Hello and Thanks

I've been lurking here for a few weeks now and figured I'd post an intro and a thanks and then quietly go back to lurking

I'm 47, female, a computer geek and would like to lose over 160 lbs.

I've only ever made half hearted attempts at diets and exercise through my life, always giving up after a short time because I'm just addicted to sweets and playing video games - much more enjoyable than eating healthy and sweating! LOL

A few years ago I got a treadmill to start exercising (Yeah right!). Every time I decided to start walking, I'd try walking 'at a brisk pace' because that's what you're supposed to do right? But it never worked, it was torture, my feet would hurt, my legs would hurt, I'd be gasping for breath, etc. so I'd give up.

Recently my daughter decided to do a 5k and I went to support her and watched - it was the first 5k I'd ever seen. It was a small event in town, not too many entries and I was looking at the people. There were maybe 4 or 5 people I'd consider athletic, everyone else was overweight to some degree or another and they weren't very fast, a few just walked the whole course, and I thought, I could do that. Not that day and still not today, but it was something that was not unobtainable if I worked on it. So I decided I wanted to try and do a 5k before I hit 50.

I'd read a lot about heart rate monitors and how some people were crediting them for their own transformations and I figured it was all hype, but what the heck, it was worth a shot, right? I did some research to try to figure out which one to get and found myfitnesspal.com in the process - a thread about HRMs. My first walk with the HRM was an eye opener - I wanted to stay in zone 2 and watched my heart rate shoot right up as I started my normal 'brisk' walk. I'm short, fat and out of shape, so to me, brisk was like 2.4 mph (forget about the 'slow' rate of 3 mph so many people suggest you start at - that's just not possible for me). But I had to keep lowering my speed based on my heart rate and wound up walking a half mile and averaged less than 1.9 mph that first walk - how slow! how embarassing! But the next day as I pondered that I realized, my feet hadn't hurt, my legs hadn't hurt and I hadn't been gasping for breath. The only reason I stopped was because it had been really muggy that day. So I got a fan and decided to try to go even further the next time. WUHU! a mile in half an hour! It had been years since I'd walked a mile straight - yay!!

I created an account on MFP and have been tracking everything and reading all of your great inspirational and motivational stories since then. What a fantastic site this is! Over the past few weeks I've consistently tried to either start walking at a rate slightly faster than the last time, or walk 5 minutes longer, always letting my heart rate guide me. Last night I walked 2 miles in 50 minutes. It's not very far or very fast compared to a what a lot of people can do, but for me - what an accomplishment - I've NEVER walked 2 miles straight. It takes a while now for my heart rate to even get close to zone 3. When I climb the stairs in the morning to my office on the second floor of our building, my heart doesn't pound the way it used to. And I've lost 8 pounds!! (Hopefully they're not just lost but banished and never to be seen again

Thank you everyone on MFP!! I believe I can actually do it this time!