I'm 470lbs and I need support!

Katherinelittle24
Katherinelittle24 Posts: 63 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hello everyone! I weighed myself today and I am 470lbs. I cried and cried and told myself that I will never be at this weight again. Now, does anyone have any advice and, or suggestions in how I can get started? And, or do you have any further websites and, or groups that may help with support as well? I do believe that I have a binge eating disorder. My assessment with a therapist is next week and I am attending this virtual weight group via zoom that my insurance covers. I am always in pain. I cleaned my kitchen today and did all of the dishes and I had to take three breaks while cleaning my kitchen because my lower back hurt so much. I can barely take a ten minute walk without being in pain, but my fiancé and I are going to attempt to take at least a ten minute walk per day and gradually increase from there. I also do plan on getting Weight Loss Surgery, hopefully in September and I did complete the classes for it and like I said, will be seeing a therapist to discuss my weight and the reason behind my weight. Please don't talk me out of my surgery. I've already made up my mind but until then, I am looking for support to lose some weight and to get some insight as well. Thank you! :)

PS - Once again, Please no judgments. I know we are on here for the right reasons but I have posted on MFP before and got some pretty nasty comments, so please leave any negative comments to yourself. Thank you :)

Replies

  • jlval1989
    jlval1989 Posts: 89 Member
    Chin up! It sounds like you're already taking some very good first steps - in discussion with a therapist and insurance, and downloading mfp.

    As for the next steps - mfp will calculate a calorie goal for you, and you can also check a few others online. I'd recommend a TDEE/BMR calculator (it helped me understand the calorie goal I was set, at any rate). If you've never come across those terms, Tdee is total daily energy expenditure, so how many calories (ish) that you burn through in a day, and BMR is your basal metabolic rate, or how many calories your body needs just to keep the lights on.

    From there, it's all about planning your meals to fit with your calorie goal. Weigh your foods to help with serving size, and try and fit in as many healthy foods as possible. Easier to cook from scratch here, than rely on ready made stuff.
    And don't try to overly restrict the treats! If you've got room in your calorie goal for some sweets, go for it! If you try to cut out every bit of sugar or sweet treats, you're more likely to fall off the wagon.

    Relax, slow and steady, and you'll get there.
  • Hanibanani2020
    Hanibanani2020 Posts: 523 Member
    Have you seen a go to test your heart, blood etc to make sure you diet correctly?

    If they say all is fine Don’t go too fast. Start at a reasonable calorie deficit so you don’t get hungry enough to binge, just enough that you’ll be dropping steadily over time. Remove all food that you currently can’t control binge eating out of your house and replace with lower calorie alternatives as that will help you feel control in the short term.

    Walk just enough for as long as you feel like you’ve walked but not in pain or exhausted. Even if it’s five minutes to start.

    Excited to watch and support you through your journey!
  • elfin168
    elfin168 Posts: 202 Member
    Go you! Chin up and onwards hun..forward to a life with less pain
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    sounds like you already have started. If your surgery is scheduled for September, then you should already be on a diet per the clinic that will handle your surgery; I know when my brother and his wife had it done, they had to go on a control diet before the surgery.

    After surgery, you will add back foods in stages. I'd suggest looking around now for cookbooks and recipes for each stage so you can get some variety.

    You aren't going to be able to eat much in the first few months as your stomach heals, but use that time to get the most you can from therapy and learn new eating patterns. You probably won't even WANT to eat that much at first, but don't expect that to remain that way forever; eventually your stomach will heal, you'll be able to increase the variety of what you can eat, and if you don't have new eating patterns in place, you risk returning to old habits and regaining weight.

    Instead of using the guided MFP setup, set your calorie goal to what the doctor and dietician tell you to match the diet they should be monitoring. Start now eating to that calorie deficit. Ask them if you should be adding back exercise or not as the goal calorie range set for you may or may not account for that. Follow what they tell you when it comes to macros; likely you are being asked to go very low carb. Start now learning to be aware of what you are eating, what a portion size looks like, etc. Your clinic should be guiding you in what your post surgery diet should be like, so I highly recommend following what they tell you.

    But the biggest thing is to learn now how to control your portion sizes; WLS is a tool not a miracle, and like any other tool, it can be misused, and many people who have WLS eventually gain much of their weight back because they misused it, thinking it would solve all their problems by itself instead of realizing they still needed to learn to overhaul their diet in the long run for long term success. WLS will NOT automatically lead to permanent weight loss; you will lose a lot of weight quickly yes, but WLS will not guarantee that weight will remain off; you must put in the work to learn to eat differently and gain control of your eating disorder in order to have long term success.

    Best of luck to you!
  • Kaitie9399
    Kaitie9399 Posts: 1,346 Member
    My advice:

    Weight-loss comes through adhering to a strict schedule of both eating and exercising. Use MFP to log all of your food--every single bit and decide what times of day you will eat. My schedule is breakfast by 8, snack at 10, lunch at 12, snack at 3, dinner at 6. Knowing when I can eat helps me from feeling deprived of food (and stops random snacking and overeating). The primary exercise I've done to lose weight is walking. Before you start your walk, stretch your leg and knee muscles first (a good 5 minutes of seated stretching will do the trick) and see if that helps with the pain. After a few days, add a few more minutes to your routine and before you know it you'll be able to walk for an hour. I walk every single day and have lost 65 pounds.

    As others have said, WLS is a tool and not the cure. My DH had WLS back in 2011. He was 500+ pounds and through surgery got down to 299. As soon as he hit that magic number he started eating crappy food again, added soda back into his diet and regained 150+ pounds. WLS will help, but it's really your mental state that will ensure you keep the weight off forever.

    My last suggestion, get a fitbit. It will help you to track your steps and it shows you exactly how many calories you can eat throughout the day to stay on track to lose the weight. I wear my fitbit day and night and love it.

    Best of luck, you can do this.
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    HeidiCooksSupper wrote: »
    There are lots of folks here in MFP that started out with hundreds of pounds to lose and successfully did it -- some with surgery, some without. Some changed their mind about surgery part way through. So put worrying about that aside for now and just work on getting control over your food consumption by using a TDEE calculator and going for a 1000 calorie/week deficit. Those of us who are obese (in my case I weighed twice what would be healthy), all got here by eating too much and having a warped relationship with food. We are relearning and unlearning the habits of a lifetime and it isn't easy. BUT IT CAN BE DONE! And you will do it, too!

    Take it one day at a time and ask here for help whenever you need it. Lots of us are here for the long haul. Remember, the only thing needed to lose weight is to eat fewer calories than you expend in the course of daily living. There are no tricks or special foods or special times of day or ... that make a difference. Just do whatever works for you to consume a healthy diet that enables you to lose a bit of weight each week.

    There are really only two pieces of equipment you need for this and the second is optional: a food scale and a bathroom scale. The food scale is most important since you will need to carefully weight your food to determine how many calories it has. I know hubby and I weighed twice what we ought because we were eating for four people when we were only two. We are slowly working our way down as our numbers change and we lose weight. It's fun to watch the grocery bill go down, too!

    *sigh* I've been having this battle with my parents. My mother moans that she cannot understand why they are so heavy when they don't eat that much; I can't get her to accept that they are eating too much and eating 2 or 3 servings each during their meals. Since the dietician put my father on a restricted carb diet for diabetes, she has at least been using the food scale a little more so she can get an idea of the carbs she's feeding him, but even that was an uphill battle to achieve!
  • HeidiCooksSupper
    HeidiCooksSupper Posts: 3,839 Member
    bmeadows380 wrote: »
    ... My mother moans that she cannot understand why they are so heavy when they don't eat that much; I can't get her to accept that they are eating too much and eating 2 or 3 servings each during their meals. ...

