My background:

I am 22 years old. All through high school I was roughly 140lbs (I'm 5'5 1/2). I was very athletic (playing softball, basketball, and volleyball). When I was 18 I suffered my first miscarriage.. I was devestated and gained 10lbs from eating. I lost 5 of it when I went to college. My freshman year of college (7 months after my 1st miscarriage, I became pregnant again and miscarried at 13 weeks). I gained back that 5 lbs. 6 months later (and no we were not trying), I got pregnant again. Due to high risk, I was on bed rest a significant amount of the pregnancy, and gained 60lbs. After I had my daughter I was at 175lbs. 6 months later I got pregnant with my son. I gained 30lbs with him. I nursed him for 14 months, and everytime I worked out, dieted or cut any calories my milk would dry up. So now he is 17 months old, I weight 162 lbs and am ready to get down to a happy weight. My sex life suffers because I am so self concious about my body (stretch marks, fat everywhere, and just not feeling pretty.) Everybody in my family is skinny! My mom is 130lbs and 5'9, my sister is 5'3 and 100 lbs and I'm 5'5 and 162 lbs.. it makes me very self concious to be with my family.

I am ready to work out, get skinny, get heatlhy, and make sure my children know the importance of eating right and working out.

I would love to weight 130lbs again. Any tips? With a 1 year old and 2 year old simple cooking is a must! I can't be chasing kids for 2 hours while I cook! Any tips with working out also?

Thanks so much.

Hey Brittanylynne! Welcome to 3fc! I am sorry to hear of your losses. I too miscarried a few years ago at a healthy weight of 125, and it devastated me and I did a lot of emotional eating and shutting myself in my house, effectively ending all work out attempts. I know it is hard, but I am also happy to see you have 2 children! I never attempted to try to have another baby as I was so wrecked over the first, and now one of my goals for getting healthy again is so I can try again and be a healthy weight before hand. I'm still trying to find what works as well so my advice may not be the most intense or scientific.

Do you possibly have access to a gym? They do cost some money and not all areas have them. But if it is possible, I highly recommend it (especially if they happen to have a child care facility). I found that I CANNOT lose weight without working out. Some people can lose just by changing diet, but for me, that doesn't work.

Also, I hear you on the cooking. Don't have kids but have a busy schedule. My mom recently started a health journey herself and she loves the Taste of Home stuff from the magazines and cookbooks and they have a whole series of Taste of Home Diet and Taste of Home Lite (something about family favorites). She bought them all, and seriously every recipe is soooooooooooo good and pretty simple. And since they are soo good, even those in the family who aren't dieting, love what she cooks. We now share the books and almost all my dinners come from there. Each recipe has all the nutritional information too, so you can see just how many calories and how much fat you are eating. And if you want to, they even have a 10 week (I think, maybe only 8) diet plan in the book where you get 3 meals, 2 snacks and all fall between 1300-1600 calories.

Good luck!

You are doing pretty good - 5'5" and 162 lbs isn't bad at all, in fact, you are just about 10 lbs away from a healthy BMI. But, I understand that your family is tiny, so you probably feel that you suffer by comparison.

And I feel ya about being self-conscious. I know when I hit the 160 mark, because I immediately feel horrible about myself. Somehow that is the magic mark for me, and a signal to buckle down and so something about it. But I really don't like to be seen naked until I do something about it, so I know how you feel.

What is working, for me, is a combination of pretty strict calorie counting on Livestrong.com, and wearing a Bodybugg, all day, every day. The Bodybugg is really motivating, because you can see how many calories you burn with everyday chores. For instance, yesterday I spent a good amount of time cleaning the house and I burned calories like crazy (almost 3,000 for the day)! You don't really think about it. Move more, eat less - an old prescription, but one that works.

I also like cookbooks and trying out different recipes. It makes me excited to make something new, even more excited then the excitement I feel about going out to eat.

