Hi everybody, I'm Amanda! I'm a college sophomore but I have been struggling with my weight since high school.

I was always a very thin and small-framed girl. In middle school, I started thinking I needed to lose weight and was borderline anorexic. Thankfully I was able to get treated and gained back weight I had lost. However, I continued to gain and gain, not realizing I needed to stop. Toward the end of high school I was starting to become overweight.

At the beginning of college, I lost some weight initially because of nerves and constant walking around campus. I had a bout of mono and lost more weight and felt I looked great. When I started dating someone 2nd semester freshman year, I started gaining weight again. I got up to around 165 by the end of last semester.

Mid December, I decided I absolutely needed to lose weight once and for all. It has been 3 months and I've lost around 26 pounds through calorie counting and exercise. I'm looking to lose 9 more! I recently ended my relationship and my healthy lifestyle has really helped me cope with the stress of everything.

One thing I will always struggle with is bingeing on food. I have had a few binges since I've started losing weight, but I've learned that instead of letting those small mistakes mess up my entire progress, I can instead move forward.

My weight has been an up and down battle the past few years. I've lost a fair amount, then regained some. Currently just re-losing those last few! I'm pretty glad I was able to maintain what I did, but am still learning to tweak my habits so they don't creep up again. I like biking & running, but have yet to make them regular habits.

At 17 graduating high school, 118 lbs. 5'4" At 32 with three kids and escaping a horribly abusive husand 108 lbs. A few years later back around 120 I began the climb, about a pound a year to the present of 150-155 lbs.at 66 years of age. Always had 116 to 118 as blood pressure until about five years ago. Now BP up in 130's usually, sometimes higher. Tired, achy, have the belly flopover started. Not feeling good or good about myself. Got an ad in the mail for the Miracle Metabolism book by Diane Kless and I fit the Metabolism B profile with most of the items on the list.

Has anyone used this method of weight loss? If so what do you recommend?

I joined the site in April '11 at 149lbs, was feeling bloaty, chunky and not very lovely...my weight had always fluctuated during my adult life between 125-140 but I had piled on so much and was ready to change.

I've been vegetarian most of my life. Have a bit of a fondness for wine, which is clearly sabotaging me at every turn!

So with very little exercise and turning vegan I got down to 129 by late June...stayed there til January but then started eating the dreaded dairy again...so here I am. 145lbs and pretty much back where I started!!!

From today I am back on the vegan wagon. Cutting WAAAAAY back on the vino. Joining the gym today to get started on some cardio and weight training. Will be aiming to eat 50-70% raw...so we shall see. I will weigh every Monday and keep you guys updated!

When I was one year old, I had a really bad reaction to sulfa (which is found in most vaccines) and it kind of screwed me over. I started gaining weight like crazy over the next couple of years and my parents had be see dietitians and doctors out the wazoo!

Some of the plans worked, some didn't, but eventually I would just stop.

In 2009, I did a round of HCG and lost 22/23 pounds, which brought be from 202lbs to 180. I didn't really do the maintenance so I eventually gained it all back. I did another round of HCG in the spring of 2010 and I lost between 15 and 20 pounds. Once again, gained it all back.

In 2010, I had my gallbladder removed because I started having gallbladder attacks. I lost a lot of weight after that. But I gained it back during my senior year of high school.

My weight really doesn't change too much (somehow, I'm one of those girls who can't seem to really lose weight but I don't gain a lot of weight either).

My goal is to lose 30 pounds by August 20th. I've already lost 4 in the last 3 weeks or so. I've been walking/fast walking 1.6 miles for 30 minutes 5 times a week, and I have cut out most junk food (but I am not dieting... just making wiser choices!)

I never thought about my weight at all until high school. I had grown up an active, healthy kid, and so I was a thin teenager. I th9nk I weighed about 100 pounds. I was proud of my body and liked being petite. It became my identity, and I felt that I had an invincible ability to eat whatever I wanted and never gain. I would go to Wendy's every day for lunch and wolf down chicken nuggets, a huge fries, a giant coke, and sometimes an ice cream as well.

