My Starting Weight: ~375 lbs (01/01/2017)
My goal: 220 lbs (This would put me in the obesity stage 1 category)
Milestone: 260 lbs (this would put me below the 40 BMI mark for being morbidly obese or stage 3 obese)
Current Weight: 290.4 lbs 6/21/19
Loss this Week: -0.3 lbs
Total loss: -84.6 lbs


What's Working/What Needs Work: It's a loss, even its a small one, though I think the actual loss was higher than that - however, I'm a lot blocked up right now in the plumbing, so to speak, and TOM should be starting today, both of which are resulting in water weight gain. I also haven't been sleeping very well this week, and I've noticed that on days where I get under 5 hours of sleep (like last night), I usually retain water into the morning, so all those factors have come together against me.

However, even with the over eating last weekend (because though I mitigated some of the damage with bike rides and long hikes and walks, I still probably went over maintenance those 3 days), I still showed some loss, so I'm happy!

The all day fasting thing once a week seems to be helping. I fasted a full day last week and was found I was able to stay under my limit every day until Friday and the start of the camping trip. Monday, when I came home from the camping trip, I stayed under 1500 calories for the day, and actually was under even more because I didn't count back the exercise calories associated with mowing my grass, weed-eating, and the work I was doing in the yard that evening.

I tried to do an all day fast on Tuesday to help account for the over-indulgence over the weekend, and made it until evening. But I began doing some heavy housework that evening - vacuuming, mopping the entire house (and I have no carpet at all, so I have to mop every room), and sorting and cleaning up my spare room for my cousin to use this weekend, and found myself getting shaky, so I made myself a ham wrap and allowed myself to eat a can of peaches because I apparently seriously needed the food for the activity I was doing. So instead of being an all day fast, I ate 1 meal which kept me to under 800 calories for the day. Again, I did not count back any exercise calories at all that day either, which means I was probably closer to something like 300 net for the day in actuality.

I was really proud of myself yesterday - I stayed under 1500 calories for the day, despite spending the day out of town for work! So even with eating out for 2 meals, I kept control of the need to snack and stayed under!

Tonight, I'm taking my cousin out for dinner and a play for her birthday, so I only had apple juice and my usual almond milk and splash of creamer for breakfast, and will try to skip lunch all together or at least only have vegetables to save as many calories as I can for the dinner as we're going to a restaurant that doesn't have calorie counts. I can approximate the best I can, but its a fancier place so I doubt they're going to have much that is very diet friendly, though I plan to stick to salad and stay away from saucy items.

Tomorrow we're going to the local Renaissance Festival and I'm not even going to bother trying to count calories there. However, the festival grounds are on a hillside, so walking up and down that hill all day long should help a lot! And one day, after being so good all week, I know won't kill me, and I can pick a day for an all day fast next week to help cover any extra calories I consume.

so anyway, I may have finally latched onto something to break me out of this horrible plateau I was in; next weekend, I think, may be the full tale because TOM should be over and hopefully, I'll drop this extra water weight and can see what my true weight is. wish me luck!

Beauty1726 wrote: »

@BettJo64 thank you! And it's true especially when there MIGHT be a diagnosis of me not being able to lose weight. 😩

@Beauty1726 I would seriously question any diagnosis from a doctor saying you cannot lose weight. A medical condition can make it very difficult, but never impossible, and there are inspirational stories out there of folks who succeeded. There are a lot of myths floating around concerning weight loss, metabolism, insulin, etc and I've found that the general medical community oftentimes is way behind on the current research or easily buy into unfounded theories in areas outside their expertise.

there is a lot of good information here from folks who keep up with the times, though I know how tricky it can be to sort the reliable information from the rampant misinformation that is out there. Look up "Starvation Mode" for an example; that's a myth that has been around for a very, very long time. (though too bad it isn't true; then the answer would only be to stop eating completely! lol)

I was told by an endocrinologist that because I had PCOS and thyroid problems, that I'd never lose weight. I lost 90 lbs in 2012. I did gain almost all of it back, but I then proceeded to lose 100 lbs in 2017. It certainly wasn't easy, and my brain can be an insidious enemy that constantly confounds my efforts, but I've proven to myself that it's not impossible!

I think doctors should be looking for ways to help their patients figure out the underlying cause that blocks them from losing weight, because most of us don't "want" to be fat and are incredibly frustrated because we can't figure out why we can't seem to get anywhere in weight loss efforts. It certainly is incredibly insensitive and unhelpful to tell us that we're just being lazy gluttons. I'm finding in my own case that the actual fight isn't physical; it's mental, and the worst battles I have is with my will. So I need to focus on ways that can help me bolster my will power.

