Happy new year a bit late! I don't know if anyone with "not a lot of weight to lose" feels the need to chat or vent or commiserate ... but I do! But given how these chats have died down, I didn't even put a month on this one. We will be lucky to make it to 500 posts by the end of the year.

I don't feel like I fit in anywhere but the featherweights forum as I have struggled with JUST A FEW POUNDS for years and years now (I'm talking max of around 30 pounds, depending on how low I set my goal).

I did pretty well last year. Got my butt in gear around the end of April at nearly 155 pounds (at 5'6" that is just crossing over into "overweight" - but somehow with a small frame I carry excess weight horribly, very very doughy and dumpy.) By September, I had gotten very close to my goal of ~130 pounds (132.2 at my lowest). I was thrilled to be back in my old clothes and feeling comfortable with myself. Then .......

Not really sure. I got complacent. Stopped tracking foods. Allowed in a lot of "treats." Stopped weighing as regularly. Bumped up a few pounds. Then.... some work trips and the holidays hit. My carb addictions returned full force. By mid-December, I had started gorging myself on snacks and desserts.

So that's my pathetic story. I'm not going to dwell on the fact that the last time I weighed this much was July 10 (yes I checked ) or that I had to dig out my boxes of "fat clothes" from the attic ... the two things I will focus on from here on is how to move to a healthy maintenance diet without spinning out of control and how to get into an exercise routine.

I think one thing that would help me is to have an actual maintenance PLAN to work towards... like am I going to track all the time, track on weekdays with weekends free, just restrict carbs, strive for moderation, or what? And how can I get myself into exercising regularly? Why is it such a battle with myself?



But for now, and the next few months, I am back to WEIGHT LOSS. At least I know how to do that. Problem is, how to get back into the groove.

I wish I could take a few days "off of life" to push through the carb withdrawal and get back on track, but with work and child care I haven't found the time/energy to push through it. Once I gain weight, I feel awful most of the time - constantly eating to stave off headaches, shakiness and "starvation!" yes I feel starving no matter how many calories I eat. And exhausted even though I hardly do anything. Ridiculous.

I know what you mean with breaking that carb addiction again. That's the one place where I'll make excuses and stop losing. Sugar AND starches. Yummy. I love a good gluteny pasta. And garlic bread rocks my world. I have been doing more maintenance foods and choices and it seems to be going really really well, but I'm definitely still tracking weight and doing the occasional spot check on my daily calories.

I am trying to allow myself a couple of cheats here and there- a tbsp of sugar in my huge cup of coffee. A tbsp of honey in my afternoon chai tea. But so quickly they lead to cravings for potatoes and waffles and more carbs oh my. I guess that's just my "forever" struggle! I have learned that if I have homemade chocolate chip cookies in the house I will eat them. But only 1-3 per day (and I can make them small). But if I don't make them I don't eat them and I don't really substitute other things for them.

Lately my other struggle has been lack of fiber. It's so easy in the spring/summer/fall to eat tons of it, but it's so unappealing this time of year. I think I may just try to eat popcorn as part of my calories. Hmm.

Hey thank you for starting a chat thread!

I'm currently staying off the scale again, will try this for a few days. I started to get too obsessed and stressed again. I've been plateauing around 131-132 for weeks now and well, this is exactly the weight were I plateaued 2 years ago after losing a lot of weight (around 30 pounds), got discouraged, started regaining and the rest is history.

I guess I could just call it quits and start maintaining, but for some reason I _just_don't_want_to. I want to show myself that my body is in my control. I know I'm still pretty close to overweight so shaving some pounds off should not be too difficult. I want to show myself that I can do this. I can be lighter, for myself and my knees and my hobbies that favour a light body.

Phew! Felt good to let that out! I'll concentrate now doing what I've been doing since last spring and try not to be too stressed about the fluctuations on a scale.

I have that "perpetual starvation" feeling, too, and have just gained due to a long trip, so I can relate, Emma! Btw, I always love to see you post - you are very honest, but, no matter what you say, your comments are uplifting!

Just sitting here, the phrase came to me "There are no magic bullets." I guess I thought there were for so long. But, imvho, it's just a matter of accepting that we'll be hungry most of the time for the rest of our lives, even though we are eating a healthy amount of food. Not everyone has this condition, but those of us who do just need to keep using the scientific method to find out how best to deal with it.

Yay?

I've started doing yoga with my daughter, and that is going to help with the body shape. At my height, all the bumps and bulges are more noticeable. Yoga is a comfortable way to tighten those up. There are lots of YouTube videos with various approaches. Kids might even be able to do that with you!

Best wishes to all!

Massive amounts of congrats on your amazing weight loss, Kristi! : I have the cookies around right now - Oreo Thins, those Christmas butter cookies which come in the tins, and pineapple upside-down cake in the freezer - which I'm thinking about pitching, but can't quite get myself to do it. I'm just going to allow myself to have them on my up day, Sunday, and no other days. Being sick in December scared me to death, so I'm not having a problem avoiding them on the other days.

