I have another friend who is ready to start out with a weight loss plan, but she's not sure where to start! I thought I might be able to help her out by soliciting ideas from the wonderful gals on this forum who are kicking so much butt So, tell me about your plan. Are you doing one of the well known plans, or is it a plan of your own design? If its your own, how did you come up with it? Also, what sort of exercise are you incorporating?

Thanks for the help!

well i'm doing my own plan and i'm not a "gal" i know men are like gold dust round here but hey! simple thing excersise. i eat porridge or weetabix for breaky with green tea. banana between meals. boiled brown rice and veg in gravey with a grilled chicken fillet for lunch. and as the famous slimming shake ads say "a regular dinner!

I started off slow. Making a determined effort in January by making a chart with places I could check off exercise (+90 minutes a day). And then places for ten cups of water a day. I knew those were goals I could meet and wanted to start off with something that I could meet. Now I'm exercising almost two hours a day and have a walking goal of 30 miles this month. I also started on Monday to count calories and watch my portions on nutridiary.com. I'm not losing weight fast but I'm definitely feeling better and my close fit loser - I'm doing measurements this morning so wish me luck

for me, the food is the most important part of my weight loss. yes of course i exercise like a madwoman, but that isn't the hard part, its the food. so i really like to eat several times every day so i dont feel deprived. my plan is really just calorie counting (target is 1500) but i try (key word: try) to keep the bad carbs (white) out of my diet. the way that i eat now is the way that i'm going to eat for the rest of my life and i'm happy about that. i still get my treats here and there.

exercise is really important too, not just for weight loss, but for overall health. if your friend is someone that hasn't really exercised in the past, i'd probably suggest to start out slow and try to get a lot of cardio in, but definitely encorporate a strength training routine of some sort.

everyone has a different weight loss path. i've been losing weight really slowly since I reached 150 but, alas, 150 is when I started to get more serious about my strength training and getting tone.

i wish your friend the best of luck! get her on here!

I've been doing Ediets for about 3 weeks now. I think its working great! They give you a menu that already has calories figured out and once you get used to the site, I've found that there is really a lot more options than what you would expect. Combined with 35-45 minutes of exercise about 4 times a week. I seem to be losing slowly...but losing!

start slow. dont jump into excerising doing hours at a time... listen to your body. and stretch! and with diet... make sure to eat a lot of fiber, get a lot of water and dont eat anything white. lol... (sugar, white rice, white bread, etc.)

but i think the most important thing i could stress till yall tell me to shut it is... listen to your body. itll tell you what you need as far as nutrients and excerise.

good luck!

I've lost 7 pounds since starting my diet two weeks ago but I recently started feeling like I wasn't loosing as much or as quickly as I thought. But reading your posts has made me realize that the importance is to keep loosing, cause all of you are working as hard as I am and are loosing slowly as well.