I got away with this until I was in my twenties, and college food consisted of pizza and soda. I remember stomping on the scale and crying when it said 120. I started riding my bike to campus and dropped back down into the low teens.

Fast forward to adult life, post college and I have been up and down a couple of times from 138 to 118. I was 118 a year ago, and then I got pregnant. Now my baby is 5 months old and I am 130 pounds, and losing slowly.

Being a young female in today's society, weight is a topic on everyone's mind. Everyone expects people to be slim and healthy and in fact everyone is different! There are people out there with all types of body shapes and sizes, heights and weights. I'm always been self conscious about my weight, especially as a teenager. After I finished secondary school, while I was still self conscious, I probably wasn't as conscious. But lately, I've become very obsessed with weight loss and wanting to change.

Last September/October I would have been around 152-154lbs. I went to the doctors in February this year and I was 142lbs. It gave me a lot of motivation to get my act together because I wasn't even watching what I was eating and I wasn't exercising! In April, I started walking more regularly and sort of watching what I was eating. Now, I'm getting stricter about what I'm eating and exercising as much as I can. June 1st, I started my journey and I'm hoping I'll be my target weight of 119lbs (or there about) by the time I return to college for my 4th and final year in mid September. I have a final target of 112lbs but I want to get to 119 first and then lose the last 7 lbs.

And that is pretty much my story.

Hi everyone!

I'm 24 and freshly on my own. I moved out of my parent's place into my own apartment last month, and I'm taking the opportunity to get a handle on my life. A few years ago, I dropped about fifty pounds over a year (I was hungry all the freaking time, but the weight was really bothering me).

Right now, I'm 126 pounds, and I'd really like to be 110-115, ideally with low body fat and significant muscle mass. I don't want to be thin. I want to be ripped. I know I can do this - I've dropped larger amounts of weight, without gaining it back, in the past.

Right now, I'm counting calories (playing with The Hacker's Diet and Excel spreadsheets to keep track of what I'm eating) and working out a few times a week.

Hey everyone!!

I have been struggling with my weight both physically and emotionally for the last year. I am married with 3 children. I made it through TWO pregnancies and bounced back to my original weight of 110 lbs right away. Then came #3....my son and my little monster He was my only breastfed baby and I thought for sure I had the postpartum weight loss thing down...I was just going to be blessed forever right?? WRONG! I was 152 pounds the day I had my son and 140 lbs 6 weeks later....and after a year of breastfeeding....STILL 140 lbs! I know what my problems are-not eating breakfast and then massively eating and drinking pop at night combined with making excuses why not to exercise- but I cant get motivated to stay on track for the life of me! It's always oh I am tired today...Ill start tomorrow...or crap I screwed up...I'll start tomorrow. And then oh geeze it's already Wednesday..I'll just start next Monday, but this HAS to stop! I can't do this to myself anymore. I am lucky that I am not way larger than what I am with the way I overeat at night and it has to stop NOW!! I can't be a poor influence to my children and I can't be unhappy with myself any longer. I have a trip in February planned with my hubby and I can't go on another trip with him where I duck and dodge swimming in the beautiful Caribbean waters to avoid wearing a bathing suit....so here I am...hoping that I can see others overcoming the same challenges with success and for the first time in a long time....I actually feel motivated. I CAN do this. I HAVE to do this!! *Ash* (

I have always thought that I was fat, look looking back I realize that before this year I have never been overweight, but I definitely felt like it. Whenever I thought about my weight I got so upset that I just wanted to eat comfort food. I would eat because I was upset, because I was mad, or because I was bored.
When I was a sophomore in high school I started getting interested in boys, and I was convinced that boys would only like me if I was thinner. I started throwing out my breakfast after I left the house, not eating lunch, and only eating about 300 calories during dinner (I had to eat dinner because it was the only time my family ate together and I didn’t want them to think anything was wrong). I liked the fact that I was hungry, it made me feel special. I don’t know how much I weighed before this, but in one or two months I dropped down to about 115 lbs. I wanted to drop below this, but I couldn’t risk it because my parents were starting to notice and I REALLY did not want them to find out.

