Hi! I'm 47 years old and over the last two years have lost 45 lbs. I am currently 193 lbs, and lost 20 lbs over the last two months. I am actually working on a new way of eating for the rest of my life, rather than trying to drop pounds in a hurry. I make some sacrifices of course, but mostly I am working on finding things that I can live without and things that I can't. I try to make sure I keep my protein levels up, and my veggie count up. I actually lost weight the first 1 1/2 by simply dropping half and half from my coffee, and then dropped several things that I ate every day but decided I really didn't need. It really surprised me when I lost 25 lbs over that time, and got me started on researching bmr and what happens if you aren't feeding your body enough to maintain you. It's no wonder those 1200 calorie diets gave me no energy, headaches, and just made me feel lousy, plus they never worked and I felt like I was starving! I am a firm believer in splitting calories up during the day and that if your body is saying, "FEED ME" it really does mean it, but it doesn't mean stuff myself with a bazillion calories. Start with 100 and go up if it doesn't help within a half hour seems to work real well for me. The bmr etc is a little new to me, so I'm bound to make mistakes with following it.

I joined this group to meet people, since there really isn't a local support system in my area. I just need a place where I can get to know people and talk things through if I have questions or issues. This seemed like a good group to start with.