Peolpe want results right now......it take time.....and all we have is time.

Great post Kiki! Thank you for sharing it. I know I keep wondering (not so much worrying...just wondering) what I will weigh when I'm done this journey. I get more excited over inches now than pounds (I'm more interested in my body shape than how much it weighs) but I know it'll be a while yet before I truly don't care what that stupid scale says.

Progress of mind AND body. :happy:

Thanks Kiki!

It's so refreshing to hear some honesty. We're all here because we've battled with our bodies. I'm not the thinnest I've ever been but I now realise that's not what I want and it certainly wont make me happy.

It is what it is. And what it is to me is to be at peace with my body and at peace with food. It is to learn how to work with my body instead of against it and to appreciate what it *can* do and what it *can* achieve and rather than feeling let down by it and the things it doesn't do. I'm seeing positive changes. They are slow but it is still progression. it is a lifestyle I can keep up forever so it will take as long as it takes. I'm in it for the long haul.

It's great to hear that you've been doing this for years, have had all the ups and downs, but are ultimately still seeing positive changes on an ongoing basis.

EM2WL has been the light bulb I needed to make me see there is another option to constant hunger and self-loathing and I can't thank you guys enough for it. I really hope more and more people start to realise this too.

:flowerforyou:

It's important that people are realistic about this whole thing. I think too many "other mentality" people jump on it and are not MENTALLY prepared for the challenge. It's long, full of emotion and breaking points and makes you really question everything.

Then one day you wake up and love yourself and realize the pain and suffering has been worth it for oh so many reasons. It's then that you ignore the scale and focus on living a healthy and happy life which to me is all that matters.

Thank you. We always want to see immediate results, but this is a lifetime journey. Must hang in there!

Thank you for this post! I have just come to the realization that the scale may not move down for me for a LONG time. The scale has barely moved for my three months of reset and I doubt it will move much during my slight cut. AND THAT'S OK. In fact, I'm reconsidering even trying to cut right now. Because I am stronger, healthier, my pants fit better, I've put on 5lbs of muscle, lost 5lbs of fat in 8 weeks, and I have never felt this GOOD in my entire life. And I have NEVER eaten this much consistently. If the scale goes up, I would not care at this point. I'm eating healthily and cleanly and exercising regularly.

Your post has helped solidify my feelings that the scale is insignificant and a liar. You look fabulous at 20lbs more than your lightest! So I can too...in time. I WILL let my body move at it's own pace even if the "last 30 lbs" never come off or if only 10 do over a few years. I cannot ask my body to trust me if I do not trust it. Let's be honest, this is about trust. Everyone on the ledge needs to trust their body that it is doing the right thing and stop being upset about a scale number or how their pants fit. Our bodies know what needs to happen in order for that trust to be rebuilt. We are all here because our bodies don't trust us anymore after years of neglect and starvation. Time is the only thing that can rebuild trust. So we need to relax, eat, and wait for our bodies to trust us. Only then will the scale move down or the inches melt away. As I've seen from the forums, for some people that's right away, for others MONTHS or even years if they give it that long. Your post shows that the wait is worth it. So I'm trusting my body and waiting and EATING. :happy:

EDIT: P.S. I am literally eating twice as much as I used to and not gaining a pound. Something to think about!

Kiki
Just wanted to drop in and let you know how much I appreciate what you and Lucia have done. You guys are amazing.

I will admit that it took me awhile to start upping my cals. I did it slowly...same with reducing cardio. I just did the reset over the summer (even though I've been following EM2WL since last December/January). I'm not going to lie. The reset was kind of scary for me. But I went to the website and read your posts about what to expect and when to know you're done with the reset.

I will say that I think you have been very up front and honest about what to expect. I think it probably depends on what place you are at in your journey (lifestyle change). When I first started on MFP, if I would've tried EM2WL I would have been one of the people that just got discouraged and thought it didn't work.

