Good thread idea.

I started without really meaning to start which turned out to be a happy accident. I was doing something for Lent last year and I was obviously in a calorie deficit. I started feeling better then I realized it didn't have to be a major change to start losing weight. I quickly went back over a lot of my past failures trying to make rules to prevent myself from previous mistakes. One of the main things was keeping it simple for myself and knowing when to relax. The only complicated part of my plan (and it really is still simple) is that I do 7 days of deficit in 6 days so I can always have my maintenance calories each Sunday. It gives me something to look forward to and got rid of my fear of eating over my calorie goal line.

jjlewey wrote: »

I dont know what if anything will be different this time but I am trying. My wife and I are going on a cruise in 2 months. I talked her into driving 20 hours to the port because I am afraid of trying to fit into an airplane seat. I am 6ft 3in and 415 pounds today. It has been a week, lost a little over 10 pounds. Trying to keep the momentum going.

@jjlewey

I am concerned that you don't feel like anything is different. Can I encourage you to post your plan here:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10754240/what-is-your-plan#latest

Maybe we can help find some ways to make it different or easier for you.

I understand about the airplane seat all too well. At my highest (higher than you now) I was buying two seats and I was experiencing claustrophobia because my overall girth. It was all I could do to keep myself distracted so I didn't flip out.

I also know about inconveniencing my wife on vacations.

jjlewey wrote: »

At this point I guess my plan is just keep tracking, try to hit my fitbit step goal 12k, and hopefully build a little momentum. My goal is to feel better and not dread going to the doctors office next time. This last week has been good, I have felt better for sure. I can feel the difference.

@jjlewey

What made you stop tracking in the past?

I am doing a lot better on steps. I am hitting 8500 pretty regularly and considering my own particular restrictions I feel pretty good about it. My goal is 10k steps right now because I think it should always be a little higher to help motivate me to do more.

jjlewey wrote: »

I think mainly discipline. I would skip tracking a meal, then a day, then before I knew it I hadn't logged anything in a month or 2. I just have to make sure I do it every meal, every time.

That is not something I have to really worry about. Once I make something a part of my routine my fairly compulsive nature kicks in. I even find waiting a longer than normal amount of time between eating and logging irritating. Not mad irritating but mentally irritating like an itch. Helpful here but not always helpful in other situations.

melanie_marie78 wrote: »

This time around, I've changed up a few things:
-I'm weighing myself everyday to make it part of my routine
-I switched from a strict keto diet to a more standard calorie counting diet
-Well...I'm here talking it out! That's different. I usually keep my journey pretty internal, which is okay. But when I have setbacks, it's easy to justify it to myself or keep it secret when there's no one else to talk it out with.

Something I still need to work on:
-strategies to move away from emotional eating instincts. Every time I've gained a significant amount of weight has centered around something emotionally traumatic and my long-term poor coping mechanisms.

I do find it helpful to post my thoughts even if no one replies. Sometimes just writing it out and reading is enough to give me insight into my situation.

shrinking_amazonian wrote: »

bjkoziara wrote: »

I'm also getting others less involved in my weight loss and relying only on myself for motivation and accountability.

This is a big part for me - I am not telling family what I am up to. I don't want to be subjected to their scrutiny.

My hubs knows, he is and always has been my main support. With family I find that they are so judgmental - I am always doing it wrong. They are also all overweight and try to push me off track, "just have a treat, you've earned it" or "you're good enough as you are, don't lose any more weight!"

I think that tackling this with my core nucleus of support will be a lot easier.

I am also trying keto to help with my intense hunger in the mornings, I would wake up and feel like I could eat the whole fridge even after having gone to bed overfull. So far it's working amazingly, I am very happy to report I can easily wait to have breakfast! I am really happy with this way of eating even if that is the only big success it brings me.

I didn't tell anyone either outside my wife. I even denied it for a very long time and well past the point it was so obvious I was losing that it was ridiculous for me to keep deflecting. Even though everyone knows now I still don't talk specifics with most people. The online community knows more than the majority of people in my life.

Anyway good job on finding a way of eating for yourself. Being happy is the biggest part of sustainability.

You are aware of the "keto flu", right?

shrinking_amazonian wrote: »

NovusDies wrote: »

You are aware of the "keto flu", right?

So interesting to hear someone else with a similar approach!

I have mostly had headaches and my leg was cramped up one day but so far it’s not too bad. I armed myself with a bunch of different electrolytes and it’s been doing the trick I think!

I am glad that you knew. I am often shocked how many people show up at MFP complaining about symptoms because they jumped into a diet without doing a lick of research.

My own electrolytes can be fun to manage. I can retain a stupid amount of water when I eat maintenance or above for several days. The combo of sodium from restaurant food and higher carb (I tend to be moderate carb for a medical reason) is like hooking me up to a hose. When it starts coming back off it is tough to keep up with the electrolytes.

You may need to keep that in mind if you take a non-keto break like a vacation or something. When you return you will probably go through the same fluid drop.

