Hi everyone, I'm Ezgi, living in İstanbul/Turkey. I'm an academician and masters student. I'm 28 years old. My height is 164 cm (5'4.5'') and my starting weight for this challenge is 85 kg (187.3 lbs), which I weigh myself on July 27. I will weigh myself on Friday. I try to take 1200 cal and walk 6-7 km per day. And also I want to swim 3 days a week. My goal weight is for this challenge is kinda big, but I'm really motivated for it. I want to be 79 kg (174.1 lbs) by the end of August. I bought a smoothie blender, I'll make healthy and nutritious smoothies every day (probably evenings because it's hard to make dinner because I have no energy in the evenings). I had drunk alcohol and had eaten junk food almost every day until 2 days ago. I'll eat/drink them rarely.

Good luck everybody!

This is my toughest 48 hours of the week: when my family is in the house and I want to bake and cook all their favorites! And of course there are always substitutions you can do to recreate those in a healthier way, but it is definitely NOT the same! Since I am just getting started again, I am opting to say no can do! I have to get a solid 60 days of putting in the work to avoid temptations to get myself in 'the groove'. My chocolate craving is intense right now and I managed to get by last night by dipping some fresh strawberries into a Tablespoon of Hershey's syrup and when it was gone, I was done. I still have 4 strawberries left so it'll definitely be on my mind tonight, too! I could definitely do worse and have. Everyone keep up the good work, we can do it. Monday is my weigh in day and I am anxious and excited to see a lower number. WE CAN DO IT

Hi I am Marina from New Zealand, I am 210Lbs, 95.3Kg. Over the last year I have had some lifestyle related medical problems, which I am aiming to turn around before they get irreversible. I had high blood pressure & have managed to get that under control by losing 7Kg, 15.5lbs, with more exercise & healthier eating, however I was so happy with my progress I lost my way & the latest visit to the doctor has me going back to where I started. So another kick in the butt & I'm ready to get back on the healthier train again. I have a Bernese Mountain Dog, we walk 3.5Km each day & I run a camping ground, so walking isn't necessarily my problem, food & beer is! My goal for the month is to have lost 3kg, 6.5lbs, so here we go!

hey everyone hows it going? Weekends are usually rough for me but so far so good. I worked outside most of the day building a retaining wall and then went frisbee golfing so I got a lot of walking in. I guess the only bad part of the day was I ate a footlong sweet onion chicken teriyaki. on wheat with pepperjack onions lettuce and spinach for dinner. I could have done without a whole foot long but I ate well all day and was very active so im not sweating it.
looking forward to this months challenge. i have a lot of weight to lose and plan i hitting it this coming month.

cheeso1 wrote: »

Well girls can someone tell me when the first weigh is x

I’m pretty sure it’s this week with whatever day you picked for weigh in ?

grebber1 wrote: »

hey everyone hows it going? Weekends are usually rough for me but so far so good. I worked outside most of the day building a retaining wall and then went frisbee golfing so I got a lot of walking in. I guess the only bad part of the day was I ate a footlong sweet onion chicken teriyaki. on wheat with pepperjack onions lettuce and spinach for dinner. I could have done without a whole foot long but I ate well all day and was very active so im not sweating it.
looking forward to this months challenge. i have a lot of weight to lose and plan i hitting it this coming month.

@grebber1 I sometimes have larger meals, too. I think the key is keeping track of your calories and monitoring the average across the entire week. I find that if I have a large meal and go way over my calorie target, the next day or two I tend to run a couple hundred calories below my target, so that the average across those days is about where I want it to be.

@sara41164 ..
Man thats a tough one. I guess in a perfect world they would just eat what your eating and love it. I have kind of the same problem in my house where a certain someone is always thinking they know what i can and can't have.
Self control around what your family really wants is a pita.
I guess it's not fair to make them eat the same but at the same time they need to be respectful of what your trying to accomplish. It's hard enough.
But you will always be confronted with the foods your family wants. It's everywhere. Your going to eat it at some point. You have to be in control of yourself and not go overboard.
One thing I'm currently doing is if there is going to be something to eat that I shouldn't have but I'm going to eat anyways, is make a huge salad and drink a bunch of water before hand. It really limits me on how much of the bad food I'll eat.
Come on here and post. Support will help you greatly

What date is first weigh in please

Well this week has been good and bad in since of diet. My body is retaining water. Well yesterday i didnt get a chance to work out at all. 😥 I tried to excersie five to six day a week. That ok i am staying positive. I dont believe the scale anymore. One moment it say i lots more than i expect then i gain it all back in one day lol. But my clothes are falling off. Tonight i will try strength training. And then tomorrow i will do my cardio for longer. That the goal this week! Wish me luck!

