Here because my daughter said she wanted to have me around longer!

Hello. Today is my 4th day tracking calories. My 15 yr old daughter turned me on to myfitnesspal. She explained how it worked, and put it on my smartphone. She thought that the monetary aspect of another program would motivate me (I'm a miser), but to prepare me for it, she downloaded MFP for me. Then she said, "Mom, I want to keep you for more than ten years longer." And I know that if I don't do something about my weight, she might be right.

I'm a physician in my early fifties. I am about 120 - 125 percent of the weight I was when I was 21, which was the high end of normal for my height, so I now officially qualify as obese. I have high blood pressure, back and neck trouble, and a strong family history of cancer on both sides. My work is largely sedentary. So I know that weight loss would be helpful for me. I have tried increasing exercise, but it causes increased neck and back problems. I have tried cutting out carbs, but I always relapse. I currently weigh the most I've ever weighed in my life, as of a few days ago 167 lb at 5 ft 6 in.

My daughter calculated out the calories I should eat every day for weight loss, and came up with 1200/day. I said, "That's impossible for me to achieve. I probably eat about 3,000 calories a day currently. Let's try 1500." She set me up for 1550 cal/d, so there would be a tiny bit of slop room. And I began.

As a physician, I know quite a lot about nutrition - I often counsel patients about it. And I cook most of our meals, using very little in the way of prepared food, because of trying to limit the salt in our diet to help with the high blood pressure. So I already knew the right foods to eat. But I was surprised to find that simply having to log in what I was eating made me very conscious about the calorie content of the foods. I tried to eat something whenever I was a little bit hungry - a piece of fruit, usually. I tried to bulk up my meals with vegetables - instead of having a cup of home made chili for lunch, and then a second or third serving, I would pour that single cup of chili over a bag of frozen green beans, to give it more volume. I planned ahead so that there would be something good to warm up for dinner as soon as I got home. I try to remember to drink water often. And I don't eat at all after dinner.

Strangely, I found that without starving myself, I was eating about 1200 calories a day! And I'm starting to lose weight already. I think I would not be able to do this without the app, which makes it incredibly easy to log the calories. Yesterday, while shopping in Trader Joe's, they had out samples of chicken sausage, and I was hungry, so I took one. But then I asked the server what portion of a single link was on that plate, found that specific food by name and brand in the app, and added the 50 cal to my day as a snack. I'm reaping the benefits of MFP having been in use for a few years already. Thank you to all who have come before me, logging in caloric values of so many foods!

I just hope I can stick with this. The only times I have ever lost weight before have been while I was under extraordinary stress, or eaten like a compulsive anorectic, and it came right back on as soon as the stress let up, or I relaxed my diet. This program is ultimately flexible, easy to manage. I think I might be able to stay with it for the time it takes to train myself to eat smaller portions, and more carefully. Maybe I'll stay on it for many years.

I have my first big challenge coming up, today. I'm taking my middle school aged son and a bunch of his friends to sleep over at a local hotel with a pool and a hot tub. I've purchased all sorts of junk for them - chips, cookies, cake, etc. I will be taking them out to an inexpensive Italian place for dinner. I'm planning to bring along veggies and fruit for me, and have tried to estimate the number of calories so that I can have half of my favorite dish at the restaurant. I know that if I begin on the goodies, I will not be able to stop myself from consuming an entire supermarket-sized bag, so I will just have to not have even one bite of the junk food. And I'll make sure I have plenty of good water to drink.

Wish me luck!