Are you shooting for the 50ish net carbs or are you trying to go really low like sub 30?

shrinking_amazonian wrote: »

I wanted to do a fair amount of research since it was going to be such a different way of eating and I wasn't really sure what to expect. Being that it's so new to me I am not trying to be too hard on myself. My goal is to have 25net carbs but if I am getting under 75 total carbs this first month I am still happy with that. Once I get my footing I figure I will have a better idea on what recipes to choose, where I am finding "hidden" carbs and how to manage eating out more effectively.

I find my water retention is always most noticeable in my hands - my fingers get so so swollen and if I add in some exercise and nice warm weather they get painfully swollen. It's been rainy and cool so I haven't really had a chance to see if the low carb has helped combat the sausage fingers.

Sounds like a good way to start. It might also tell you if you need to even bother with going lower carb. I see so many people come through MFP and they get stuck thinking they either need to eat normal high carb or very low carb. I have asked many of them if they have ever tried slightly lower or moderate levels of carbs and they all seem confused at the notion. I have a medical condition that is easier to manage if I keep my carbs lower but mine still run 80 - 120 most of the time. They are running a little lower right now because it is summer and the heat has a definite impact on my appetite and food choices.

I firmly believe in keeping a diet as flexible as possible just because I think it is easier. Many people respond very well to low carb for satiety which obviously helps keep a person happy during weight loss. I don't believe everyone that goes this path needs super low carb although you may be one of them. I would just encourage you not to get stuck with a specific criteria just because it exists. You probably want to try the 25 and see what you think since it is part of your initial game plan though. I did several experiments initially including keto.

merph518 wrote: »

jjlewey wrote: »

I dont know what if anything will be different this time but I am trying. My wife and I are going on a cruise in 2 months. I talked her into driving 20 hours to the port because I am afraid of trying to fit into an airplane seat. I am 6ft 3in and 415 pounds today. It has been a week, lost a little over 10 pounds. Trying to keep the momentum going.

I flew to Florida last year to take my family on a Disney vacation. I was 380+ lbs at the time, and shorter than you, so I was most likely wider. The seats are a little snug, but if you're sitting next to your wife, you can most likely raise the armrest between the two of you. Also, you can request seat belt extenders.

I'm hoping that next time I fly, I won't need them! But I figured I would share and maybe save you a 20 hour drive. If you're super concerned, you could call the airline and ask about it. It should be doable and not too uncomfortable, though!

As many times as I have had to ask for the beloved seat belt extender I am not sure why I didn't think to suggest it. That is why I think a group like this can be helpful. We will just know things about the challenges of living large. I was past the point of raising the armrest and had to buy 2 seats. This was not always helpful because we fly out of a small airport and on the smaller planes the armrests do not always go up. So it may require driving to a larger airport but not necessarily driving the entire way.

jjlewey wrote: »

merph518 wrote: »

jjlewey wrote: »

I dont know what if anything will be different this time but I am trying. My wife and I are going on a cruise in 2 months. I talked her into driving 20 hours to the port because I am afraid of trying to fit into an airplane seat. I am 6ft 3in and 415 pounds today. It has been a week, lost a little over 10 pounds. Trying to keep the momentum going.

I flew to Florida last year to take my family on a Disney vacation. I was 380+ lbs at the time, and shorter than you, so I was most likely wider. The seats are a little snug, but if you're sitting next to your wife, you can most likely raise the armrest between the two of you. Also, you can request seat belt extenders.

I'm hoping that next time I fly, I won't need them! But I figured I would share and maybe save you a 20 hour drive. If you're super concerned, you could call the airline and ask about it. It should be doable and not too uncomfortable, though!

Thanks for the advice, we made up our minds about driving. Gonna be an adventure, we are going to Gatlinburg and Stone Mountain on the way down. Then Charleston SC on the way back. It is adding 3 or 4 days to the trip but now I am kinda looking forward to it.

I have been measuring every chair at work trying to find 1 about the standard airline chair size. Last time I was on an airplane was about 10 years ago and I was about 340/350. I remember it being snug but not stupid uncomfortable. Hopefully I will get to the point that I dont have to worry about it.

You will be in my neck of the woods then. Gatlinburg will be fun if you have never been there. We haven't been in years because it gets played out in a hurry although we have talked about returning recently. I like that indoor putt-putt golf place. I haven't been to Stone Mountain since I was a teenager. I really should plan to go again myself.

I have a few things that make it differant this time. For one my son is also very over weight for a 15 year old so me and him are both changing our diets to loose weight. My wife is also joining in this time too to loose what little weight she needs to loose.

I got out on high blood pressure medicine this year. I told my wife I would loose weight and realized one night it was a year ago that I told her I would try to loose weight and never even tried. My back has been hurting quite a bit the last year or so and finally I realized you can just count calories to loose weight after watching the people on my 600 lb life do it so many times.

So now its been a lil over a month and me and my son are both down over 30lbs and feeling better. You get used to eating less which is amazing cuz before I'd never even dream of eating so little. I found that making dinners at home allows you to eat quite a bit more compaired to going out to eat. Now that I have been doing it for so long I don't ever see my self going back to how I used to be. That life was miserable.

