I feel so fat! :(

You don't have to exercise to lose weight. Just stay under your calorie goal and you'll do fine.

exercise doesn't need to mean hours at the gym. you can do squats while you're waiting for the microwave to ping, press ups against the counter while the kettle boils, run up & down the stairs an extra time, dance if your favourite song comes on. little things add up and they're absolutely better than nothing.

dinia07 wrote: »

Thanks everyone. It's really hard to be optimistic when your self esteem is pulling you down. I feel so fat and ugly. Maybe I just need some encouragements from persons who were on my shoes before.

Why isn't not wanting to feel fat and ugly and wanting to improve your self esteem enough? You feel bad and you know what will make you feel better. So do it!

Exercise will likely help even more as it's been shown to improve mood. Even you only exercise for 15 min a day, 5 min at a time you'll likely feel and see a difference. Don't busy your life so much that you don't have time to take care of yourself.

If that's you in the pic, you are not ugly. There are ugly people - you aren't one of them.

If I could only give people one piece of advice, it would be to add more healthy food to their diet. Fruits, veggies, low or no-fat dairy, whole grain breads and lean, white meats. You stay fuller and you're healthier for it.

It can be very difficult to get motivated when you feel down about yourself-you convince yourself that it is never going to work, you will never be slim, it's too difficult etc. But TRUST ME, you can! There are many people here who have lost a large amount of weight doing this-I myself went from 13st to 8st, (I gained two stone back after getting into a comfortable relationship-doing pretty well at shifting it though!).

Just make sure you are eating less calories than you are burning by following the numbers that My Fitness Pal gives you. It won't be easy-in fact, the first couple of weeks can be hard, especially if you are trying to break eating habits that you have had in place for a long time, but grit your teeth and keep going! Once you start to see the scale going down, or feel your clothes getting looser you will be amazed how much motivation that can give you, actually seeing the progress.

And also, be patient; one of the mistakes people make is not seeing any results after two weeks and giving up. Unfortunately, it is not a quick process, there is no 'quick fix'-if there were, we would all be skinny! For example, I find that, even if I am doing everything 'right', I will maintain a weight for two or three weeks (maybe even gain a pound or two) and then the next week i'll drop 2-3lbs or something. Weight loss isn't linear, so don't get discouraged if you don't lose immediately, or every single week. Try and aim for 1lb a week, which is one of the healthiest rates of loss.

The confidence you gain from losing the weight is incredible and worth it-I am not as slim as I used to be, and I haven't lost enough that other people have noticed, but I notice, and I feel so much more loving towards myself just knowing that I am succeeding in doing something positive for my health (and, I will admit it, my vanity).

Feel free to add me if you like; you got this! Weight loss is simple but not easy, and we are only human-of course we will make mistakes, we'll overload at that BBQ, drink too many cocktails on holiday, but at the end of the day if you want to lose the weight badly enough you'll put the effort in and totally own your own body

Although I tumbled headlong off the bandwagon, I did manage to lose 20+ lbs a few years ago (yes, it was a diet, and I didn't learn to eat later) and something that I am incorporating this time around is thinking of it as a substitution program. i'm substituting my junk food (butterfingers and twin bings) with cherries and grapes, my hazelnut latte with extra hazelnut substituted with plain black coffee at work (saves me $5/day!) and my lunch at mcdonalds, taco johns or dairy queen is being substituted with either smart ones tv dinners or healthy leftovers. Today's lunch is a chicken breast and i'll be slicing up a tomatoe and sweet bell peppers to go on it and nuking them along with it, dessert is cherries and i'll be drinking water.

Well first off, you are beautiful. I can completely understand how you feel though, there are days I feel the same way. What I've found is that working on your view of yourself is probably the most important thing you can do. Don't compare yourself to everyone around you, we don't all look the same and there is nothing wrong with that.

I remember one day I said that I looked fat, my bf looked at me and dead serious said, "do you even know what fat is?" I said "of course" and he responded with "then you should know that you are not fat"

It's all a mental thing, try to work on loving you, if you want to lose weight, then calorie counting/eating at a deficit is all you need to do. But you may find that once you lose the lbs you may still view yourself as being to big if you don't address the mental component.