I can't believe I didn't make it over here when it happened, but this is fairly landmark. Last September I was 275, I weighed in this morning at 198.5 lbs.

My weight hasn't started with a 1 since my early 20's, and even then I had to exercise to get there. I'm in better shape than I was in college. I'll be 39 this October.

What's next? Backpacking sounds fun. Hmm...

Welcome Megin!

Stick with it! Sounds like you are doing the right things. There will be lots of times that you hit weight loss stalls, but things WILL continue. The composition of your body is changing to a leaner, more muscular one. If this is the first real time you've started exercising, then you will make good muscle gains. DO NOT stop the resistance training! Keep with it. You are working on the you for the long term. I have dropped 73 pounds since September last year, and my wife has dropped 49 pounds since January this year.

You might want to get very specific with your calories. "Under 2000" sounds vague. Try eating 1800 exactly for two weeks. If you aren't moving in the weight, then try 1700 for two weeks. At some point, you'll get going again. Stay at that level while you keep losing. Hit a two week plateau, try adding for two weeks. Weight creeps up on that, then try dropping a little more. You have to find the amount of calories that's going to work for your body to drop your weight. I've averaged around 2.0 pounds a week for quite some time before slowing as I get closer to my goal weight. A good place for seeing what kind of calories are going to work for your weight loss is this site. I've had good luck at their extreme fat loss zig-zag levels for long periods of time, but that might not be for everyone. Start with just their fat-loss zig-zag, and I think you'll be on to something.

Good luck! You are NOT just fooling yourself. And drink LOTS of water!

At our camp ground, there is a 3-mile trail around the lake. I have walked this hilly trail a number of times before, but yesterday I jogged it, hills and all. Slow jog, but never walking once. I've never been a runner at all. It was a slow jog, but it was more than a walk.

Leslie- Thanks for your kind words. Yes, the faculty at my school were very supportive, and some were even inspired, but unfortunately, most times anyone asked what I was doing, faces would drop into sadness when I told them that the magic bullet is counting calories and exercising six days a week. So many people want it to come in a bottle instead of from hard work and determination! (sorry I didn't respond earlier. I spend more time on my own facebook page than here these days... but you know that! thanks for joining us there at Fred's Fit Club. Hope you are enjoying it!)

Started the school year (I'm a middle school counselor) in XXL shirts and size 44 pants. Now I am wearing size Large shirts and 36 pants. That's a really nice realization. Cleaning out the big clothes over the next few days to donate them.

I can tell you that I am not at my goal quite yet, so I would do it differently. As a person still on the journey, I have taken a couple of vacations this year, and each time I set a goal for myself to weigh less after the trips than I did before them. However, when I take the family to Disney World this August, I'm trying some of the wonderful and painfully expensive food from the parks.

However, I can also tell you my plans for being at my goal weight. No week-long vacation is going to add more than a few pounds to you, and that would include the water being retained from all the sodium in those delicious dishes that you might be thinking about trying. The only reason not to indulge on a finite special occasion like a birthday party, holiday, or vacation when you are already at your goal weight would be because you don't trust yourself to get back on track when you get back to real life.

Honestly, a week or two isn't going to destroy anyone's weight permanently. When you get back, get back to what you do. Within a few weeks, you'll be right back to where you want to be. This is not a diet. It is a way to live the rest of your life. Being on vacation in an exotic place with a chance to sample some exotic foods that you can't get just anywhere else... GO FOR IT! Then go back home and do what you do. If you are talking TGI Fridays where you could get it at home, I would just eat light there.

Jeff and Russ have even admitted to wanting to try the cuisine at the Heart Attack Grill where the food is blatantly defying healthiness. It's not an everyday thing, just like vacation.

Also, I would imagine that if you are anything like me, your tastes have also changed. I cannot believe how much I enjoy a dish of leafy greens with fruit in it. If someone had told me a year ago that I would think this way, I would have laughed out loud at him. You might be surprised at what you end up wanting to eat there!

Good luck and enjoy vacation!

I am a big believer in support in your life. I started my latest (and final!) journey to be fit last September. I am 67 lbs down from then. I was doing it on my own from September until Christmas vacation. At that point, after about 25 lbs, my wife and our friends started counting calories and working out, too. Since then, I've been able to stay on track and lose lots more fat. I am constantly around people who are either conscious of what I am doing or they are doing the same thing. I've even trained the people at work, and most of the people there are supportive, too. Staying on track with a support system, both online and in real life, has been integral to my success. That is how I deal with setbacks and poor feelings about myself.

