A bit overwhelmed

I just poked around and randomly stumbled across groups. The 100+ & 200+ are for those that needs to lose that much or more.

Welcome to MFP!

Start slowly. Don't worry about joining any groups yet. Just focus on keeping your food journal. You will see the pounds come off. Once you become familiar with journaling your food and exercise and also become comfortable with the website, then join the support groups. I think the most important thing is to learn the website first!

Good luck! You can do it. Nothing worked for me before this website.

I completely Identify with your feelings. A year ago I was pretty frustrated with it too. There's a differing opinions on when you should eat, how many times you should eat, and we're not even talking about WHAT to eat. Every time you turn around the Fitness & Diet industry is trying to sell you something. When you finally sift through that there's some Doctor or Dietician trying to buck their peers and coventional wisdom so they can make a name for themselves. THEN there are the reems of studies that say certain things, and for every one study there will 5 people in the media who take the study out of context.

And we haven't even talked about EXCERSISE.

Who do you beleive, What do you beleive?

Here are two concepts that are gospel. Everything else is a dervitive of these and up to personal choice:
1. In order to lose Fat, you need to be in a calories deficit. How you do that is completly up to you.
2. You cannot out excersise a bad diet. Log you food and excersise and the math will be obvious. Focus on your nutrition first, it's 80% of the battle.

When I started I spent two weeks researching the foods I was eating and how many calories I was consuming. Some stuff was so bad i quit cold turkey. However, I didn't just wake up one morning and was eating healthy. Over a course of several weeks I made changes to my diet. I would change one thing, become comfortable with it and made sure it would stick. Then I moved on to something else that needed improvement. I still do this, and once I reach my goal I will continue to do this.

Hope that helps. There are a lot of successful losers here. You're going to see a lot of things posted here that won't work for you. You need to find things that you're comfortable with, and things that work for you.

I've been here over a year and a half, lost the weight, (well, MOST of what I want to lose! ) and NEVER joined a single group! :noway: I do stay quite active on the boards though, and have talked to tons of members for extra motivation and ideas. But, nope, never joined anything. :noway:
No one says you HAVE to, it's only if you should see a group you think would be fun!

I'm not positive, your little heart is kinda close to your goal, but it looks like you're only a pound away...CONGRADULATIONS!!!

I've been here over a year and a half, lost the weight, (well, MOST of what I want to lose! ) and NEVER joined a single group! :noway: I do stay quite active on the boards though, and have talked to tons of members for extra motivation and ideas. But, nope, never joined anything. :noway:
No one says you HAVE to, it's only if you should see a group you think would be fun!

I'm not positive, your little heart is kinda close to your goal, but it looks like you're only a pound away...CONGRADULATIONS!!!

Thanks for the congratulations! It IS only a pound from my goal, but, I wanted to lose more, just never changed my goal. I DID reach the 43 pound goal I set, and even 2 more, but, in the last year I've been see-sawing with the same 5 pounds! :laugh: