Women 200lb+, Let's Aim For The Sky This July!!!

@pamperedlinny UGH I don’t like hearing about the doctors that are like that, especially when you are working on changes. Definitely see about a new dr. Since you got your numbers down before, I hope you can be strong enough to advocate for the 1 month trial for yourself. You did it before and had some things come up that affected that you’re aware of. Maybe see if you can show your tracking to show the dr what you’ve been eating and have the conversation for her to review. They don’t have much knowledge about nutrition but sometimes just seeing that can be sufficient. I go back & forth on how pushy dr’s should be about weight but do think that if you’re actively working on it they need to back off. I realized how clueless they can be when I lost weight the first time around and they were asking me for advice to share with patients.

48 yo 5’3” 6/2013 SW 277 ((in 2021 lost 57 lbs from May 1- Dec 31))
July goal: keep some sort of deficit daily
Ultimate Goal weight: 141 (normal BMI) No goal date, since I am struggling so hard with the prednisone

1/1 172.2
2/1 172.2
3/1 165.8
4/1 161.4
5/1 156.8
6/1 156.8
7/1 153.0
7/8 154.4

🕊️Recuperate from illnesses and prednisone/hives. If possible, continue fitness journey and always be thankful!.
🕊️Be patient! Remember that increments are where it is at, and focus on habits.
🕊️Remember: Total loss of over 120 lbs!!

So I am on my cycle, and I was really thinking that my water weight would be more. I just have no idea what my real weight is right now.

So, these past couple of weeks my breasts specifically decided to “shrink”. I feel like Carol Burnett’s character that looked like she had a couple of oranges in her dress and her boobs hung down to her waist. So, I asked the hubby to take me to the store to buy a couple of bras. I don’t know what I was thinking, between all the skin, the brightest lights you done ever saw, and dealing with the whole situation I barely avoided a nervous breakdown. I almost didn’t answer the hubby when he asked "what is the matter?" But I said, “I am a shar pei! All the bras don’t cover enough to get the skin tucked into the actual bra.” I left with zero bras, and yet another horrible shopping experience. It is totally laughable.

I do remember on the thread “what people don’t tell you about losing weight” that many said when you get to your goal weight it is hardest, and it will be your lowest point - because of all the changes. I tried to be ready for it. Whew, it is a little harder than I thought! My hubby said I just need to be patient. But, in the back of my mind - I will have this excess skin for years (forever?). I will get used to it though, that is what I keep trying to tell myself. So that is a nice thing. It is just shocking to go through all this change, and then be all like… blech!! I will still continue to the normal BMI, but I just wanted to do a little ranting now that I am not at the moment covered in hives and blabbering in pain. Thanks for listening ladies, you can do it!! Hang in there!! Have a truly blessed rest of the month!!

Hello All!

I am finally getting serious about restarting my journey to a healthier lifestyle this month. Throughout the year I've been saying I want to start taking my health more seriously but never really stuck with it or held myself accountable but trying to make strides this month to stick with it!

Age: 28
Height: 5'7
SW: 247 lbs (June 2022)
CW: 245.3
GW for July: 240 lbs
GW: 165 lbs

💫My goals for July:

🌟 30 mins of Ring Fit/Walking x3/week
🌟 Log food every day of July
🌟 Stay within calorie limit
🌟 Order DoorDash/Eat out only on weekends
🌟 Perform skincare routine every morning & night

We got this!!

I went for a long walk Thursday with my youngest and not a bad walk Friday too. My husband left that morning for Hawaii to see my MIL who has just been put in hospice. She is such a sweet lady. My youngest left to visit her today for a long weekend. I will stay here to look after the cats. It makes me glad we went for a longer time this spring for a family wedding.

My youngest went to the drs and they need to be off salt and red meats and get more exercise. We only have lamb once a week and avoid beef. Every 2 weeks or more we will have pork. I also avoid turkey since it has too much iron for me. So I need to shift my meal planning and start having more go to vegetarian dinners. No more take out the Dr said. That will be good for my weight loss so okay.

