Over 100 To Lose?
AuntieMC
Posts: 346 Member
If you have over 100 pounds to lose, I would like to ask you a question. What sort of questions would you ask if you could talk to other people who have already successfully lost over 100 pounds? Obviously how they did it might be of interest, but are there more specific questions you might have? What sorts of information would you find helpful?
In a forum like this, there are lots of people who have already lost over 100 pounds (I am one of them. I have lost 177 pounds since August 2011). I am sure many of them would like to reach out and help others, if we knew what might help them along the way. So, what kinds of questions would you ask?
In a forum like this, there are lots of people who have already lost over 100 pounds (I am one of them. I have lost 177 pounds since August 2011). I am sure many of them would like to reach out and help others, if we knew what might help them along the way. So, what kinds of questions would you ask?
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Were there weeks of "Plateau" and what did you do to break through them? And congrats!:drinker:0
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Ivey, there were indeed weeks of plateau! LOTS of them! After dropping the first 100 pounds, I even gained five or ten back, and had trouble losing it again. I think it took me about a month to get back into losing mode. I just kept doing what I was doing, and things eventually got going again!0
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What was your motivation & what continued to motivate you?
Where you got your meal ideas from?
Little tips or tricks to help you along the way.0 -
Thanks so much for offering your help!!
What exercises (if any) did you do that you felt helped the most? Videos, walking, lifting heavy, cardio, or a combination?
Did you allow yourself cheat meals and would you do different looking back?
Did you plateau? For how long and how many times?
How do you HONESTLY feel naked? (loose skinf, stretch marks, etc) And what did you do to help or wish you would have done?
What is the best advice or one thing you wish someone had told you when you started on your journey?
Sorry for all the questions!!!!! But again, THANK YOU!!!0 -
Actually, I posted a question last month and received no replies, despite bumping it back up a couple of times. I'll repost it here.
Other than the obvious, "Keep doing what you did to lose the weight" and "Don't go back to your old habits," what are some tips for getting our head right to not only lose, but keep the weight off.
I saw a touching video from David Elmore Smith (aka: 650 pound virgin from the TV show by the same name) after he regained 300 of the pounds he publicly shed. In that video, he said he wasn't mentally prepared to keep the weight off, that he was a "mess".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTlvDMBDIxQ
He says, "As much as you work on the outside, you have to work on the inside."
I would love to know what others who lost a good amount of weight -- and kept it off -- did to work on the inside.0 -
Alavado, I was motivated by very serious health issues. I felt it was a matter of life and death. I still do. I sure wish I could have gotten the motivation before it came to that!
At first, I mostly concentrated on anti-cancer foods, as explained in the book "Anti-Cancer: A New Way of Life". This included lots of vegetables, very little meat, among other things. I watched "Forks Over Knives" and "Fat Sick and Nearly Dead", and began delving into plant-based diets, and some vegetable juicing. I got some Raw Foods Cookbooks and also searched recipes online, then modified them to suit my needs. I invented some of my own recipes.
Tips -- I will have to think about! But for me, I think the biggest thing was getting off of all sugar and refined foods. It really helped eliminate the constant cravings I used to have!0 -
Ivey, there were indeed weeks of plateau! LOTS of them! After dropping the first 100 pounds, I even gained five or ten back, and had trouble losing it again. I think it took me about a month to get back into losing mode. I just kept doing what I was doing, and things eventually got going again!
I am so happy to hear this. I swear I have gained the same 8 lbs 3 times! I'm in the midst of losing it again and this time it had better stay away.0 -
Actually, I posted a question last month and received no replies, despite bumping it back up a couple of times. I'll repost it here.
Other than the obvious, "Keep doing what you did to lose the weight" and "Don't go back to your old habits," what are some tips for getting our head right to not only lose, but keep the weight off.
I saw a touching video from David Elmore Smith (aka: 650 pound virgin from the TV show by the same name) after he regained 300 of the pounds he publicly shed. In that video, he said he wasn't mentally prepared to keep the weight off, that he was a "mess".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTlvDMBDIxQ
He says, "As much as you work on the outside, you have to work on the inside."
I would love to know what others who lost a good amount of weight -- and kept it off -- did to work on the inside.
Well for me I am still doing it... Working with my therapist 43 months into this journey... I had no intentions to have weight loss surgery (no disrespect to those that do) but in my mind if I could not fix what was broken in my head then no surgery would do me a bit of good, so my first stop was therapy. I had to come to grips with my food addictions and beyond that what was triggering my over consumption of food because there was reasoning behind the massive amounts of food I was eating. So I have spent the better half of 4 years repairing myself from the inside out. I have a better understanding of who I am and what I want. Food no longer has any control over me, I make the choices that dictate my future...0 -
This is awesome, thank you so much!
