Different body types and carrying your weight well?

rguzame wrote: »

To be honest I think the weight is in my bra lol. I wear a 36 J US bra size in uk 36GG. I have Chronic back pain and it makes exercising a lot harder! When I was 160lbs I was down to a 36 DD.

You need a better bra. I am a G and used to have a lot of lower back pain. We are talking about over 20 pounds of boobs. Of course we have back issues and need good support. Started wearing Enell sports bras a few years ago and that stopped. I won't wear any other bra now.

I also tend to not look as heavy as I am. I am very strong and have a lot of muscle which I think accounts for a lot of that. I would carefully consider whether you should worry so much about being a certain weight. If at size 12 you looked good and felt good why would it matter that much what the number on the scale is?

rguzame wrote: »

usmcmp wrote: »

I was nearly identical. 5'9" 217 pounds and people thought I looked great.

Eating is going to be the thing that really makes a difference. Setting your calorie goal appropriately and sticking to it. Weighing food is important. Getting quality fats into your diet and strength training will help with joints.

Thanks I do notice I go over my goal frequently and then I have to jog to get back to my goal.

Get on top of this and you'll start losing.

I am 5'7" and was 210 lbs., I carried my weight well too. I am currently 160-162 lbs, US size 8. I have been maintaining for seven months now. I got my head and diet in check first and I started lifting heavy 4 days a week and lots of cardio. I still lift 4 days a week but only do cardio once or twice a week. I weighed (by grams) and logged everything I ate, I didn't need a cheat day or a cheat meal. I stayed within my calorie goal. I hit a plateau when I got closer to goal weight for about 4 weeks and then I had a woosh of 5.5 lbs. You can do it, I am rooting for you.

I was almost 200 lbs, obese and didn't look great but in the overweight 160s people told me I looked great. It's not easy to lose weight but luckily there are a plethora of weight loss strategies out there and if you try 10 methods that don't work, there will be hundreds more for you to cycle through until you find the one that works for you. I've lost mine mainly though accurate logging and walking but that might not work for you.

Good luck!

rguzame wrote: »

vismal wrote: »

rguzame wrote: »

usmcmp wrote: »

I was nearly identical. 5'9" 217 pounds and people thought I looked great.

Eating is going to be the thing that really makes a difference. Setting your calorie goal appropriately and sticking to it. Weighing food is important. Getting quality fats into your diet and strength training will help with joints.

Thanks I do notice I go over my goal frequently and then I have to jog to get back to my goal.

This is probably part of the problem. Unfortunately, MFP tends to overestimate how much you burn doing physical activity. Even with a fitness device, your calories burned may be totally inaccurate. Also, humans tend to underestimate how much they eat, even when tracking diligently. Any time you are not losing fat over the long run, it is because calories in meet or exceed calories out. I'd work on increasing the accuracy of logging (http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/1296011/calorie-counting-101) and not relying so much on exercise when you've gone over your calorie limit.

Thanks I will focus more on the diet first!

Ah yes...the classic gaining weight while running. When you're unfit, even a slow jog can feel like a marathon. It's very likely that you congratulated yourself on doing such an amazing job and ate a nice big meal when in reality, you burned all of 120 calories. Been there, done that.

I'm 5'2" and I've always (except for my come to jesus moment in a fitting room which led me here) been able to "hide" my overweightness behind clothes. I've sort of become an expert in what to wear and how to wear it to appear to be a lot smaller/more shapely than I really am. (the key is mom jeans combined with slightly loose tops, I swear) My highest weight outside of pregnancy was 176, where I started, and people were SHOCKED to hear that as well as shocked to hear I needed to lose 61 lbs to get into my good BMI.

That number, 176 doesn't seem like much when you're comparing it to your 218, but imagine you were SEVEN inches shorter. It's huge for someone my height so hiding it was a must. I've lost a little over 18 lbs in about 2.5 months doing just walking mostly. No weights, not running, just walking on my treadmill and calorie counting. It's been much easier than I imagined it would be.

I also haven't really "watched what I eat". I eat mostly the same stuff I did before in smaller quantities. I've cut out a few things that are really really calorie dense because I don't want my whole day's allowance spent in one place for 10 minutes of delicious, but I still enjoy my heavily creamed and sugared coffee, I still eat noodles and things, I've never been a dessert person, or candy and sweets, but I still eat tuna melts, mayonnaise, cheese and all. I switched up to lower calorie bread because I don't particularly like bread anyway, it's just a delivery system for the tuna salad and cheese:) And I scarf down avocados (pretty calorically dense) like a paper shredder takes paper, and I'm losing happily. For me at least, CICO is perfectly adequate. I think it would work for most people if they logged accurately and consistently. I hadn't any earthly idea how much I was eating before. We have more money now..... that doesn't happen to us...

I have the OPPOSITE problem. I was 190 in high school and wore a size 18/20 (at 5'5", so maybe height has something to do with it??). Even now at 129lbs and 5'5" I still wear a 6, sometimes an 8. I'll just never be one of those size 2/4 girls unless I was TOO thin.