It's always so exciting to come check this thread out and see people losing, good job!

I lost 1.5lbs this past week. which puts me at 249... since I know how easy it is for the scale to say 250 again, I'm gonna hang around.

Awesome job with the losses ladies!!!!

AFM: I am down 1.2 from my massive weight gain. I am 268.4 this morning. AF is due soon too so I'm sure this water weight is going to come off extra s-l-o-w.

Ainslie - I feel your pain. I also have kids who are overweight. I especially worry about my daughter because I'm scared she's heading down the same path as I went down. I have been obese basically my entire life (since the age of 9 or 10). I try to encourage her to eat less and eat healthier and do zumba with me. I bought her a new bike a few years ago, since she had outgrown her old one, and really tried to encourage her to ride it regularly. I really try not to say much but it's really hard. My son is 9 and more active, but still loves to eat and has grown quite a belly this past year. We have a new neighbor and she's really been keeping him active so I'm hoping he will slim back down a little. My kids just love to eat. I swear they get more enjoyment out of eating than just about anything else. Unfortunately it seems to run in the family. It really doesn't help that we live with my parents and my parents are junk food junkies, so no matter how much healthy food I buy and cook there are still tons of junk food in the house and absolutely nothing I can do about it. There is absolutely no way I can afford to move out with two kids to support on my low income and there dad hasn't been seen in a couple of years and no telling where the **** he is or if he's even working. I didn't mean to go on a rant, but I just wanted you to know that I truly feel your pain. I struggle with this every day and I wish there was more I could do to improve their health without making them feel bad or feel like I'm trying to say they are fat. I don't want to make them feel that way. I know that they know they are overweight, but until they make a decision to try to help themselves I feel like my hands are kind of tied.

Tomorrow is our weigh in to start our next weight loss challenge at work. I have not eaten good this week at all. I just about had a heart attack when I found out that the shake I had at Sonic the other day was about a 1000 calories and that was for a medium!!! I've gained this week, but until tomorrow I won't really know for sure just how much. I have got to get back on my diet and stick to it.

Mandy , I just love the cream pie shakes at Sonic and was going to get me one a while back and looked up the calories and fat grams and just about passed out LOL It was a sad sad day but I said no and didn't go. I wish you all the best on your new weight loss challenge at work. I hope you win this one!!

Congrats lanabug and justaloozer.

Mandy hopefully your kids will be inspired by your success and start taking cues from you. And those shakes are dangerous. Especially that half price promotion.

I am down to 251.2. A new low and hopefully the start of a downward trend.

lanabug, WTG on making the 240s!!! Congrats!

justaloozer, I'm glad to hear that the weight is coming off quickly for you, I'm sure you'll be back at your pre-vacation weight in no time!

Mandy, I wish you the best of luck on your next work challenge! I also hope you win this one!

I don't even know what to believe my weight is anymore which has me beyond frustrated. Despite eating out two times this week there was no change on the scale, none, which I thought was strange, I was sure that I would at least hold some water weight, and deep down I had a thought that maybe there was something wrong with the scale, but instead I just looked on the bright side of things. Today, I asked one of my family members, who is much lighter than me to weigh themselves, they did. Then a few minutes I stepped on the scale and it told me I was up to 261.5 (which I am going to assume is my actual current weight)! It almost feels like the scale just remembers the last weight and shows the same number or something close to it unless someone with a drastic weight difference weighs themselves on it in between weighings. Am I crazy to think that it's broken?

Woo Hoo girls, congrats on the losses!

levoquette, yes, scales often hang on to a current number if it's close. One way to trick it is to hold something heavy (a gallon of water?) and stand on the scale, after that then weigh yourself. Another thing I have noticed when mine seems to be going crazy is to change the batteries.

As for me... well here is my novel

Wednesday evening I never got around to prepping my tomatos for salsa, so I began yesterday at 4am. It took me 5 hours of constant work to prep 60ish pounds of tomatos. Then it was time to go to the basement and gather all the jars bring them up to wash and sort. Then there was the 1/2 bushel of bell peppers from the garden to prep, the 10lbs of onions, the heads of garlic, oh yeah and the HOT peppers (which even though I was careful ended up shooting my on the lip with juice and burned for hours...lol). At 9:30pm I pulled my last jars from the canner. All that work for 36 pints of salsa. But it's oh so yummy and I know what's in it In the middle of my mess my 4 year old dropped a weight on his hand crushing it (not broken thankfully) and leaving a big hole in his hand (2 stitches). Thank goodness hubby is a good dad, he is often the one to take them to the hossy when something horrible happens. He had a rough night and i forsee him being a cling on for a few days.

