How I Did NOT Lose 98 pounds

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Replies

  • larnsperger
    larnsperger Posts: 161 Member
    WOW amazing story! Thanks for taking the time to share. You are so right about maintenance, it is much harder than losing well at least for me. Losing is like a game with a pay off, maintenance is hard when you are no longer losing. I understand eating disorders in a way I never did before. I understand how women can get so caught up in losing they just keep going.

    Wishing you continued success!
  • chezileigh
    chezileigh Posts: 255
    Cor, you look 10 years younger well done!
  • Jmstill300
    Jmstill300 Posts: 239 Member
    Well done! You hit the nail on the head with the majority of your points as well. I know this struggle all too well myself.
  • fat214
    fat214 Posts: 109
    Wow
  • wheezybreezy
    wheezybreezy Posts: 313 Member
    This was such a great post! Thank you. And you congratulations!
  • Caligalslim
    Caligalslim Posts: 39
    Great advice you have help me out a lot. Congrat on your goal.
  • era228
    era228 Posts: 14
    Thanks for sharing your story and your words of wisdom. And congratulations on reaching your goals - you look like you feel great!
  • essjay76
    essjay76 Posts: 465 Member
    CONGRATS! You look amazing!!
  • mocha608
    mocha608 Posts: 2 Member
    Great post Jeanne!!!!! Thanks for sharing your story. It helps to know that I am not alone trying lose weight. I have lost weight before and gained it all back and then some. My goal is to live a healthy life style along with exercising daily. Hopefully, I will my reach goal on the weight that I want to lose.

    Congrats to you and thanks for encouraging me to not to give up on my goal. Have a great day!
  • mscrholder
    mscrholder Posts: 38 Member
    Exactly what I needed to read, especially the part about losing weight fast and exercising like crazy. Thank you so much for sharing! You look phenomenal, and your story is even more phenomenal!
  • JeanneTops
    JeanneTops Posts: 2,640 Member
    Thank you all so much for the positive feedback!

    I've received a lot of friend requests which puzzled me because I have this statement on my profile:

    **I'm rather Internet shy so I don't accept friend requests from people whom I do not know. You're welcome to respond to me on the forums!**

    But I checked my privacy settings today and realized that I'd set them so that nobody but my friends could see them :embarassed: I've fixed that now.

    I apologize to all those who sent me friend requests. I really do wish you all well and if you click on my posts link you'll see that I post frequently in an open forum which is very warm and welcoming to all who want to join in. I prefer to keep my online interactions to that forum. Thanks for understanding and just keep working on your goals one day at a time!

    Jeanne
  • pscott822
    pscott822 Posts: 16 Member
    Wow, from what you say I'm convinced that the change has to happen in your head before your body follows.
  • UNDERWOOD1272
    UNDERWOOD1272 Posts: 3 Member
    Good stuff. Wisdom really. :smile:
  • ILiftHeavyAcrylics
    ILiftHeavyAcrylics Posts: 27,732 Member
    Excellent post.
  • getitamb
    getitamb Posts: 2,019 Member
    Awesome!!
  • alienrite
    alienrite Posts: 314 Member
    Amazing post and success. Should be required reading for everyone here
  • mspoopoo
    mspoopoo Posts: 500 Member
    You were beautiful before but now you look so bright and happier!

    I really like hearing the success stories from woman like me who are a little bit older.

    You are definitely an inspiration and role model!
  • granitendirt
    granitendirt Posts: 76
    Bump, so I can come back and read your post when I need some encouragement!
  • triciab79
    triciab79 Posts: 1,713 Member
    I did the exact opposite of those things to get to my goal. :-) Everyone is different though and it is wonderful that you found the right plan for you.
  • rachseby
    rachseby Posts: 285 Member
    Thanks for this...and your pants are really cute!
  • jen_zz
    jen_zz Posts: 1,011 Member
    Thanks for sharing, wonderful advice. I needed to reminder to just focus on today and not worry about the future. Also important is to be happy at whatever weight one's at.
  • Jameson1984
    Jameson1984 Posts: 100 Member
    Bump for encouragement.
  • kathleenjoyful
    kathleenjoyful Posts: 210 Member
    Bumping this because you are so positive and pragmatic, and right about the mind-body connection. Congratulations, you look fantastic!
  • misifer
    misifer Posts: 114 Member
    This is, by far, one of the best "do's and don't's" success stories that I've read. Thank you for sharing your successes and mistakes during this lifelong journey. And you should be SO proud that you've maintained, when I've heard that is the hardest part of this.

