up more and the flavor is strong each time.  What i have done in my home since I cant get rid of all the food I shouldnt eat that my roommates still have, i've created a place where I keep just my food and I rarely keep any high calorie food there.  When I feel the need to overeat these days I look for something sweet and end up with a couple apples, which isn't nearly as bad as downing a box of cookies.  I'll also eat in one spot, away from where I keep food, so when i feel the need to eat even though i'm not hungry I will grab some fruit, some veges, maybe some string cheese, and then a small amount of what i'm usually craving, like ice cream or a cupcake.  I'll eat it all as slow as I can and enjoy it as much as I can far away from where the rest of the food is, that way when I finish having my mostly healthy snack its much much easier to resist the urge to go back and finish the whole container of icecream or whatnot.  I hope that can help you as well.

lillys I tend get stuck around my period to, and i've read that this is a usual thing for women.  Also, be careful because 1000 is the highest deficit you should have, and depending on what your intake is to get that you may not be loosing because if you arent getting enough nutrients your body will slow your metabolism because it believes you are starving.  I dont know your stats and how many calories you are having a day so I have no idea if it is that or just it being that time of the month, but it is something to watch out for.

Not starting off on a good foot.

Challenge start weight: 147

Current weight (weigh in 1): 148

Going to the gym tonight, hopefully have better results for next weeks weigh in.

weigh in one-

Like some of you I am also up today.

last week 171

today 174

I didn't eat very well over the weekend and also got a new digital scale, and slacked on my activities last week so that I could finish my online art class.

Getting back into the hang of things this week!

I

Starting weight: 149.8

Current: 148.6

Week one and I am really proud of myself. I've been to the gym everyday this week and I've been working soo hard to keep my diet in check.

Yesterday I baked peanut butter cookies and then went to a BBQ at my boss's house. There were more burgers, hot dogs, chips, dips, and desserts than I've seen in a long time. I only had one cheeseburger, one of my PB cookies, and a small slice of strawberry torte (mostly walnuts and fresh strawberries with whipped cream). I know that's still splurging a little but normally I wouldn't have been able to control myself from trying every single dessert at least once or twice. At the end of the day I was only about 200 calories above my daily goal!

Just out of curiosity how many calories do you guys try to eat daily? My goal's 1700.

And good luck to all of you, I know the feeling of that ridiculously strong temptation to binge and have given in far too many times and can certainly appreciate the temptation. darcyskywolfe, you gave some really awesome tips on how to help control bingeing because you're right, completely cutting your fave food out of your diet always comes back to kick your ass.

I hope all of you ladies have a fabulous and fulfilling week, I'm rooting for all of you!

Thanks bonding_the_atom, I'm glad some of my tips might help you as well, although I really cant take credit since most of the stuff I do i've either learned from calorie count of because if someone mentions an idea I feel the need to research it for fun.

My daily calories are about 1300 - 1600 a day.  It depends on whether i'm sitting in front of the computer typing up papers the whole day or if i'm running back and forth to classes and maybe playing DDR a bit.  I try and keep my deficit the same each day so the calories all vary depending on exercise and activity level.

Congrats to Darcy and bonding_the_atom for your weight loss! Good going!

And I'm very impressed with bonding_the_atoms discipline! BBQ and still managing to keep on the wagon! Go you!

I generally aim for 1200-1300 cal but i let myself have a lot of leway, so often find myself zig zagging between 800-1600. Ive heard zigzagging is good, but im not so sure if this is the case when its uncontrolled like mine! I like to have a deficit of about 500, but i put my activity level at sedentary, and dont count any walking i do so hopefully its generally a bit above this!

I'd really like to take up the advice on avoiding triggers, the problem is id doesnt leave me with much! I eat a lot of fruit and veg because I love it and know its low cal, I avoid meat most of the time because of the fat content, but will have chicken breast or lean mince twice a week or so, and eat any other meat if someone else cooks it for me, carb-wise I eat a LOT of cereal. It's my major trigger food and once I start I can easily eat my way through a whole box (I have a 15 weetabix in 1 sitting record). I do tend to pick at cereal bars and biscuits too (so lots of sugar in my diet, lol) , but other than that i dont really eat many carby things, bread and pasta just dont do it for me that much. If I have pasta I'll have about 20 peices cos i don't see the point in wasting cals on something im not fussed about so i just bulk out with broccoli and tomatos

Soooo... you can see there is a problem in that if I remove cereal I dont really have any carbs (minus veg and stuff). The days I've tried this I've ended up with headaches and ultimately just ended up binging. Do you have any advice to get round this?

I like the whole idea of eating in one spot but i live with three boys and they already think im a nutter so id rather avoid any behaviour that might seem obsessive.

The boys are a pain really! They make so many cakes and they are my weak spot. They dont eat that much cake themselves so I find when they make anything I end up eating half!!!! (over 2 or 3 days, but still...)

Hmm, I have your cereal problem with pasta which I really cant just have 20 peices of.  Its my biggest weakness, so I try not to make it much or bulk it up with a vege I love.  That is an idea though, you could try bulking up your cereal with fruit of something like that.  Or have it as part of a meal with some fruit and yogurt, or eggs, or something low calorie like that on the side.  I find that it helps to make a big meal with one higher calorie thing and a bunch of low calorie things.  Spending a while making it and setting it out all nice looking seems to help me feel more satisfied after so I dont eat more.  It also gives a bit of a feeling of finality when I finish, so I dont grab more of my favorite part or anything.  Just thinking of it as one great whole meal and eating it slow makes me feel like afterwards since i've spent so much time making it and enjoying it I then need to continue on with my day and do something not food-related.

I can empathize with your problem with cakes.  A couple of my roommates are both very thin guys who could probably eat a whole cake each and not gain a thing, and they both love cakes and brownies and make them all the time.  One thing i've tried to do, since resisting their brownies is hard, is make sweet stuff for them before they make anything.  When i'm the one baking things I can make low calorie but delicious cakes that I dont feel bad eating some of, and they like having someone make them stuff.  One of my favorite recipes is one I found on here for normal size cupcakes with frosting that are normally less then 100 calories each.  Even when my roommates do bake now as long as I have some of my cupcakes around I can grab those instead.