Hi lolajean!
I'm pretty new here too.
What kind of plan of attack do you have? What tack are you taking to lose weight? There are so many different ways. I don't have a lot of experience losing weight and I'm not joining any kind of weight loss program.
My Mom had to lose about 100 pounds and she did the LA Weight Loss program. She lost the weight and has kept it off for five years. With that plan you go to a center and have lots of support from the staff and other ladies you meet there. Also, their plan is really healthy but a bit extreme. I'm a busy working Mom and don't think I have time for all the food preparation involved but it really worked well for my Mom.
My sister has had three kids and gained a ton of weight with each pregnancy and lost ALL of it each time. She's still a skinny minny. She made up her own diet that was very basic. She increased her daily activity by walking the girls to the beach and playing with them there everyday (it's a couple miles walk with two girls in a stroller and one slung to her chest) and she counted calories and fat. She viewed them as a budget like, if I eat that sandwich I'll have so many calories left and so many fat grams left for the day. Then when she reached her goal, she increased her calorie/fat allowance and voila! Skinny Minny. I told her that her diet sounded a lot like Weight Watchers which uses a formula to convert food into point values and gives you a point budget per day.
I'm using a formula my company's Wellness Works department sent out. It said to take your goal weight and multiply it by 13 if you're not that active 15 if you're moderately active and 17 if you're highly active. Whatever the number, that is your goal calorie intake. They said you should also make sure that only 30% of those calories come from fat. The nutritional info on packages tells you how many calories come from fat but if all you have is total calories and total fat grams you can multiply the number of fat grams by 9 and get the number of calories from fat. They said that if you still struggle with losing weight, to look at the foods you're eating and if you've got a lot of carbs, try to replace them with fruits and vegetables.
Since you only have a few pounds to lose, you might be more interested in things like slim fast, though I don't know much about that. I know that Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem take all the guess work out of dieting by not only telling you what you should eat but by preparing it for you. Then there are low carb diets like Atkins. There are all sorts of plans of attack from which you can choose. I think the best thing to ask when approaching diets is, what is going to work best with your lifestyle and with your cravings? Which plan is going to be the easiest for you to follow consistently? I think too often we ask which will be the fastest. Experience has shown us that rapid initial weight loss is not an indicator of long term success. You need a plan with which you can LIVE.
With this forum you can actually talk to people who have successfully taken off the weight and kept it off. One thing though that I think is crucial in getting off weight is motivation and a clearly thought out plan of attack. What are you going to do at parties? When you eat out? If you go on vacation? If you get hungry in between meals? If part of your plan is exercise, how are you going to get yourself to go do "whatever it is you're going to do" on a day when you just don't feel like it?
For example, I've been having trouble sleeping this week due to stress at work. So, last night I took a pill. Well, it was really hard to get out of bed and I didn't feel like doing my morning workout. My husband, unprompted by anything I said, suggested that since I had taken a pill and was groggy maybe I should skip this morning. That was helpfull. Fortunately, I had anticipated mornings when I would drag myself out of bed tired and groggy and not wanting to work. I had my motivation in place. I've already purchased season passes to a local water park for next summer and I will NOT walk around there half-naked as a saggy out of shape near-30-year-old.
Hey, it worked. Good luck! I know you can do it. You've already overcome some head winds to get to this forum! You can reach your goals and the people here want to help you because we all want the same thing! When one of us succeeds it helps all of us view the future with hope. I hope great things for you!
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