Over the past couple of years I have gained all the weight back and at 18 I now weigh an astounding total of 154 lbs making me officially overweight. I get so mad at myself when I think of how much I weigh, and I feel ashamed. I want to lose weight again, this time doing it the HEALTHY way. I am switching from red meat to chicken and fish, and trying to eat more vegetables and less carbs. I am also trying to cut pizza cold turkey out of my diet (which is hard because I love cheese). I want to start exercising but I am in really bad shape and I don’t know where to start. Any suggestions would be welcome!

I remeber sucking in my long and lean underweight stomach when at the doctors... from when I was 5. Throughout my life, I've been tall and skinny, blessed with a high metabolism and grew fast. However, being thin wasnt enough for me.. I liked to be the skinniest girl in the room... I ate like mad though. I remeber just sitting down and eating a whole bag of spicy chex mix EVREYDAY for a SNACK after school.. I wasnt super active as a kid, and were looking at like 4,000 calories a day. However I still was underweight, and ate constantly (except at my dads, would starve myself when with him from like 10 on up) At 11 I became best friend with a slightly chubby model, whos agency had her on a strick diet. She felt so bad about her body she started calling me out on my "bug butt" and "chubby thighs" That was my first diet ever (prob lasted like 4 days .) This total overeating kept going and going until I was 12, and during PE, I found out I was officiall 5'7 and 128 pounds... To me that was huge. I started eating only dinner of chicken and rice pilaf (turns out a lot of it) that summer, binged a lot near the end of it, came home and did a low carb diet for a week, bringing me down to 120. The second the scale said 120, I stuffed myself, and gained 4 pounds back.. ate myself back to my original weight by the time school started... welcome to the yo-yo dieting cycle. I would stop eating and then when I wasnt dieting, I would specifically shove as many calories into my mouth as possible, if i wanted them or not. (I LOVE diet soda, but if I'm not dieting, I specifically drink regular soda) The after school snacking was intense. Evreytime I would lose the weight, i'd end up binging, and gaining the weight and more back... with this cycle, my weight slowly creeped up. I never told anyone about all this, becuase i knew I would fail, and they would pity me. The summers were borderline annorexic. Fast forward to 14/15, I now decide I'm done with dieting. I started skipping breakfast and lunch (wasnt hungry) and pigging out as soon as I got back from school and on weekends. My weight stayed at a solid 134, which I loved, but I started getting chest cramps from too much caffine/sugar not enough food in the mornings, and my parents grew concerned of diabetes. That didnt bug me, but when we moved near the middle of the year, we moved to a place that served fast food, cookie sandwhiches filled with frosting, healthy things too.. but the problem is they also allowed parents to see if your kid bough lunch or not. Thus I had to eat lunch. And breakfast. And I pigged out.... the last day of school, the PE teacher took our weight measurments... and I was in shock. I hit my all time high on 141. I felt sick.. I had always vowed to never get that high.
When summer started, I stopped eating agian... I tried to force myself but it wasnt working. I knew I could healthily lose ten pounds in two months, but I would reather starve myself and loose the same ten pounds in the same time. Of course I rebounded, and have probrally gained it all back... but thats not my goal anymore....
My main goal is to get out of the cycle right now I'm exercising a ton still (volleyball tryouts) but I'm trying to maintian my weight, and learn how to not binge Once I get a handle on that, I'll try to loose my 5-15 the HEALTHY way, and learn how to maintian, not gorge myself until it hurts. Looking to be a healthy girl.. Not nessisarly a skinny one.. but those pesky pounds are going down (love the ring of that )
~cheers and good luck