I get the feeling I am going to get a job offer next week. He said in the interview that the next step is checking references. If he said checking my references I would know for sure. I got the feeling they hadn’t gotten many applications. I know my references will give me good reviews so if he checks mine I should be getting an offer for sure.

@bojaantje nice progress with the measurements. I ordered clothes online based on the size I have been wearing and measurrments and they were all at least a size too large. Good luck figuring out clothes sizes. I liked what you said about trusting the low. I actually track my high and my low and make sure they are both going down. However on here I record my latest low. If I vary I wait for the next low and record it on here. Most people can’t drink coffee or caffeine after 2 PM without it keeping them up. I find that if I have enough coffee everyday drinking it later in the day doesn’t effect me. But if I drink too much I will get a caffeine withdrawal headache. So I am careful to stay in the right zone so I can have an occasional coffee drink later in the day. I stay away from drinking my calories for the most part. My husband is a storm water quality engineer. Hope your work changes go well.

@Cupcakecrusoe last night I went out to a restaurant we haven’t gone to since the Pandemic began so I am back up a bit too. I plan to do some house cleaning while my family is gone. At least it will stay straight until they are back. Nice you are having a lunch together. My husband and I worked remotely together for more than a year and didn’t take lunch together although we discussed leftover lunch options a bunch. When we worked in the same city we got together for lunch every week or 2. I miss that. Congrats on the headstand.

@justanotherloser007 Hope for your recuperation and slow loss might work well as you approach your goal weight. Lots of NSV you are experiencing anyway. Praying for you. I agree with what you said about weight management.

@cosmiccurves good luck with the last unpacking. We moved from a large house to a small house and I eventually gave up trying to find places for everything. Now that kids are grown I am trying to get rid of things they left behind or don’t need. My youngest is still living with us and keeps bringing kitty things home for our cats.

@mshawski You will. However the way to get your brain to help you get there is to tell it you are there already so it works with you. Vision your future as a reality so your brain knows what to do. I am trying to do this but not there yet. This is the only alternate truth I believe in. Sorry about the pain. I used to do Aquafit before the pandemic. I am waiting for the COVID rates to get to a low level before going back to the YMCA. Think it might work for you. From what I have seen 3-5 cups are good for women. So best getting that down a bit. I love coffee but drink more like 1-2 cups a day. Welcome.

@karibrandt I do not drink usually either and agree it is a challenge to fit it in when I do. Now that I am older I usually can’t drink more than 1 anyway.

@pamperedinny Hope your lab work goes well.

@JAC581 I thought you had COVID and felt it was a false or too early test but wasn’t going to say anything. Glad you checked again. Sorry.  Hope it is mild. Take care.

As to eating bad foods: I think the jury is out on the idea that calories are the only factor in weight loss. Some feel that the studies made in this country in the past years were biased with blinders on and were not conclusive as to how best to lose weight. Many other approaches to studying weight were not even done. For me calories are important but I was on a plateau for more than a month eating under my BMR at times and upping/then changing up exercise and it wasn’t until I took a diet rest and started to eat better that I started to lose again. I lost really fast when I started to up my calories -faster than I had ever lost when I was eating at too large a deficit with the exception of the day I lost 4 lbs after drinking 10 glasses of water the day before. I did go back on a more reasonable deficit to lose the rest of the next 20 lbs. When I went back to work fulltime and had a hard time exercising, logging and cooking healthy foods at home. I started to gain back the 40 lbs I had lost. I tend to not lose when we eat out too much whether the calories are low or not. Yes deficit is important but it doesn’t explain everything. However perfect doesn’t work for me either. I have to have some joy in my meals. However I have found that making some favorite foods special by having them less often works too. I lost 20 lbs while going to Starbucks every weekday eating a pastry and latte but eventually I was exercising too much and eating too little and it didn’t work anymore. So I agree that deficit is important and eating favorite “bad foods” now and again is okay. However I think what we eat is a factor in weight loss. I also think that sleep, water intake, and regular exercise play a part. I do think you can lose without exercising. However I am losing for my health and exercise helps me. I mentioned that my youngest just went to the doctors and they 1st want to try her losing weight and eating better before they have to do a more invasive test. She actually wasn’t overweight until she went off to college. The doctors didn’t mention calories. They mentioned cutting out take out, and red meat, low salt and getting more exercise. Only the exercise relates to calories. So don’t worry about an occasional weekend eating less great food or going out while on a vacation but I think to lose we need to not just watch what calories we eat but what we eat, drink, our activity level, sleep and water. I think that highly processed and most foods eating or taking out are not going to help our weight loss or health.

