Hi Everyone!
I stumbled upon this site while looking up reviews of several different diets. My name is Kim and I am from Ohio. I'm 28 with 2 kids & have been having a hard time losing weight. I lost the baby weight from our youngest in a relatively short amount of time due to our wedding being that same year. I managed to keep it off & felt pretty good around 145/150 (I'm 5'3 btw) within the past 18 months I have skyrocketed up to 218. My diet didn't change too much, but my alcohol intake definitely went up due to social events at first but then added stress as I gained weight. For the first year I tried everything. Diets, exercise, you name it I was doing it. Finally I caved & spoke with my dr about it. He suspected that it may be an issue with my thyroid so blood work was done. My levels were just under medication level so he advised me to continue dieting & working out.

I feel completely hopeless. I'm out of shape so working out is difficult but I do still try. I spent way too much money on nutrisystem only to find that I actually gained another 5lbs at the end of that month. Stuck to the plan 100% so that was very discouraging.

For the past couple weeks, I have been having a slim fast shake made with water for breakfast, progresso light soup for lunch, & usually just chicken for dinner. I've also cut alcohol out entirely. Still not seeing any results : ( Anyone in a similar situation? Has anyone found themselves here & found a way to overcome it?

Here's my input:

One- I have thyroid disease and it went undiagnosed for 9 years because my primary care physician was using outdated TSH lab ranges (anything over 2.5 is hypo, he was using 5.0 as his, some go as high as 6.0!) and he also was relying solely on the labs and not paying any attention to my symptoms. I had an "unrelated" issue that he sent me to a specialist for who immediately suspected thyroid and sent me for tests, I came back as hypo and my primary care doc wanted me to rush down to get put on Synthroid. Um, no. If he can't diagnose me, how can I trust him to treat me? I changed docs, and got one who uses labs as a reference but asks me how I feel and that makes all the difference- she dialed in my meds (I take NDT rather than Synthroid) and it helped a lot.

Two- you don't actually need to exercise to lose weight. You lose weight with diet, you get fit with exercise. Exercise can help by creating a greater caloric deficit, and of course it's healthy to get exercise, but it's not a requirement to lose weight. I got really sick last year and between May and December 2016 I lost 40 lbs without exercising. I added exercise in January and only lost another 20 lbs.

I agree with your decision to cut alcohol entirely. Personally if I drink alcohol or eat wheat products I cannot lose and usually gain weight. I have to cut both out of my diet in order to lose no matter what I'm doing calorie-wise.