Hey team! 😃 I’m a 23 year old girl from Norway. I’ve been struggling with weight all my life, and now I’m finally doing something about it. Started out on mfp back in march this year and boy it has been a game changer. Been logging and losing everyday since. When I started I was 210 lbs and now I’m down to 175.8. My relationship to healthy food and exercise has improved tremendously 😃 Can’t wait to see what this challenge brings! We are going to kill it 👊🏻🔥

Hi everyone. I'm the ol' lady of the bunch, almost 65, living in Montana. I'm here because I'm having a hard time getting back on track after losing 60 pounds (achieving a goal weight that eluded me for over 40 years!). Things happened and I gained back 15+ pounds and I'm still gaining. I'm hoping this challenge will be what I need to get back on track. That elation I felt when I got down to 129 pounds was amazing and I swore I would not be one of those statistics, part of the large percentage that gained weight back. My new clothes are getting too small and my body feels the extra weight when I'm hiking or even just doing stairs. Not acceptable!

Hi everyone! I am a 26 year old mother of two. I have recently restarted my weight loss journey. I lost 50 lb in 2016, but haven't been losing since. I just got off track, and actually gained ten pounds. But I have now lost that 10 lb this month! Hoping to lose another 30 by the end of the year!

@littleflutterby. Got me thinking.

Commonly Touted Myths:

• You need 5 serves of carbs a day
• Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
• Eating more often makes you lose weight
• Fats make you fat
• Artificial sweetners are bad for you
• You must finish everything on your plate

You need 5 serves of carbs a day

There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. There are essentials, fats, amino acids, vitamins and minerals; but not carbohydrates.

This myth was propagated by the FDA, largely funding and supporting the grain growers of the US. (remember the "Food Pyramind" - I call the "Fat Pyramid" - as if followed will almost certainly make you overweight) Grain, when processed, produces long shelf life, low cost, calorie dense food. Great for feeding a population on a budget with little wastage during hard times. Bad for the health of that population if made the primary food source.

The snacking and 5 meals a day is a modern westernised society trait, which seems to be hand in hand with the average populous being overweight. Every society processed grain based foods have been introduced has slowly had it's average BMI increase (weight/height ratio).

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day

Great if you are company that produces breakfast foods, but there is little scientific evidence that backs up this claim.

Experiment and see if breakfast is for you. For many it is not required (or desirable). In many cultures, breakfast is not eaten, or is more health meal than a carbohydrate rich feast.

Eating more often makes you lose weight

Another claim that has very little scientific backing.

The TEE (Thermal Eating Effect) is so small that it is hard to quantify. Weigh this up against the number of chances you make to over-eat and you are in dangerous waters.

TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) vs Calories Consumed seems to be the MOST reliable indicator of weight change. (aka. calories in vs calories out). The hard bit is working out TDEE and Calories consumed as these are estimates. A close enough estimate on Calories Consumed can be achieved by weighing portions and tracking. If a close enough Calories Consumed can be found then a relative TDEE can be computed with about 3 weeks tracking data including weights. These will always be estimates, so to ensure weight loss ensure the balance is WELL in your favour (200+ calories per day).

Fats make you fat

Fats are processed by the body as glycerides (HDL, LDL and tri-glycerides), not fat. To make a fat, your body needs to use insulin to combine glucose (sugar) that is not able to be absorbed by the cells for immediate use as energy.

So in reality, its the excess sugars that cannot be used immediately, or stored in the liver's glycogen stores, that make you fat (not fats).

Only really bad eating fats are trans fats (hydrolised oils - fired oil). The body does not know how to adequately work with these and their side-effect is to make shut down the LDL regulation system (LDL is the bad cholesterol). Mono-, Poly-, saturated- unsaturated-, etc.. all these fats the body knows how to process for energy.

Artificial sweetners are bad for you

The toxic level of most artificial sweetners is so astronomically high that you would never consume them in a quantity that is damaging.

That said, artificial sweetners do maintain the body's insensitivity to sweet foods. If you consume no sugar, artificial sweetner or sweet foods for about a month, your sweet taste sensitivity returns. Some foods start to taste TOO sweet. With sweet sensitivity re-established you start to get a feel for foods that are hiding calories (also any bitter after-tatse from an artificial sweetner becomes very obvious).

If you can stand to go through sugar/sweetness withdrawl for a month, it is WELL worth the effort.

You must finish everything on your plate

This is a fall back to hard times (like war time) where food was not plenty and the next meal was not assured. Parents used to insist that children finish everything on their plate to ensure that they had enough to grow (even if it meant doing without themself).

In our current times of plenty. Always finishing what is on your plate has 2 issues:
- 1 - The person serving has no idea of how much YOU should really be eating.
- 2 - It encourages eating when already full.

Kids, left on their own, rarely over-eat. If eating non-processed food, they have a great capacity to know when enough is enough. As we grow older, this "innate" ability gets suppressed by our "maturity" to the point where we eat by habit, not by need or feel.

As such MFP and other tracking systems can re-teach us when "enough" really is "enough".


There are probably a number of others I have missed along the way, but these are the few that came to mind when I was prompted into thinking by @littleflutterby.

Hope this helps people.

Happy also to be corrected on any point by anyone who has information of evidence to the contrary. One last thing I have learned is that no matter how much I learn, there is always more to learn.