My name is Amber, I'm 24 years old (at least for another 10 days!). I'm a stay-at-home mom with 2 boys, ages 3 and 1. I've been married to my husband for 6 years.

I ran across this site last night and began reading through the forums and looking at practically ALL of the before/after photos and success stories. I found it very inspirational (CONGRATULATIONS to all of you who have lost weight--all of it, or even a couple pounds!!)

When I was about 18-19 years old I weighed about 130lbs. It wasn't my skinniest, but its where I thought I looked healthy and felt the best about myself (when I was skinnier, I think I looked TOO skinny). When I got married, I gained about 10-15lbs...which wasn't bad--I still felt and looked fine. But when I got pregnant I gained about 60lbs. Unfortunately, I didn't deliver a 50lb baby--he was a healthy 7lb, 3oz. I lost quite a bit of weight after the first couple of weeks (tons of water weight), but I never got below 170-175.

Not quite 2 years later, I got pregnant with our 2nd son. I did a lot better with the 2nd pregnancy, only gaining the normal 20-25lbs or so. I lost all of that weight and quickly got back down to the 170-175 range.

About 7 months ago, I stepped on the scale and realized I had gained quite a bit of weight after already losing what I had gained with my 2nd pregnancy. I was 189lbs . So my husband and I started to diet together. In about 2 months we had both lost between 15-20lbs. But then we fell off the bandwagon. I gained about half of it back--a couple weeks ago I weighed in at 179. So I've started dieting again...and this time I want to stick to it!! Unfortunately, my husband is currently working long hours out of town, so we don't see each other much, and I don't have a partner--that's why I decided to join this site!

I weighed myself this morning and I am at 174.0lbs, so I've already lost 5lbs in the past couple of weeks. Ideally, I would like to reach my goal weight of 130lbs in about 6-7 months (about 1-1.5lbs per week). My best friend is getting married May 15th, and I don't want to be the fat bridesmaid!!! Even if I don't quite reach my GW by then, I know I will look and feel a lot better than I do now!!

Thank you for reading and I look forward to getting to know you guys! Best of luck to all of you and your continued successes!!

My HW (somewhere around 185-189):
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My goal--Me at 130lbs:
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Hi Amber and welcome to 3FC.

Good luck with your goals

Hugs
Michelle

You're gonna love it here!

I already do!! =)

PS you have a GREAT face

Aww, thank you! I must say DITTO!! Mine is way better when you minus the chubby cheeks and double chin (can't see it in that pic, but its there!) haha!

Hey there, Amber I'm CarrieAnne & I'm new around here as well, just making my first post today. We are currently at almost the same weight & sounds like we have roughly the same goals. My birthday is May 22nd & I would really, really love to start off my 'new year' without all this extra weight & feeling comfortable in my own skin. Let me know if you'd like to keep in touch. Perhaps we could be weight-loss buddies & help to give each much needed support. Good luck & I hope to hear from you and see you around!

Hi CarrieAnne! I would love to be your weight-loss buddy! I was wanting to meet someone on here that was close to my weight with a similar goal...you saved me from having to search! I'm not sure if I have enough posts to PM you yet...you may not either since you are new too. I'll try to PM you, but if I cant..or if you aren't able to reply with a PM yet, we can keep in touch right here for the mean time if you'd like!

hi, Amber! i did get your message, but was not able to respond so here i am...

