My weight loss journey

[Scarlett1975]

The more I lose weight the more I want to. I now weigh 74kgs and fitted into size 29 jeans last night, below is before and after but I'm not done yet. Pic doesn't really show but in terms of clothes it's a massive change.10kg so far.

[Ressie]

Looking good Scarlett! I lost 20 lbs. between June 2019 to April 2020. I've gained quite a bit of it back during the pandemic darn it. I was doing the intermittent fasting program and still trying to stick to it. Too much intake of sweets this year is the problem.

[Crissy 107]

Congrats on the weight loss and I think you look stunning in your LBD

[ShelbyDawn]

You go Scarlet.

I've gone from almost 250# down to 205 over the past few years, from a 38 waist in my jeans to a 32 and feel so much better about myself.
Of course, I don't look anywhere near as good as you, especially in front of that Ferrari :daydreaming: but it is a lot easier to find clothes that fit...

[jessicacd43]

Wow congrats!!
My New Years resolution is to get down to my perfect weight from 230 to 180!

[Stevie Allyn]

Congratulations Scarlett. You are rocking the LBD!

[cindylouho]

You look fantastic!

[Pumped]

You look much better in the second pic. You neck and chin is much thinner, legs too, but hard to tell in the before pic.

10KG or about 20 pounds doesn't seem like much, but in about two years I went from 200 pounds down to 180 and my jeans just hung off me. I dug through my clothes and found jeans I stopped wearing because they were too tight and they are a bit loose. I wore a 32" or 33" waist and bought a few pairs of jeans the other day and they are 30" waist. My goal is to get down to 170 pounds and then see where I am at shape wise. I might go down farther. It might take 1 or 2 more years.

I don't try very hard. Heavy concentrated dieting sucks. I just cut back on portion size and pretty much eat what I want, just less of it. I will still have a cheese burger and French fries, (or chips to you Brits!), a couple times a week, but I share my fries with my wife instead of getting a serving each. I did cut my Coke habit, (like in Coca-Cola!), from one a day to maybe one a week and I don't drink sugar free soda.

[CD Rachel]

Well damn girl you look great! How are you loosing the weight? what method are you using?

Rachel

[Scarlett1975]

I'm not eating much after lunch time and that's all, sometimes skip dinner all together.

[Marianne S]

You look great, Scarlett! I wish I was still at 29" myself. I've got some skirts I'd still like to wear!

Weight loss certainly is a "journey"! I've been there... and back... several times. That's the bigger challenge in the long run: not just "taking it off," but keeping it off. It's like Sisyphus rolling that great boulder up the hill, only to see it roll back down again. So for anyone who might happen to be interested in the details, I'm titling what follows


Not just a "journey," an Odyssey!

It's sobering to look back and reflect that every time I've regained weight after losing it, I ended up even heavier than I was before! I have records from years past to demonstrate this. Here's part of my "journey." For instance, back in the 1980s I must have had about a 30" waist. But by the beginning of the 90s I was getting fatter. So I dieted:


22 Sep 1991: 169.5 lb, 34" waist
4 Dec 1991: 152.5 lb, 30.6" waist

So far, so good. And not bad for a 10.5 week diet, losing over 2.3 lbs per week. But by the end of the 90s I was up to 187 lb, and much fatter. So I had to go at it again:


12 Oct 1998: 187 lb, 38" waist (UGH!)
14 Feb 1999: 137 lb, 29.5" waist

That was a pretty nice Valentine's day gift to myself back then. If you ask how I lost 50 lbs in 125 days, 0.4 lbs per day or 2.8 lbs per week, the answer is I was fasting from Monday to Friday (except for vitamins), then eating anything I felt like on weekends. It worked fine for a crash diet, but it was pretty drastic--I found myself getting tired by Friday--and it's not something anyone wants to keep up forever.

I must have gained a lot back by the start of 2005, and in early February of that year I had the flu, which was rare for me. I hadn't had flu for twenty years, and haven't had it since. It was one of those unusual occasions when an illness actually improved my health in the long run. How come?

Well, I'd made some efforts before to give up smoking. And you know what they say about smoking: "Quitting smoking is easy. I've done it dozens of times!"

We could well say exactly the same about losing weight!

Anyway, a doctor at a routine checkup in 2002 urged me to quit smoking--not that my health was bad, just as a matter of policy--and pressed into my hand a prescription for Wellbutrin to help. I never did fill the prescription, and a year later I learned he was dead, which seemed sadly ironic since I was still alive and smoking. Still, I recognized the soundness of this good man's advice, and over the next couple of years I made two tries to quit smoking, but they never lasted more than a few days.

