Hi everyone - Just getting started here! :-) Can you answer

Six pounds?!! That's amazing. Advice? Well, sounds like you don't need any you're doing fine- but I just gave Slemma what I think is some good advice that I read in a health magazine somewhere and so I'll copy here for you:

Hi Slemma, I'm new here but I think we're probably going thru kind of the same trial- I've gained steadily for the last 2 years since I decided to put an end to all dieting efforts. Now I've realized that I've got to take a more sensible, long-term approach to being healthy. What's hard for me is that I know that being physicall active is an important component to any healthy lifestyle, but I live in the northeast, and am house-bound for six or seven months of the year because it's either to cold or too snowy outside. My solution was to join a local gym that lets me go month-to-month. Fall and winter I'm in the gym, and come spring and summer I cancel my membership and get active outside. I also read some really good advice about calories, the gyst of which was to eat what is "normal" for you for three weeks. The only change is that you must be strict with yourself about writing everything you eat down. Once the three weeks is over, calculate the average number of calories you consume each day by dividing your total calorie intake over the three weeks by 21. If for example you averaged 3,000 calories a day, then just subtract 500 calories a day from that. Over a week you would lose 3,500, which is equal to 1 pound of weight. If you did this for 10 weeks, you'd lose 10 lbs, and so on. Once your weight loss slowed, you'd do the three week calculation again, counting every calorie as before. If you were eating on average 2500 calories per day, you'd reduce it by another 500, and that should be enough to shock your body out of it's "set point." Of course, after another ten weeks you could potentially shed another 10 pounds, but once you reach 2,000 calories, I personally would begin adjusting the number of calories you cut back to something more doable, like 300, and then increasing the amount of time you exercise to make up for the other 200 calories, so you can continue to lose at a rate of 1 lb. per week, which is really a very sensible way of losing weight and keeping it off. That's what I'm doing. I figure it took me 10 years to put all this weight on, I certainly can't ask my body to lose it overnight. Best of luck!