i'm glad neither of us had to search very long or hard...i would love to be weight loss buddies! i have friends in my life who need to lose weight, too & we always say we're going to do something together but what usually ends up happening is we get together & just sit around talking or even worse yet, eat and/or drink. not very helpful to either of us. i'm hoping that some support on a personal, but *less* personal level will be whats needed (if that made any sense what so ever)

sunday weigh-ins sound great, though admit i can sometimes get pretty addicted to the scale and tend to weigh more frequentky than once a week. (especially as the pounds are coming off. i get such glee checking the scale when the number is getting smaller)

i just started my first day of the 'Crack the Fat Loss Code' system today. its essentially carb cycling, though the first week is more extreme, and i'm hoping i'll do well with it. i've done very well on Atkins in the past but it does have a history of making me sick after a few months. this seems much more realistic & doable so i'm crossing my fingers. i do see myself doing an extended version of the 1st phase, though, because you are supposed to do the 1st 7 days perfectly & if you have any mess ups or cheats you are supposed to start all over with day one. one of my friends is having a halloween party this saturday & i know that even if i can avoid food tempations, there is no way i will not at least be having a drink or two so i'm already preparing myself to start over next sunday. just figured there's no harm in getting a 'jump start' now before the party. otherwise, it always tunrs into "oh, this is coming up so i'll start after (insert any possible event or day in here)". no time like the present, right?

i've done very well today, sticking with & preparing all the meals i planned out last night, then exercising before coming to work today. and now i've got a buddy, too, yay! i have really high hopes for us both!!!

i have tomorrow off so i've planned an hour walk after dropping my son off at school to get my day started.

well, i feel as though i just went rambling on there. thank you so much for replying & accepting my offer. i feel really strongly that this can be that little extra push that will help us both meet our goals.

i look forward to hearing from you again soon. please let me know how it is going for you & what your plans are.

--carrieanne

I have never heard of 'Crack the Fat Loss Code'. Hope it works well for you! I love that you didn't put off starting it until after the party...shows you're serious about losing the weight!! The way I look at it is, if you put it off 'til tomorrow, that's one more than you're overweight and one day longer 'til you get to your goal weight! Good for you!!

I am counting my calories. I'm on 1,300 cal/per day, hoping to achieve an average of 2lbs lost each week. I just recently started exercising on a regular basis (which I haven't done since high school). I try to do SOMETHING every day. Some days I will go for a 30-35 minute walk. Some days I just do a lot of stretching. Some days I will watch and follow an online workout video. I switch it up a lot...and I aim for at LEAST 30 minutes each day. I will increase that in a few weeks once I'm in a really good routine. So far so good!

Its ok that you weigh yourself everyday...I do too...its hard NOT to! However, my "offical" weigh-in on Sundays is the main number that I go by. I track my weight on http://physicsdiet.com/ which helps because you are supposed to weigh yourself everyday...and it makes a cool graph that shows your average weight and all kinds of stuff. It helps on those days that you weigh yourself and the scale goes up a little instead of down...cuz when you put it in the graph, it doesn't look so bad since you get to see the whole picture of your TOTAL weight loss, rather than just one day.

I'm gonna send this to you by PM too...it'll be easier to see that I've written back that way. You can respond on here 'til you get your post count up! I'll keep checkin' in!

Have a wonderful and successful day!!

thanks, i will definitely have to check out that site & try keeping track that way. also really, really can't wait until i get enough posts & time logged here to get a ticker. is that weird? how many posts do you have to have to be able to PM? ((nevermind, when i tried to reply by PM this time, it told me i needed 10. will try to rack those up this evening or tomorrow at work. that'll make things easier))

well, the scale says i lost 2.4lbs since yesterday's weigh-in. the meals were simple enough for me to plan, prepare & follow. didn't feel hungry at all. did some good leg work yesterday, too. felt the burn in my butt, especially.

got off to a rocky start today when i woke up late & didn't get to have the breakast i'd planned but just jumped straight to the next meal (which was actually supposed to be a snack but it was a coffee protein drink so it still made a good breakfast. added celery for a bit of veggies on the go), took my son to school, then grabbed a freind of mine who's getting married on halloween & we drove to an area of town with alot of hills & we did an hour&a half walk thru the residential neighborhood. it's pretty muggy today so we worked up quite a sweat. and the burn i felt in my butt yesterday came back with a vengance going up those hills. made me feel so good!

the calorie count thing sounds good. the Crack the Fat Loss Code (CTFLC) is more of a carb counter the first week, then carb cycling after that; like 2 days low carb, 1 day higher carbs, then 1 day normal eating & so on. the theory being that you 'trick' your body into not storing any carbs as fat. crossing my fingers.

well, the fam's home & i need to hop back off the computer (i'm mostly inly on from work) butr wanted to stop in & say hi! & good luck til tomorrow. i will check in again in the morning.

stay strong and true to yourself!

