Hello Looking for Motivation to keep this going

Im always up for more shared motivation. Im a 47 year old married mother of 2 getting ready to celebrate my 25th Anniversay in June. Thats my goal. Lose as much as possible before my cruise. I will send you a friend request and together with a few more friends we can accomplish anything

Hi and welcome. I think I've been doing this for two months now. Yeah, since right after Thanksgiving. My wife and I started it together. She doesn't count her calories so I think she goes over a bit every day. So far I think she's lost like 8 pounds. I have lost 17. Down to 201 this morning from 218 when we started. Now I can wear my large shirts, no more extra larges. My new jeans are now pretty loose on me. My new belt I've gone down a hole. I no longer have heartburn when I go to bed. No more omeprozole, haven't taken any since I started this diet. I can now bend over and tie my shoes without having to hole my breath. And I don't mean squat down to tie them. I mean standing up, bend right over and do it. Like touching toes. Let's see what else, sex is way better, way better :-) My belly is no longer sagging. I can look down and see everything ;-) All just because of 17 pounds. I still have quite a ways to go.

Now, here's what I've been doing that has gotten me where I am now... First of all I stay within my calories as much as possible. Even if I'm really hungry at the end of the day. I scan everything with my iPhone into the app. I weigh myself every day and enter it in the app. I post my weight on FaceBook, my friends "like" and comment on it.

Breakfast: I try to make it between 300 and 400 or a little more calories. Breakfast NEEDS to be your biggest meal. I'll either cook something, just for example, an egg, a pita (100 calories for the pita), a slice of bacon and some ham. Maybe only one meat and I'll add Mozz cheese (less cal than most other cheeses). I always put salt, pepper and dill in the egg to give it flavor. I'll even put capers in it because the calories are super low and it gives a ton of flavor. I'll even use the parkay spray butter which has zero calories. I'll use Pam to spray the skillet, again, zero calories. If I don't want to cook, I either have a Special K breakfast sandwich which has less calories than most other brands and the egg they use is 100% better than others. I'll still add salt, pepper and Dill to it. Sometimes even a slice of bacon I've pre-cooked a few days earlier. Every week after shopping we cook all the bacon so it's always ready. Anyway, or if I don't want any of that I'll have a lean pocket. I always have 1 cup of something to drink with whatever I'm having. It will be either skim milk or Simply Orange.

Lunch and Dinner: Diet friendly microwavable meals. Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, Smart Ones, Atkins, etc. Stay away from Stouffers and others like them, they are way too high in sodium, fat and cholesterol. Plus with the other four brands you get a lot more choices in meals. Lunch I try to use a 300-ish calorie meal. Dinner smaller. Plus if you use a smaller calorie dinner and do have the calories left, you can have a desert or more to drink.

Snacks: between each meal I have a snack, that's two snacks a day. Special K makes my favorite snacks. Atkins has great ones too but they cost more and are a bit higher in calories. But I try to keep snacks around 90 calories. Basically I'll have a snack bar. But sometimes I want coffee, I use 6 teaspoons of sugar in my coffee (4 cups of coffee... big mug). So, one coffee when I get to work lasts me a couple hours and it's 90 calories in sugar :-) That's my snack, sometimes.

Desert: Smart Ones makes deserts, look in the freezer, they rock. About 130 to 150 calories each.

Rules I follow: When I go shopping each weekend, make sure I'll get what I need to have 14 microwavable meals, 5 to take to work on Monday and put in the freezer and the rest stay home. I make sure I get enough snacks to take 10 to work and put in my cabinet in my cubicle and leave the rest at home. I try to mix things up a bit for breakfast. Try different things. This next one is HUGE... If I have enough calories to have a microwavable and something to drink and still have plenty of calories left, DO NOT make a huge salad. You can EASILY stay within the calories but you will eat way too much. After doing this diet for a week and a half my stomach shrank big time. So if I have a huge salad plus something else then I feel sick and bloated and horrible. Not worth it. I eat dinner once I get home so I eat around 6pm and if I do have desert I have it right afterwards. Any time you eat you have to think about what you will be doing for the next three hours. I go to bed around 10pm so the latest I want to eat anything is 7pm.

Good things to use: PAM, Parkay spray butter, spray salad dressing, dill pickles (like Claussen) for snacks. Eat a bunch of those if you want to, but watch the sodium. Green tea (it will help with your metabolism). Another great thing to do, At Walmart they sell beef filets, perfect in size, 220 calories a piece, wrapped in bacon and they taste really good. Sure, it's not a t-bone but who cares. You're dieting and want a steak instead of a microwavable once in a while, right? Go for it. Tonight in fact we are each having one plus a decent sized salad. We also go ahead and buy the already made angus hamburger patties. Not the crappy kind in the boxes. The kind with all the steaks. You get a pack of four at 300 calories a piece. Throw a ton of seasoning on it, a piece of cheese and put it in a pita... mmmmm

Now, this far in the diet, I hate eating at any restaurant. The meals are WAY too big. WAY too greasy and bad for you. If I go out now and order what I used to I can only eat like a half a burger or half a steak. But I AWLAYS feel like crap afterwards. So, we don't eat out much anymore. We save money too :-)

I know this was a lot to read but I hope it helps somebody out there.