But it isn't the concept of EM2WL that would have been the problem. It would have been me. ME! I was not ready. I came to MFP eating 500-700 cals/day during the week and eating more on weekends because of family events, etc. I wasn't on a "diet", that was just how I ate. It was a carryover from my teenage years when I was anorexic. When I first came to MFP, I struggled to eat 1300 cals/day. I wouldn't have believed anyone who told me that a year and a half later I'd be happy eating 2300/day and maintaining.

So please don't apologize for painting a rosy picture. You didn't. All the information is out there and you were honest. Thanks for the post!! I hope you know how much we all appreciate you. :flowerforyou:

*Sorry for the ramble* :blushing:

Ms. Kiki,

You are awesome!! Your post was just plain REAL! Over the past couple of weeks i have enjoyed eating 1700-1800 calories and i don't plan on stopping! I do love lifting weights and i guarantee you i will continue to follow this process. Every time i try to eat 1200 calories it's just not enough. some days i don't eat enough and i know it. I can tell.

You are not painting Rosy pictures. Sometimes people just don't understand how much they are eating and not paying attention to what they are eating.

What EM2WL has done for me is open my eyes to WHAT i am eating. I can eat 1800 healthy calories and that is the goal. My cravings have reduced big time!

Thank you for the motivation that you and Lucia give!

I never thought you were miss leading or unclear about how this works. For me it was lack of understanding the process. The mental struggle that goes along with eating more, the bloated feeling in the beginning, the outsiders saying you eat to much. And its because of that I'm doing a second reset. I've since resolved my bad relationship with the scale, don't feel bloated anymore and have a plan to stick to for the rest of my life.

You and Lucia have helped me off the ledge so many times on this journey I cant thank you guys enough.

Misleading is what I received before em2wl. :flowerforyou:

Thanks Kiki, I'm keeping this for future reference and motivation when I'm depressed and mad over the evil scale number!!

At times during my 4 month journey into EM2WL I have been guilty of panicking/freaking out.

I went to the doctor yesterday for a random follow-up appointment and I weighed 10 more pounds than I did when I started all this back in May.

My clothes fit...differently. In some ways that I am happy about (like the way my butt looks! Hello squats and deadlifts!) and in some ways I am not so happy about (like my belly, which is and always has been my trouble spot, whether I was eating 1300 calories a day or now). But in general, my clothes fit the same.

My measurements fluctuate, but in general have stayed EXACTLY the same as they were on May 4, 2012. As of right now the only change I have is that my butt has gained a half an inch but my waist as stayed the same, and really....squats and deadlifts. This is normal and to be expected. It's also TOM and we all know how that affects measurements.

I definitely look more muscular though. And I'm pretty sure that's where the 10 pounds has mostly gone...to my arms. my shoulders, my legs, my booty.

I don't know if eating more will ever make me lose weight. At this point though...I don't care. It is difficult for me to put into words how horrible I felt this past winter from not eating nearly enough, working out like crazy, getting up several times a night with my second son, nursing almost exclusively, and having terrible insomnia. I was lucky if I slept more than 2 hours a night. I felt crazy. I felt desperate and sad and scared. It was a very dark place. I knew that something had to change or I was literally going to die.

I thought I was eating the amount I was supposed to eat to lose the baby weight. I thought I was eating healthy. But I felt like absolute crap all the time.

I am fairly certain that all that I struggled with last winter with postpartum depression and insomnia were directly related to my VLCD. The not sleeping, the constant fatigue, the depression...they were all red flags from my body telling me that I needed more fuel to survive.

Honestly, the best part of eating the proper amount of food my body needs is that I sleep like a rock. Maybe that sounds insignificant but if you've ever struggled with severe insomnia like I did you'll know how very precious sleep is. How everything literally looks and feels better with sleep. When I wake up I feel refreshed. If one of my kids needs me in the night (which happens -- bad dreams, wet the bed, thunderstorms, etc) I can help them and then go back to sleep without any trouble.

