94 pounds lost !!!That is outstanding. You are actually within a healthy range for your height. It is normal when we get closer to goal to see a slowdown in our loss. It happened to me and it has happened to others. Stick with it and you will get to goal. Have you checked out the featherweights forum, it deals with those last stubborn pounds. Don't give up , it will happen.

I'm pretty much in the stretch right now, and the going has been very slow. And I am not slacking at all; if anything, I am working harder than ever. I was driving myself almost to tears over it until recently, when I started landscaping my garden. I've spent the last few days out there, digging beds, spreading what feels like tons of mulch, lifting deeply-entrenched roots from the ground, pounding in edging, etc. On top of all this, I've also kept up with my regular chores, and I've been on the go from the moment I get up at about 5:30 am, until I splodge out mid-evening. It's been a heck of a workout. :)

And yet, for all this really heavy, physical labour, and sticking to a stringent calorie budget, my weight has continued to bounce between 191 and 192. But you know what? I CAN do this kind of heavy, hard (and intensely enjoyable) work. For hours and hours, with only infrequent breaks to refuel and pop online for a few minutes, to check e-mail and here and such.

These busy days have changed my perspective quite a lot on the slow scale progress. It's made me realize, that for all practical purposes, I'm already THERE. Oh yes, I plan on taking off this last 16 pounds, but I'm already living the after picture. I look good. I am fit, and getting fitter all the time. But I'm also, for the moment, done beating myself up for not losing weight more quickly. I am just continuing on, doing the things I know work, and letting my body do its thing, in terms of when it releases the remaining poundage. Because I haven't done all this really hard work, haven't changed my life so radically only to hate myself for something that isn't completely in my control. I can do the work. I can count the calories and exercise and that's all I CAN do, short of doing something really stupid, like dropping my calories dangerously low, at a time when I am burning them like crazy.

Sometimes, particularly when you're getting pretty close to goal, it just goes slowly, and getting upset over it is natural, but it truly isn't doing you any good. You know how much you're putting into it, and there's no authority you can appeal to because it isn't fair. All you can do is continue LIVING and enjoying your life as much as possible, because as has been said up in the thread, you're really not going to be doing anything all that much differently when you do get to goal.

I thought I was NEVER going to lost those last ten pounds and almost raised my goal weight , out of frustration. Thankfully I didn't do that and I did reach goal. My advice to anybody who is upset about losing those last few is "Do not give up".

You're about 15 pounds away from your goal. It's going to be much harder for you to lose the weight, maybe it's time to crunch down on your diet just a little more. When you were bigger, 1200 calories were definitely going to take the fat off, but now that you're smaller, 1200 might be just enough to maintain. I know what the calculators and the bmr stuff says, but that doesn't always work for weight loss.

*And I've found that upping your calories only works temporarily and that if you're greatly restricting calories.

one question. are you getting enough sleep? lack of sleep can also slow your weight loss.

Brilliant! This is exactly my thinking.

If you're going to look at weight loss as a race, comparing yourself to other people, you need to compare yourself to real people, not imaginary people (the ones losing weight fast without trying). You need to know that you're not trailing behind "everyone else," you're far, far in the lead. Most people never get to the point in the race that you're now in (because they give up, and usually because they started comparing themselves to all the imaginary people they imagined ahead of them).

Weight loss is still often a very silent marathon. You don't know how many people are running, and you don't see the runners ahead and behind. For every person you see running ahead of you, there are a thousand running behind. You'll see some of those people if you look for them (they've made posts similar to yours), but a lot of them are hidden, because they too think they're failing and either have dropped out of the race, or are lurking because they don't want to admit it.

You do need to know that you're in the lead though. You're doing great not terrible. 1/2 lb loss per week is an acheivment many much heavier racers would kill for.

Even for the folks who legitimately aren't losing as much as the "average" person - this isn't a race with prizes only for speed. Everyone who keeps going wins, and the only losers are those who abandon the race.

Too often we see the end number as the reward, and don't notice the rewards along the way. If you don't lose anyother pound, list all of the rewards you've gained because of the loss.

Even though I still have most of my weight to go, and even though I've lost far less than a pound per week during the journey, I can list dozens of ways that I am winning. I no longer have sleep apnea, I can shop in a large store without needing to lean on the grocery cart, I can shower normally without a shower chair, I can wash my hair with two lathers and a conditioner (at my heaviest, I couldn't hold my hands over my lead long enough to wash my hair normally). I can sleep for more than an hour without waking in pain. I can sleep on my back without suffocating. And there are dozens more I can list, but won't because you don't need to know my race, you only need to know your own.

How far have you come? What have been your prizes along the way? What have you gained that is worth keeping even if you never lost a single further pound?

