Help

Hi Caroline! I’m Tina from Dublin in Ireland. Your story touched my heart. I can’t imagine losing a child like that.
I have 2 grown up lads ages 23 and 25. My 25 year old lives in Germany and distances himself from the whole family. His mental health is causing him to act this way.
I want to be the best I can be. Mirrors in changing rooms are the worst. I need to lose the belly and back fat!! About 2.5 stones to lose that’s about 30 lbs.
I’m used a calorie deficit calculator to find out how many calories to eat daily and logging my food.
First weigh in at home on Friday morning.
But
Trying is better than doing nothing

Hello, Caroline, and welcome to the MFP Community. I'm so sorry for your loss: I can't imagine the impact. It's a tribute to your strength of character that you're here and working on self-improvement to benefit yourself and your 2 children.

Getting started is hard for almost everyone . . . and for those that don't have the hard start, there's often a hard patch past an initial motivational "honeymoon phase". I think that you can do this. Maybe a gradual on-ramp, some modest changes at first, would make it a little easier?

Since you know about health and fitness, you know that extreme restrictive eating rules or punitively intense exercise not only aren't essential, they can be counterproductive (through fatigue, undernutrition, injury, deprivation-triggered bouts of over-eating, etc.).

Many people do very well syncing their Fitbit to MFP, and simply starting to log food (just as one eats now). For me, starting logging instantly made me realize that some foods I was eating weren't worth their calorie "cost" once that price tag was explicit. Those were easy things to reduce (frequency or portions) or eliminate in order to reduce my calorie intake. Slow loss IMO is a good thing, giving a person an opportunity to learn and practice practical new habits that will not only provide that loss, but a pathway (of good habits) to staying at a healthy weight long term.

I hope that looking like you once did wouldn't be a bad thing once you got there, but if that's truly a concern, I think there are other appearance measures you could take to visibly signal externally that you are a new and stronger woman internally. Even a new fitness focus could accomplish that, and we women have options for things like haircuts and such. Many of us do look different after loss than we did at similar weight in the past (not necessarily in a bad way!), in any case.

I can understand and empathize with some concern and hesitation on your part, but your obvious core of inner strength is a big asset. Your steps toward improved health and fitness, toward a different but still productive and satisfying life after such tremendous trauma and loss, will be an amazing example of character and resilience for your two children. I'm cheering for your success, and feel sure that you have what it takes to make it happen.

Best wishes!