new and generally clueless

lealovie

Hi everyone -

I'm writing an intro because it seems to be the thing to do. I'm just kind of here. I don't have a plan or anything at this point.

I've never really done the dieting thing. We decided that the best place to start was food journaling so that's basically why I'm here at this point. Of course seeing all those numbers is probably going to make me more intentional about stuff so that might be a bit of a change but I'm trying not to stress about it too much.

I am over my "comfort zone" weight wise -- meaning clothes don't fit as well as I'd like and I'm not comfortable with my current shape. I'm a curvy body type, but now that I'm over 30 height weight proportion is a concealable goal (125 as opposed to the 90lbs they wanted when I was twenty) but it's pretty far off and would involve me going back to my teen weight so that's not really something I have my sights on. My "drivers licence weight" is 180 and that seems closer to a goal but it's still 40-50 lbs away I think. I haven't been on a scale in months so it's not something I'm 100% on. I think I have one in a box somewhere . . . I would like to loose about four inches of waistline for sure and that's something I'm likely to measure regularly.

So here's my challenges

Exercise -- Kinda hate it. I've never been one of those people who felt good after a workout. They just make me tired and useless. I'm generally active -- my work is constant movement for 6-12 hours four nights a week and I have a 45lb toddler to try to keep up with.

Work schedule -- I work nights so my meal & sleep schedule is inconsistent

Breastfeeding -- technically I still do it. It's only like once a day most days and I'm not concerned about anything nutritionally here but I hear it can make the body hold on to weight so I figured it was worth mentioning

Diet concerns -- I've never really dieted and the concept kinda scares me. There are so many ways that if you change your eating habits you can change the way your body processes food/metabolism stuff so I don't want to do it wrong, whatever that means.

So that's me, I mean aside from being a total sci-fi/fantasy/D&D geek who's other interests include fashion and nature.

Hi again

felixg1109

Hi

Just don't panic and go slow. One step after the other.

Exercise: It's not neccessary to loose weight - you just have to eat less calories than you use. If you want to speed up find somethin to make it "not that bad" like mainly listening to music or audiobooks, reading, doing sudoku etc. while doing sports. Even if you are active during work - you can also try to do some small extra things in your freetime like parking the car 5 mins away from work, go shopping without a car, use the stairs instead of the lift. All those small things add up.

Work schedule: It's harder to gain routines with a schedule like this, but in general it's still the "less in than out" thing at last. Just search for easy ways to save some calories.

Diet concerns: first of all, there is no thing like "oh i totally crashed my metabolism for ever". Just go with a decent deficit and look for enough protein to prevent loss of muscles. Just start and keep going. You can change things by time if you want to.

Good luck!