As for my weight, yesterday I was down to 267.6, today I am up to 268.0, I am sure it's a combo of being on my feet for 17 hours yesterday and TOM should be here anytime between now and Monday. I have been 100% on plan, so I'm not concerned.

I made it to this thread and am excited to be here - while my sig says 270 I actually weighed in at 269.8 on Wednesday and should be lower than that this saturday!

I am hoping I can stay in this thread until I am too low (and not have to leave because I get too high!) but I have a trip to New Orleans from the 12th to the 18th which is making me very nervous. I have booked a hotel with a gym and a pool but am seeing both my bridesmaids for the first time in 5 years (one from California and the other from England) and know I LOVE the food in NO... gah.

Anyway - hi and again, I am glad to be here

I decided not to weigh myself today to give my body time to expell all the salt I ate yesterday. Hopefully I will be down tomorrow. I would really like to kick this plateau in the a**. I tired of bouncing around. Good luck to us all.

Made it down to 250.2! Been in the 250's way too long. Hopefully I can keep this up. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Keep going girls, you can do this.. Mara... I can forsee you leaving us very very soon

We had our official weigh in for our new weight loss challenge and although I knew I had gained I was still shocked to see 260 pounds again I can't believe how much weight I put on in the last two weeks! I had gained a couple of pounds the last week of the last challenge and then I completely went off my diet and ate all kinds of crazy things intentionally, but I didn't expect that big of a jump. Wow! I sure hope I can quickly get back down to 252 and then go from there. I have to lose 13 pounds in six weeks in order to win this next challenge (the goal is to lose 5% of your body weight in 6 weeks).

I'm curious what kind of diet everyone in here is following. I have had success with low carb obviously and I know Weight Watchers works if you can stick with it. I have been looking at Chris Powell's diet plans which are basically a back and forth high carb/low carb day. I even thought about trying the Subway diet since they are doing the $5 footlongs this month and I figure I could eat a healthy breakfast and have a 6-inch for lunch and dinner and maybe a piece of fruit for a snack. I am so lost. There are so many different things I could try. I even seen a Living Social deal for a weight loss clinic in my home town where for $39 you get six B-12 shots and $50 you can use towards appetite suppressants or whatever else they sell. I have to admit it's tempting

I know the whole calories in-calories out thing, but I also know that can't be completely true because it has been proven that if you eat an extremely low carb diet you can eat a lot more calories and still lose weight. I just don't know what to do anymore. I'm stressing myself out which is making me want to snack lol

I know I've learned one thing with this weight loss challenge - it's easier for some people to lose weight than others. Why can't losing weight be easier??? As a transcriptionist I was just typing recently on a patient who couldn't gain weight, now why couldn't I have that problem.

Mandy, I'm a calorie counter, nothing is really off limits, though I try to watch my "bad carbs". I try to limit what I eat when it comes to white bread, white pasta, white potatoes, or sugar, but that doesn't always happen.

Weight is staying pretty steady... with TOM here, that is amazing to me! I really expected to be up even more today.. instead I was down .2 to what I was on Thursday. I have a feeling by the middle of this coming week I will see an amazing "woosh".

Mandy- I started out by cutting out the junk foods and having smaller portions of my regular foods and trying to get in exercise every day that I could.
I've counted calories in the past so I sort of roughly count some of them in my head (usually rounding up a tad) I try to limit my snacks (fruit, rice cake, aldi choc or orange Ice cream bar..) so I don't fill up on too many of them.. I try to stay away from high calorie or high fat foods. And one big thing that helps me is a set time to stop eating each day. When 5 pm (sometimes 4 pm)comes around I'm done eating for the day. I used to have acid reflux bad. I'd wake up in the night with it and I'd have to get up and chew several antacid tablets and If I didn't have any It was horrible! Not eating for several hours before bed has cured that problem

Good morning all!

This morning I am finally back to where I was last week: 264.6. It took me all week but I am finally back!

Mandy, I am a calorie counter. I track cals, carbs, fat, and sodium on MFP. I limit junk food, breads, rice, etc because I can eat more food if I save my calories for healthy stuff. It has been a struggle lately. I am losing steam but I know I need to keep going.

I also work out 5x a week and on my 2 days off try to stay moving for a portion of the day. Yesterday was my "rest day" from exercise but I walked around for 3 hours with my sister in law.