Sorry for my non-technical terms... Since 1/1 I have been working out, eating gluten free (although I really need to cut sugar), doing Jillian Michaels Ripped in 30 (since maybe the 3rd week in Jan) and I have noticed that I feel more muscles, I am stronger, my clothes fit better... but the scale has not budged. Did you suddenly have a week when the scale started moving after you had been working out/trying to tone?
And of course, all the questions the above posters asked are on my mind too!0 -
Hey auntiemc maybe you should start a group for this? Id be happy to help in anyway
I think giving back to others on the same journey is soooooooooooo important 0 -
Jubee, when I started down this road, exercise was out of the question. I spent most of the first six months in bed most of the day. When I was able to be up, I started trying some in-home exercise videos, like "Sit Down and Tone Up" by Chair Dancing (Jodi Stolove), and In-home Walking with Leslie Sansone. I couldn't do it all, at first. I just did what I could.
I allowed no cheat meals of any kind. I felt my life was on the line, and that sugar and processed foods were the enemy. I have not cheated once, and I don't plan to, ever! Well, I don't plan to cheat on food, lol! I DO plan to cheat death!
Yes, I have plateaued, not sure how many times. Probably for a month after losing the first hundred pounds, again around 140 or so, I think. At about 165 pounds, I was stuck for at least a few months.
How do I honestly feel about myself naked? I am ALIVE! I wasn't sure I would be! Yes, aesthetically, the body of a 56 year old woman who has lost 177 pounds ain't much to look at. But it has been through a lot, and I am glad to be here! I do have the advantage of having NEVER had a body that was much to look at. I was a 300 pound teenager, and really never gave much thought to such things. It was just me.
The best advice I could give someone who is just starting down this road: Permanent and drastic change is what you need to do. What you are doing isn't working. Doing less of it won't, in my opinion, effect a permanent change. The junk food has GOT to go. Yeah, it tastes good. You are used to it. It is on every street corner, and everyone is eating it. If you try to cut down on it, you will probably continue to crave it. Toss it out the window, every last sugar-laden bit of it! And never look back!0 -
fresh-start, that is a really great question! For those who didn't see it, she asked "What are some tips for getting our head right to not only lose, but to keep the weight off?"
I have only recently started really grappling with some aspects of this. I was in survival mode until recently, but now that the dust has settled, and I still have to maintain this 177 pound weight loss, and lose another 40 or 50 pounds as well, getting my head right is an important issue. Most of us have been using food as a coping mechanism. We need to find new coping mechanisms. There are a lot of unhealthy ones out there -- drinking, smoking, drugs, compulsive shopping, whatever. A very conscious effort has to be made to replace unhealthy coping mechanisms with healthy ones. Many people use exercise. Some use creative outlets. Some benefit from some form of therapy. Others find self-help books dealing with whatever topics are issues in their lives are helpful to them. If anyone else who has already lost over 100 pounds is reading this, please chime in with some suggestions!0 -
What exercises (if any) did you do that you felt helped the most? Videos, walking, lifting heavy, cardio, or a combination?
Well in my case at 560 lbs. walking was out of the question, hell I could barely stand for more than 30 seconds at a stretch. I got a doctors script for Aquatic therapy and used water displacement to allow me to stand and walk in a therapy pool. I did this for the first 17 months of my journey and lost 170 lbs. in the water before being fitted for braces (severely bad knee's) and start doing things outside of the pool.
Did you allow yourself cheat meals and would you do different looking back?
We eat out once a week and the only rule is whatever I want off them menu I can have but it has to be eaten there and nothing is brought home. In the very beginning I had to rid all trigger foods from the house until such I time that I could consume them within my caloric intake. I have introduced everything back into my diet now and have no limitations on any food just eating them in moderation.
Did you plateau? For how long and how many times?
Yes had plenty, there is a breakdown on my website of my weight loss every week if you care to look at it.. www.gettingfit4life.com
How do you HONESTLY feel naked? (loose skinf, stretch marks, etc) And what did you do to help or wish you would have done?
Yes even after all that I have been through losing 300+ lbs. and having 17 lbs. of skin removed I still have body image problems and I have come to grips that this is just going to be a part of my life and I am learning to live with it... I am never going to be perfect but I will be the best that I can be.. It is all I can ask of myself
What is the best advice or one thing you wish someone had told you when you started on your journey?