That's the motivation that will keep you going. If a specific number is the only goal you're seeing, you're going to judge everything by whether or not you see that number. Judge by how far you've come, and you're not going to want to abandon that. Even maintenance (and I shouldn't even add the even, because there's no "even" about it) - maintenance is a reward, and not just when you've lost it all. Maintenance is the biggest reward in my life, because I've never had that before. I was always either losing rapidly or gaining rapidly. Now I've been losing slowly, and for many months of my weight loss I've been maintaining - but maintaining the loss has been the largest reward of "this time" for me, because I never had that before (and I never valued it either - there was only losing and gaining).

kaplods, what a wonderful post! I helps me and probably others too.

WOW! I want to thank EACH of you dearly!!! I've read every single word twice (at least). I think I'll make a print out of this for myself in case I wake up tomorrow morning with amnesia as always lol!

You are all incredibly kind! Here's what I've taken away:

I think what I'll do is focus on my accomplishments thus far, as many of you have suggested and keep myself busy. I'll try to picture every pound as a stick of butter ;)

I also will try strength training with heavier weights and I'll also try getting more sleep (I've been wanting to do the latter for some time now)! Other than that, I know I just have to wait it out. Perhaps I am a featherweight now. I guess I still see myself as so far away that I don't see it as "the last 15 pounds" but it really is.

I do need to stop seeing it as a race. Kaplods you have me pegged quite well, I am very competitive and it's something I do consciously work on. So far, I can only change my behavior; not my thinking lol :)

All I know for sure is that there's NO WAY I will give up. There is NO CHANCE of that. And in that way, I know that I have "won" the race.. my own race :)

Anyway, thank you so much! This should definitely be considered a form of therapy.

Hugs to you ALL!

I just wanted to say thank you for posting this thread, because I think I'm getting to that same point. It's crazy because we started out at pretty close to the same weight, I've lost 70 lbs so far, and I'm just a little heavier than you right now. My weight loss has stalled over the past week.. and I know it will just get slower the smaller I get, so I've been thinking/worrying about it a lot I guess. But reading all the things you've said and all the other replies has really helped soo THANK YOU! :)


Good luck with reaching your goals, we can do this!!!

JK, I just looked you up to see where you were, because I was inspired by your mini-goal photos and your amazingly fast progress. You reached your healthy BMI weight March 11th, which means you lost 8 pounds in just over a month. ! That's only slow compared to your previous progress. That means you have to stop comparing the new you to the old you!

I totally get where you're coming from because I did the same thing last month. I had set my sights on 10 pounds per month and did it the first month I started, in January. The second month was February, a short month, and I didn't reach it, so I planned to lose the ten pounds and the extra three from the month before. I got myself worked into a little tizzy that I wasn't losing quickly enough because I had scheduled it in my calendar, dammit! lol

Then I looked back over the past month and realized I was really only a couple pounds behind, and figured if I didn't get used to this, I was going to be miserable forever, because this is life now. I decided for April that I wasn't going to let myself expect a loss every time I stepped on the scale, which I still do every morning (twice!). Now I'm happy and relaxed, because I know I'm doing everything right, but I'm enjoying it more. I've lost 5 pounds so far in April and that was even with a visit from TOM and getting sick with a cold and having to do my taxes! I just am feeling a general sense of well being because I'm so happy that I've made this commitment. Attitude is everything.

For a workout routine that looks like it would definitely make a difference on your body, check out the website bodyrock.tv and watch a couple of her videos. Holy crap if I can ever do SOME of that I will be happy. Keep rockin' it, you're doing great!

You've gotten a lot of great advice already, but I want to point out one potentially unhealthy thought pattern you have going on here. If this doesn't describe you (and I don't know you--this is a guess), feel free to ignore it.

We often attach moral values to being overweight. Eating and food choices are fraught with complex emotions: guilt and shame and secret pleasure and anger (at ourselves, but also over not getting what we want). I really think all this emotional stuff makes staying on plan more difficult because every choice becomes an emotional one.

Many, many people get obsessed with perfection. I think the thinking goes like this--"If I do everything right, if I am exactly perfect, I am a good girl and I deserve to lose weight. If I am not perfect, I am a bad girl, and that explains why I haven't lost any weight." We get almost ritualistic about it, like the diet and exercise and water intake and vitamins are the steps to please the diet gods, and as long as it's performed perfectly, the diet gods are supposed to be pleased and grant us weight loss. When they do not, we feel angry and betrayed. This makes it harder to stay on plan. If perfection didn't work, why bother with anything?

The fact is, though, there are no diet gods: just biology. Bodies are complicated things, and there are many variables outside our control--not to mention the bad data we get from unreliable scales and water retention. Sometimes we can't find the reason why we drop slower or faster or not at all for a while, but over time the weight does seem to come off.

I dunno. For me, getting rid of the emotion of it made the whole process so much easier. Renounce the diet gods. This isn't about being good or bad.

I have no advice. Only want to tell you that your 96 pound loss is greatly inspiring, and to tell you that I feel EXACTLY the same way at almost the same weight as you now, and now every time I want to ***** and whine and rant about being stuck here, I will think of you and the 96 pounds you've lost and shut my mouth. Thank youl