Hi guys,
I'm pretty new to this but just wanted to get some sort of support/motivation at the start of my weight loss journey!
I wouldnt class myself as fat but I am definately overweight as far as the scales say and I have just weighed myself and I am the heaviest I have ever been...ever! I am 5'9 and 13 stone 3 (185 pounds i think) and it has highly depressed me, when i met my boyfriend 3 years ago (im 23) i was floating happily at 154 pounds and that was definately my happy weight and would do anything to get back there at the click of my fingers! I have been forever dieting, then eating for 6 and gaining it all back plus more and I just need some opinions of why crash dieting is not the way forward and why i should get on the slow weight loss wagon...

Also what is classed as slow, I would love to lose 3 pounds a week but I heard thats still not healthy and wouldnt know how many calories to eat (I run/walk 4 times a week).

Any advice is welcome, i just need some support before i start living on cereal!

Hello, Grace!

As a pound-a-week (or so) loser, I can tell you a little bit about why it works for me. Other people may prefer to lose more quickly with more restrictive plans, and as long as they stay healthy, that is A-OK too--but I'm really loving this slow meander for the most part. Sure, sometimes I'd like to just have it done and get to my goal, but I'd say 90% of the time that I think about it at all, I'm happier this way.

Here's why:

- I never--I mean never--feel deprived.
- I don't get lightheaded, queasy, shaky, or drowsy the way I have on more restrictive plans.
- My food tastes awesome
- I haven't even noticed the passage of time all that much because my relaxed 1500-calorie plan means I'm not constantly thinking about food-food-FOOD.
- I haven't had to take a break from my diet because it's easy to live this way.
- I've been able to stay 100% on plan since late October.
- I can do this as long as it takes--as long as I live, in fact--and not mind it a bit.
- I haven't wanted to murder anyone yet.
- I feel freed from the diet roller-coaster because no food is off-limits to me.
- Even if I never lost another pound, I feel so robustly healthy eating this way that I wouldn't change it now.
- I've crash-dieted plenty of times and once weighed 125 pounds--it eventually all came back with a vengeance because I didn't really learn how to LIVE this way.

Doctors generally suggest losing no more than 1% of your body weight per week unless you're under medical supervision; this is what my doc suggested. The reason for this is that more rapid losses include bigger proportions of muscle tissue loss, which leaves you susceptible to easier weight gain once you're into maintenance. Other stuff I've read says two pounds a week is the maximum safe weight loss. Still others say you should look at monthly losses, not weekly ones, as there is so much variation for women from week to week.

Those are all average weight losses and your first week might include a big "whoosh" of many pounds as you drop water weight. If you listen to yourself closely, I think you'll probably be able to tell what's a good clip for you. When you're not suffering from feelings of hunger and deprivation, when you don't have to choke down another bowl of salad or cereal but instead enjoy your meals, when you find yourself surprised to see another pound gone when you weren't consciously straining to lose it, you'll know you're in your "happy zone."

In my opinion the biggest problem with a crash diet is that it's a diet. Weight loss is a time to get out of the habits that made you gain weight in the first place. You can lose weight quickly by a crash diet. But then what happens once you get to your goal? From what I hear around here, maintanence is even harder than losing, and on a severe diet you haven't done any of the work of figuring out what it takes to keep you from gaining.

As far as figuring how much you can eat to lose the weight, there are tons of resources online for helping you figure that out. I use fitday.com. You can set up your goal weight and time, and it will calculate for you how many calories you can have.

Great positive post Nola - just what I needed to see after constantly comparing my weight loss to others and feeling blah

For me, it's the difference between a pound lost forever and a pound lost temporarily. Slow pounds stay off. Fast pounds come back. Taking a couple of years to get to my goal weight, learning all the things that it takes for me to lose weight and maintain that loss, means that I get to be at my goal weight for the rest of my life. A couple of years compared to the rest of my life doesn't seem that long.

Really? It's not that a disagree with you, not at all. I think you're doing things the right way. But a couple years still seems like a long time to me. I wish I could be there now. Not that I'm going to do anything crazy, but there's still that part of me that says, when I'm congratulating my self on a lb. lost, "Yeah, but you still have SO far to go."

zoodoo613: Really! It also helps, and I didn't know this at the beginning, that I felt so much better as I lost the weight. It was much more satisfying to have lost 40 pounds, even though I wasn't yet at goal, than I ever thought it would be. So, it's not like you have to wait until you reach goal to get lots of the benefits -- including new clothes that look great, new activities that feel good at a lower weight, and new experiences with food (like, hey, heirloom tomatoes taste really terrific!).

