*** Supportive Friends -- Looking to Release 50+ Pounds ***

Hello all. I'm a 30 year old and I have lost 30lbs with MFP over the past few years. Losing slowly but not going back up, so it is working for me. I have 50 lbs still to go to my goal weight of 160lbs. I have not been under 180lbs since I was 14 or so. I don't know what healthy looks like but I'm SO looking forward to the feeling.

I could TOTALLY use more support and inspiration- and even the occational not so gentle push. Thanks for posting this and I'm excited to get to know you all!

~Glynis

@Tru and meg
I felt sick for around 4 to 5 hours it seemed to come on when I was sat at my desk but when I was about and about walking it'd go away. I drank my 8 glasses of water and yes my heart was a bit jitery but I guess that's the high caffine levels. I didn't have the second reccomended drink before 6pm. It did stop me from feeling hungry all day though and I managed to stick to 2x slimfast shakes and a healthy chicken salad for dinner. Which to be honest I don't think I would have done without the supressant. I'd have come home and had some toast or a sandwich but I've come straight to bed with some water.
I think I'll give it another go tomorrow but if I feel sick I won't be taking it again.

Looking forward to a good day today. Going to meet my dad this morning, and we are going to take a walk together. Normally he would be working today, so its a little treat to get to go during the day on a Friday. We might walk to a local lake from his house, which would a really nice long walk (5+ miles).

I also plan on riding my one speed bike with a 35 lb child attached to it, at least for a mile and a half. At my older son's request, he wants to ride his bike to school, and I'm not quite ready to let him ride there alone. So this morning, in order to have energy for the walk with Dad, I'll be driving along Jamie as he rides to school, then this afternoon I will actually ride the bike to go get him.

Dinner should be interesting, I'm going to a potluck at my church for a ladies get together. I'm making an Olive Garden knockoff soup, Pasta E Fagioli. Has lots of yummy veggies and not a lot of pasta :happy: If anyone wants that recipe just let me know.

@Jolande, don't forget to let us know how you feel today. Just want to make sure you take good care of yourself.

@Jane, a potluck is a gathering where each person brings a different food to share.

Here's the recipe for Pasta E Fagioli:

1 lb hamburger, fully cooked
2 cans tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes
1 large potato, peeled & diced
carrots (how ever much you like)
2-3 stalks celery
1 small onion
2 cans of beans (your choice), rinsed
2 cans water (use a bean can)
2 cups macaroni or shell pasta
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1 1/2 tsp garlic
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp basil
3/4 tsp chili powder
salt & pepper to taste

Brown hamburger in soup pot, drain if needed. Add all ingredients except pasta, simmer till veggies are tender. Then add pasta and simmer another 8-10 minutes.

This is a recipe created by my mom after she had Olive Garden's version of this soup. Enjoy!

Edit to say, this recipe feeds my family of 4 at least twice! I usually take out half the batch and freeze it before I add the pasta, that way the pasta isn't mushy in the frozen half next time we have it.

Didi: stay strong or find an alternative, perhaps a hot chocolate? Won't do as much damage...

Meg: I'm going to have a go at that recipe too. Although I might make it with ground turkey as husband eats no beef. Hope you had a great walk and bike ride.

Jane: hope you enjoyed the cinema. What did you see? I'm afraid if I went to the cinema I would be asleep!!

Jolande: Personally I don't believe in supplements and energy drinks. A friends son is currently awaiting a liver transplant due to the damage caused by those drinks. Be careful!!

Ron: Enjoy your week at home!

So still no movement on the scale but it will, I know it. Don't know what is stopping it but I'm sure it will move. Been loving being back at the gym. I used to be such a regular that everyone, staff and clients knew me, so returning is like being greeted by long lost friends. My trainer has been there training other people when I've been there but she always keeps an eye on me. Its nice, causes she has been training me for over 2 years we have a friendship as well. She is impressed with the dedication and effort I've dived back in with. I am finding it mentally hard as all I can think is 'need to get home to baby girl!'. But I also keep telling myself the more weight I lose the more time I will have with my daughter when she is older.

I properly go back to work on Monday (did 2.5 days and then it was the Easter holidays) and Kenzie goes to nursery. Its been hard because when I dropped her off for her final settling in time yesterday (2 hours) she has clocked that this is the place where Mommy leaves me and started to cry which made me cry and then she cried when I came to collect her. The look on her face was just like Mommy you left me!!!! She is only 8.5 months old but smart as a whip. Not looking forward to having to drop her off for the whole of Monday. When I dropped her off I used the time to go to the gym (and restart C25K). I'm pleased with myself though as all I wanted was to go into the shop and buy chocolate and stuff my face. I told myself though that eating was not going to make me feel less guilty about that fact that Mackenzie has to go to nursery. It is just a fact of life. I need to go back to work. And I know that nursery will be good for her and soon she will love it.