The the little bit of weight I have lost has been life changing, no longer does my back constantly hurt at work anymore and everything fits better. My son is a lot happier too now. There is no stopping now.

mo8414 wrote: »

There is no stopping now.

Jackie9003 wrote: »

I can't fail really

I feel the same way. The only way to fail is to absolutely stop. It was so dumb of me in the past to make a mistake and then quit. I have made many mistakes this time but not one of them has stopped me because they aren't a big deal.

I think one of the things that has benefited me is that I am not stubborn about what I am doing. If something is not working that well I am completely open to changing it. I don't quit. I learn and then I adapt.

I guess I really had a couple hings that kind of made me start this time with the desire to really stick to it.

The first being my overall health (mental/physical/emotional). I'm finding that the heavier I get the more my depression seems to bother me. I also have been having pretty painful hip and knee issues for the last year or so, and my blood pressure has been back and forth between being too high. I can't live like this forever, and it will eventually kill me probably sooner than later.

Second reason being that we went to Hershey Park at the end of June with some friends and I literally couldn't ride just about any of the rides. That took a real blow to my self esteem, that is already quite fragile.

Lastly, my daughter is pretty heavy for her age/height. I want her to start doing better, and so far I've been a *kitten* example to follow.

Good thread idea.

This is my and my wife's billionth's diet, but it actually seems to be working for once. I started at 300 ish and am down 40+ with no hiccups yet in motivation or results. Kinda amazing, actually. We knew that doing the same ole thing would result in the same ole problems, so we changed things up:

- Really committed to logging every single calorie and never exceeding our #'s, which for me is 1600. We put aside allllll the other variables like "which foods" and just focused on that one thing - the number. I never go over 1600. I will literally cut 1/8 off a 40 calorie piece of Dove chocolate to make it fit within the 1600. The number has become sacrosanct, and we've only blown it twice in several months. We take that number seriously, like gospel. We know that staying in the habit of treating that number as a very important thing is what will make this effort work.

- We finally realized that our diets do not fail while we're dieting; they fail when we stop dieting. We've always been in a habit of taking a weekly or bi-weekly off day. They always started out pretty reasonable and then evolved into cathartic gorge-fests that got completely out of control. Then one day there'd be a gorge fest that was so utterly insane that the scale got put away, and that was the end, whether we knew it or not, and whether we found out thta day or a week or month later. We decided that while we'd be lenient with ourselves in terms of, if we're out and about and eat too much, no big deal, just log it and move on, we'd actually have no scheduled off days or cheat meals. This has worked out well. We're always on our diets and I think that has helped. We never intentionally take cheat meals, although sometimes they just spontaneously happen. But rarely.

- And then the game changer, IF. Our weakness has always been nighttime snacking. We sort of slithered into IF, as opposed to adopting it all at once. It started with an idea of cutting down on nighttime snacking, then eliminating it entirely, then going full IF and not even having milk in coffee. For months we've been doing zero calories outside the 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. window. That narrow (for us) window allows us two generous, satisfying, "normal" meals that don't feel punishing at all, and a couple of snacks. For us, this works better than spreading the calories thin throughout the day. It took a while to really get used to not having any food the other 16 hours, but our bodies got used to it and now we're not even hungry outside the window. IF has really been a good appetite suppresant for us.

- We are avid amateur chefs, in fact for both of us it's been a main hobby, and we had to come to the painful decision that that had to go for a year or so. We "know" what healthy, low calorie food preparation is, we just weren't doing proper portion control. We decided to accept our own limitations and order meal delivery for a while. This has worked out well. These days, there are meal delivery services with very good food. Not at a level of what we'd make ourselves, because we historically have been really into gourmet cooking, but good enough to feel satisfied and not punished. All these places deliver calorie-controlled, reasonably healthy meals that take 90 % of the work out of structuring a good diet day. Someday we want to go back to our own food, though. But only when we know we're ready for it.

In the end, I think the structure of IF has been the game changer. I think long after we've gotten to the destination with our weights, we will keep doing that. I don't know if it'd suit everyone, but for us, the rigid pattern of finishing dinner and that's it until the next brunch has pulled a lot of things into a workable structure that were very hard before and eventually caused diet breakdowns.

Finally, we've learned to be humble about it. It's very easy to get into a mindset like "We're doing everything right and we'll just keep doing it until we reach our perfect weights." The truth is, no matter how good the plan is and how easy it seems, a diet is always one meal or one day away from collapsing. This time we are avoiding the hubris and the announcing of results to friends, and all of that, and just focusing on grinding out successes day in and day out without fanfare or arrogance.

conniewilkins56 wrote: »

Sorry to post this because I don’t advise it but the last time I flew, I didn’t want to ask for an extender so I simply wrapped the seat belt around me and pretended it was fastened...this was so dangerous and so stupid but I didn’t want to bring attention to the fact that I needed an extender....oh, the things we do to hide our extra pounds....

I tried that once back when I first outgrew the standard size. Also admit to it being stupid. The FA caught it immediately and brought me an extender. It ended up shining a bigger spotlight on my largeness. Lesson learned.