    I can relate to several of your points but I've never been able to fully explain them. Thank you for doing that beautifully! I have never been sure of my "goal weight", because my only goal is to get healthy, and never let myself get UNhealthy again. I have no timeline, although I'm learning patience. Nothing about eating extremely low calories and exercising until I was exhausted ever felt "right" to me. I needed to do NOW, what I'll need to do at a healthier weight, so that is what I am doing. Doing it any other way was simply unrealistic for me.

    Thank you for the reminders to focus on today, and not worry so much about tomorrow. And congratulations on your successes!
  • kristinksmith
    kristinksmith Posts: 44 Member
    4. Dream about how happy I'd be when I reached my goal weight.

    It's weird but you have to learn how to be happy. Just being at your goal weight doesn't automatically make you feel happy - at least not for long. The compliments stop, the thrill of losing weight stops, the ordinary trials and tribulations of life continue and sooner or later something goes wrong in your life. If you haven't learned how to be happy through all those, then you won't be. This time, I focused on being happy at whatever weight I was because I focused on enjoying my food, enjoying my exercise and enjoying how I looked and felt each and every day. Now I have the habit of being happy and I know how to get through the lows of life.


    To me, this was the most profound thing you said. You're absolutely right -- the end weight is not the panacea for happiness. Being proud of the success and positive choices we are making today and all along the way should be the building blocks of happiness
  • aarar
    aarar Posts: 684 Member
    Yes, I've lost 98 pounds. I started on my birthday in December 2009. A year ago, I'd lost 88 pounds and reached a healthy BMI. Since then I have lost an additional 10 pounds. This past week I observed my one year anniversary of being at a healthy BMI.

    Last year I wrote a long post about how I did it which you can read here:
    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/314505-success-before-sixty

    From Day One, my goal has been to not gain the weight back. I've yo-yo'd all my life and I just didn't want to go through all this effort to gain all the weight back yet again.

    So, I didn't do a lot of things that you commonly see here on MFP. I think of these as the mistakes I made in the past.

    1. Lose weight quickly.

    The stress of restricting eating, exercising like crazy and worrying about my weight would be too much to bear long-term. Something always happened and I'd ease off, gain weight and give up.

    2. Set short term weight goals.

    Inevitably I'd miss them and then feel like I was failing. Probably it was just my natural weight fluctuation. But regularly feeling like I was failing left me, at the end, not feeling like the success I was. Without feeling like a success, I had no self-confidence about dealing with the natural difficulties of life and I would start over-eating again.

    3. Focus on how much weight I'd lost.

    All that did was keep reinforcing my self-image as a fat person. I was a fat person who'd lost weight. This time, I focused on how much I weighed and how good I looked. I threw away my larger clothing and bought new stuff all along the way and really worked at feeling happy with how I looked and felt. I refuse to answer questions about how much I've lost - I just say "a lot."

    4. Dream about how happy I'd be when I reached my goal weight.

    It's weird but you have to learn how to be happy. Just being at your goal weight doesn't automatically make you feel happy - at least not for long. The compliments stop, the thrill of losing weight stops, the ordinary trials and tribulations of life continue and sooner or later something goes wrong in your life. If you haven't learned how to be happy through all those, then you won't be. This time, I focused on being happy at whatever weight I was because I focused on enjoying my food, enjoying my exercise and enjoying how I looked and felt each and every day. Now I have the habit of being happy and I know how to get through the lows of life.

    To sum it all up, my motto is: Work on Today, Let Tomorrow Worry About Itself.

    Everybody loves Before-and-After pictures so I'm going to post mine. You can see my previous weight losses on this blog post: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/JeanneTops/view/official-135794

    All I'm going to say is that the way I look now (on the right) is EXACTLY how I wanted to look when the picture on the left was taken. (Note the same style and color scheme!)

    Best of wishes to all of you.

    6yrcomp.jpg

    I absolutely agree with every single thing you said.
  • positivelypetercarr
    positivelypetercarr Posts: 2 Member
    Jean thank you for sharing. Your story is an inspiration to us all. Keep living the healthy life!
  • smfh
    smfh Posts: 17 Member
    bump
  • pkw58
    pkw58 Posts: 2,038 Member
    Excellent post, inspirational to me... I don't want to regain what I lost this time around.. My goal that on August 14, 2013, I can say the same!

    And I can! Thanks again!
  • ShellyAnn46
    ShellyAnn46 Posts: 212 Member
    bump realistic expectations

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