You need to take it one day at a time... do everything that you can do to be successful today and know that when you go to bed each night that you have done all you could have done to be as successful as possible and then get up tomorrow and do it all over again.. This is not a diet, it is the rest of your life......0 -
dawnsjourney, you can do it! Just keep at it!0
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EdDavenport, thank you so much for adding your replies!0
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whitneyas, I haven't done that much with toning and exercising, so it hasn't been much of an issue in my weight loss. But I did lose an entire clothing size in one month, recently, without any weight loss, the month I finally started exercising!0
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kazzsjourney, thanks for the idea! I am not sure what to call such a group. I know there are already groups for people trying to lose 100 pounds. What would be a good name for a group trying to attract both newbies and weight-loss veterans?0
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I would like to ask if you ate above or below your BMR? I am very confused about many calories to eat. Some friends have told me to raise my calories, because I was eating under my BMR. But I have seen many others barely eating any calories and lose a lot more than I have. Any suggestions? By the way, congratulations!0
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LinFlemmer, I have no idea what my BMR is! For the first six or seven months, I just shifted to a totally different way of eating. Eliminating all sugar and junk food and fast food totally slashed my calories, but I wasn't counting calories. Once I got off the sugar, my cravings and feelings of constant hunger went away, and vegetables started tasting good! I had already lost about 100 pounds before I started counting calories, then I aimed for 1200, but remember, I was very sedentary. Now I am aiming for 1200 to 1400. I didn't do a bunch of research on this. I just ate better and a lot less, and I asked a couple of slender friends near my height how many calories they ate in a day, then I tried to do what they had been successfully doing all their adult lives. I did once get to a pretty long plateau, and I actually started eating just a little bit more, and it did seem to help! I got to an even longer plateau, and that time, cutting calories a bit seemed to help. Who knows, maybe you just have to keep your body guessing??0
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Great post. Very helpful.0
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WOW!!! 177 lbs!!! That is totally amazing!!!!! My question to you is .. How did you do it ??? That is remarkable. CONGRATS!!! I find most interest to me is ... what type of food did they find that hindered them the most while trying to lose weight, and what is the biggest change that they have made to become healthier, and happier!! 0
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Hi Mandy! Ah yes, the question everyone want the answer to -- How did you do it? In my case, I totally and radically changed my eating habits, overnight, cold turkey, and never looked back. I did this because of a serious medical problem, which shocked me into action. So, I would have to say that step one is to find a MAJOR motivation! Because changing the kind of lifetime habits that lead to being two hundred pounds overweight is no easy thing to do. You have to REALLY want it! You have to want it enough to break free of the lifelong addictions to sugars and fats. I tossed all the sugar and processed food and junk food, and never got any more. I switched to whole, organic foods, heavy on the vegetables. The food that hindered me most in the past was definitely SUGAR! Once the refined sugar was out of my system, I felt a lot better, other things started tasting better, hunger was under control, and cravings were greatly reduced, nearly eliminated!
You also asked what is the biggest change I made. I changed EVERYTHING. My entire diet totally changed. Getting off of sugar was a big one!
Mandy, I see that you have also lost significant weight. Would you mind answering some of these questions, too, to get another person's perspective on it?0 -
good thoughts here. I read a lot of posts from others talking about the bmr, whether to eat back calories, and a bunch of other things I don't know anything about. I too just try to do something different, watch portion control, stay between 1200-1500 cal/day and make sure I am getting enough protein and water. Beyond that I feel it's a bunch of mumo-jumbo to get caught up in. And I totally agree with you about the sugar. Once I stopped eating processed foods and refined sugars, my cravings went away. I know this to be factual because on the rare occasion I have indulged, the cravings come back with a vengeance, and I have to work really hard to get back on track, It's so not worth it in the end to indulge!0
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Most definitely about plateaus....they suck...big time :happy: Also, my best advice to people is always that sure, dieting and exercise and whatever you do to lose weight is great..but if your head is not in the right place, you will not be successful in the long term. We are all overweight for a reason...we have to deal with that reason and come to learn a new and healthier relationship with food. It isnt a diet, its a change in your way of living.0
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We are all overweight for a reason...we have to deal with that reason and come to learn a new and healthier relationship with food. It isnt a diet, its a change in your way of living.
I totally agree with this. I think it's a big part of why I've gained weight after all my dieting attempts.
But to be honest, I have absolutely no idea why I let myself reach a bloated 250 pounds. If I knew what was broken, I'd see about getting it fixed. It's not like I had an abusive or neglectful childhood. I wish there was a scan that doctors could do and say, "Aha! You are fat because your parents refused to buy you a monkey for your birthday," or "I see. You have an unhealthy relationship with food because your mom used to give you a chocolate bar when you had to stay home with a fever." Hmmm...come to think of it, maybe that last one actually is the culprit -- too much love from my mother! ;-)0
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