Hey guys I have been trying to lose weight ever since last year when I went on a new medication and went from weighing 140 to 160. Since that time I ballooned up to 180 (yikes) and have been struggling since Jan. 1 from that weight to get to the 167 I was this morning.

I've heard it is a bad idea but I weigh myself every morning. I am obsessed with seeing whether I lose at least a little bit of weight every day. I've been stuck at 167 for three days and basically eating one small meal a day at most.

I really want to get to 100 pounds ultimately. I don't want to look normal -I want to actually look slender. I'm short so all these extra pounds look that much more terrible on me.

I still let myself have coffee with cream and sugar every day though I know I'm adding 300 extra calories probably. I just can't give it up.

Today I had a couple bites of a cake I made (part of how I got heavy was I am addicted to baking cakes and cookies), three pieces of celery and a bit of chicken broth for lunch, and now it is almost 6 and I a hoping to just not consume any more calories today.

If I am still 167 tomorrow I'm gonna lose it. Does anyone else obsess over seeing the scale move every single day? I know I need to be patient and be happy to even lose one pound a week but I spent like three months stuck at 169 pounds and only recently got as low as 167.

I wanted to at least be back to 160 before summer and I guess technically if I can keep this up and not binge I can get to 160 before summer technically begins.

The problem is it seems like at least once a week or more often sometimes I have a mega binge and gain back the 3 pounds I was struggling so hard to lose... this week I went to Jimmy John's and acted like I was buying the second big sandwich for someone else. I consumed my sandwich and then went to another location and immediately consumed the second giant sandwich, then went and got a giant ice cream cone.... Probably consumed like 3000 calories within half an hour.

I named myself LadyBinger because I am prone to very bad binges and that is how I gained so much weight. For example a few times in the past couple months I have eaten a full lunch at one place, then gone to another place and immediately eaten a second lunch. I can eat a very large amount of food without being sick and should probably enter eating contests. But I am so distressed with how chubby I am.. I wear size 16 pants, but I can also squeeze into a size 12 skirt or dress at the moment.

I'm 31 and for most of my early twenties I weighed around 120 so I'm not really used to being fat. Now I'm so embarrassed about my weight I sometimes don't want to leave the house. Even though I know I'm really just kind of chubby and not truly blows your mind fat.

SO unhappy with my body right now. Which of course makes me want to binge, and right now I just want to eat a ton of food very badly. Trying to resist.

Thanks for reading this and hello fellow dieters.

Hi LadyBinger sounds to me like you really have some good willpower - that's super important and will get you to where you want to be. Congratulations on getting to 167 this year. You can do it!!

It also sounds like this website will be a great place for you to get some more info on how to make this a bit easier for yourself! From what you say, some of the choices you're making with your food isn't helping! The content of your days calories and your calorie limit might be causing the problem. Basically 1000 calories of cakes etc is still going to leave you hungry, where as 1000 of 'good food' including protein, good fats, veggies etc will fill you up. Being hungry is the killer for you I suspect, perhaps that's also causing you to need the binges too? Or maybe that's a separate issue. Anyway, I think any diet where you're hungry a lot isn't going to work long-term, so i'd recommend trying to find a way to eat plenty and not be hungry but still be under the calories you need to lose weight. So that's bad news on the cake front!! On the plus side, you really get used to what you're doing after a while and the urge to have sugary things goes away.

The other thing that I found really useful on this website was some of the information in the monthly challenges (Chicks Up For a Challenge section) - there are a few threads in there where people post their weights every day. It's a really good source of information on how people's weight fluctuates, and how long they're on a plateau (then have a whoosh), or how much they go up and down before moving gradually down etc. Looking at those is a good way to understand that everyone has different degrees of fluctuations, but if you keep on plan the scales eventually comply! The scales are going to misbehave. That's a given. But if you understand and accept this you can continue to weigh every day but not let the number throw you off if you don't like it! I like to plot time v weight on a graph so that I can see where the trendline is going and know whether to expect a drop or a stall - that way i'm judging my progress from every result I've had previously, and not just from today.

Anyway, plenty to learn from all over this site, so welcome to 3FC and enjoy the support you'll get here

Welcome to the site!

It may sound unexpected, but if you don't restrict as much as you've been doing, you'll likely lose more weight faster and not binge as much (though as ange said that could be a separate issue). Your body needs fuel just to be alive. When you give it very, very little fuel, it increases things in your body that make you very hungry. A good way to get around this is to eat enough that you're not hungry all the time, but not so much that you don't lose weight. It also helps a LOT to make most of those foods nutritious ones (beans, veggies, fruit, lean meats, rather than cake or chips or something).

Losing as much weight as you want to lose will take some time, but it's absolutely doable. I'm down over 60 lbs from my high weight, and not starving myself was a big part of doing that successfully. It's just not sustainable, even if it feels like the best thing to do in the moment when you're frustrated by your weight.

I also second what ange said about scale fluctuations - your body weight changes daily (even hourly or more) based on a lot of factors, not just how much fat mass you have. It's more accurate to look at your overall weight loss trend, not the day to day for actual progress.

