Yikes! According to the height/weight charts, I'm officially obese! Man, I feel stupid for doing this to myself. When I was a little girl, I never understood how people could "let" themselves get fat. I always thought, well, if you weigh too much, eat less. Now here I am!

Anyway, I steadily gained weight since leaving college. Looking back over the years, I always tend to pack on the pounds in stressful new situations. Like law school, starting a new job. Then, when life settles down, I don't lose the weight. Instead, the next stressful situation comes around, and I gain more.

My goals are to exercise more to help with stress, and eat healthy food. My main obstacles are joint pain in my knees and ankles (probably caused by weight gain) and general laziness. But I hope to see some success!

Welcome, and good luck! I found that 'obese' label to be one of the things that got me motivated, too. And when dealing with stress, I really believe exercise helps me work it off better than eating ever did -- although I still want to eat whenever I'm stressed!

You sound like me...I wrote about that a bit in my journal. And yeah, I hit the obese mark too before I finally pulled it together. Back down to overweight now.

to 3FC! There are quite a few different support forums. Pick the ones you like and make yourself at home!

@ New Chicklet

Welcome to the best site ever

Leenie

You sounds like me!! I ALWAYS said to myself, how do people let themselves get so fat! And now here i am! Good luck and welcome!

It's shocking when you check your BMI and it says Obese. That is what kick started my weight loss. I concentrated on exercise rather than diet because I wanted to become fit, then the healthy eatting followed as I didn't want to undo my good work. That was 9 months ago and now I am in the 'normal' category. I feel so much fitter. I exercise most days of the week. I currently have very sore calves and so I did not exercise yesterday and I won't be today and I feel really crappy about it! I never thought I would get this into exercising. It's really not as difficult as it seems at the beginning, and this is an amazing place for support and motivation.

We started from similar places (height & weight & goal), and I had the same experience with the BMI. But you're not far from "overweight" You can do it

LOL I hate BMI- it's a generalized view of what you are suppose to weigh.... I'm 6'1 the ok range for me is 140-180 or so... which seems funny because at my thinnest, I was 5'10 and 220 LOL

You need to figure in just what type of body you plan on having at goal before really worrying about what is on the scale, I say that because some people will fight to go down to 130 lbs, but in reality with more muscle - they wont be able to get below 145 or 150. Just something to think about

And your knee and ankle pain, a lot of time as we gain weight we tend to slack a bit on our stance... the best thing you can do for yourself is relearn to walk and stand properly... make sure you stand with your knees flexed, not locked- and that you aren't putting most of your weight on your heel. This is often overlooked when it comes to our joints taking a beating. People constantly ask me if it is really that simple, and yes for most of us- our bodies go into lazy- must hold ourselves up mode Check out the way you stand next time and make sure that when you walk, you're rolling from heel to toe- and not from the outside in- if that makes sense