3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community - From the Russian Front

kochevnik means 'nomad' in Russian. I spent most of my life wandering around living in different places. I'm not your 'typical' poster here, first of all I'm a guy and second, not so young as most of you LOL - I turn 50 in a few months. I have to thank everyone on this site because I think it was coming here and seeing the success stories that made me say, hey you can do that - you see people who have lost 100, 200, 300 pounds and suddenly your burden doesn't seem quite so heavy (haha nice pun, eh ?)

When I was younger, I was a competitive runner so was pretty thin - I still run - never really stopped, I just started getting older and kept eating the same crap foods and it all caught up to me. My highest was when I was in Alaska and wrecked my shoulder playing hockey - somehow I got the idea that eating a lot of nuts was healthy and I got up around 240 pounds (never checked, had no scale). I will also note that it is much easier keeping the weight off in a foreign country compared to living in the USA - when I lived in Russia and China about 8 years ago it was easy to stay thin - just drink a lot LOL

So I move back to the USA, start eating more American food, get a desk job, get married, have 2 kids and wah lah - blob city. Last year in the summer my sister comes to visit and she has lost a LOT of weight, she would be one of the posterchildren for this site if she comes here - she lost probably half her weight (from 300+ pounds at 4'11" tall). So I at least got motivated to make two 'August New Year's Resolutions' after she left - I would use a postal scale to measure out and limit my potato chip consumption (my main weakness) and I would go running 2 times a week, every week. And I did it. And lost about 20 pounds. So this year August rolls around and I think about what to add to my resolution's list for the coming year and I run across this site and my expectations go way up. Like someone else here mentioned - there was no magic moment, nothing that really altered my life - I just woke up one day and said, yeah, I think I can do this.

Like I also mentioned on another Intro thread, I don't think diets that limit the 'type' of food you eat work in the long run. Look at all the people that say "I was on XXX diet and I lost 70 pounds and now I've gained it back"

Don't get me wrong you can definitely lose weight on a diet - but IMO that is LESS than 1/2 the battle. The real battle is to KEEP the weight off. I think someone who loses 30 pounds and keeps it off is far more successful (and healthy) than someone who yo-yos.

I find that with a total calorie count and no limit on what I eat, what happens is that you automagically start making some better eating choices. Eating a lot of crap food HURTS because you become hungrier faster. At the same time, being able to slide some 'bad' foods in there every once in a while keeps you from feeling 'deprived' leading to depression and giving up.

So for example, on my 'diet' yesterday I ate a Whopper - which is pretty damn funny if you ask me. Some diet, some would say, but according to my scale (first one I have bought in more than 10 years) it's working. I didn't know what level of calories I was eating when I started, but I used one of those calculators at freedieting dot com and it said 2000 would be a good place to start.

I should also mention that one of the other things that REALLY got me going on this was that when I started plugging different numbers in that calculator I came to an interesting conclusion :

What is the difference in calories per day for someone my age, gender and height who weighs 210 pounds and one who weighs 220 pounds ?

The answer appears to be about 60 calories a day. 60 cals is half a slice of bread !!! I knew I could do THAT. And likewise, I figured if I could do it once from 220 to 210 then there is no reason I couldn't do it a few more times and get myself off that 'Obese' category on the BMI (Yeah I know the BMI is 'off'). So that 60 cal a day little number - or 360 cals a day to drop 60 pounds, was do-able, so I better get off my *** and get do-ing it.

So this is my fourth week and I'm dropping 2 pounds a week so far at 2000 cals a day. So that means, before I was eating in excess of 2800+ a day (plus an extra 2 miles of easy walking each day). And 2000 has been 'interesting' - I would not say it is really hard, just a bit annoying at times. I can handle 'annoying' if it means I can drop 60 pounds.

I figure all this is mostly going to take is time. In 6 months I can still be overweight and feeling worn out all the time, I can handle some annoyance and in 6 months I can drop 30, 40 or 50 pounds - I shouldn't even care what the number is because as long as it keeps coming off, week after week, who cares how long it takes to get there ?

Anyways, that's my long story - just thought you all might like to see the thought process in action. I'm pretty happy with how it is all going - I 'feel' a lot better even having lost just a few pounds so far in the last month and since I don't really 'deprive' myself of anything, it has not been so emotionally hard either. And I am actually looking forward to testing to see if I can stay in maintenance, because I know it will not be much different than what I am doing now. I figure when I hit goal in 6 months or a year, I should be able to ramp up my cals and as long as I figure out what that set point is to stay 'even' it is defnitely going to be a lot more cals than I am eating now - and now is not that bad.

Best of luck to everyone - this place is great for motivation - I come here almost every day to see who has finally made their goal, hope some day it will be me :)