18 years old, 300 pounds and discouraged

mackleemoose

Hey, I'm Kennedy! I'm a senior in high school and I'll be going to college in August 2017. I've been overweight for most of my life and it wasn't until recent where I had a HUGE mental breakdown. This is not the way I want to live and I need to better myself not only for appearance, but my health. I feel worst and worst everyday. I need as much help as I can get. I hope to have a sense of community here to get encouraged to follow through with this. To be honest, I barely know where to start at this point.

fubarfornow

Hi Kennedy. I haven't really posted on the boards, but saw your post and wanted to welcome you, and let you know that you're not alone. Your story sounds similar, but I'm older and it took me a long time to get to the point where I felt capable of dealing with my weight. Good for you for checking in here. Two things that have helped me (besides MFP) are going to a medically-supervised weight loss program, and going to counseling. The counseling helped me realize that food isn't my problem, it is a symptom of the real problem, which for me was trauma and the resulting PTSD. The food is just a crummy way of dealing with that problem (no pun intended). Once I started feeling more capable of dealing with what was going on in my head, dealing with the non-functional coping mechanism (food) became a lot easier. There are plenty of supportive folks here who will give you their own take on what works for them. I started at 287 just over a year ago, and have lost 77 lbs. For me the secret was the counseling combined with the medical, scientifically valid weight loss advice.

irejb12

Realizing you want to change is a starting point and yoy should be proud of yourself. Do you have any underlying medical conditions ? I ask this because some medical conditions like thyroid problems or PCOS, can cause weight gain. You may want to check with your doctor to rule out any medical conditions.

Assuming there are no medical issues, start your weight loss journey by taking baby steps, gor ex. walking outdoors for 10 to 20 minutes three times a week ( if you can do 5 days a week that'll be great). If you don't have the option of walking outdoor or on a treadmill, there are exercise tapes, like Leslie Sansone's Walk Away the Pounds, which you can do indoors and is gears towards beginners. You can also check out utube where there are free exercise videos.

Of course, nutrition is very important, perhaps even more so than exercise. Maybe you can start by keeping a food journey or using MFP to log what you eat. As you know, the type of foods you eat are important like more fruits and veggies as opposed to process foods.

Just remember that losing weight is a process and that you must be persistent and dedicated for change to occur. Good luck!

aerial102

Hey there!

I'm in a similar boat. Except when I started, I was 365 lbs. That was my heaviest weight. Currently, I'm 314 lbs. Feel free to add me! We can do this!