So, today I'm starting over. I got really frustrated and discouraged when I stepped on the scale Friday and it was up 2lbs from when I started this journey on June 1st. Both of the previous weeks I had lost one pound (small but at least a loss). I have been exercising every day other than Sunday and for the whole month I had only missed 2 days. I was trying to eat smaller portions and less carbs (very difficult, nearly impossible in West Africa) and I thought I was doing ok. I guess not. Anyway, after being down all weekend I decided last night that I just have to get back up and start over today and be even more diligent about my eating. Here we go (again)

Good luck to you!

What are you doing for exercise? If you're gaining muscle, your scale won't go down. Muscle weighs more than fat, so, you may still be losing fat but also gaining some muscle. The best thing to do is also measure yourself, don't take the scale too seriously because we can even retain water, among other things!

I'm glad you didn't give up. The best thing we can do for ourselves is get back on track and not let the scale bring us down.

For exercise I have been mostly walking, but I did do a few weightlifting sessions. Not quite enough to the muscle to be on the scale yet. I'm pretty sure if I get my eating straightened out I will do much better. Eating right (for me) is really hard here because in Ghana, most of the meals are focused around a fairly large serving of some simple starch paired with a soup or stew and a small amount of protein. For someone who knows that eating lower in carbs worked for her to lose weight in the past, it's hard to figure out how to eat.

Is there any way you can buy other food, and make your own meals?

I do make my own meals sometimes, but buying some foods here is incredibly expensive. Good meat is really expensive. One can of Tuna is about $12 USD ( I think it was last time I bought it at least)

Wow, that's really expensive for a can on tuna... I don't know what I'd do.

I hope you find a way around this soon, you can do it! Don't give up!

I wish I had some advice for you but I do have some encouragement. Keep up with the exercise, it has always worked for me, even when I have found it slows my losses.Best of luck.

Thanks for the encouragement everyone! I know that it will be much harder for me to eat right than if I lived in the U.S. but I also know that I can eat BETTER than I was eating and I've started working on that. My wonderful husband and I went to town to buy groceries yesterday and he has been working hard to try to find things that I'd like to have but are difficult to get here (like squash). I was just really discouraged after getting on the scale last week. You all cheered me right up :-D

Good luck

Is eating more meals in smaller portions an option at all? That might help a little?

To get on my soap box for a moment...it just irks me to no end that globally it is so much cheaper to eat unhealthily than it is to eat healthy. I spend almost $40 USD more a week on groceries now to eat clean than when I ate a lot more food and it was unhealthy to put it mildly.

I wish you the best of luck and I sincerely hope you figure out a plan that works for you.

punkrocksong, you are SO right. It really got on my nerves when I was still in the States that I had to spend nearly twice as much money on groceries if I wanted to eat REAL food like fresh fruits and veg instead of un healthy things like all the prepackaged foods available these days. It's even worse here because the variety of fresh veggies available is just really small. I can get enough for a basic salad, but if I want something "unusual" like squash or sweet potatoes I'm either going to have to get something that's really expensive ($1.50 for a single very small sweet potato) or I'm gonna have to pay a lot for a frozen variety (like broccoli, about $6 for one bag) Simple starches are the basis of the diet here. White bread, yam (real yam, the African kind) cassava, rice......but I'm working it out