It took me so long to post that I missed some later posts because mine was too long.

@CupcakeCrusoe When my daughter was little I noticed that many girls were very skinny. I actually was thin until after an ectopic pregnancy when I couldn't eat or keep food down, my metabolism changed and I couldn't get the pregnancy weight off. I had lost all my pregnancy weight after my son was born. As a girl I would put on a little in the winter but it would fall off once spring came along.

As a baby my daughter was thin and long. But when she was older but still little my daughter looked chunky in a lot of clothes but I knew she didn't have any fat on her. Later she played soccer, softball and danced. She had her father's broad shoulders. When we were shopping for clothes with my mother she agreed that my daughter wasn't overweight. They talk about big bones and I am the 1st to admit that I am not big boned and my daughter has small hands and feet like I do but she has a larger skeletal frame than I do. I have skinny shoulders. We both have long torsos but like her Dad hers is even longer but she is medium height like me. Her body is more like her Dad's side of the family. In track she was good at shot put, and discus. She didn't really have a runner's body. In soccer they didn't think she ran fast enough to be a mid-fielder until the day the mid-fielder didn't show up and she was given the position somehow my daughter would get to that ball and get it down the field so the forward could make a goal if she couldn't. She became one of their choices for mid-fielder instead just defense. Mid fielders are the ones that play both offense and defense and they are constantly running up and down the field. In fact the forward stays on one half of the field and the defense stays on the other half.

She wasn't overweight until she went to college, when she could eat whatever snacks she wanted. But I find out later that her Dr gave her a hard time even when she lost a little weight she had gained from studying so hard in Senior year. She told her to lose more. This girl danced almost every night she had lessons and was in the dance company with rehearsals and performances. No she didn't have that tall skinny ballet body but she wasn't fat. Yes, her weight was more but it was all bones and muscle. She just didn't have that body that many girls have. I was flat in high school and she was not. She had my grandmother's and my sister's body except she wasn't as tall as my sister. I realize now that she thought she was fat. People's version of the ideal shape of girls/women is a real problem. Yes and Doctor's have it too. I think they cause the problem sometimes. So far your daughter probably doesn't have to face the stupid doctor and I hope she never will. My daughter didn't believe me when I told her she wasn't fat. I feel if she had she wouldn't be overweight now.

I remember someone asked what veggies they eat for a more unprocessed nutrition ((sorry I can't remember who)) I use frozen veggies that have no seasonings of any kind. This makes life soo much easier! I love my veggies, and if they are already cut up how I like and I can put them in a pan it makes nutrition faster, fresher, easier. AND I consistently include them. Less "I don't know if I have time to cut/prep"etc.

I think I eat my weight in onions, and vary out broccoli, okra, peppers etc. lols. I LOVE onions with just about everything except fruit!

