New and sooo confused...

don't dispair - it took me quite a while to get into MFP but now I am addicted. Stick with it and before long you will be on your road to weight loss. Don't stress too much, even if it's just helping you learn about serving sizes, exercise calories etc it's a start.

The biggest thing is simply accountability/honesty. Log everything, do your best. All I've done is cardio (swimming, walking, some running last summer) and the weight keeps heading in the right direction. Where I've failed is where I've gotten lazy. A day or two of not logging turned into a week - and then a month (or two). The system works! You just have to trust it, and be honest. See how many days you can keep a streak going while staying under your calorie goal. Watch out for sodium. You can customize your diary so that you can focus on different aspects of your diet. I focus on fiber (making sure I get enough - and I actually set mine higher than the default setting) and I watch my sodium (I'm a diet pop junkie unable to TOTALLY give it up, but at least I can keep an eye on it).

Feel free to friend me. I'm not falling off the wagon again - at least not until the snow falls!!!

Since this is such a lifestyle change, start out by changing one thing at a time.

Usually the easiest/most permanent thing for people to change is what they eat. Start by making yourself log EVERYTHING you eat. Those 2 crackers you had while making dinner? Log 'em. That handful of M&Ms you had because you needed a lil something sweet? Count 'em and log 'em! You will probably be amazed at how much you are really eating in a day.... I know I sure was!

Re: water - you probably have a "normal" type of glass that you drink out of every day.... Count how many of THOSE you have in a day. Every time you re-fill, log the one you just drank. So when you fill up your glass first thing in the AM, don't count that one....count it as "one" once you finish it and come back for a refill.

Once you get into the habit of logging everything you eat, start playing with the excercise thing. There's a HUGE debate on MFP on whether you should or should not eat those earned excercise calories back, and the only thing anyone can agree on is to do what works for YOU. Well, everyone also agrees that you should probably get a heart rate monitor and not really trust MFP on calories-burned, but it's working ok for me so far.

I don't really excercise that much - I'm not a gym person...I *might* walk around the parking garage with a friend on our breaks every few days - but I do work out in my flower beds/garden almost every day. I log that, and usually eat those cals back.

Take things one day - or even one meal - at a time, and remember that we're here to support each other and make this permanent change. We can do this!!!