I have a brand new baby, so I don't have a lot of time to cook either. I rely pretty heavily on stuff that I can make ahead. We have chili a lot - high in protein, low in fat/carbs, easy to make a huge batch with very little time (just chuck stuff in a pot and then ignore it for a few hours while it simmers) so there will be leftovers for lunch and snacks. I find snacks like raw veggies, cheese sticks, yogurt, etc., to be handy throughout the day so that I really only have to cook once a day.

As far as exercise, make your husband help you by taking the kids for an hour or so a day so you can get out and work out! Tell him it's for your body AND your marriage. I'm doing couch-to-5k right now (great program - very easy to get started if you're really out of shape, and you don't need a gym if you don't have access to one). I wasn't really into exercise before I got pregnant, but I find that I really like it now, mostly because it means that I get some precious ALONE time for an hour. I don't know what I'd do without being able to go outside and walk/run for a bit by myself each day.

Good luck!

I'm sorry to hear of your difficulties, Brittanylynne. There's so many wonderful weight loss advice and methods and helpful tips, I know you can find an overwhelming amount of those just by searching over the forum. The possibilities are amazing! So here's what I'll talk about instead. My highest weight ever was close to 400lbs and I was married at the time. And my husband didn't love me any less or want me any less. I had plenty of days that I hated what I looked like, but I decided life was way too short to live in such a constrictive way that cut into my joy. And ultimately, I can't and shouldn't tell another person how to feel about me which is what I'd be doing if I didn't want to be romantic because I thought I wasn't good enough. It's insulting when someone doesn't trust my feelings and tries to tell me I feel differently than I do, so I don't do it to others either. We're divorced now, on good terms, and I'm with someone new who is wild about me and I'm STILL not skinny! 185 might be a far cry from my former weight, but when he met me and wanted to date me, he didn't know about my history! He didn't know where I'd been or where I was going in regards to my weight and didn't care. He one day admitted he wasn't generally attracted to women my size, but he was attracted to ME no less.

I say all this because I didn't lose weight by punishing myself and I was never able to lose because I was motivated by negative feelings. When I would diet because I felt horrible and depressed about myself and wanted to lose weight to make myself happy with myself, I failed. When I decided what I really wanted was a better life for myself and I damn well deserved to have that because I'm capable of doing so many great things which my weight hindered, I succeeded. So I hope you work on transforming the self-conscious, unhappy feelings about yourself into more positive, accepting, compassionate feelings about yourself. I wasn't an unworthy, unlovable person at nearly 400lbs and you certainly are not at 162lbs. Because worthiness and happiness have nothing to do with what the scale says in the first place.

Hello, Brittany! I suffer from the same kind of self consciousness, and it has definitely had an effect on my and my husband's love life. I will say that making the changes I've made over the past two weeks has made a lot of difference in my confidence. People - including my husband - have commented on how I look like I've lost weight, and it's helping motivate me. I count calories and keep a food diary. I'd also like to get back into my 6 days a week gym habit, but right now it's a work in progress. I don't think exercise is necessary to weight loss, but it will keep you healthy and tone your body (which makes a HUGE difference)!

As far as recipes go, look into crock pot recipes. There's so much goodness you can make in a crock pot. Make big batches over the weekend and eat the leftovers through the week. It's also great because you just throw the ingredients in the pot and let them cook without much - if any - supervision. My favorite crock pot meal is pot roast with carrots and potatoes. Mmmm!

Good luck! You'll find a lot of advice and support on 3fc, so be sure to check out the old posts when you have time!

One more thing I just thought of. You should share your thoughts about your body and your plan to make changes with your husband. I know it's hard to admit you don't like your body, but my husband has been such an encouragement to me. He constantly reminds me of the good habits I'm trying to keep, and I love being able to share my losses on the scale with him when I weigh in one a week!

Oh, that's another thing that I do a little differently than other 3FCers... I only weigh once a week. I know a lot of people weigh every day, but those little variations (that don't mean much in the long-term) would drive me insane. Just a thought.