Nola- your post was a breath of fresh air in my quest to figure out
"where to start." It is encouraging to see people happy with slow-and-steady weight loss

Nola--i keep thinking about how you said you NEVER feel deprived. To me, that's amazing. I feel like there is NO way i could lose weight and NEVER feel deprived. There will always be times when i am hungry, either physically or psychologically. Even if i were to eat 2800 calories a day i would feel like that! I don't know what to do about it. Maybe my body/mind is just different than yours.

Oh, there are definitely times that I feel physically hungry. We're supposed to feel hungry when we haven't eaten in a while, and I do feel pretty hollow if I've delayed a meal. I never feel hungry for long because it only happens to me shortly before meal-time, but I do feel it. I don't define that as the same miserable, trapped feeling I used to get on other diets, though.

If you're old enough to have done the fat-free thing that was popular in the eighties, you probably remember how you would've just about killed for some butter on your baked potato or a nice thick steak or a bite or two of cheese--all the stuff that you couldn't have on a low-fat plan. When I tried Atkins, I couldn't stop thinking about bread, crackers, even fruit. I was in a constant bad mood because I was constantly thinking about those forbidden foods. It was as close as I ever want to come to having an obsessive-compulsive disorder; it made me feel frantic and frustrated.

Those intense cravings, feelings of despair or anger, and bad moods are what I'm calling deprivation. I feel as though I'm finally free of those because nothing is off-limits to me.

Okay, there are some things that I haven't touched since late October of last year because their calorie load would be so high that I would have trouble fitting them in or because I have trouble eating them in moderation, but it's not because I CAN'T have them. I can--I just haven't considered Chee-tos, Cheez-its, or beignets worth their caloric price. I don't feel deprived of them because if the day comes that I MUST have them, I can (just not on the same day or in the same meal ).

Sometimes I miss eating anything I want in as much quantity as I want, but I don't count that as deprivation, either. Every once in a while I miss cigarettes too, but I'm not about to go back to being a three-pack-a-day smoker because I hated the consequences of my actions. I'm not feeling deprived of cigarettes, I'm just prone to fleeting thoughts about an old, outmoded way of life.

I don't know that your body/mind is different or if our terminology is. I've come to terms with feeling hunger before eating and now see that as normal; I miss some old favorite junk foods, but don't really feel deprived of them because I could choose to have them. I might just have boxed my definition of "deprivation" into a narrower space than you do--which is totally fine too.

I totally get that whole, 'not feeling deprived' thing. I have not been great with calorie counting and I have been trying to lose weight since the first of the year, and as well I quit smoking that day and I agree with the 'fleeting' cravings, not even cravings, just. . .memories, of smoking and I would not either undo my 4 months of being cigarette free just to feel better in that moment. Anyway, back to food, I have been making a concerted effort to incorporate healthier, whole foods on a daily basis, and cut out a lot of the junk that I was eating. The biggest change I made was exercise and that has made the most life changing difference, I just feel better, more balanced and def happier since I exercise. The weight loss has been VERY slow, I actually gained 10 pounds when I quit smoking and have not lost all of that yet, but the decrease in my measurements has been amazing considering the small amount of weight I lost. I suppose Ive built a lot of muscle. Sometimes I do really get discouraged that Im not at goal yet, but its usually soon after the depressed feelings start that I lose a couple of pounds and notice a big difference in myself. I also agree that these are pounds that will never come back, as opposed to being gone temporarily. Every other time I have lost weight, I soon as I would notice that was looking better, I would be overcome with the fear that they would come back, like I was almost afraid to feel proud of myself or I would jinx it. . .and I did always gain it back. Slow is better, and I relaize that now, and I wouldnt change this journey to snap my fingers and be thin tomorrow because I know it wouldnt last. Hang in there and be patient and youll get there.

Nola, what is your average daily diet? What do you use to fill your 1500 calories?

GREAT question and totally AWESOME answers! Thanks to all of you.

Now that you clarified, i feel exactly the same. I don't feel deprived of any particular foods....but sometimes i really wish i could eat the AMOUNT that i want to, instead of counting the calories.

I feel like I don't like all of the "snacks" I am supposed to be eating