Hello world.

ashtonkristi1162

254.2.

There. I said it out loud to another human being. I weigh 254.2 pounds.

I grew up (and I’m sure you know this) in a time when women did not talk about their weight, at all. It was a taboo subject. And yet all the media showed these thin, wasted looking women who looked 12 when they were 20 and called them beautiful. In high school I weighed 115 pounds, was an athlete in really good shape, and thought I was fat.

This didn’t happen overnight. Every year i see my weight climb some. I’ve tried every fad diet to some extent, and the most i ever lost was 30 pounds on a low-carb 1200 calorie diet where i literally starved myself of life’s pleasure foods. I gained it all back in six months.

It’s gotten worse in the last few years. I’m unable to do the kind of exercise a good healthy lifestyle encourages, because it causes me intense back pain, and triggers the inflammation of my AS and probably the fibro. And all the meds I’m taking for the AS and fibro I’m sure don’t help. Plus I’m sedentary 10 hours a day at my desk, and then usually another 3-6 hours in front of the ps5 or the tv. I have a stent in my chest from coronary artery disease. High blood pressure. High cholesterol. I’m walking, talking death. I feel like any minute I’ll keel over from a heart attack. Taking a shower, going to get the mail, walking up the stairs to the game room exhausts me, and it takes too long to recover.

Anyway, stepping on the scale at my last trip to the doctor broke me. 254.2. The heaviest I’ve ever been. I wanted to die.

So this week I opened the *kitten* myfitness pal app on my phone for the first time in maybe a couple years, and I’ve logged my food intake for 3 days in a row now. It’s a step. And it makes me more mindful of what I’m putting in my body.

Maybe next week I’ll throw in a couple of walks around the cul de sac. 🤷‍♀️

Sorry for the word vomit.

AnnPT77

Congratulations on starting!

I'm an MFP long-timer, lost from class 1 obese to healthy weight starting in 2015, and 9+ years since of maintaining a healthy weight. Most of that happened when I was already pretty old (69 now), entirely menopausal, and severely hypothyroid (medicated), among other things.

If you could look at all my posts greeting new people, you'd see that my most common response when they ask for tips is that they choose an easy-to-follow plan rather than a fast plan. Misery is optional. Exercise is good for a body - at least manageable exercise is - and burns a few more calories, but strictly speaking exercise is optional for weight loss, too.

I understand that you have quite a bit of weight you want to lose. I deeply understand that any of us with a significant amount to lose want to lose it fast. But pursuing that can be a trap. A sustainable plan, gradual but steady loss, can get a person to goal weight in less calendar time than a more extreme plan that causes bouts of deprivation-triggered over-eating, breaks in the action, or even giving up altogether because it's. Just. Too. Hard.

As a bonus, gradual loss makes it easier to experiment and find new, sustainable permanent habits that will help a person stay at a healthy weight after they get there . . . something that many people find more difficult than losing in the first place.

I'm cheering for you to succeed, because IME the quality of life improvement is more than worth the effort required to get there. You can do this!

Best wishes!