40 pounds to lose! Need some motivation!

Hi Lauren!

It sounds like you have some really good "WHYs," and those are really important for success. When you have a big goal like that, the best thing you can do is make yourself a road map and reverse engineer your goal. If you're going to try to lose 2 pounds a week, that would take you 20 weeks. But, you also want to make sure your goals are realistic with your schedule and what you can do. How do you lose 2 pounds a week? The simple science is a calorie deficit. You need that 3,000-3,500 calorie deficit for each pound. So you have to decide if you can maintain a 6,000-7,000 calorie deficit each week. So look at how many calories you're burning per day and how many you're eating. If you have a heart rate monitor, that's the very best way to determine what you're actually burning. I just got one of the FitBits with the heart rate monitor and I LOVE it. I was overestimating my calorie burn before... so that's a bummer, but at least now I know what was going wrong. If you think it's realistic for you to get that deficit each week, circle that day on the calendar and go for it! If you think maybe the time you have to exercise isn't going to allow you to quite get there, what about 1 pound a week or 1.5 pounds a week?

Also, it may also help to break a large goal like this into smaller goals you'll be able to attain more quickly so that you are seeing progress and gaining confidence.

I hope that helps! Good luck, girl! You got this!

Hi Lauren. I have a wrist fitbit that only does steps, and it interfaces with Mfp. I'm thinking about buying a Hrm as well. One thing that has helped me is the TDEE, it gives a few more calories to eat rather than the standard MFP 1600 calories. Also, I have 40 lbs to go, but I'd be happy at 160/65. I'll add you as a friend if you don't mind.

Oh- eat a lot of organic fruit and veggies - and ask your doctor to write you a script for a good prenatal vitamin for the folate and dha!

At 170 you won't have any decreased fertility I wouldn't think. I was 195 when I got pregnant with my first and a whopping 215 with the second. I'm only 5'3" and I was 32 with my first and 34 with my second. I will say the heavier you are, the higher risk your pregnancy and with my 2nd I had fat people issues once I got really big.

I lost 40lbs over the last year. In the beginning it was easy, now it's tougher to lose. Kids are 4 and 2 now.

I'd like another, but I want to get down another 15lbs. That will actually put me around 170 lbs. I need to get to 175.4 to be overweight instead of obese. I'm 188 right now. Clock is ticking.

I've lost about 70 lbs overall, around 47 since I joined MFP, and ~35 lbs since last July when I finally got serious about it. Since July I've been pretty conservative, aiming for about a pound per week loss. The last time I looked I think I'd averaged right around that over the time period. Things are slowing down the last month or two between the holidays and getting pretty close to my goal weight. It's always said that the last 10-20 lbs are the hardest, and I'm at about 15 to go.

Regarding the Fitbit, I've owned 4 of them and they are ok but I have found them fairly easy to fool inadvertently, particularly the wrist-based models. For example, rocking in a office chair caused Fitbit Flex to trigger a step with every back-and-forth of the chair. Also, I, my wife, and others I know have had a number of reliability issues with the hardware. That's why I owned 4 of them. Their customer support is good but at some point it's just a problem.

I've been using a Garmin Vivofit for the last year or so and I'm much happier with it than I was the Fitbit devices.

My best advice is to set realistic goals and to not sweat the small stuff too much. Too many people come here planning to lose 20 lbs in a month or some other such silliness. It's just setting yourself up for failure. Realize that, roughly speaking, it takes 3500 calories *above* your maintenance level to gain a pound, and 3500 calories *below* your maintenance level to lose a pound. It's going to take time to lose weight but by the same token, if you go off the rails one day it's also probably not going to really make any difference. If you have a bad meal, or even a bad day or weekend, pick yourself up, get back on the horse as soon as you can, and don't beat yourself up about it. In the grand scheme of things it's not going to have any real effect unless you're doing it all the time.

Good luck, you've got this!