How I Did NOT Lose 98 pounds

JeanneTops · August 2012

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 · August 2013

Wow, from what you say I'm convinced that the change has to happen in your head before your body follows.

UNDERWOOD1272 · August 2013

Good stuff. Wisdom really.

ILiftHeavyAcrylics · August 2013

Excellent post.

getitamb · August 2013

Awesome!!

alienrite · August 2013

Amazing post and success. Should be required reading for everyone here

mspoopoo · August 2013

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 · August 2013

Bump, so I can come back and read your post when I need some encouragement!

triciab79 · August 2013

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 · August 2013

Thanks for this...and your pants are really cute!

jen_zz · August 2013

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 · August 2013

Bump for encouragement.

kathleenjoyful · August 2013

Bumping this because you are so positive and pragmatic, and right about the mind-body connection. Congratulations, you look fantastic!

misifer · August 2013

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 · August 2013

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 · August 2013

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.