Put my intro in the intro thread as well, but I just wanted to start off by saying hello! I'm Jenn, 25, live in NY with my hubby and dumb dog and annoying cat. I started my serious weight loss journey about 2 and a half months ago. I've been big all my life (reached ~100 lbs. by 2nd grade) and it's just been gradual from there. My biggest problem has always been portion control, and consuming far too many calories, which started as a child when I was fed crap and forced to finish all of it (grew up relatively on the poor side) and given adult sized portions. I started out at probably ~350 lbs. and the last time I checked I was about 310. It's been a slow and steady start, and I do have a few questions. First and foremost, I'm still having serious problems with portion control and not being hungry all the time. I'm literally hungry -- or I think I'm hungry -- all the time. Nothing is filling to me, but instead of eating lots of bad things at once, I'm eating throughout the entire day (until about 8:30PM). Is there any way to make my stomach shrink faster or curb my appetite? Also, as far as exercising, I've been going to the gym and walking the treadmill a few times a week, but haven't been too much lately. Instead, I obtained a couple of Zumba DVD's (Zumba Gold, for beginners) and have been doing them about 10 minutes per day because they are beating my a**. According to My Fitness Pal, I'm burning like 200 calories in those 10 minutes. Is this enough to be justified as a work out to continue to lose weight?

Sorry this is so lengthy. I'm really just looking for advice to stay on the right track and finally be of normal weight. I knew I wanted to do it for real when I finally sat down and said "I'm just so tired of being fat".

Welcome Jenn!

Great job on losing 40 pounds!

We all have to find what works for us and what we can live with.

Our history sounds so much alike. What works for me is protein for breakfast. Then, I have a greek yogurt everyday at 10 am. Lunch is protein and veggies. I have an afternoon snack and dinner is protein, veggies and maybe some carbs. I have an evening snack and then STOP. As I've lost more weight my portions have gone down. Also knowing I have snacks coming helps with the "I'm so hungry!" monster.

I read The Beck Diet Solution which goes with any diet, since it deals with only emotional hang ups. In the book she teaches many coping techniques. The most important for me was learning "Hunger is not an emergency."

As for exercise, I am really out of shape so I go for walks. Any type of moving is good.

Keep reading, keep learning, and keep contributing.

Good luck Jenn!

I have found that eating smaler portions of things every three hours or so really helps me. I also need the Protein to feel full and have to wait and slow down eating because it takes the body about 20 minutes to register "full". If I eat a whole lot in 10 minutes I may still think i am hungry but 20 minutes later I realize I am "over full" Another thing to look at is your water intake. At a minimum you should be drinking 8-8 ounces glasses (64 ounces) a day but really you should aim for half your body wieght in ounces. So if you weigh 300lbs you should aimt o drink 150 ounces of water a day. Often we think our bodies are telling us we are hungry but it is really thirst. Hope thoses ideas give you some things to consider. Hang in there! You are doing AWESOME!

Thank you so much everyone for your replies. The Zumba does wear me out (usually sweating but definitely always winded) so I'm glad that what I'm doing is helping. I want to start strength training at some point too because I don't want to lose any muscle mass while I'm losing weight. The good part of all of this is that my husband and I are doing it together, although he weighs more than me (360) he's mostly muscle and a foot taller and has a very high activity job. It's been a little difficult thus far and I have slipped many times, but overall I'm sticking with it and I hope to get lots of support from all of the wonderful people here to keep on keepin' on. I just can't wait to see what I look like and all the fun things I can do when weight is no longer an issue