Hi! I just found this place and everyone seems so nice, so I thought I'd jump in.

My name is Gayle and I'm 21 years old, from South Carolina. I weigh around 210lbs right now, which is slightly less than the heaviest that I have ever been. My goal is to eventually get down to 145lbs. I've been trying to lose weight for the past few years but always manage to go way off track. I'm doing okay this time though, I'm eating more fruit and veggies and not eating Girl Scout cookies no matter how loud they may scream for me.

My main difficulty right now is dealing with my unsupportive best friend. My best friend is about the same weight as me and thinks that "a balanced diet is a cookie in each hand." She tells me that I know nothing about losing weight and proceeds to tell me about her diet as she's stuffing her face with a big bowl of mac & cheese with ham along with a sub and three cookies from Subway. I started to think that maybe I've been misguided and should join her on this diet because it sure would taste good but I seem to do okay when I do it my way...as long as I can stick to it.

I guess another minor issue that I have is that I can't quite make myself get out of bed an hour earlier than usual to go walking before work. No matter what time I go to sleep, I don't feel fulfilled unless I sleep until 10:15 AM. To show you how bad this is, my work day starts at 11. I live 5 minutes away from work and give myself just enough time to get up, shower, blow dry, dress and dash out the door. I need to put an end to this maddness! I was able to do it for about a week. I'd get up at 9, walk until 10 and then get ready for work and I felt good about it...then the weekend came and you can probably guess how that ended.

So, um...I think that's enough about me. I'm glad to have found this place and can't wait to get to know people better. I'd love to find a support buddy to be on this little journey with.

...And to think I thought I'd have a hard time typing up an intro! Ha!

Welcome Gayle...
Glad you joined us here...I'm a newbie too..
Good luck!!
Selena

Your friends has issues...with herself. You can't help her, you can only help you. Just smile when she makes those insane comments and continue eating your leaner and healthier choice meals. Once she sees the weight coming off you and not her, she's likely to stop making such statements. And perhaps she'll even decide to go for it herself when she sees it working for you.

As for getting up early to exercise, don't. If it's a problem for you, you could eventually fail. Rather than force the issue, seek alternates. Can you go for a walk on your lunch hour? Or after work? Break the session into two half hours and do part at lunch and part after work. Look for alternate times. Also, if it's perhaps the walking that's becoming monotonous, look for alternate exercises. Try joining a gym. I went through the same phase when i began getting up early to walk before work. I started slacking off, making excuses to myself about it being either too dark, too cold, too rainy, too early, too whatever. So I instead went to the gym after work. That one seemed to work for me.

DON"T LISTEN TO YOUR FRIEND ...........I know its so easy for someone like that to make you lose all your confidence in your self but just dont do it .........sometimes I wonder if friends like that aren't really trying to bring you down because they are soooo scared that you will succeed and then they will be left behind because they are not strong enough to do it ...........I'm not saying to lose your best friend ....but just dont use her for support .........you can come here and get lots of that from people who are focused and want to help .

Hiya,

I'm a newbie too. Sounds like your friend is scared of losing her 'pig out' buddy. Stick with it and ignore her. If you are losing weight then you must be doing something right

I can totally relate you about mornings... who invented those evil things? Why do you need to exercise of a morning? I know people say it's the best time to exercise but if you aren't a morning person then maybe it's better to do something later rather than nothing at all.