That being said, I have slowly but steadily started to shift my thinking from results to work. What you experienced was not a setback, just a perception issue. My happiness cannot be tied to having unrealistic expectations about myself. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow with Ryan Reynolds' abs (though my wife would be quite pleased!). However, I will get up and work out. And I will be within my calories. And I will keep researching the best methods for losing fat and how to cycle calories in order to get me there. And I will take action every single day.

That action is what makes me happy. My fat, I have noticed, took awhile to start visibly disappearing, then it started creeping in from my extremities, where I have less fat to begin with. I remember joking that I was doing all this work, and all I was getting was skinny wrists and ankles! Well, having continued, now my ankles and knees and forearms and elbows and biceps and triceps are all looking quite trim. And my face! My thighs and belly and lower back fat are all still there, though. But they are getting smaller. I take measurements because I can't see the difference from week to week. But a quarter inch gone is good.

Keep going. Keep working. Get your happiness and joy and acceptance for yourself from the work you put in. The results will come. I promise.

Sometimes, nothing seems to be happening, but your body is changing. Like Jeff and Russ said at one point, sometimes you've got to fake it until you make it.

Oh, and practical advice... capri pants are something you can wear until you feel comfortable with your problem area.

Good luck! Let us know how you do.

Thanks.

I deleted the other weights from months gone by, and now the numbers really make sense. Thanks for the tip.

And thanks from before about the kudos on the 2 lbs per week. Getting my wife and our best friends involved was amazing for staying on track. Surrounding myself with like-minded people has really helped me keep on it.

Certainly no inconvenence! I appreciate the assistance. I'll email it soon, and I think I'll go ahead after that and take out the data from before the 8th.

Since you are on here and feeling in a helping mood... Could you tell me what the difference is between the red dotted projection line and the green dotted line?


Thanks!

Leo

Hi Benjamin,

I've put in quite a few days of weight recording into the app now, and I see that there are big differences between the trend report from a week, 2 weeks, a month, a quarter, six months, and a year.

My data ranges back to September 16, 2009, and I have put in daily weight records since April 8, and I have practically weekly data since September.

My trends are reading as:

Past Year, losing 1.1 pounds of fat per week
Past 6 Months, losing 1.22 pounds of fat per week
Past quarter, losing 4.74 pounds of fat per week
Past month, losing 7.95 pounds of fat per week
Past 2 weeks, losing 8.96 pounds of fat per week
Past week, losing 5.62 pounds of fat per week

If you'd like, I can export to email and send the file to you. I've lost about 57 pounds since September 16, 2009 as of this morning. Good app. The trend line makes me not want to cry when my weight goes up. But these numbers are kind of crazy sounding to me until you get past the last quarter...

Let me know.

Leo

Hi AJ. I've managed to lose 57 lbs since September. Around January 1st, my wife and our two best friends started the journey as well. As a group of friends who hang out a lot, and as a couple who are always together, we are always planning our meals, accounting for calories, and talking about what we are doing for exercise.

Let's face it, we are different from the naturally thin people who don't have to think about food at all.

Tom Venuto says on his Burn The Fat Blog that there are four stages to get through when thinking about food.

Unconscious Incompetence is when you never think about food and you suck at limiting yourself. Wrong foods, wrong amounts, and you are not even aware of it.

Conscious Incompetence is where you realize you are eating the wrong foods in the wrong amounts. It's like hitting bottom, he says.

Conscious Competence is where you and I are. We are eating correctly because we are very aware of what we are eating at all times.

Unconscious Competence is where you are eating the right foods in the right amounts, but you are not even aware of it.

I would suggest that while you are trying to burn off the fat that you might want to stick with the third stage, and be aware of your food while eating the right foods in the right amounts. However, if you think you might be going crazy, maybe you need to practice just eyeballing it for a couple of weeks. Try to portion your foods like you know they should be, and eat the right kinds. But take a break from writing everything down.

Yes, you will lose some of that data. But you will gain an experience, and you will see if you are ready to eat like a thin person. My guess is that you can maintain your weight to within a few pounds if you try to stay careful, but aren't obsessing with scales, measuring cups and portion sizes.