Hi, I'm Cait. I'm 33 year old, and I currently live in North Carolina, although that is changing soon. I just finished my Master's degree in May and I've been using the free time while I've been looking for a job to really focus on creating some better eating habits. I'm hoping this group will help keep me motivated as I move this month.

Hi everyone! Late register here I'm 27, from New Zealand, and I've always been a big fan of the outdoors, running, and netball (kind of like basketball I guess).

I'm just getting back into the swing of things after almost a year with a knee injury, surgery, and minimal exercise. It's amazing how much weight I gained lying around all day So now I want to lose it all plus some more... The goal is to get back to netball, and that's a huge risk on my knee unless I lose weight, and build up all the muscle I lost.

Time to take my life back! Let's do it

@korimak0 I’ve never heard of lotus roots, I will definitely have to try them. Thank you!

Calorie wise I could definitely squeeze them in but carb wise I’m not sure. I figured if I make them once every couple weeks that won’t be a big deal and I can work around them.

sara41164 wrote: »

I have a question for everyone. I have a family of 6 and everyone complains about eating the healthy stuff and how it don’t taste as good. I don’t think I have the strength to turn down the good food they want if I were to fix it. Is it fair to make them all eat what I need to eat to reach my goals? How do you all cook for your families/kids?

Hey @sara41164

There have been some great suggestions in this thread, and I'd like to add my perspective. I cook for my picky immediate family sometimes although I don't have kids, so I think your situation is far more challenging than mine. Here is my perspective...

It's easy to make delicious unhealthy food. It's harder to make delicious healthy food. But not because healthy food is less delicious...more so because our culture has given healthy food bad PR and the passed down family recipes are so rarely healthy in nature.

I encourage you to continue to try to find creative solutions to make healthier food more palatable to your family (I know it will still remain challenging--both in appeasing so many tastebuds and also in changing the others' mindsets). So many weight loss stories begin with histories of how families ate and how people had to learn to modify their eating to move away from their pasts.

I think modern culture is set on a "weight gain" setting. The normalization of things like cereal or pop tarts as breakfast and pasta or pizza as a meal is, in my opinion, dangerous. Looking at nutrition value, cereal and pop tarts should fall under the dessert category while pasta and pizza--with their normally low protein values--should be treated as sides with correspondingly small serving sizes. I don't think families who follow these norms are wrong or bad...but I do think our entire society is fighting an uphill battle.

It's hard to fight this culture, and every small healthy choice you make will hopefully influence the future of your family. So I wouldn't feel any guilt over trying to stick to healthy recipes!

It takes a while, but here are a few healthy options I've learned are pretty delicious and work with my family.

-Wrapping chicken breast in a single piece of bacon (adds calories but not too many, easy to skip bacon if calories don't allow, higher fat and lower carb "unhealthy" foods are generally lower in calories and are fun to use in moderation)
-roasting the heck out of vegetables.i don't use butter--just cooking spray for the pan. For science reasons, veggies become more sweet after roasting. I like doing it with asparagus, broccoli, carrots, bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, cubed squash's, etc. any veggie your family might like could work--it's easy to google for basic recipes--and easy for picky eaters to pick out the parts they want--I always salt the veggies, too. People who "don't like" a vegetable are often shocked if veggies are roasted right. Every single family member I've tried this on is now a fan of at least one veggie they previously "disliked"
-after pan frying a meat, I use the same pan to sautée a riced cauliflower/broccoli blend. I stir in a spoonful or two of queso (depending on amount I'm cooking) and this is my side. This one had my sister straight up fooled (I told her it was just rice sautéed for a long time). Kids are harder to fool though.

Hopefully something here helps! My favorite part of weight loss is when I'm eating a 300 or less calorie meal, and it's just a delicious as an 800+ calorie meal.