However, that bout of flu left me in bed for a couple of days and I didn't feel the least bit like smoking, so I used the opportunity to jump-start another effort to quit. This attempt was "third time lucky." I haven't smoked since, and I'm sure I'm better off for it in every way--except for my weight! I had the same problem many other people find when they stop smoking. It may save us from a premature death, but it can be the death knell for a slim figure. So I set to it again:


5 Mar 2005: 193 lb, 38.8" waist
3 Sep 2005: 141.4 lb, 29.7" waist

Mission accomplished--for the moment! This time I didn't do anything as drastic as fasting. I adopted what I thought of as a "modified fast": that's to say, "minimal sustenance" Monday to Friday, eating and drinking anything I wanted on weekends to relieve the boredom, otherwise I would never had kept it up for so long. I also did considerably more walking and cycling, which must have helped. Weekday "minimal sustenance" consisted of 70g of bran cereal (for fiber) with soymilk, and a can of chicken, salmon or something of the kind for protein, plus vitamins. I didn't lose weight quite as quickly as I did with fasting, but 2 lbs per week over 182 days is still good and the diet was far more sustainable. No doubt healthier too.

The trouble was, as soon as I let up on the diet, the weight went back on again, far faster than it did before I quit smoking. And I have to say the winter--the holiday season especially--is the curse of any dieter. By the following spring I was heavier than ever. So I had to do it all over again:


24 Apr 2006: 203.4 lb, 39.0" waist
18 Nov 2006: 141.8 lb, 29.4" waist

I used the same diet regimen successfully, again losing 2 lb per week, though this time of course it took longer, 208 days.

Then the dreaded holiday season and winter intervened again, and while I made efforts to keep the weight off, I'm ashamed to say I rather lost heart after that. Over the next five years and more I let my weight balloon up to an average of 215, the heaviest I'd ever been. Each successive peak over a twenty-year period had been higher than the last: 169.5, 187, 193, 203.4, 215!

I've no doubt that getting older, with metabolism gradually slowing down, played its part in this, along with smoking cessation. Still, this just "wasn't me," and "never had been me," not at 215 pounds. Among other things I was left with about one skirt with a stretchy enough waist that I could actually get into! I needed to lose a third of my weight.

Well, long story short, I made one final, Herculean effort using the same diet regimen, and in stages got down to a low of 141.7 lb with a 30.5" waist in 2014. And this time, as with smoking cessation, it was "third time lucky" (since 2005), more or less. I say "more or less" because it has floated up a bit, and I still haven't maintained that elusive 30-inch waist. Still, 155 and 33.5" is better than 215 and 40 inches! I went out and bought a bunch of new clothes for Marianne.

I just have to watch my weight, that's all, and take prompt action if it gets above a certain threshold. That's the first piece of advice. I think it's too easy to become complacent when weight starts drifting up--"Oh, it's just a little bit over, it doesn't matter"--until it gets out of control to the extent that getting it back down again seems too daunting a task to tackle, not until it's really, really bad; too bad to tolerate. (And when it gets that bad, some people never do.) I just mustn't "get above myself," that's all.

And of course, what works for one in dieting doesn't necessarily work for all. If I need to lose weight fast, my method works for me. I'm glad yours is working for you, Scarlett. Good luck in keeping it offl!


Oh, when I was above myself
I was a curious pair;
My lower feet still walked the street,
My uppers trod on air.
Said folk "You must come down a peg,
We know not where you stand";
So reaching up I pulled my leg
And took myself in hand.

- From Goings On of an Alter Ego
M. H. Longson, Punch magazine, 9th February 1949

[Angela Marie]

You look great. Love the dress. 'm blessed to have a petite body. I also have been working out regularly for over 40 years and eat healthy. I'm 66 now and 5ft 6 135-140 with a 28-29 in waist. I believe that a healthy diet and regular exercise is far better in the long run not only for our appearance, but more importantly for our health. Just my two cents.

[JulieB]

Intermittent Fasting works very well, good for you in every way.

[Ressie]

10KG or about 20 pounds doesn't seem like much, but in about two years I went from 200 pounds down to 180 and my jeans just hung off me.

Same here. That's 10% of your weight so it's quite a bit! And it's mostly fat tissue that's decreased. My face looked better when I got down to 180. 170 is my next goal but I'm around 190 now.

[Star01]

This has been a difficult year with all the sitting around and I have gained about a dozen pounds. We have a walking path across the road but it is turned into a snowmobile super highway where one walks at their own risk this time of year.

I get a free membership to the Y through my Medicare supplemental but I wouldn?t go anywhere near a gym right now. What I find at 69 is that the vigorous exercise gets more difficult as joints deteriorate. These trainers at the gyms don?t know how to deal with my neck fusion either and tend to setup programs that cause too much discomfort.

I know that I can do it through self discipline but it?s a huge commitment that I have never been able to stick with. I have recently taken another approach to this and an trying to convince myself that fat girls can be just as sexy as the skinny ones.

[Scarlett1975]

Thank you for all the replies, at this stage I want to lose another 5 kg but it depends what my body wants to do. The fasting is quite easy and has fitted into our routines well as has eating better and going for a walk etc. At the moment I feel 5kg us achievable but let's see once I get there

[Jane G]

You go for it girl. Me though I'm pretty happy with around 210 lbs. That"s actually not a lot of spare on my frame.:heehee: