Well... I've been trying dieting for about 4 weeks now. I started the Slimming World Diet, which is really good and involves mainly eating fruit/veggies/lean meat and fat free stuff. The first week I exercised for 5 days and lost 4.5lbs! The other couple of weeks, I didn't exercise and I lost nothing. I lost all motivation and I've been on a 7 day binge. Argh. Fortunately I only put on 3/4lb (I thought it was gonna be wayy more). So after having a stern word with myself (and after realising I'd eaten all the chocolate in the house) I now realise that I have to do this diet properly again!

I know the diet only worked in that first week because I exercised, but I HATE exercise and have never really done it before.

I was hoping that someone could help me devise a plan that I could stick to. I can't afford/bring myself to do spend lots of time with exercise, but could perhaps do 1-2 hours per day. The following is an example of things that I did...

Pilates session at my local gym (love love love it!). I have a fitness DVD that has 30 mins worth of cardio and 20 mins worth of stretches and toning exercises. And I sometimes ride my bike to the next village on a fairly flat route. There's also a Zumba session at my local gym that I can go to once a week. I also enjoy playing badminton, but I don't know whether an hours worth would really count as exercise...

At the moment I have a very sedentary lifestyle, but I'm hoping that changes soon with my work placement coming up. I'm just sat at home waiting for my background checks to come through so I can start!

Please help!

I'm in no way a featherweight, but on the other hand I've been around the block. It sounds like you were doing great until you took a week off with your eating (and exercise).

My suggestion is to just get back on your chosen plan and stick with it until you research (and find) another.

My conclusion is that the reason you lost weight in your first week was mainly from cleaning up your diet. Fruit, veggies, lean meat and FF stuff sounds like a pretty healthy way to go and you would easily lose weight as got off the processed foods. Exercise helps but wouldn't be the "only" reason you would lose weight.

More than an hour a day of exercise, in my opinion, would be excessive. Alot of the chicks I know aim for 45 min-1 hr per day and take a day off every week. I think that an exercise plan needs to be sustainable, otherwise you won't stick with it.

At your current weight you may find that after the initial drop that you may, in fact, lose much slower. My suggestion would be to come up with some goals that are not scale related. One of my goals was to get healthy. I've achieved that...now it's a matter of staying that way.

Best wishes!

Thanks! I can manage 45-1hr I hope. :P

Shame I can't lose 4.5lbs every week! Lol! But as long as it's coming off, I don't mind. Fortunately I don't mind the diet either, it's probably just in my head but I FEEL better when I eat good foods. It's just the exercise... I think it's so crucial to me aswell because I don't do anything else. I'm in my summer break now from uni and so I have very little to do. Should be starting some care work soon though so I will be walking about 2 hours a day to and from plus working. Then I won't be so worried about the exercise.