And if you can move to stage four, wonderful! But if you can't, then stage three is an okay place to be. Food is our drug, AJ. But unlike any other addiction, we HAVE to consume ours every single day. If you have to stay vigilant, that's okay. Just figure out how you can do other things that are active and fun. Those are the times that I forget about food and accidentally skip a snack or something. It's not obsession. Just monitoring because we know our limitations.

Good luck!

Eleanor!

You can't out-train a bad diet... So, you are going to want to take a look at the tools on the Fat 2 Fit Radio website. You might also want to do a Google search for "calorie calculator" to find some other pages to make sure that you can find out how many calories you should be eating each day. My wife and I found a great one here. On this site, you are going to find the amount of calories you need for maintaining your current weight, how many calories for fat loss, and how many calories for extreme fat loss. You will also find good zig-zag calorie plans for each where you try to vary the amount of calories you take in each day.

I am not sure what you've been doing to keep track of calories, but an entirely free and comprehensive site for keeping track of calories you consume is My Fitness Pal. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, they also have an app. When I say comprehensive, I mean they have a process where users can enter foods and other users can validate them so that even foods at a regional grocery store are in there. Makes things really easy and painless.

Welcome aboard. It's a great show to listen to because they have powerful information. Good luck!

Leo

219.5 lbs this morning. Don't know why, but that feels landmark to me. Started the school year (I'm a school counselor) at 275. Next REAL landmark scale victory will be 199 for me. But not even in the 220s anymore? Pretty cool.

That's awesome, Jill! I have again hit a SLOW spot. Not necessarily a plateau, but not losing like I was. I am starting to zig zag my calories. I still think I might be too low because my calories are right around the range that yours are. I think I need to take this leap of faith and start eating some more calories. I weigh 220.5 lbs, 54.5 lbs down from when I started. Fat was absolutely melting off before, but now it's slowing. I am eating around 1800 calories per day on average, and I work out 5 days per week. My body fat has dropped, too, from 39% to 27%, so I know it's been mostly fat that I've lost. Like you, I've been very nervous about raising my calories, but reading your story, it might be just what I need.

Good for you, Jennifer! I was also able to snag a copy of the app. It looks to me like there is a bit of a learning curve with it. There are some icons that are explained in the Hacker's Diet book, and I haven't been able to spend much time with it yet. But I am working on it.

My numbers are crazy. In the real world, since New years, I've been losing 2.1 pounds per week on average.

The FatWatch app says:

losing 3.07 lbs/week of total weight
burning 1,534 cal/day more than you eat
46.4 lb to lose
goal weight in 105 days

HUH? Maybe I am doing something wrong. Maybe eating fewer calories than I should. I thought I was losing relatively healthily, but burning 1534 cal/day more than I eat? Hmmm... I'll keep using it and get back with hopefully more accurate findings.

But yes, thanks, Jeff and Russ!

Jill, isn't it amazing how many people ask what you are doing when you start to show the physical signs of weight loss?

They just look down when I tell them. I count calories and exercise six days a week alternating cardio and weights.

Sorry folks, but that IS the magic pill.

Welcome to everyone who is new!

I do not track motivation, but I always notice it. I completely agree with everyone else. If it starts to feel stale, your motivation is going to decline. Figure out something else to do or to focus on. There is always a way to keep things exciting and to reach new goals.

Some of the things I have done when my motivation has waned is to change exercise routines, start a facebook fan page, involve more people in my life, do research, and, of course, listen to Fat 2 Fit Radio!

My fan page is called Fred's Fit Club. Like Jeff and Russ, I'm not selling anything. I am just using the page to keep myself honest and to help others try to reach and keep the same goals I have. If you are interested, take a look. If you like it, become a fan. Thia kind of thing helps me stay motivated. Russ Turley is a fan. How could you go wrong? LOL

Xiaoru, Follow the Fat 2 Fit philosophy for eating! Don't get into the trap of being "on a diet." Start eating like the thin person you want to become, because you are going to eat that way for life! I have lost over 50 lbs, and I eat ice cream and pizza sometimes. When it is a regimented diet that may involve Beach Body's supplements to purchase, you know you won't want to be on that forever.

Listen to the Fat 2 Fit podcast! They have great advice that has helped me become successful at losing this extra weight while becoming more and more fit.

But the P90X workouts ROCK!

I weight daily. When I see the weight pop up a little, I reflect on what I might have done the day before and how I can avoid any miscalculations today. You just have to realize that the body is complex, and it is going to fluctuate.

One of my Non-Scale goals is to get to think more about fashion instead of, "Does this cover my fat well enough?" Most of my old clothes were still of the fat-covering variety anyway. New wardrobe for me!

