Just signed up... now what?

Welcome!

I agree baby steps!

Congrats on stopping smoking! That is AWESOME!!

Welcome! When you first start it can be overwhelming remember keep it simple. Don't fall into the old "diet" ways that you have to change everything in your life because you are trying to lose weight, and remember this weight loss does NOT have to be miserable. With that said, here's my basic advice.

1. Log your food as accurately and honestly as possible - If it goes in your mouth it gets logged good bad and the ugly. While you are starting just worry about the calorie number once you get good at logging then start looking at protein, carbs and fat. Again Keep it Simple. If you don't have a medical condition that you have to watch your sugar intake don't even bother tracking that.

2. Get a digital food scale they are very inexpensive and probably my greatest investment This will help you learn portion control which helps with being able to eat in moderation.

3. Understand that this takes time, so being patient is good

4. Understand that weight will fluctuate all the time, don't let your emotions get tied into the number on the scale, the scale is just one of many tools you will use to gauge your progress.

5. Strive for consistency over perfection, if you make 80% good choices the other 20% don't make too much of a difference.

6. Remember weight loss comes from a calorie deficit, don't make it a huge deficit, keep it reasonable and remember any change you are considering doing ask yourself "Am I willing to do this for the rest of my life?" If so then go for it, if not think about why you are considering that change.

Good luck!!!

Welcome to MFP... Baby steps are important. Congrats on kicking the smoking habit. That's great. My advice. Track a couple of days how you typically eat so you can see how the calories add up and where they are going. Then, look for ways to swap out for healthier foods.

Friend some people on here. Feel free to friend me. Make this a support system for you.

Exercise... Start small. Even if you can only walk 20 minutes a day to start out, that's something. Work yourself into bigger exercises.

Don't do extreme restriction... It doesn't work. Allow for treats, indulgences, etc. And remember everyone has bad days. Just keep it to a day, not a week, month or year.

Congrats on taking the step to sign up

My suggestion is you start by getting in the habit of measuring, weighing and logging everything you eat. Once you start to see what you are eating and where you are consuming calories you will have the information you need to decide what you need to change. Are you getting enough protein? Are you eating too much sugar? Are you eating too much sodium? Your food diaries will help you answer these questions.

The second thing is to start exercising. Walking is a great form of exercise. If you live somewhere where walking outside isn't an option, I really like the Leslie Sansone DVDs. Some of her workouts are on YouTube. If you don't like walking, find something that you do like to do. It doesn't really matter as long as you get up and move.

What you decide to eat is going to depend on your preferences, your budget and your body. You don't want to be so restrictive that you feel denied. Forbidden foods become temptations, so work your favorite foods into your plan. Just eat them less frequently and in smaller portions.

And remember this is a lifestyle change, not a diet. We are in this for the long haul. For me it breaks down into waking up each morning and setting two simple goals:
1) I will eat under my calorie goal
2) I will exercise for at least 30 minutes

I know if I do those two things every day, the weight will come off. The prior day's success or failure doesn't matter. All I have to worry about is being successful today.

First of all, U GO GIRL!!! So proud of you for taking steps towards a healthier you AND for your teenager. HIGH 20 (high 5 with both hands and both feet) for stopping smoking. I smoked all through paramedic school (but thats a whole other talk show).
ANYWAY, you will find some absolutely awesome people here to be friends with (and yes, I love adding friends for more motivation and support) and lots of fantastic stories. Once or twice a week, I go to the success section. Peoples before and after pics make my jaw drop!
FOOD--- If you can, make a trip to Sam's Club with a 100 dollar bill and get some chicken breasts (fresh/frozen AND canned), veggies (fresh and frozen), salad, 3 or 4 different dressings, frozen precooked turkey meatballs, a head of lettuce (for lettuce wraps), maybe a big ole honkin chunk of lean pork (like a pork loin), maybe a BOH (big ole honkin) beef roast---NOT CHUCK ROAST---TOO MUCH FAT.
Salads are fast and furious and you can throw ANYTHING in a salad. Crock pots are a gift from God----throw meat in it in the morning with water not quite covering the top of the meat--chicken bullion and garlic powder for chicken, mushroom onion soup mix packet for pork, beefy onion soup mix packet for beef---turn it on low before you go to work, come home from work----KABOOM!!!
Put the MFP app on your cell phone and play with the features. LOVE LOVE LOVE being able to scan food with my phone. But most important, stay in touch with your buds here. Good days and bad, success and short comings, it will ALL be such a blessing to you. I could type more stuff, but I don't want to bore you. Congrats on you journey...ROCK ON!!!

In short its to allow you keep track of what your putting in your mouth and I mean everything, including drinks and so on. It has a large database so simply type in the search box what you had for breakfast and then click on the item to put in for Breakfast.

Top tip - use your phone and the fitness pal app - then simply scan the barcode (had a barcode scanner in the app) - never search again! - simply beep every meal to put in the diary.

Now you can see how many calories your eating simply stick the goal it sets - you'll find there will be times you have to say "no I cant Ive eaten my limit" whereas before you would even know how many calories you had consumed. Ergo its a dead handy tool.

The next trick is to eat healthy, I would get used to cutting your calories for a couple of days or so and then start to think about what it is your putting in your body.

That chocolate bar - may only be 150 calories but is it helping me? short answer not really - as an easy example.

Once you got the hand of controlling what you eat then you can "eat clean"

Theres many online resources and tbh everyone you ask will have a different reply as theres sooo many options to go for.

Start small as said - start counting and entering you calories - in part that will start kicking off the "hang on thats 400 calories for one bar!" responses and in effect you'll start eating healthier by default.

Hope it helps

I'm going to echo the other posters here and say baby steps. You might see all this garbage floating around online on losing something ridiculous like 10lbs in a week but that's impossible. Or at the very least, not very healthy.

It may sound like a pain in the butt, but track EVERYTHING you shove in your mouth. Don't forget things like butter, if you use oils in your cooking, and other things you don't really think you're eating but have calories in them. Portion control is key too. I picked up a cheapy food scale at Walmart for like $5 and I measure everything. Read the serving size labels. This threw me off for the longest time because tuna, on the can says 60 calories but if you read closer the can is actually 2 servings!

Move! Get up and walk. You don't have to run five miles every day, but just get up and do a quick 20 minute walk around your neighborhood. If you have a smartphone the mapmyfitness app now links up with myfitnesspal so you can use the gps to track your walks and it automatically adds to your diary.

Try and cut out as much prepackaged boxed processed food that you can deal with giving up. And don't feel bad if you can't go all out clean eating all the time. I have a fridge full of fresh fruits and veggies, and I'm not ashamed to say I've got chocolate covered pretzels and Oreos in the pantry next to my organic homemade sweet potato chips and dried apple slices.

Most importantly a good attitude helps immensely. If you don't drop a whole bunch of weight at first, don't get discouraged, it takes time. Then one day you'll put on some pants and they'll fall off. And while I weigh myself, I don't obsess over the number on the scale. I focus more on how I feel. Good luck! It's all kind of overwhelming at first just like any life change. But I believe in you, stranger I've never met, and I think you can do it!

Track your calories. At the start you don't have to make major changes to what you eat. Just figure out how many calories your current eating habits are costing. Then make the barest minimum of changes to get that number at or below the number mfp recommends. You can use portion control and substitute less calorie-rich items to get that number down.

For me, I barely changed anything in my diet. At first, I even had to eat more food before the weight would begin coming off. The only real change was limiting the amount of soda I drank, yet I still managed to have one or two bottles a week.