Fair warning, when I weighed myself on my 2nd day, scale said I had lost 2lbs...stepped on the scale the 3rd day, I was up .2 from my starting weight! So if that happens to you too, don't be discouraged!! I'm pretty sure at least for myself it was a fluctuation in water weight. I started drinking a lot of water (which I never did before), so it took a couple days to even out...but I think it has now!

Awesome you got a good workout in! I didn't get mine in today. I had every intention to, but my grandparents and my mom ended up coming over unexpectedly this evening when I was planning to do it. I'm ok with it though. I have worked out every day since I started, so this one day won't kill me...I'll just do a little extra tomorrow to help make up for it!

I've been watching my carbs too. Not cycling them, but trying to stay around 70% of my normal recommended daily value. So not exactly LOW carbs...just lowER carbs And I try to make sure my carbs are really healthy. I've been doubling my protein (lean protein, of course)...I've found that protein helps fill me up and keeps me satisfied longer. So I've been eating a lot of chicken, tuna, and egg whites. I load up on fiber too...it helps in the same way the protein does. And did you know that for every 1 gram of fiber you eat, it takes away 1 gram of carbs you eat? It like cancels it out...dunno how, but it does! I didn't know that until a few months ago when one of my friends was diagnosed with diabetes..she told me. Then I noticed that some high fiber things (like high fiber tortilla wraps) had "5 grams net carbs" written right on the package...duh!

Well, I've rambled long enough! haha! I need to get to bed...its really late and I gotta get up early to take my son to preschool! Check in with ya tomorrow!!

that sounds like a good eating plan. very sensible and easy to keep part of 'real life'. yeah, i knew that about the fiber & carbs. having done Atkins before, that's one of the things you have to keep in mind; # of grams of carbs minus # of grams of fiber = net carbs. it's something that's already been brought up in the CTFLC book i'm reading, too, but not stressed quite as much as it was in Atkins. i'm kind of combining my knowledge for this go-round.

scale said i lost another 1.2 lbs yesterday. was kind of hoping/expecting more considering how active i was yesterday. in addition to the morning walk, i did arm exercises w/a resistance band in the evening. oh well, any loss is a good loss. the program does stress alot of water consumption but i've always been a big water lover anyway so i'm not anticiating too much fluctuation there. however, i did notice the first day (which i was at work during) that i must've peed about 7 times more than normal. maybe because i didn't have all those extra carbs/starches absorbing the water in my system? who knows, but i didn't seem to making quite as many bathroom trips yesterday.

oh, & don't worry about not exercising yesterday. you should have a day of rest each week anyway, so the one missed day isn't a big deal.

found out yesterday that i got a new job! so very excited an old ex-co-worker of mine just started a new job this week & is doing a week of training in Phoenix. she found out tuesday that she would be responsible for hiring a new team member & once she heard the job description/details, she said she just knew it was for me. it's almost identical to the work i did when we worked together and even pays a buck more to start. she was told hiring was completely at her discretion & i dont have to interview with anyone else, so now all i'm doing is waiting on a start date. all the better motivation to get back into all my skinny-ER clothes, at least. my uniform now is huge, shapeless & disgusting, but in approximately 2 weeks time, i will need to back in cute skirts & tops. yay!

i'm just a few posts away from being able to PM so gonna go take a look around and see what there is to see. (i'm so not as worried about getting caught playing on the comuter up here now that i know i'm getting ready to give my notice)

i'll will check back in with you later today. stay strong!

good luck! i've had an account here for a while, but i've decided to post just recently. lol