I've got a lot to lose and I need a lot of help!

mamaof2plus2

I'm a mom of 4 as well as a one on one aide to an autistic child in a therapeutic school. Starting in Middle school I became a chunky girl. My parents seperated and I lived with my dad who fed me cereal, fast food, and TV dinners. I stayed chubby until I graduated high school and moved out and slimmed way down to 125 which is when I met my husband, since then I have doubled my weight. I'd love to blame my wieght gain on having kids, but with my kids I never gained more than 16lbs lost it after plus some. It was AFTER I had them that I started ballooning, gaining 70lbs between the birth of my daughter and the birth of my son and then an additional 60 after my son. I just keep getting bigger! I realized when I was choosing photos for My son's first birthday decorations that I hadn't taken a picture with him since birth because of how uncomfortable I am with my body.I'm taking my kids to Disney in a little over a year an would love to loose 100lbs so I can at least take pictures with my kids during a trip of a life time. Please help if you can!

1) I'm a stress eater, does anyone have realistic ideas on how to help NOT turn to food when feeling stressed.

2) I have four kids lol, which means I have like no extra time. My husband is currently working 2 jobs and I work full time so most night I have all the kids by myself and need to feed the bathe them get them ready for the next day etc. How do I find time to cook a low calorie meal?

3) exercise, I'm lucky to work at a place that offers 30min workout classes 2x a week and I have been doing them, but how much should I exercise? What kind of exercise?

4) meal planning...it is so hard to plan a meal for a week but I find if I don't I end up abandoning ship and eating way more than my daily allowance. Thank you!

Francl27

If you're really motivated, you can do it. First thing is to keep in mind that your kids can benefit from a healthy dinner too. It doesn't have to be anything fancy... Just throw some chicken or fish in the oven and nuke some frozen veggies if you have to. We cook very simply here. Typically one meat, some veggies (often frozen) and sometimes brown rice/couscous/egg noodles. Some nights we have pasta, others tacos. It doesn't take much time. You can look at my diary if you want (I was away last week, so skip that). We don't even do meal planning, just do groceries for 3 days at a time typically (so the meat or fish we buy stays fresh). Buy a scale and measure your food and you'll eat more reasonably too.

You don't have to exercise to lose weight, but it helps you maintain some muscles while you lose. Even if it's just going for a walk, walking in place in front of a tv show or something, anything helps. Or you can buy some workout dvds and do that at home when the kids are in bed. Honestly exercising has helped make things easier for me because it gives me extra calories (which I use to have a treat). And now I actually enjoy it and would rather do that than vegetating in front of the tv or something.

I was a stress eater too but once I got motivated, it wasn't too bad... Keeping a diary and not letting myself go over goal has helped a lot. And changing my snacking habits to high protein foods.

Live4theLift

Its not all about low calorie foods, i started to lose weight by just portion control. You would be surprised what a serving size of some foods are and how much we over eat. As for exercise just do what you can at the house, lift light weights do lunges, jumping jacks, pushups, situps ect. I actually plan my days a head of time in MFP, i will put in my breakfast and lunch a day ahead and go from there, that way i have an idea of what i want to eat and the calories i have used so far.

VickiZei

I also have 100 to lose so I know how daunting it is. A couple things I've learned as my kids were growing and I was trying to eat healthier, it takes the same amount of time to cook a low calorie meal as a high calorie one, if not less time. It takes almost no time to have a raw meal, salad, fruits, cheese, smoothies etc. I suggest using fresh veggies and lean meats to make yummy satisfying soups. Even if this is not what you feed the kids, you'll always have it on hand for yourself. It's not that time consuming and always freezes well. I make soup a bout every two weeks and freeze in single servings so there's always a couple different kinds in the freezer to choose from. I grab it for my lunch at work or if the rest of my family is having something not so healthy for dinner.

The other advice I have is to stop using coupons. I know with four kids this sounds like crazy talk but about ten years ago I realized that most of what I bought because of a coupon was junk. Cookies, crackers, snack foods etc. I couldn't believe the money I saved when I stopped using the coupons. Then I started noticing that I just didn't buy the junk at all cause I wasn't willing to pay full price. Thirdly, when you're saving all that money that you used to spend on snack foods, you don't feel like its so expensive to buy more fresh foods and better cuts of meat. Another pitfall is the great deals on soda. I stopped buying soda for home. We still have it out once in awhile but because its not readily available at home my kids, who are now grown are still not soda drinkers.