Also, if anyone is on facebook, take a look at my fan page. It's called Fred's Fit Club. I'm Fred. It's my pet project where I post my thoughts on health, tips, and my milestones. Others are also posting milestones. Please think about becoming a fan. I'm trying to grow the community I started. Thanks!

Sandra, that self-correction is an awesome NSV. Way to go.

And a new shape AND a new article of clothing? Congrats! That happened to me with a few things. Mostly jeans. However, I messed up because last summer, I FINALLY, after years, got rid of my smaller clothes, thinking I was just hanging onto a pipe dream. Now I am using thrift stores to fill in the wardrobe since I am 50 pounds down but have another 40 to go. Who wants to spend a bunch of money on clothes I will only be in for a couple of months at best?

Ken, I've been getting into hiking, too. LOVE it! I have been asking people who want advice about losing weight what they want to do with their new body if they achieve it. Sit around in front of the TV with your six-pack abs? NO WAY! I want to be up and doing things. And that is just what my family and I have been doing since it's been getting warmer these days.

Rock on, guys!

Rock on, Jill! I know how frustrating it is to have to put a halt to exercise. That is some major frustration.

Keep it up. I find that this whole thing is way easier than I ever imagined now that I am counting calories. 50 lbs down and no sign of slowing or stopping. If I can figure this out, ANYONE can!

And that's 50 lbs down.

That's a pretty awesome feeling.

Congrats, Ken. Keep it up.

Nice job! I'm looking forward to that myself.

Today I reached 227. According to my BMI, I just slipped into the land of "overweight" as opposed to "obese."

Perfect timing on the topic. I'll check back after two more pounds. That will mark 50 lbs lost.

Welcome to all the new people. I know I'm not around here as much as I should be, but I was so inspired by Russ and Jeff that I decided to make my own support system. I made a facebook fan page called Fred's Fit Club. If you are on facebook, take a look. I'd love to have more people on there. The bigger the support system, the better.

Don't ever think you can't do this! I've struggled with my weight ever since I can remember, but no more! It's time to take control and end this struggle once and for all.

Russ and Jeff have the best podcast around. Thanks, guys!

Way to go, Tom!

People pay to watch her consume fast food??

First of all, that is disgusting.

Second, knowing how I feel now compared to when I weighed 47.5 lbs. more, I can't even imagine how horrible and tired she must feel and does not even realize it.

Your goal is to be a freakshow, honey. Your website indicates that this mission is accomplished.

My wife and I figured out our calories, and then there were days we were eating 200-300 calories below. Some weeks were at a stand still, and others were small dips in weight. She was getting a little bummed out. I suggested we eat up to our calories because we are not accounting for calories from working out other than to up our levels of activity to lightly active from sedentary. Since we have been eating at our levels and not "banking" calories, we have been having strong weight loss weeks. I think that many people do indeed give themselves too few calories.

The body is always doing things that we might not understand. I'll check in to let people know if this sudden success keeps coming or if it just happened to coincide with the calorie change. Great topic.

I'm 46 pounds down now. 229. Damn that's a great number. New belt. Everyone is telling me that I need new clothes.

Warm weather is calling me every day. Get outside and do something! My wife and our two best friends are really making this happen this time.

Body fat just measured at 29%. First time I've ever seen it in the 20s.

And I bought some cool-looking off the rack jeans at Target.

Oh, and having people at work continually remind me that I need a new wardrobe because I look like none of my clothes fit anymore.

And then I created a fan page on Facebook where I've started helping other people lose weight and get into shape. Daily ideas from me are helping other people. That's a real "what the heck?" moment.

Rosie, that same thing happened to me. Probably the most unhealthy thing I could do one day. I was home with my two year old son, and we were playing, having a great time, and then he wanted to watch one of his shows. So I put it on, and then I notice that I am hungry. I look for something lean and find an apple. Eat it. Then I'm still hungry.

I started craving the Girl Scout Cookies on the counter. I eat a couple, add them to my daily intake, and I'm still hungry. Well, a few cookies later, and I stopped even putting them into the calorie counter app.

Next day, a pound lighter. Motivation to stay within my calories is back. I know that I should have found something leaner and good for me. But the lesson is still to listen to your body. I know things will work out for you, Tom. And like I say to everyone who gets discouraged...

I can guarantee that your issue isn't that you are working out and eating right.