I agree! 1.4 is great. It means you created a calorie deficit of more than 600 calories a day! That's a success to be celebrated.

I tend to think of small weight loss weeks, or even a weight-loss-less week as practice for maintenance. (Actually your 1+ pound is a great week IMO) Once you get to your goal, you are still going to have to "stay on plan" week after week just to remain the same. Basically you're going to have to "suffer" (meaning not eat what you want when you want it) for the rest of your life. This is for the rest of your life honey. You will not magically become "cured" of the desire to overeat once you reach a certain number.

If you want to give up now after losing a doctor recommend amount, then what is going to happen when you have a PMS/TOM 3 pound weight gain some week??(It sucks!!)...will you just throw in the towel and call it quits?

Wow, i didnt expect so many responses, hmm where to start, first of all, thanks so much for all the support. i do realize its a good amount to lose, i think yesterday i was just having a terrible day to begin with and after losing around 3.5 pounds a week seeing that just put me in an even worse mood. for those of you wondering i am currently 213.6 i started out at 221. my over all goal is 160. but for now im just focusing on getting under 200 (small goals). i do realize this is a life style change, and i feel so much more energetic and just all around happier now that ive been eating right and working out. i guess i just didnt realize how long it actually took to put ON the weight. its like... how did i let myself get here? Anyway, thanks so much for all the encouragement. i am not going to quit because like someone said, my only other option is to go up. and im def. NOT happy about where im at now. I DID buy a pair of designer jeans yesterday and i actually fit into one size below the biggest size. that made me feel pretty good .

Thanks guys, ill be sure to keep you updated.

This is a journey and a learning process that we all are trying to figure out. I think you have done great! Keep up the good work!

AWESOME! I'm glad it was just a bad day, and you weren't really quitting .

I felt the same exact way last year (around the end of Feb) when I had stuck to my diet really well for about 8 weeks and had "only" lost 6 pounds (so a little over 1 pound per week). I felt discouraged, frustrated, and like i was failing. I was working so hard for that. I totally fell off the wagon.

Guess what? Here is now March of the following year and I'm not down anything more (haven't stuck to anything long enough since then). If I had pushed through, that pound per week would've had me where I wanted to be right now ... even less than that per week would've gotten me here.

My point is that, you have to do this. If you don't push through it now, then you'll just find yourself pushing through it at some other time in the future. So the question is do you want to be at this place in time for the last time ... or do you want to let go now and come back to it later? I promise you that "later" you'll wish you had hung in there.

Hang in there. You're doing GREAT!!!!!! Next time you lose even just an ounce, instead of saying "darn, I only lost one ounce", tell yourself "Awesome! I lose a whole ounce" and keep saying it 'till it feels like the truth!

I'm kind of glad I didn't realize that you said you'd lost 1.4 lbs this week, at about 2/3 my weigh. Lordy, that's an amazing number. I know I wouldn't have thought so in my 20's when I could lose 7 lbs or more a week, if I really tried, but it took me a year to get 40 lbs off, so that's less than a lb a week.

I have to suggest that maybe you're working too hard. I probably have the ability to lose more than a lb a week, but it's pushing myself at a pace that feels very unsustainable. I had to decide between sustainability and rapid results. I have health issues and frankly, emotional ones that make losing fast impossible. If I work at "full speed ahead," I get frustrated that the results didn't seem worth all the effort and I feel like I'm running myself ragged, for what? So, the easy way was to decide what I WAS willing to do, and decide to be happy with that progress, whatever it was. So, last year that was obviously about .8 lb per week. I'd like to do a little more this year, but I still have to decide how much more I'm willing to do, in order to get the (I'm hoping) slightly better results.

I can say that, for me, learning to (mostly) ignore the weight itself has been my life saver. I'm really more health than weight loss focused. Staying on my food plan and exercising have benefits besides the weight loss (which is really good since I don't always get weight loss). I've found the food plan that allows me the most energy and less health consequences. It's calorie controlled, so if I follow it, I will lose weight (but not very rapidly, because I didn't choose a food plan that was inherently going to feel depriving). My exercise will (and has) increase my overall health, strenght, flexibility, and endurance. So there are rewards, even if the scale doesn't budge.

Not everyone has to follow (or is interested in) the slow, lazy way to health improvement (and hopefully) weight loss, but I'll tell you it's really taken a load of pressure off of me. There's no deadline, and I don't have to do any more than I'm willing to do, and the progress speaks for itself. Maybe I'm lucky to have so many health problems that progress is so noticeable. Even though I've lost only about 1/4 of what I would like to, I've had some health and ability breakthroughs that are essentially miraculous.

I know I've been on the weight loss rollercoaster since age 5, and each and every time I gave up and regained it was because I felt my progress wasn't good enough. It seemed that not only was the weight not coming off fast enough, but that if I couldn't reach my goal weight, there was no use in trying to control my weight at all (now isn't that a silly jumping to conclusion).

I finally realized this time that even when I'm sure that I can't get off 180 more lbs, I can still keep up what I've already lost, right? And if I decide that what I'm doing is too hard, that I can say "well, what can I do," rather than "I might as well eat whatever the heck I want until I'm 20 lbs or more heavier than I started." So, if today I decide "I just can't take this anymore," I can choose to say maintain some of my weight loss. So how much am I willing to keep off? 60 lbs? 50 lbs? When I start thinking that way, I realize I really don't want to give myself permission to gain 10 lbs, and that it isn't all that difficult to do what It takes to keep off what I've already lost, and if I'm going to work that hard, I might as well work just a little harder to get a few more pounds off.

I've given myself permission to decide to stop the weight loss at any time, but I've also promised myself not to just give up and let entropy take into affect (which inevitably will send me over 400 lbs, since I've never gone "off" a diet and not regained everything plus).

I guess the way I look at it, is that if I don't regain, it could take me forever to get to goal, but I will eventually get there, just by choosing not to gain.

That may not work for you, but it helped give me 4 years of slow success, as opposed to the prior 33 years on an endles succeed/fail cycle (and with more failing than succeeding).

Slow success beats to heck fast success followed by even faster failure.

Thats really sad to hear your story my mate | Weight loss creates problems. However, it can be controlled by proper diet, exercises and healthy habits. I dont know what should i tell you , but you have to continue diets or nothing will be useful if you drop it in 4 or less days.

There is no alternative like working out.

hey xpink, I know exactly how you feel.
My entire life has been strung together with 'diets' that lasted two weeks and then binges that lasted sometimes 6 months. Every single time I gained every single bit of weight back.
This time, its been a little over two months and I'm still trucking, and sometimes and scale just bounces up and down and sometimes I lose in a landslide (lucky enough to be dropping pounds like hot potatoes this week, but next week I'm sure it will slow) but the thing to remember about weight loss is that it is a BIG picture. We're talking about months and sometimes years of carrot sticks and endless miles on the treadmill, and on a day-to-day basis it can get discouraging, but its all about putting one foot in front of the other and understanding that your weight will fluctuate, but as long as you're sticking to your healthy lifestyle and as long as you stay determined and on track, you will lose the weight. It's that simple. Whether you lose one pound or six pounds this week, you're headed in the right direction and it'll pay off at the end.