There's a lot of good support and info on this site. You can definitely lose the weight! It might just take a bit of a different strategy, which is normal - many people have tweaked or changed what they're doing to find what's comfortable and works for them. Hopefully we here can help you do that.

Seconding what all the others have said. You need real, actual nutrition to fuel your body, and a piece of celery and chicken broth isn't going to do that. If that's all you ate, you were lucky to clear 150 calories WITH the few bites of cake! (And I highly doubt your cream and sugar is 300 calories, unless you're filling up the entire cup with all cream and no coffee.) I'd recommend getting yourself to a dietician post-haste so you can learn how to eat a balanced diet that will give you what you need and won't leave you so hungry. If that's too expensive, there are some really good resources online that are a bit cheaper.

I'm very similar to you in a lot of ways; I too overeat when I hit that too hungry point (so I have to make a real point of not getting there), and I also vastly overestimate the amount of calories I eat on a daily basis. Tracking with a good tracker like myfitnesspal will help there. I made the decision to weigh mostly daily, but it does have its downfalls, chief of which is discouragement with normal body fluctuations. If you're not using a long-term weight tracker I'd urge you to start doing that too so you can look at the pattern of rises and falls and see the long-term trends. It makes a big difference.

And this is the hardest thing of all to do, but as someone who's also prone to falling into the body hatred trap, please, please try to care for your body and come to love it. Self-hatred leads to nothing good and has real physical, emotional, and mental consequences. Even if it's just enjoying your ability to move or stretch or lift weights or SOMETHING, anything--when I get discouraged about how I look, I remind myself how strong I am and how hard I've worked and what I can DO, not just what I look like.

Hello ladies (I think this is all ladies?) thanks for the responses. I posted on this website because I felt a binge coming on and thought maybe I could stop it. I didn't...and gained two pounds in one day as usual with a binge. Perhaps you are right that I need to eat a more reasonable and healthy diet. I feel so trapped in this cycle of starving and binging....I overeat and feel like I have to make up for it by starving myself, then I am successful at doing that for maybe three days and lose like two pounds, then gain that back in a day and I'm back to where I started. Not sure how I managed to lose the first 11 pounds that I have...I basically just had one really good two weeks and since then I've been at a plateau.

I am stuck in an attitude of really hating my body... and that just makes everything harder. How can you change your attitude towards acceptance when you are so in loathe with your body?

sorry you're finding it tough. You're 31 and say that you were a healthy weight in to your mid twenties, so guessing you're a 'beginner' at this dieting lark! I'm 50 and have had about 35 years practice, and i'm still learning a lot! It can take a while to figure out what suits you best, and I'm sure there's a much better and more sustainable way for you - but you have to find this out yourself by reading about the different diets, or talking to someone who know's what they're on about, and deciding what approach might work for you, and basically some trial and error.

The good news is that you can start to feel better about your body pretty quickly (a few weeks - sometimes even a few days) and then everything becomes easier because you're getting happier and happier, and more motivated to stick to what you're doing. The first bit is difficult. Especially for you if what you're doing isn't working. So do a bit of research, and have a new start, and you'll be off and racing. It's May, you can be feeling a whole lot better about this by June, or you can be in June and be exactly where you are now. June's coming. Your pick!

LadyB - The people here are very supportive and you landed in a great space - IMHO. That said, I think you need professional help to get you on a healthy and sustainable path. I recommend that you journal every single thing you eat and the calories for 2-3 weeks and note any stresses or triggers that might have contributed to the large intakes you described. Then get some professional advice. You know you can do it because you started the year at 180. A goal of 160 by mid June is very reasonable and a good start . But, broth and celery cycling with sweets and huge meals won't help you long term.

As for daily weighing, I do that. But, I don't obsess. I find knowing I am going to weigh myself every morning tends to help me stay away from junk at night. Fitbit has a free program that will weekly average the weights you enter. It also has a calorie input and exercise logging function. You don't have to buy the fitbit to use the app.

I hope you stick around and good luck.

I'm 100% echoing nightowlrn on seeking professional help. For me, I struggled for years with my own body image issues and finally shoved myself into therapy (not just for that, but other things). It's been really helpful at sorting out my own overall unhealthy thought patterns and actions, but I can't lie, it's a long road sorting oneself out! But very worth it, and much healthier and sustainable long-term than disordered eating/starvation-binge cycles (which are dangerous in their own right as well), not to mention more comprehensive than strangers can provide on an internet forum. And you said originally that your weight gain is from a medication, so hopefully it's some comfort at least that despite the weight gain, you're feeling better in whatever aspect the medication is supposed to be helping with!

And a point on the weight "gain"--actually gaining two full pounds would require you to eat 7,000+ calories, and the body tends to fight weight gain, so it's highly unlikely you're actually gaining and losing fat like that over and over again. You're probably seeing a teeny tiny bit of fat gain and loss and a whole lot of water gain and loss. I can't help but reiterate my earlier recommendation to see a dietician and get yourself some solid information on food--just being armed with real info can help a great deal in demystifying the whole process.