Hi Everyone!
Nice to meet you all, my name is Ithfifi or as most people call me Ithi. I'm a 25 year old Brit living in Holland. I moved here two years ago after falling in love online and I guess I have fallen into the same trap a lot of people do. Falling and love and being very happy I got 'comfortable' and gained more than I've ever weighed.

I'm currently 72.4kg which is too much for my shortness at 5ft1. I got pretty down about it for sometime and I guess I was in denial, clothes stopped fitting me and I started to wear jogging pants a lot. Now I've past that point and really determined to get to my ideal weight of around 55kg.


My main struggle is that I live with my partner's family currently so I feel like I have less control of what I eat. Unaided with with my own kitchen I am more than happy to eat healthily for every meal but its not that easy when someone else is cooking and more often than not cooking in butter!!

My main inscentive is of course to be healthier, slimmer but I have the added pressure of Christmas coming up when I will be visiting my family for a month. As much as I am doing this I am also hoping to get into new clothing that is waiting for me there; I really don't want to disappoint my mum!

Sorry for giving such a long intro! I am hoping to get the support here that I need, learn from your success stories and hopefully make some friends on my journey

Hi Ithi! I'm sure you'll find the support you need here. ( Don't worry, your intro is not long at all. Have you seen any of my posts?! I am, apparently, quite talkative. )

I'm fairly new here, but determined to make this work, and that includes building a solid support base here. I hope I can become a part of yours!

I definitely understand a few of your obstacles. When I was young (21) i also moved to another country to be with the one I loved. We were happy, and that made us both too sedentary and careless about our food intake. We also spent a bit of time living with his family, but even once we were living on our own we spent most nights eating dinner with them. It is tough when you don't have all the control over your own food, and how it is cooked!

Here are a few of the things I managed to do when I was in your situation:
-Walking. I found that extra walks, sometimes with family members, sometimes on my own, helped even when the food I ate wasn't exactly healthy.
- Chores and Yard Work. I found something extra to do. This helped me be more active, and made ALL of us who lived together much happier.
-Help with Cooking. Can you offer to cook some meals, once in a while? Suggest you have a new recipe you think everyone would love, or offer to cook the veggies for the meal. Sometimes I had to word my 'help' just right, but often it meant I was able to cook the meat without excess fat, or not fry the veggies in butter like they would.

i'm not sure if any of those would help you, but maybe i've given a few ideas you can work with. I hope you're able to implement something that helps you feel better about the process, and yourself! Good luck!

Hi Bardess,
sorry for the slow reply but thank you so much for replying to me! I hope you are well? How have you been finding things?

It's really interesting that you had a similar thing happen with moving abroad, it seems we have something in common already! I have to agree that it is hard not having control over the food situation. I also failed to mention that I suffer with quite extreme IBS which means that it is limiting enough at times. When I am in England I eat so very healthily with fresh veggies almost every night, salads for lunch and a big difference here is also that the veggies we do occasionally eat come from a jar. Maybe that's just me being picky but I've grown up with home grown or at least fresh - in my mind I think is less healthy but I may be entirely wrong?

Your advice was brilliant, While I still wont have much of a voice with the cooking I am choosing the option to by a bag of lettuce for under a euro (I also can't afford to cook as I wish every night right now) and make a salad (I mix in seaweed; lasts me a really long time if I eat it about 4/5 times a week) if they chose to eat pizza or what not. As for house work this is pretty much my way of thanking his parents for allowing me to be here, his mum is also disabled and I am more than happy to help her with things and its just a slight bonus it gets me off my bum in the process.

I already started to include walking before I joined the forum which I have enjoyed getting lost and finding new ways to walk and adding on extra to make it longer as I found it get easier. I also have been doing Davina DVD's and yesterday completed my first attempt of the Walk away the pound work outs which I discovered on here, it was amazing! Really, I didn't expect a walking dvd to be so much fun and can see it becoming a regular! Have you tried it?

Hope you have a great day, Bardess!

Welcome Ithi! I'm new here too, and everybody's so supportive already. Looks like I'll be here awhile (I've got a fair amount of weight to lose), so am hoping to both give & receive support and friendship. I look forward to seeing you around the boards. Let's do this!

Hi Dana! Welcome to you too! Isn't everyone so friendly? I've always been a little shy of forum posting but it really is nice to see such a friendly bunch - it should make our stay easier I will see you around too! Best wishes to you