@KeriA that's exactly what I think about myself. If I wasn't pushed to diet all throughout my childhood and teens, when I was slightly overweight (like 5kg maybe) but swimming 3-4 hours a week and cycling everywhere for about 13-16+ hours each week, I would not have had such a horrible relationship with food for so long and such horrible self-esteem that I got to the highest category of obesity. And I had to work through all this mental stuff and fix my relationship with food and remove a bunch of stress from my life, including learning to speak up for myself and tell people off for giving me stress about my weight or body or health (especially because my health has always been good, I'm only clumsy and break bones but I don't get sick sick often) before I could lose any weight at all. It's working now because I have minimal stress in my life so I have the headspace to deal with this.
I know it's not 100% the fault of other people because I ate all those extra things but I do think the main reason I needed a coping mechanism was the stress from being told I was fat all the time.

Let's see if I can post a picture of me then.


+1 for East cookbook. It's fantastic.

Good point about tracking the highs too. I don't write any of it down but I would be very concerned if my weight suddenly went above 130kg again. So I am sort of tracking the highs too, at least in my head. I feel a 5kg/11lb upwards fluctuation is normal for me so I don't worry about that.

Clothing sizes are so stupid!!! I always fit into stuff that's supposedly 10cm too small for me everywhere and when it comes to sportsleggings it's a complete mystery. But seeing the new numbers did lead me to try on some old jeans again and I could close them! They're a W34 from Levi's with loads of leg space so I'm looking forward to the time they'll look good on me again. Now they give me extreme muffin top so it's a no. I tried on another W34 from Levi's I still had with skinny legs but my calves didn't fit. They're thick, 51cm iirc, so they'll always be a problem, as will my thighs, but I noticed with this weightloss that my waist is lagging behind on losing because my belly's behind so that's more and more the deciding factor of whether something fits. Very interesting.

@CupcakeCrusoe I wish I had a zero waste store around. Cool! Thanks for the suggested cookbooks. I have an old one Vegetarian Epicure. It is falling apart. I need to update.

@bojaantje3822 Yes I do better losing when my life is less stressed and less busy. I finally started to learn how to lose slowly when I work fulltime but it is harder. Nice to get more input on East.

Yesterday I was on my own after 5:30 AM when I took my youngest to the airport. I went back and took a nap then went out for breakfast. We never go out for breakfast anymore and hash browns but don't have them ever. I didn’t need lunch then went and got a hamburger for dinner. I got that out of my system. The calories were higher than usual (but under my TDEE) and the food was mostly crap nutrition-wise. I did some cleaning but could have done more. Today I made a mostly healthy breakfast with vegetables and fruit except for the leftover pancake from yesterday. We usually have pancakes on the weekend but they are whole grain and not so big. I will go to the grocery store and get food for the rest of my time on my own and to start making more vegetarian meals. I will start with Spanakopita for when my youngest gets home tomorrow night. I think tonight I will make sloppy joes with lamb but will also have vegetables. I have to figure out at least some more meals for the rest of the week. DH is coming home Monday night too late for dinner but since he may be on Hawaiian time and you don’t get food on planes we will save him some dinner in case he needs it. I think I will plan to have a fish night, a chicken night, a lamb night and the rest vegetarian each week. Low salt, lots of vegetables and fruit. Every once in a while we can have pork. No beef meals at home. No take out.

For anyone who wants some inspiration: https://www.nyonyacooking.com/recipes/sizzling-japanese-tofu~9moM3LTdp one of my favourite recipes that's easy to make vegetarian. Just swap the meat for more mushrooms. I'm not big on tofu but I loooooove it in this dish. You can use lower-sodium soy sauce if this seems too salty. (Edited correct link)

@goal06082021 when I was working as a waitress, Asics shoes lasted me 6 months. Reeboks too. I hope you find shoes that last you longer. Nowadays I work out in Under Armour shoes and wear Vans and All Stars casually and to work (I'm no longer a waitress). Clarks shoes only last me two years typically and I don't wear them year-round. Adidas have stupid sizes so none of their shoes fit (the gap between 43 1/3 and 44 3/4 needs filling). I typically get my Asics from an outlet store. My last pair was €30 so it doesn't feel as bad.
I love colourful outfits and shoes. One of our coaches has a pair that's completely neon yellow and I love them.