I don't typically like to talk about my weigh struggles (except here I guess) but I have been struggling with my weight since middle school. I wasn't fat AT ALL back then, I was super thin but I was slightly bigger than my 00 friends, I guess. Back when I was in 9th grade I would have killed to fit in a size 0 (no other size would have sufficed). It turns out have have larger hips and regardless of what I weight I will never go down from a size 4-5 in pants...Anyways, when I was in 9th grade I enrolled in a gym and became obsessed and it wasn't about losing weight, it was about being fit. I would go to the gym everyday after school for 2 hours, then I would run 2-3 miles or mountain bike for an hour...I went down to around 112lbs. My comfort zone and what I was always at was 130-135lbs. At 5'6'' that is an ideal weight for me, however, I always thought I was fat so I always tried to lose weight but didn't put too much into it and just ate and ate and ate. I literally ate around 4,000cals/day of junk food. Slowly gained weight after I started seeing my first boyfriend at 16-17 and after starting college, during my 3rd year, I was my heaviest at 160. That summer, I went to a different state for an internship and lost 10 lbs. I lost an extra 15lbs eating soup and regained all back so the next summer, I lost 15 lbs and then after school started again I lost another 5 lbs.
Then I meet my current bf (ex?) and I have gained in 3 yrs 50-effing-pounds (it disgusts me to even say that...). It has all been a mixture of a cheating fiance (yeah, the same one that is currently my bf-ex - it's a long, long story), new job in a new city with no friends and overall being depressed and eating myself away. I never weighted myself and just bought new clothes when I outgrew the smaller ones. My family visited me after not seeing me for about 7 months and were surprised at how much weight I had gained...that's when I realized I weighted 185lbs...I started dieting in June and have lost 10 lbs so far. I have really taken dieting seriously a few days ago as before my mindset was "diet during the week, have fun in the weekends" and that clearly was not helping, so after a 2 week hiatus I came back into dieting this past Friday 8/11 and I am feeling great.
My target is to get back to 130lbs and see how things go from there. This time, I know what I need to maintain: first, I NEED to weigh myself every day. I need to see when I am starting to slip away so I can take action immediately. For me, it's not bad to be obsessed with the scale. Second, I NEED to create a habit of exercising. and third, I NEED to better my relationship with food and exercise portion control.

Overall, I will not put myself in this position ever again. I am 26 now and it has never been this hard for me to lose weight (which is why I guess I never cared too much or payed too much attention...). I can't wait until I am 130lbs and I get to giveaway all my fat clothes...

pretty simple really. starting in my teens, i became indolent, preferred to sit and go on the computer rather than get up and exercise, and ate whatever i wanted. got up to 150 lbs, and after many (MANY) attempts at taking responsibility for my body, i finally began to whip myself into shape last year. my weight has been declining at last, but it has come with a price: i'm a little more obsessed with food and fitness than i'd like to be.

Hi everyone, so inspiring reading your stories and how far you guys had come. Keep up the good work!

Me, I've always battled my weights for years since Junior High. I tried many many diets even those stupid diet pills. My weights went up and down so much and at my heaviest I was 176lbs.

I started working out by going to the gym last April, it was a spur of a moment thing because I passed by a small gym and saw their advertisement. When I started in April I was 147lbs. I then pretty much broke myself paying a personal trainer for 25 sessions package and started working out. I'm in love with it, with lifting weights, trying to get lean and building muscles. But as my session ended and I can't afford him, I decided to start working out from home using Chalean Extreme and once in awhile my friends and I will do some HIIT workout together. Today I'm weighing in at 136lbs. Still have a few more to go, the last stubborn weights.

Best of luck to you all

Hello Everyone!!!!! I am a newbie and just started the I Deal Protein Diet last week!!!! So far so good, weigh in tomorrow!!!! The only set back, I over did it on the veggies. Instead of 2 cups I weighed veggies on scale too 16oz. I was wondering why I had to eat so many veggies!!!!! and I have been following it to the letter!!!!

I have a recipe I cooked yesterday in my slow cooker, but first I have to check with my ID rep and make sure it is okay. My husband LOVED it but I will not eat it until I get the okay. It was really good for not cooking with butter etc. It is a Pork Tenderloin with veggies in a slow cooker!!!!

I will share when I get the okay!!!!

Looking forward to the new adventure!!!!!