Sorry for the rant lol I've been where you are with a doctor's comments, and know how defeating and demoralizing that can be! Weight loss isn't easy for anyone, whether you're trying to lose 100+ lbs or that last 10; we need all the encouragement we can get!

You can do this, though, and you've got our support in helping you figure out the plan that will work best for you!

My Starting Weight: ~375 lbs (01/01/2017)
My goal: 220 lbs (This would put me in the obesity stage 1 category)
Milestone: 260 lbs (this would put me below the 40 BMI mark for being morbidly obese or stage 3 obese)
Current Weight: 290.4 lbs 6/28/19
Loss this Week: -0 lbs
Total loss: -84.6 lbs


What's Working/What Needs Work: Well, it looks like I accomplished nothing this week, but I know that I'm still fighting water retention and its masking my progress. The scale is stubbornly refusing to drop below that 290 mark, but I'm continuing on. The good news is that the fasting/intermittent fasting seems to be working this time around, and most days, I'm actually staying below my calorie count.

One thing that is probably hindering my efforts and contributing to the bloat is my weekends, however, and this coming weekend isn't sadly going to be any different. I'm doing very well during the week by either doing a 24 hour fast one day or at least keeping it under 500 or 800 calories depending on my activity level for that day. When I do that long term fast say on a Monday, I'm finding that its much easier for me to stay under 1500 calories the rest of the week, and I haven't been dealing with the strong mental desire to go ahead and eat over like I had before; for now, the magic "switch" in my willpower seems to have flipped back on.

but for the last several weekends, I've been in situations where I know I've been over eating. Now I also know it was never enough to completely blow my progress for the entire week, and that's a lot of the reason for the Monday 24 hour fasts, using that to make up for the over spend on the weekends, but its also probably contributing to the water weight that is hanging on. That and "plumbing issues".......

This week, on Tuesday, I met my parents at Lowes for supplies and we went to Shoneys for dinner. I had most of my calories still available, and while I know I probably went over my 1500 limit, I know I was well under maintenance. however, it is restaurant food, and restaurant food like that always seems to result in a couple of days of bloat for me, so there's all kinds of things that are contributing to the water weight.

So I keep telling myself to hold on, that it is working and that once the water weight goes away, I'll see my actual results, but it can be frustrating! Still, I'm greatly enjoying the fact that the switch seems to be back on for the moment! Now if i can just bust through that stupid 290 mark and get back into the 280's!

My Starting Weight: ~375 lbs (01/01/2017)
My goal: 220 lbs (This would put me in the obesity stage 1 category)
Milestone: 260 lbs (this would put me below the 40 BMI mark for being morbidly obese or stage 3 obese)
Current Weight: 287.0 lbs 7/4/19
Loss this Week: -3.4 lbs
Total loss: -88 lbs


What's Working/What Needs Work: well, that looks like a fantastic loss, but I can definitely say that I don't recommend the method that brought it on - I must have picked up a stomach virus or perhaps a touch of food poisoning because I was not a happy camper this morning, and while emptying my stomach in a hurry made me feel a little better, I'm still queasy and my stomach is having a split personality moment right now where it wants food but dares me to even try......

So that means that this probably isn't a true loss and the scale will likely bounce back up next week, though hopefully not too far. The good noise is that the plumping issues I was dealing with seem to have finally resolved themselves, but I know I'm still retaining fluid as I feel bloated and swelled. The humidity is up in the area and I never deal well with high humidity. I'm also swelled because I spend yesterday in the sun working on building a wall for the camper my dad and I are building, and that about 6 hours of hard work, so I was putting through their paces muscles that hadn't seen that much activity in a while. Great exercise, though! And I acknowledge may also be the source of the stomach issues, though I was doing my best to stay hydrated and we took shade breaks and even sat in the truck during lunch with the air conditioner on full blast to cool down. But while I've been working outside all summer, its always been in the evening after work and not for that long period of time, so the sickness may have been some delayed reaction to too much sun exposure. Mom and Dad are still working on it; I'm going to give it a little more time, then I might go over and get back involved because its my camper and I detest that they would be building it without me considering they are older and that's a lot of strenuous hard work; I don't want them to have to strain so much when I'm considerably younger and more able to handle the heavy work!

So anyway, I'm not really getting the joy of finally seeing 2-8 on that scale instead of 2-9; if it continues to stay below 290 through next week, and I am sure it is truly a loss and not just a temporary thing, then I'll perk up some