First steps!

OMG. This stuff actually works!

My doctor recently pointed out that my BMI was just above the accepted range.

Trying to drop about 15 pounds from 181, up to which I crept over the past five or ten years.

This is my first time ever dieting. I started a month ago.

I'm 5'10, sedentary, 66 years old.

Initially, I wanted to lose one pound/week (which in hindsight I now understand is too aggressive for my desired loss. I'm now trying to lose 1/2 pound/week.)

My standard workout for years has been about 300-500 calories 5 days/week: moderate weights, swimming, walking, and spinning. Now, using MFP, I can eat back all those exercise calories with no guilt!

And, lo and behold, for my first month, I've actually been losing an average of about one pound/week as predicted by MFP. Wow!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's all about the science. CICO and all that.

Read below how NOT to count calories!

For my first few weeks, I made a mistake when calculating calories in my breakfast drink and bananas. So I was eating 300 LESS calories than the 1,500 that MPF suggested for my target weight loss. I was ravenously hungry eating just 1,200 calories. Very bad plan!

I'm now using a scale! :-)

I fixed the numbers retroactively in my diary, which is is public if anyone cares to comment.

Biggest win:

Standing in line at the grocery store and was about to grab two mini-Reeses Cup look-alikes that I eat sometimes after swimming. But first I decided to check their calories. "One hundred and seventy calories EACH? I absolutely don't have 340 calories in my calorie budget today or ANY day." :-) I put them back on the shelf. Now THAT'S a win.

And of course, I no longer sit and eat multiple tablespoons of peanut butter out of the jar. I can't afford the calories.

MFP is a wonderful tool without which I don't think I could have succeeded in this. And reading the forums here have given me a lot of very helpful information as well as a sense of community as well.

Thank you all for your posts. And I wish all of us success.

Tom