Hoping to get to the gym both days this week as well as spending some time sorting out the gardens (we rent and the last tenents did nothing with the gardens!). Hope you all have a good one, if you are in the UK, enjoy the sunshine!!

@meg - thanks for the recipe. Looks really nice - will have to try that this week.

@steph - we went to see Tom Cruise in Oblivion. I don't normally like him very much but it was quite good fun - and quite thouhgt provoking in places. Would recommend it - and I stayed awake! Hope everything gets easier with the nursery - your little girl will be loving it before long, sure you'll both get used to the routine.

@steph_135 - good luck with the puzzles and the 'you time' - sounds good!

@Diane - good luck with the water drinking. I hate those days when you could just eat everything in sight - hang in there and you'll feel really good about it tomorrow.

Had a day of continuing to sort stuff from the house move and getting rid of empty boxes. All good fun - now preparing to sit down with a nice bowl of curry! Finally have the Wii set up again so have done a wii fitness workout as well as working on the cross trainer so feeling good about the day so far.

May I join your "thread"? I have been using mfp for 18 months now. I did really well at first...lost 34 pounds. But since October the weight has been steadily creeping back. I seem to have lost my motivation. I need help!!!

@Steph_135, sounds like puzzles are a good way to keep the hands busy! Good luck getting back in the swing of things :happy:

@Tru, feel better soon! Remember to drink lots of water.

@Jane, I bet it's nice to get settled in. Wii fit is fun! Even my little 3 year old can do it, with a little help. He's pretty funny too, when I am doing yoga on there, he will stand beside me and do all the moves with me.

@acadia, feel free to join! Anyone is welcome here :bigsmile: Hopefully you'll catch some motivation from us!

Well, I've had a mostly good Saturday. The first part wasn't so great (TOM arrived, killer cramps!), but I got myself up and moving, went to meet my Dad for a walk in the woods on the logging roads behind his house. 3.4 miles, elevation gains of 987.5 feet & 649 calories burned. Came home, inhaled some lunch, I was so hungry! Then I went a bit crazy and did an hour of zumba... Problem is, now I have over 2000 calories left in my daily allowance! No way those all are getting eaten. Dinner is going to be so yummy! Jamaican jerk chicken with red beans and rice. I'm kind of drooling just thinking about it.

Jane... Thanks! Started a hard puzzle! It's going to take a while. I think moving is so much fun! We've been at this place for over 6 years, and are looking to move SOON! All of out stuff has been in storage for so long, that I don't even know what half the stuff I own is anymore. Maybe we'll have a garage sale for a lot of it.

Tru... Feel better! :flowerforyou:

Acadia... I can't remember if I posted it here or in another topic, but this quote has been motivating me a lot lately. "Commitment is doing the things you said you'd do, long after the mood you said it in has left you." It's not always fun and games, so when we lose motivation we have to remember the REASONS WHY we started this journey in the first place, and remember that it's going to take time and commitment to the journey to get there.

Meg... Thanks. My TOM is 2 days late. I'm just waiting to the first 24 hours of cramps over with! It's baaad! I love Zumba too. :happy:

Lisa... I get in grazing moods as well. When I start to just want to snack on everything, I've been noticing lately that it might be time for an actual meal. Even if I'm only a little bit hungry, I say it's better to have a meal of REAL foods, than to snack the rest of the night on non-nutritious junk.

Today marks official day 4 of healthy eating and working out for me. I'm quite proud, and excited to feel this motivated for this long.

@Ron Now that you are here, maybe some other gents will join in. You could start an avalanche. You can't be old as you look about my age and I'm "not" old. Do you find you have to do things a little differently as an older person?

Hi Everyone! I'm new here, today is my 7th day, and I saw this group and knew I'd want to be part of it! You all are so supportive of each other, and I believe that is one of the most important keys to longterm success on this journey we all are on.
I want to lose a lot of weight, about 175 lbs.............ugh, I hate even writing that number, but I've gotten real about it and know I just can not allow myself to miss out on being the real "me" anymore. I love people, I love to laugh, I love to do fun, silly things, and even though my next Bday will be the big 5-0, I still feel like I'm in my 20's.....funny considering my daughter will be 20 this Fall! lol

There are various reasons that have gotten me to this weight, and I'm ready to give it my all to start slowly changing my life around. I'm tired of being alive and not "living"! Does that make sense?

When I found out about this site, I wasn't sure if I'd like it, and had been considering joining WW online, but the monthly fee of around $60 kept me from doing it! I'm so happy I hesitated, because now I've found MFP, and I know I found the right place for me! I love the support, the food diary and tracking, the exercise tracking and the ease of use!
I hope to "meet" alot of you on here, and I'd love the support through this journey I'll be on for a long time......a lifetime actually. I want to support others too, it's a wonderful give and take and I'm looking forward to knowing you all and your stories better!