Thanks for sharing that, Pidge, and I'm sure many will benefit from reading it. We need to not beat ourselves up, but just recognize our strengths - you have a lot of them - and run with those!

Thank you! It helped me a LOT to write that out too.

Still hovering around 130.8 - 132. Back and forth, back and forth. But I can see I have lost something again - I can see it from my clothes, my favourite pair of pants will be useless soon. Which is ok, as I can cut them open and use them as a guide for a pattern for sewing.

And goodness the muscle! I've been climbing regularly and will increase now from once a week to twice a week, which I suspect would be my maximum at the moment. Good inspiration for losing weight too - can't help thinking that by losing those last 17 lbs I could improve so much! Pole walking, tea training, I can barely recognize my arms anymore. :P It's crazy, really.

I've never heard of cutting open clothes to form a pattern, but it's ingenious! I don't even have a sewing machine, but I plan on getting one someday. Yesterday a hem started unraveling from a practically-new tank top, and this is the type of thing that makes me want to go look at them again!

About the craziness: I'm thinking of writing a book: Suprised at My Thighs! They've always been pretty heavy, and it's a freakout to consistently see them otherwise.

That's hilarious. Maybe I will enjoy the same incredulity when my midsection finally slims down. :P

I think I'm hitting that point in my new diet where the rapid progress is starting to slow down as my body adjusts to operating on fewer calories. I hope I don't get discouraged! At a week and a half, this is honestly the longest I've stuck to anything.

In other news, has anyone seen the Neila Rey visual workouts?

http://darebee.com/workouts.html

For someone who doesn't have a gym membership or much space (in an apartment), I think these are great. They also have a lot based on superheroes and movie characters, for inspiration.

Wow. I'm in the exact same place. Getting obsessed and stressed. Plateaued slightly (just a couple weeks, and can't really call it a plateau when I know I ate at maintenance calories for the better part of a week or two) at where I plateaued before, gave up, and started regaining. I am also in the healthy range, but at about 23.5 BMI, which isn't too far into it. I could start maintaining. But while sometimes I look in the mirror and am pleased, far more often I am not. And I feel I can do it and would feel better and lighter for it. So another 15-16 pounds… it shouldn't be this hard but it is.

I am meeting with a dietitian on Monday to try to sort out what I'm eating… it's been rather a lot of crap foods and not much healthy foods, so I need to start working on a forever pattern of eating that incorporates treats but doesn't see me eating chocolate for dinner (ugh, like today. I'm still at a 300ish calorie deficit, but I felt sick and didn't even enjoy it, it was mad).

I think pre-planning what I eat is something I need to start doing and focusing on. I also bought a chart to record what I eat each day and am thinking of adding hunger scale numbers/some sort of rating system to help me see at a glance what meals/foods are satisfying and which aren't.

I am just so close. 15-16 pounds. When you've lost 50 it seems like the last 15 shouldn't be so troublesome, but they really are.

I hope it's ok if I reply as well. I joined this forum last year, but couldn't really get into it and stayed on a German forum for a while, but somehow, I can't really stick with those, not sure why. Besides, they didn't really support slim people wanting to lose a bit of weight, to them that seemed to be an eating disorder, no matter what the story was or what the circumstances were.

I was at 118 lbs the last time I weighed myself on Friday and I really want to lose a bit of weight. I have always been really petite and for years my weight used to be between 100 and 110 lbs. Some might think that is low, but I'm just built that way and so are my sisters, except for the youngest one who has been steadily gaining and weighs over 150 lbs.

I can't expect support from the German forum, they are a bit extreme, making everything depend on the BMI and the BMI doesn't always tell the full story. I have really been eating too many sweets and snacks which is how I kow my current weight isn't my healthy weight. Recently I realised how much money I spent, buying a treat here and there, pretty much every time I went to a shop, so that was definitely not healhty.

This year I'm getting married and for my wedding I would like to be somewhere between 100 and 110 lbs again. I'll see how I feel once I'm around 110 and I definitely want to be healthy. I have decided that I will stop buying treats in shops and instead I will take smaller, healthier snacks with me when I have to go somewhere. Other than that, I've been eating healthy and the weight has begun to come off. I started at around 121 lbs and if I can lose weight just from cutting the snacks, I will definitely get healthier.

Hello Featherweights!

Can I join? At 5'9 and 165, I totally don't consider myself a featherweight, but with 15-18 lbs to lose, I guess I am.

I had a lot of success 10 years ago losing 60 lbs and meeting my goal of 140. It's so much harder now that I'm 40. I've slowly gained 28 lbs over 10 years, but really, I only want to get back below 150 now. (I think I'd look too old at 140lbs now.)

So how does this work? Do we just post weigh-ins? Just check-in daily?