Hey everyone!!

This is my first day as an FC!! YAY
I finally decided to join after having tried without success on my own.
I'm not overweight, but I am very uncomfortable in my own skin. I want to be able to walk down the street ( or *gasp* in a bathing suit) with confidence. I feel like my weight takes a toll on every aspect of my life and if I can just get it under control I could finally reach full potential.

So I enjoy working out, I hit the gym doing both cardio and weights quite frequently..but my eating is where I get in trouble. I have trouble with binging. I've been pretty good lately, but if something triggers me....watch out. It's very frustrating to be in college and have friends who can go out, eat pizza, drink beer and look great while if I did that i'd feel guilty and uncomfortable the entire time. I definitely hold back on being who i really am because of my weight and I don't think that's acceptable.

I need to change!! I need to get this under control now so that I can lead a healthy life for the rest of my life.

I've only got about 5-10lbs of actual fat to loose but it seems like the scale just never budges!! Is there anything you girls and guys can recommend to get me kick started in the right direction? I have huge issues with temptation but it's impossible to avoid the grocery store and potlucks forever. Have you guys got any tips or advice for beating the urges to nosh??

thanks for all the support, i'm really excited to finally conquer this

I just wanted to welcome you. My advice prolly wouldnt be super helpful as losing weight with a lot and a little are very different. Why not keep a journal and write down EVERYTHING taht goes into your body for a few days and see how many calories you are consuming. From there you can try to lower by a few hundred to create a defecit to lose.
Check out the featherweights forum i bet they will have TONS of good advicve for you.

Welcome to the site!

I'm going to quote one of our supermods, Mandalinn82 because something she wrote today is still fresh in my mind:

In terms of the balance between not eating enough and overeating, I use a three-pronged approach.
1. Recognize that my body needs good quality fuel to power it through the day, and that if I don't get that fuel, I feel like garbage.
2. Recognize that, if I just ate whatever I wanted, I'd not only have way too MUCH fuel, but wouldn't be eating the good-quality stuff that improves my quality of life.
3. (and this is the big one) - Plan meals, snacks, and beverages that meet my nutritional goals while providing me with the correct number of calories, then eat only those foods.

There's more in that thread that touches on this if you want to check it out:
http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=157907

I also struggle with bingeing and I can't emphasize enough how much planning helps with that. I've been at this long enough to know my "go to" foods, but I also like to try new things. I do the bulk of my shopping at the beginning of the week with a list of what I need to execute my plan. I always think through what my meals are going to look like (I don't write them down, but you might find that helpful). For example, I can tell you that my breakfasts this week are going to be either grapefruit with eggs or a green smoothie. By having this thought out and making sure the "fixings" are ready to go in my fridge, it makes it much easier to follow.

Hope that helps! And welcome!

Welcome! Even not literally overweight can be nasty when you were smaller before. Good luck losing it ^^

You should just try toning your body and not going on a strict diet. You don't want to get to the point where you're underweight.

Don't do cardio... do weights or pilates to tone your body... Cardio helps with weight loss, weights helps tone.

If you exercise a lot and eat right and you don't lose weight, then your body is probably happy where it is and doesn't want to lose weight, which is normal.