Just signed up at 'My Fitness Pal'. Any advice, experience, or desire to join me?

[worriermum]

I read about the website, myfitnesspal.com on MN. Am truly desperate to stop the ever rising weight gain - I have just topped my full term pregnancy weight. I've never really been a dieter, or even believed in diets, but I Have To Do Something. Would love to do it with some other Mumsnetters - anyone interested in joining me?

All the weight loss threads seem so bloated, if you'll pardon the metaphor. I'm intimidated by 537 messages, or 219 messages. Feel I cant be arsed to read through all that and I will never be part of the club if I dont read the history. Advice please?

Well done redder - fantastic

Hi mater - amazing loss so far! Welcome

RG Your 1lb can be friends with my 1lb and we'll kick the buggers out this week.

I'm feeling really good and proud of myself today. I got up at 6:20 really not wanting to do my bike ride but I made myself go and really enjoyed it. Then I threw my bike in the back of the car and drove to a friend's house. We went on another ride round the lakes near her house and managed to clock up another 8km so in total today I've ridden for 13km averaging 13mph.

We also went out and bought bike racks for our cars and child seats for our bikes so we can take the kids out for bike rides/picnics this summer. Thighs of steel, here we come!

mater - just to say welcome, and enjoy your holiday. Whatever you put on should loose quite quickly afterwards.

hi - coming to this 26 pages in, but I signed up about two weeks ago. Am feeling a bit as have been eating really healthily, tracking everything and running 3 times a week and haven't lost a bastard pound.

Why does this happen, anyone in a similar boat?

hi cherry whats your name on MFP? - if you make your diary public we can make suggestions? also give your details eg weight / target weight etc.

there are lots of potential reasons:

• water retention due to muscle repair
• water rentention due to TOTM
• eating too many carbs esp refined ones
• not eating enough protein

de lurking to say i have done 2 weeks of MFP and its really opened my eyes to the true loading of calories....finger of fudge calories was my turning point!

i havent lost any weight but have lost 3 inches off my very jelly waist walking up hill and stomping thru fields on the way back...even the dog has lost weight

i feel so much better and have been able to cut my toe nails with out needing lay down half way thru

hi ezzie if you want MFP friends let us know your username.

Thank you everybody! My MFP name is my RL name - should I put that on MN or not? Perhaps I should add all of you then at least my real name not on here.

I seem to go up and down a lot - can't resist temptation to weigh each day and I go 2lb up, 2 lb down in the space of 48 hours. So I don't worry when I look like I've put one pound on, but likewise don't believe really low readings (as I got sun morning as if I lost 4lb overnight) as they don't last. Important thing is the downward trend (and the fabulous amount of compliments from people who haven't seen me for a while - SIL wedding recently was such a confidence-booster).

mater my MFP is also my real name so why not add one of the others who have their mumsnet name and MFP the same (scroll back through thread) and then add their friends etc.

I also weigh daily and just record when I get a new low (ie first time I am 125lb for example, 125.2 wouldn't count) yes does mean sometimes I "put on" weight but I don't record it. So long as there is a downward trend its good!

I am now at target (loss of 50lbs since October) and gradually increasing calories and carbs up to maintenance targets. I am doing a triathlon in 2 weeks (EEK) and after that will focus on toning and weights.

Gilbonzo - deffo up for some pound kickage this week!! :o Well done on the cycling today! That's very impressive! Whenever i do my biking, i always tend to average between 5-7mph I always think that i'm going quite fast but obviously i'm just a slow coach! Must be coz i'm still a little nervous on my bike atm (only been on it 4 times since i bought it about 2-3 weeks ago) and just need to get my confidence back again re cycling. Haven't biked for about 20 years and it's soooooo different than sitting on an exercise/spin bike!! I'm also very tempted to buy a seat for my bike for DD but i'm not sure if it's worth it as she is very tell for her age and already weighs nearly 44lbs!

Hi Cherry, welcome! Hope we can all work out between us how to shift your bastard pounds!

