sad day

My suggestion are to eat most of your exercise calories and cut down on the sodium intake. With working out more you have to convince your body that it can let go of the fat. To do so you have to eat enough that your body feels it will get the energy it needs. The sodium will increase water retention and will make you retain more weight.

Good Luck.

Looking over your food diary for a bit I have to agree. The sodium level is sometimes 2+ times over what is recommended and the cals are either 1500 (when they should be nearly 3000 on some days or over by 1000+ perhaps preplanning your meals might help. As was suggested, eating back at least some of your excercise cals.

Also important would be to cut out much of the processed foods and add in lots of fresh veggies, fruit and yummy baked and broiled proteins, legumes and such.

When I first started out I cut out all fast food and eating out for over a year+ and we prepared everything at home & had just as much fun. It was loads more fun to know what was in the food you were eating and you could add fresh herbs to make it taste any way you liked it.

Getting in plenty of water is importants most especially with the overload of sodium you're taking in.

I saw someone mention the BL contest you're involved in. I think an important thing we're all learning is if we set out to lose weight and get healthy and change our lifestyle for US we will succeed:drinker: If we do it for money, contests, friends, lovers, hubbies, kids our dog our neighbor's dog or anyone else, it's likely it won't last long oh yea and did I say contest? lol I just notice many threads with so much disappointment when members lose the 'at work' BL contests, wouldn't it be a far better high to realize we're doing it for ourselves and not a contest?? Maybe I'm alone in that thought??

It's gotta be all about US! Those work contests seem to only be about who's winning and who's losing how many lbs. not who's making a long term healthy lifestyle change and who's learning how to make healthy eating choices that will last.

Cheers on turning it into something for yourself:drinker: You'll never look back if you do it for you, it's a win, win then Far more chance of keeping it off long term as well.

Becca:flowerforyou:

If you are working out that much you really need to eat more. You might not win your contest, but wouldn't you rather be healthy and still losing 6 months from now rather than recovering from damaging your body for winning a contest? And, if you work out that much i recommend a heart rate monitor so you know exactly what you are burning and not overeating by over calculating (plus be sure to subtract out what you would have burned if you had not gone to the gym - since that is already in your daily allocation.)

If you want to jumpstart your weightloss, I'd say eat the biggest green salad you can stand with the lowest amount of salad dressing you can stand almost every day for lunch. The salad should include leafy greens, protein (chicken, egg whites, etc.), beans or chickpeas, some fat (olives, avocados, walnuts), and any other vegetables just to give your body some variety. You'r progress is wonderful! Keep it up.

If you want to jumpstart your weightloss, I'd say eat the biggest green salad you can stand with the lowest amount of salad dressing you can stand almost every day for lunch. The salad should include leafy greens, protein (chicken, egg whites, etc.), beans or chickpeas, some fat (olives, avocados, walnuts), and any other vegetables just to give your body some variety. You'r progress is wonderful! Keep it up.

if you like lemons - use lemon juice as a dressing. It is SO good on a salad and ads basically no calories.

Hi ya, firstly 9lbs loss is just that a loss, so well done

BUT looking at your food diary you have a very poor diet. As by the other posts you must realize this! I love clotted cream, but it is high in fat, most of us love bad things, it's why we have ended up over weight and depressed, angry, sad, and so on

The simple fact is we are what we eat, eat crap you will be overweight and un-healthy.

AS women we are fixated with the scales, have you taken you body measurements and had a look at inch loss and body fat?

What sort of exercise are you doing, have you incorporated a workout with weights? When you add Lean Body Mass this will burn more calories, even when doing nothing! AS muscle burns more fat, it draws on your fat stores.

Seriously I think you need to look at the type of foods you are eating, try the no more than 5g of fat per 100g rule, work in more complex carbs to make you feel fuller for longer, as mentioned before have a much more filling and healthy breakfast, even if this is the one change you make at the moment it will make a huge difference in terms of snacking during the morning. If you do want to snack then reach for a piece of fruit. Also NEVER skip breakfast, make that your second thing to change, and third one is drink more water! Use a smaller plate and have 5 smaller meals instead of 3 big ones.

Do you measure everything, this helps hugely in the long term with portion control, it is a real faff to start with but you soon get to learn how much is a tablespoon by sight and so on.

You CAN do this, start with small changes and soon you will notice the difference

Oh and I also agree with others in terms of the competition! You are setting yourself up to fail, already you are upset with yourself which really wont help in changing your mindset towards food, it will continue the circle of feeling sad so you eat.