Last attempt at a healthy life!!

Hi xYummyMummy1D,

This is my first post here, as I've only been on MFP for a few weeks now, but felt like maybe my story could help you. I'm in the US so I'll have to use pounds, sorry. (I had to look up the weight of a stone - thanks for the new factoid!) Anyway....

I was in a place pretty similar to you in 2009. I weighed 253 lbs, and I was really miserable. My marriage was failing at the time,and my work situation was also exceptionally stressful, and I didn't really have anyone I could confide in or talk with about any of this. But I got a dose of reality while trying to relax on a weekend....I went for a motor boat ride with a friend on a local river. There were a lot of people floating down the rive on tubes and canoes and such. My friend had to idle his boat for a bit at one place to allow the floaters to move out of the way. A group of male floaters, who'd been having a lot of beer, thought that my friend's boat was stalled - they didn't realize he was stopped so he didn't run them over. Seeing me in the front of the boat, they called out to my friend: "Hey, get the whale out of your boat and you'll be able to go." They called out a few different versions of this as they passed by. There were probably over 100 people within hearing distance. I wanted to disappear!

Prior to that, I tried every diet, pill, product, and gimmick that came along. None of it ever worked for very long. I had tried one thing about a year before that seemed to work better than the rest, but I'd given up after a few weeks, using the excuse that work had gotten too demanding. But after the "whale" incident, I was determined and tried again. The plan seemed like it would be impossible, because NO processed foods were allowed. Only real foods that had to be cooked at home - I was actually going to have to cook! But I was determined, so I started spending my Sunday afternoons cooking enough food to last all week. I packed what I needed for workdays in a cooler and took it along. I was never far from my big container of water.

This was all very taxing for a few weeks, but the weight began to drop away quickly and I really wasn't hungry all of the time, so I kept with it. There were times when it was difficult to eat grilled chicken when everyone else was ordering a cheeseburger, but that "whale" thing would come to mind, and I'd make the right choice. I did sometimes make a bad decision, but I decided that the sum of all of my decisions was more important than an occasional slip, and so I didn't use an slip-up as an excuse to give up completely, as I had done in the past.

The whale incident was the first week of July 2009, and I was 253. By mid October 2009, I was buying new clothes for a short business trip - I weighed 205! By the end of that year, I got down to 190. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, and I didn't exercise a crazy amount. But the plan I followed had me eating plenty of protein and plenty of fats, and also some carbs. Also, no processed foods - had to cook everything myself. I have learned since then that processed foods are full of chemicals and other not-natural stuff that messes up our bodies' metabolism hormones. If you eat a lot of processed stuff, you'll never be able to win the battle long term.

In the years since, I've gone between 170 and 200 several times, so in US dress sizes, I've varied between a 10 and a 14. I really want to be a 6 or an 8, and I'm going to get there and stay there this time! I am not really setting a weight goal, because I've learned the value of muscle, and the muscle weighs more than fat. But I am tired of my own excuses, and I'm tired of going up and down, and I'm tired of not looking the way I really want to look. If you are really TIRED of all of this, too - then I KNOW you will succeed! Just be sure to find the right tools for your journey.

Best of luck on your journey!
ms.engineer72