Hi Ezzie, welcome! Well done on the inch loss! Feel free to add me on MFP too. :)

Forever - wow, 50lbs!! that's amazing, well done!! :o

I've stayed well under my calories today and haven't eaten my exercise calories either. I've reduced my carbs by about half of what MFP recommended and i think i will try and keep it at that until i get used to carb contents again. It's amazing how much you forget stuff like that when you dont have to worry about it. Please feel free to have a look at my diary and let me know what you think of it? I was going to have my lunch for my breakfast but time ran away with me this morning, which is why i had a bagel instead. Was also going to have a salad for lunch for ended up having that for dinner tonight instead. :)

RGPargy - I had a look at your diary:

General comments -
a) try and have good protein at eat meal, even if just egg or tuna from tin - it will help you feel full for longer
b) cut down refined carbs - eg bagels, jam, chocolate, if you want to have bread go for something like burgen soya and linseed - but takes until the next shop to plan this of course!
c) limit portion size of healthy carbs like sweet potatoes, better to have smaller sweet potato and some protein, maybe 150g potato and fish or cottage cheese?
d) yoghurts are great snacks, thought the lunch was v good.
e) well done for sticking to the calories.

Yes, 50lbs! Same as my 7 year old weighs! I can hardly lift her.

Forever - thanx for your comments, i will deffo take them on board. I didn't realise that sweet potatoes had so many carbs in them til i just looked on my diary!! woopsie!! Will get some of that bread too. I seem to not be able to live without it atm lol.

:o

I had mashed celeriac for dinner tonight. Tastes nice and felt like I was having a carb but was surprisingly low in carbs.

RGI'm really lucky that my dd, who'll be 3 in July, only weighs 12kg (26lbs) so it's not too bad having her on there. We're off for our first proper family ride today but as I have ds (4) on his bike we won't be going very fast. Hopefully I'll make up for that by having a backpack with our picnic on.

I have a weird thing where I can't do something slowly. When I used to go running I couldn't jog, I had to full-on sprint and when I ride I go hell for leather - even up the hills and there are many bloody hills on the route I do. When I went riding with my friend yesterday I was so as she lives next to some lakes, which of course, are flat to ride around and it was heaven!

I had a morning off my early ride today as I think it's good to have a break but I still woke up at 6 and had to persuade myself to stay in bed. I guess I should have just gone but the dcs don't have school on Wednesdays so I was determined to have a rest!

Hello new people! Cherry, I've been having the same problem. Once I started MFP I realised I hadn't been eating enough so I had to almost double my food intake. I'd also lost 2 stone since Sept and reached a plateau. It's absolutely gutting to be doing everything properly and not getting the results you wanted though isn't it? People can give you all the advice in the world but the biggest thing you need is the motivation to carry on. For me it's how much fitter I'm getting. A month ago I never would have thought that I could do the exercise I can do now so I'm focusing on that. My theory is that of I carry on exercising as I am now, eventually some weight has to come off from somewhere! I've also reduced my carbs but this bit really sucks. I 'no carbed' for a year once before and it was so hard and didn't give me the results everyone assured me it would have. I'm hoping it might be different this time but mybe I just have the world's most bizarre body.....

RG - your lunch yesteday was fab! :) the others, not so much. But like you say, you kind of dont know until you log stuff. I normally log what i plan to eat first thing in the morning and then make changes as i go along - helps me work out if i have any leaway for anything, or if ireally shouldnt have anything. But i reckon, if you stick to such great lunches, then had some kind of low sugar fruit ( like berries) and low fat youghurt for breakfast that that would make a considerable difference.

Am crazy busy with work and trying to sort out stuff for the camping trip _ seriously, i have a clio. Its not going to all fit it!!! The whole menu thing has changed yet again, so we are now doing our own breakfasts and lunches. Im going to stick to what ive been having at home and then just have smaller portions of the dinner. No ice creams - il have ice lollys. There will be wine and there will be vast quanitity of smores. AIm for this week is to stay the same i think, if i achieve that ill be pretty impressed. Though im sure shivering at night becuase its so cold will burn off a fair few cals -right?! lol

the bloody lake was only 3km round. We went round twice and still didn't feel like I'd done anything. I need to find a bigger lake.... Still, I was very impressed with my boy for doing 6km with no fuss.

