That puts you at eating 2400 calories daily, and that's if you're always eating on plan every day. I think that might be a little too much, maybe try tapering it down to 2000 or 1800 if you can manage. See if that helps a little?

This would probably make it really difficult for you, but I would try to talk to your parents (whoever does the grocery shopping) and ask them to buy you some easy low calorie staples - salad fixings, lean sandwich meat, fruit. Some foods that you could easily use as additions to the calorie dense food you're getting as a primary, and then you could just eat smaller portions of the other foods.

If you still live at home, talk to your doctor and have the doctor help you talk to your parents--if you are too embarrassed to tell your mom why, just tell her you need to see the doctor for a "personal problem" (she will assume UTI or yeast infection) and once you are there, you can talk about weight loss. Doctors can say things like "she MUST be given access to foods on this list" and "she MUST not eat X, Y, and Z".

As far as emotional support, though--that's up to you. No one else can be strong for you.

Shmead...you are brilliant! That's a great idea. Family member would proly pay more attention to the doctor.

As for support, there's support here for you, and even though it isn't the same as support in real life, it can really help. If you come here and post whenever you need a hug or some encouragement, you'll find lots of chicks jumping in to cheer you on. Please don't give up on yourself. You are worth taking care of, even if others are just thoughtless. You can be strong for yourself. Weight watchers has helped a lot of people, as have other eating/exercise plans.

2400 sounds like a lot of calories for losing, so yu might see if you can cut back closer to 1800-ish, which seems to be what I find suggested as a starting point for me, and I am similar to you.

You CAN do this!

Barb

I recently started at a new job and today I talked to the fitness instructor here. She told me when I can get the money she can set me up with a class with her to fill out a day by day plan. I'm hoping to do that soon, and until then, does anyone have a day by day plan that they follow. What I mean by this is exactly how much of what food you eat for every meal for a week? If you do, could you PLEASE help me out and post it for me?

As of now, I've gained 5 more pounds and I'm not sure how. My eating habbit hasn't changed and either has my exercise habbits. I'm a little worried that I might actually have diebetes or a thyroid problem since I'm randomly gaining weight. Does anyone know some symptoms currently connected with these things and if it sounds plausable?

Help!

Also, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions to exercise videos or something like the p90x series or slim in 6 reviews to tell me how they went?

Plan: Find out how many calories my body physically needs a day to live. Then subtract 500-700. That is my calorie limit. This can be tricky. At 200 pounds, every calculator I used gave me a different number, but it was usually between 2000 and 2400 calories. So I set a limit of 1800 every day, and slowly gained weight. There are most likely two reasons for this: 1) I wasn't as close to 1800 as imagined and 2) it simply wasn't low enough. I dropped the amount to 1500, which I never imagined I could be happy at. Well, I am happy at it (dropped to 1400 recently) and it's working. I think it's working because I dropped the "a calorie is a calorie" mentality. I don't follow too strictly to any one diet, but I do aim for as few processed grains as possible, cut WAY back on sugar, and aim to have veggies a lot more often. I focus on foods that are nutritionally good for you, and they trully are more satisfying. (That doesn't mean I don't have good old mashed potatoes once in a while. I just watch the portion size.)

I try to get half an hour of exercise in a day. Walking at the very least. I just started the C25K so I've been adding in jogging now. Either way, I want to burn 150-200 calories with exercise a day.

So there's my "plan." Unfortunately, everyone is different. You can get an idea of all the tips, tricks, and information people use to form their plan. But only you can figure out what works for you. I do think that's going to involve a calorie cut. The advice of 10x your weight sounds like the first part of my equation. Now you need to cut 500-700 from that. So, the advice of 1800 calories sounds pretty good. Keeping to that is going to be tough, if you have grocery issues. You'll just have to work out a compromise. One thing you probably always have in you fridge and I consider a diet miracle? Eggs. An egg white (I hard-boil for easy sake) has 20 calories. But the protein makes it feel like 200.

Want an idea of what works? Go to the goals section and read up on the amazing stories posted there. Inspirational, and filled with advice. They really helped me.

Keep at it, you are worth it!

I am with Shmead. Our families love us unconditionally and sometime don't see what we see and don't realize we aren't exactly perfect just the way we are. Or they know you are right but know that means they need to make changes and who likes changes right? Either way the best way to open their eyes is to get the full check up, which will help you in your efforts as well. Show them your cholesterol, BP and all your lab work. I don't know what your family is like but I have family who still would brush you off even if they were looking at the lab work simply because they feel like they live life the way they want to and they don't want to change their shopping/eating habits. Hopefully that isn't the case but if so you have a great support system here.

My husband is known for buying all the wrong things when I send him shopping (trust me I try not to send him!). I know what it is like when you are hungry looking for something to snack on and all you see are chips, crackers, all kinds of bad finger food. My problem was it was so much easier to grab a box of something bad than to pull out the carrots and celery to chop up. I started pre-chopping stuff and picking up easy snack that are good for me like the 100 calorie packs or low fat yogurts etc. BUT I will admit there are times when I don't have my healthy snacks available and I go for the chips but I pull out a specific amount and put the bag away! If I end up giving in to the bad foods that are in my house I am sure to pay attention to portion size and calorie count.

You are not alone! Keep posting here and you will find support and inspiration.

Thanks. I am still hoping someone will post a schedule?

Do you mean like exactly what you should eat and exercise every day? That is really hard to do for someone else, because everyone has different tastes. Maybe is you told us exactly what you are eating now we could help you tweak it?

This may be something like what you're looking for:

http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/100-...p-peoples.html

Hope that helps.

You can click on people's Fitday links and see what they eat.

somanyemotions Are you wanting and exact eating plan? You can get one for free if you google National Body Challenge and then sign up for free. It will help you to figure out calories, exercise I think and maximum nutrition; It gives you food/recipes/menus to use each day and also allows you to twek them to suit your own tastes.

You could always start out with that, and then work from there based upon your results. Just a thought, and free is a great price :-)

Barb

Simple guidelines:

-- Eat a vegetable and/or fruit at every meal/snack. (But do not eat ONLY fruit over the course of the day. You need veggies too.)
-- Eat some kind of protein at every meal/snack.
-- Avoid white refined stuff such as sugar and white flour.
-- Get enough sleep.
-- Get some movement every day; half an hour of vigorous movement or an hour or more of non-vigorous movement.

If you really don't know what to do, start at the above, get those habits down, then you'll be ready to refine your plan.

Do you have any PCOS symptoms? Mind posting a daily menu? I posted a link below- have you ever seen a doctor for your annual exams?

PCOS

For me I was eating a low fat diet- thinking it was healthy- and then I kept gaining. Recently started on South Beach diet because for my particular body type I learned that with my insulin resistance issues I should lower my carb intake. I lowered it to 30-40% a day and now the weights finally coming off.