Hello everyone!!
I'm back!!! I feel I can finally get back to the swing of things. Wyatt is not getting up every two hours to eat, so I'm getting more sleep.
For those that don't know me, I'll do a small intro. My name is Julie. Am part of the original Skinny Chics group. My husband and I were in the process to adopt an infant to expand our family, well back on February 1st, we got a call saying a young lady gave birth to a healthy boy. She went through the adoptive parents profile and she selected us. So that next day we bought home our son. We have a daughter ( who also is adopted). Well dealing with an infant and an almost 3 year old, I just couldn't do sleepless nights and trying to lose weight. So until I can get a decent amount of sleep, can I do something about my weight. And here i am, happy to say i get about 5 hours of sleep and feel like i can function, some what. Well that's my life in a small nut shell.
I will be doing this weight loss with little exercise. My gym won't take a child until their 6 months of age, so I got awhile before I can head back there. And it seems Old Man Winter doesn't want to leave us here in WI. So will try to get on the treadmill when I can.
I haven't read all the past post but will try to catch up.

Right, I'm back on it, (mostly).

I’ve been reading through and keeping up, but there’s been so much going on and discussed that I don’t have much to add, so I’m just going to jump in from here on in.

This weekend I decided to take a “me” weekend and have a massive clear out, threw away/donated/recycled bags of books, rubbish, clothes etc. Basically this is all from 6 years living away as a student and accumulating additional households…and when I came back last June there being zero room in my parents house (there never is right), so me never unpacking. In order to unpack this weekend I had to get rid of a room’s worth of stuff. (Don’t get me wrong, I’d unpacked a suitcase or two of clothes, and enough stuff to live with, but basically everything else was in boxes in the garages, and I’d only go out there and root around if I needed something specific!)

So I did that. I didn’t see my bf, but that’s OK, we’re going to see each other plenty over the next few weekends. Next weekend is helping him pack up. The weekend after I’ll be packing up a van (with him) and driving it to his new place and move him in. The weekend after I’m told is another bank holiday (though I find this bizarre to believe it’ll already be May) and we’re going to Plymouth to see his family.

I’ve still been cycling, walking etc lots, but I’m going to give some 30DS a go this week, and maybe even some running, though I’m not going to jump in to hard given how tired I’ve been and how much is currently on my plate. Baby steps, but when I was unpacking I came across my 30DS dvd (which I’d sworn I’d already unpacked but apparently not), and I kinda felt I couldn’t ignore stuff any longer and can’t really use the “new job, tired” excuse for much longer.

Eating is fine, if I don’t accept all the chocolate/biscuits/goodies at work, and my mum’s new erratic love of baking and shoving evil food on me. She’s all mucked up at the moment, my bro’s going through finals at the moment and doesn’t really have a plan for when he graduates (current options, teaching, masters, or something completely different), she feels left out, excluded and like he’s being rude to her specifically…he’s not, he’s just being him with a bit more academic stress than normal. This combined with me maybe/sometime etc moving out, she feels like a hen-less mother hen/who has hens that are simply not letting themselves be mothered and it’s driving her insane. Thus she’s becoming a feeder, as that’s one thing she can do. Yummy, but really bad!

Hope you’re all doing great, the warmer weather means it’s much easier to drown in water and resist cups of milky tea, even if the whole of the UK seems to be trying to bake me by not having the heating turned off yet!

Hi, I'm looking to lose a significant amount of wt and would love to be a part of this thread. My only concern is that I'm not very familiar with the site & I'm not sure if I'll be able to get back to the thread.

@ron - rhubarb cake was good! I don't always manage to hold to my limits but I figure this is life and I can't restrict myself all the time - as long as I'm in limit more often than not, I'm happy. Sounds like you are super busy - the travel sounds glamourous but I suspect it wears thin. My husband spent a lot of time in hotels a few years ago and isn't keen to go back to it.

@tru - glad you are feeling better and it must be good to feel that your improved health is down in some part to the changes you are making. I have noticed that Ive not had colds for a while and wonder if it is linked in some way.

@penny - sounds like you are doing lots of good things for you and well done for avoiding all the temptations at work. That is one of the things that I struggle with most - the constant supply of cakes and biscuits!

So, it's not been a bad day. Having felt very fuzzy yesterday, i've felt more awake today and had a busy day at work. Somewhat unexpectedly I now have a job interview tomorrow as well. A job that I half heartedly applied for a few weeks ago and they've only just come back to me. I must now find out who they are and what they do! Currently have Doctor Who on - we've been recording them and I think we are a couple of weeks behind so catching up this evening