@KeriA *I show up in a cowboy hat and a pink bandana around my face with some 70's kid pistols* Keria, give me your recipe for Spanakopita, and no one gets hurt!! Seriously, I'm gonna need that. I have veggie Wed, Fri and Sat for religious reasons, and so the hubby on special occasions takes me to a delicious gyro place to get it. Problem is 50% of the time they don't have it! (did the Greek Keebler elves not show up for their shift?? I don't know) Then I have to eat disappointment and pick at food that I feel is 1) too expensive 2) there is too much of it 3) not even spanakopita!!

Friday at 4.40pm they sent me an email invite to talk to my new employer about the terms of my employment, including pay, today!!! I only saw it this morning when I started up my laptop and I am NERVOUS. I've never done this before so I hope they're nice to me. Whatever happens my pay will go up but the question is by how much. It's at 3pm so I have 4 more hours to worry about it.

But I did immediately think of the perfect outfit. I haven't seen this person often so I don't want to repeat outfits already but I can't fully remember what I wore last time I saw him so to be safe I decided on a lovely black blazer I rarely wear, a black top I've never worn that still had the tag on it (it fits perfectly!!!) and bright royal blue trousers with wide legs and shiny gold-coloured buttons on the side. Finished off by slim black shoes that aren't super comfortable but are okay for short periods of time and my cheap new black bag because I need to go grocery shopping on my way home from the meeting and I don't wanna bring my nice bags there.

I don't look super great today because I only fell asleep at 3am and woke up at 9am (fortunately no early meetings) but I can't wear makeup when it doesn't feel right and it doesn't feel right now. I usually go barefaced anyway and he's never seen me with makeup on so while it would definitely add a little something to my overall look I'm satisfied with my decision not to wear any.

I also did one of those unreliable body fat percentage tests based on your body's measurements and according to it I lost 2% of my bodyfat, which corresponds with 9kg of the total 13kg lost. I don't know how true this is but I'm definitely feeling a lot of muscle under my fat so I think it might be a slightly high estimate. It said 50% before and 48% now, which considering I can lose half my body weight and still be a healthy weight sounds right-ish, it doesn't take into account chest measurements and while my breasts didn't get smaller during this round of weightloss (a small miracle), they were never very large. Bra size estimations put me at a 90C/D or 95A cup so my chest is really quite modest. I feel if they used those measurements in their calculator thingies it would be more accurate and lower than the 48%. Ultimately it doesn't matter but it was nice to see that according to the calculator 2/3 of my loss was fat, so even if it's wrong that sounds like a pretty good thing.

This week is going to be awkward food-wise and I won't be getting in much exercise. I'm catsitting at my sister's from wednesday evening and then spending the weekend at my mum's so no exercise thu-sun unless we go for a walk or something, but on sunday they said it might be 43 degrees celsius!!! So...
I find it difficult to eat normally when staying at my sister's because her pans are all weird and it's just too uncomfortable to cook the way I normally do.
I'm still exercising tonight, tomorrow and wednesday morning, taking a gymnastics class instead of my regular class because that's the only hour I'm available at. Gymnastics class practices handstand pushups, pull ups and double unders (jump rope but letting the rope go under you twice while you're in the air), only one of which I can reasonably practice with all of my injuries but it does sound like fun. We'll see how it goes.
Tonight we have pull ups and ring/box dips, neither of which I am capable of, so I'll have to scale them, followed by box jump overs, wall balls and double unders. Wall balls I can do, box jump overs will have to be box step ups or air squats, double unders will have to be assault bike or air squats. All in all an intense workout.
Tomorrow's olympic weightlifting. Tuesday is snatch day so that's always fun.

Have a good week, everyone!