I've arranged with my friend to do an all day ride tomorrow as our boys will be at school and we can stick the little ones in their seats and just keep going. The plan is to ride along the river so it should be quite flat and see where we end up - if I don't post for a few days you'll know we're either lost or in the water somewhere.

if you go missing we will send out a search party!

:)

Had a bit of a gggrrr momment with a collegue today, she walked in and declared she had lost 3lbs last week by cutting out snacking - shes tiny anyway and she only ever eats fruit - ever - in two years thats all anyone has ever seen her eat.

Anyway - i said well done, as you do. not that you can notice - perfect chance for her to say something to me about my weight loss. but no. nothng. 18lbs down and no one has said a thing.
:( im not going to say anything and see how long it takes - just out of interest.

red how annoying, and I can see why you didn't say anything and TBH a bit pathetic to tell everyone about a loss of 3lbs, I loose and gain that every week!

yeah - then she said ' only 5 more to go'

haha - ive got what - 24 to go to a healthy bmi and then i want to go a stone under ( if at all possible) i want to be 9stone :)
So add another 14 to that 24 and ive got 38 to go.

GGGRR - bloody annoying.

AND its frustrating noone has noticed at all - i mean, they see me 4 days a week. I am smaller, - my jeans fall down when i walk and i look like im wearing clown pants! I reckon ill get to an over 2stone loss before anyone says anything - ive not even told anyone im trying to lose weight.

red they'll notice when you come in wearing new smaller clothes, yes might be 2 stone down. Annoyingly she'll probably loose her 5lbs in the next 5 weeks. Do you think she was saying it to be mean - because she can see you are overweight and she was trying to get you to say, gosh I should loose too?

And yes if you want to and and you stay motivated, you'll get to 9 stone. But don't look at it like 38lbs focus on the 24lbs for now to be a healthy BMI, can worry about the rest later. I lost 50lbs altogether but thought of it more, number of lbs to healthy BMI (was around 2 stone), then took each extra half stone at a time after that.

TBH once I was a healthy BMI it was easy in some ways, I was used to the new WOE, the exercise and I had the benefit of looking good. The first bit of a diet sucks as you don't look good yet you need to eat and exercise like a thin person.

no - i dont think she was being mean. She has food issues - she doesnt hide the fact - last year she lost a stone by eating nothing but fruit. Thats kind o what she does - or doesnt eat for days. She admitts this all.
Im going to do it - the healthy bmi bit anyway - the 9stone bit id like, but we shall see.

red ok she might be thin but she has bigger food issues than you. in 6 months time you'll be thin as well and she'll still have food issues.

I have found the bit from 9 10 (my target) to 8 11 (today) the easiest as I didn't really care if i lost it IYSWIM. at each point happy just to maintain but kept loosing, plus people commenting how good i look. i have been adding some extra calories, but am still loosing (probably because of triathlon training!)

And anyway. I do look good now :) just a bit rounder than I'd like!!
Mid June will be 3 months and hopefully ill almost have lost 2 stone by then....

forever - have sent you a fb request - in case you wonder who its from ;)

I'd be too red but I also didn't get any comments until I was in smaller clothes. I think the baggy falling down jeans made me look bigger so no one noticed. Either that or my dh's friend's fears are popular. He told dh that I looked like I'd lost loads of weight. Dh asked him why he hadn't told me when he'd seen me the day before and he said "I never tell a woman they've lost weight because they hear 'you used to be a fucking bloater!'"

I have spent the evening being very creative and getting my Nigella on. I went through the cupboards and found some low GI stuff - oats, agava nectar, dried fruits, nuts - weighed various amounts of each and whacked them in a bowl, melted a teeny bit of butter and voila! low GI granola bars that are 84 calories each. These will be my new need-energy-coz-I-went-to-far-on-my-bike treats.

1555 cals today, according to MFP. 355 over what I should be eating. Haven't managed any exercise today either. And I have been religious about logging everything, coffees, teas, all snacks etc. Not a great day but not terrible.

Gym tomorrow, will burn 600 cals on treadmill, so that should redress balance a bit.