    So often, this is the case. My sister is like this, too. Lots of folks try to tell you they just don't understand how they can be overweight when they "eat like a bird." Baloney. If you weigh twice what you ought you are eating twice as many calories as you ought. It's really very simple. We eat enough calories to be the weight we are. We gain weight by eating more calories. We lose weight by eating fewer calories.

    We also need calories to stay healthy and heavier folks need more calories than lighter folks to stay healthy. Therefore, we can't just all drop to a uniform 1200 calorie diet and stay on it long term. Those of us who weigh more must eat more to do the basic maintenance of our existing bodies.

    At 250 pounds, this 5'4" sedentary old fart, pushing 70 y.o., has a calorie target of 1725 calories/day. I do a bit of exercising many days which I don't add in because I let them increase my calorie deficit (or, truth be told) make up for some of those days I slide past 1725. It works. In the last 11 weeks, I've lost just over 20 pounds or just under 2 pounds per week which is about right for 1725 calories -- for now. When I hit 240, I may need to adjust my calories downward a touch to keep the pace but then going down another 10 calories or so won't be that much of a struggle.

  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    Kaitie9399 wrote: »

    Weight-loss comes through adhering to a strict schedule of both eating and exercising.

    I will add that a strict eating and exercise schedule is a useful tool for those who find it helpful, but it's also possible to lose weight eating at varying times and doing activity outside of a set schedule. So I would never discourage someone from trying that strategy to see if it makes it easier for them, but also feel free to drop it if it doesn't make their life easier. The sometimes confusing thing about weight loss is the strategy that works amazingly for me may be totally useless for someone else.

    All you need is a calorie deficit. The best strategies to create that can be variable and sometimes we confuse the strategy or tool with what is actually creating the result.

  • Evamutt
    Evamutt Posts: 2,700 Member
    all great advice, I just want to add to play around with calories, you can log what you will eat before you eat it & delete or change it to see how many calories it would be. I've learned over time to substitute foods. You can also add a lot of volume by putting you dinner in a lot of lettuce, it really fills you up also add a lot of veggies to your meal & drink water while you're eating
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    Mrs_Smith_8002 wrote: »
    In December, I weighed in at 435 lbs. I started cutting back what I was eating some and had lost 14lbs by March. I got serious when we started sheltering in place by counting my calories and walking, and I have since lost 73.6lbs.

    I made a commitment to log everything I eat. No matter what, I put it in my diary. When I started, I set my goal to maintenance and just tried to get a picture of how many calories I was consuming. Then a few days later, I changed my goal to losing .5 lbs per week. Then a few days after that, changed it to 1lbs. per week, till I got down to 2lbs. per week. If I go over, I go over. I try hard to keep my calories within my limits, but I'm not cutting out any one thing exclusively.

    I started walking about 10 minutes at a time. I was hobbling at the end of those first few walks. It gets easier. Do it everyday. If you are walking on streets, walk to one house or building each time and then next week go past that house to the next one. Tonight, I walked 3 miles in a little under an hour. Saturday I walked 5 miles, but i sure didn't start out there.

    The key for my success up to this point is consistency. I'm not doing anything big, but I'm trying to make consistent and lasting changes everyday.

    You can do this. Small, consistent changes add up. Good luck!

    @Mrs_Smith_8002 Excellent advice! Practical, sensible, sustainable and doable! Congratulations on your success!

    (and if you'd like, the link that NovusDies provided above to the Larger Losers group is open to anyone who has a lot to lose; we're an active group and the more folks with a sensible mindset to chime in and help talk those of us prone to histrionics off our cliffs all the better lol :grin: )
  • ALZ14
    ALZ14 Posts: 202 Member
    The first step is the hardest, and that is deciding to do something about it! You can do this!!!!

    Starting slow on exercise is wise, you don’t want to hurt yourself by doing too much too fast. Walking is an underrated exercise, it increases your heart rate and is gentle on your joints and can yield great results.

    As with someone above, I would try to get in to see a doctor for a general physical and blood work if you can. You need to know (if you don’t already) if you have any underlying health issues that you need to take into account as you work to lose weight.

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