During the day I am happier. My hair is shinier. My skin looks healthier. Last winter when I was hardly eating and not sleeping my face looked aged and drawn. Not healthy. Now my skin glows and although my face is still thin I don't look so haggard and exhausted. I am more patient with my children and husband. The constant fog over my thought processes and inability to concentrate has been lifted. I am on antidepressants but I am confident that with time I will be able to take myself off them because I am almost positive that my lifelong battle with depression had a lot to do with not eating enough. I laugh more. I stress less.

I may not ever have visible abs. I may not ever rock a bikini on the beach. I may not ever be a size 2.

I'm only 4 months into this. I know that my body is healing. In 2 years maybe I will have visible abs. Or maybe not. In 4 years maybe I will rock a bikini. I'm in this for the long haul, either way.

To all those who claim it doesn't work...well, you could look at me and say that it hasn't "worked." At least not in the way I at first expected it to, or even wanted it to. I just wanted to lose 10 more pounds after several months of the scale not budging.

What I got was a new life. I am not trying to be all dramatic, but seriously. I cannot explain how much BETTER I feel in every way.

I am going to continue to eat 2100-2300 calories a day. I am going to continue to lift heavy things. I am excited to see where I'll be in 2, 3, or 5 years, even if as I go along I have "fat" days (or weeks, or months).

Let’s face it, this is real life. People are always going to look for quick fixes, the solution to problems that nobody can work out, and an instant transformation into something that they can never genetically be. There will always be dissention, no matter what the topic is. We help individuals as best as we can, we cannot solve their problems nor be the one to single handedly transform their bodies and their eating habits regardless of how insistent they are that we do so. Everyone is dealt a unique set of life circumstances. Each person needs to figure out what works for them, there is no magic solution.

Thank you Kiki and Lucia, for all the wisdom and inspiration that you provide because I know you do this in an effort to reach out to people and make a difference. You do make a difference in many people’s lives, you let people enjoy life more and live healthier in the process. I think it is very empowering for a woman to feel strong, with strength comes confidence and with confidence a person can take their body to places they only imagined. I find inspiration just looking at avatar photos and realizing how awesome I could be, if I’m patient and hardworking.

Patience and hard work, those are the two things that we need to keep in mind. Patience is not waiting 6 weeks for results, it is waiting 6 years. Ask yourself where you want to be in 6 years, do you want to build muscle and be able to enjoy life, health and eating or do you want to be waging the war against food and counting every crouton on your salad? Muscle takes time to build, eating correctly and eating wholesome foods will help your body, but everything takes time. Stop and think of how long it takes for a cut to heal and that is just simply repairing a small piece of skin, your body needs a long time to rebuild itself. Are you worth the wait?

I have never loved my body, I have been overweight my entire life however since lifting weights and eating correctly I’m starting to like some parts of my body. I am still not happy with everything I see in the mirror and I never will be. I have not lost those last 10 pounds that I promised myself I would lose when I started NROLFW and I spent most of the program with a 5 pound gain, which was not the fault of the program but my own problem of not eating enough and having binges. I am now increasing my calories, and I am finally only 1 pound heavier than I started. I will be totally honest with you; I will never have a perfect body. I am happy with the changes that have happened, even though I cannot fit into my jeans and I am not the skinny person I thought I would be. I am strong and I love that, perhaps I should try to be badass instead of tiny.

Kiki and the other individuals who help out here, you guys are awesome for all that you do and all the time you take from your life to contribute to us. Thanks!

Whew! I thought this was going to be a whiney, depressing, "I gained all this weight and this group didn't do anything for me, now I'm so fat, I hate you" thread. Glad to see it's not, nothing like one of those to ruin a day!

ROFL!! How about getting them delivered personally via PM?? ...Daily? :indifferent:

SO not the best part of waking up...

~Kiki

Oh man. Just remember how many people you truly ARE helping!

Thanks Kiki like someone else I am going to bookmark this when I get panicky! It really is a lifestyle change and often a total rethink on health and weight.