Anyone looking to lose 100lbs plus... - Part 4

[NoTractorsAtTheTable]

Hello, welcome to the fourth instalment of the ‘Anyone looking to lose 100lbs plus …’ thread

If you want to read them (but by no means feel obliged!), the previous threads are here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

We’re a very friendly, supportive group, and I think we’re all seeing some real changes in ourselves and our attitudes to food. It’s a long old road, but it helps to chat along the way 

Collectively, we’ve lost 869 lbs since the start of the first thread, which is pretty amazing! 

We tend to weigh in on Fridays or Saturdays, but feel free to join in at any time, with whatever weight loss method you think works best for you. Some of us have lost more than others, but we're all in this together, so if you're losing, gaining or staying the same, it's nice to have some inspiration to keep going.

We’re always welcoming to newcomers, but as with the previous thread(s), I’ll add one caveat - we’re all here because we are trying to lose a LOT of weight. If you’re looking to lose the last half stone, or even two or three stone, this might not be the thread for you. Good luck with your goals, but you may find more support with in threads with people who have similar goals to you.

Good luck finding the keys Post. I keep my spare in the cutlery drawer. My friend found her lost set in a shopping bag in her daughter's wardrobe. (They'd bought clothes next size up so just popped bag in wardrobe, keys fell in by accident)

Bear thanks. Sneaky weigh in mid week this morning shows that may not be the case this week. Now being uber strict with logging drinks too - usually don't bother.

Had a coil put in yesterday. Hopefully it doesn't mess me up.

I keep meaning to answer some questions that were asked further up. I've been horribly bunged up with cold these last two weeks, it never seems to go away!

I think I just need to somehow get rid of my sugar cravings as that is where I fall down all the time. My meals and lovely, well balanced with plenty of veg, protein and a bit of carbs but my snacking is awful.

Its hard as I've never lost easily, every half pound seems to be a struggle and its is dispiriting.

My DM and DSis are both on a low carb diet (below 130g a day) - at the recommendation of both of their doctors. My DSis in particular has lost 6kg in 3 weeks and is loving the energy. However I don't know if I could give up carbs as I love a nice jacket potato or rice.

Thanks for keeping me sane on this thread - you are all doing so well and its reassuring to see that other people are in the same situation.

I went back for another blood test yesterday to see about my thyroid again so maybe it will be another increase in meds. I also came off the Pill two weeks ago so wondering if my body is just a bit messed up with hormones.

I'm struggling with carbs at the moment... All of a sudden I seem to be eating loads of them. I think it's cause I got a soya free loaf after not eating bread for a while. I think I need to refrain from bread. It's too easy to have loads of it with butter and marmalade and frankly that's quite a frightening number of calories for something which takes two minutes to eat.

I feel the same - I couldn't give up carbs long-term, and I'm trying hard to only make changes I think I can sustain. But I have more or less given up carbs at lunchtime, by having soup or salad or eggs. Breakfast is porridge, supper still has pasta or rice or potato. So bread is pretty rare these days - as you say, it only leads to butter, and jam, and whoops how many slices was that?!!! I do find making hot buttered toast for the DC quite a challenge - they are lucky they don't get it with a massive jealous bite taken out

Hang in there Moonlight it sounds like your body's had a lot to deal with lately.

I am coveting your wonky veg box honey - it’s very much a winter root feast though, which are cheap at the moment anyway, so can see why you might think it is not the best value for money...but a whole heap of tasty meals will come from it!

Post hope you found the keys! I’d suggest the kitchen/dining room table/chair (hedging all bets there!)

On the low carb front - I did like it, but my true love is pasta, so I did miss that. I also struggled getting enough fibre in my diet, with the associated (and painful!) consequences! (TMI, sorry...). However, I have cut them by quite a bit, as you have done B1rd.

KOKO all, we’re on the downhill to the weekend now

To whomever suggested apple and peanut butter - omg it's a good idea! Yum! Hit the sweet spot and the decadent spot, and took a while to eat as I spread it on delicately. 😂

B1rd my husband is really pushing his luck on a weekend. We always used to have "Saturday breakfast" of bacon and egg sandwich made with hot toast, lurpak and plenty of ketchup, runny egg, the works. It's 400 calories though, and I could easily eat two or three rounds of it! And now I can't have lurpak, or egg, or most ready made loaves, so now I can't have them. DH still eats them and I am always so tempted to rip it from his hands and throw it. He doesn't even appreciate a good egg. He'd eat it with a fully cooked yolk, the absolute heathen.

Tractors I feel I'll be googling various winter veg soup recipes this weekend! Which is fine, soup is a great low cal lunch, after all.

If anyone has any suggestions for swede or white cabbage, let me know! I can think of:

Coleslaw (+ variants e.g. Waldorf salad)
Swede and potato pie (maybe with mince? Like a pasty in a pie dish.)
Swede as a potato substitute - mash, chips?

Yep, swedes are great as replacement for potatoes - I use them interchangeably. Maybe try it in a saag aloo type dish for a bit of warmth?

It sounds odd, but I like roasting cabbage - especially when it goes all brown around the edges! I use this link quite a lot - some recipes are...ahem...less healthy...than others! Guardian back to basics

Excellent link Tractors. I can really roast chunks of white cabbage?! It sounds so wrong!

It sounds so wrong, but it's good! It goes like this Roasted cabbage

It can be quite bitter (which I really like), but you can tweak it to how you like it.

What do you serve it with?

Anything really - meals can be a bit haphazard around here! I like it with chilli flakes, and sesame seeds so generally some form of protein - fish or chicken etc., and some other roasted veg. It takes a while to roast, so it's easy to chuck some peppers or anything else you have to hand in the roasting tray about halfway through. I'm very much a make it up as I go along while cooking, and then get more precise when I'm dishing it up so I can log it

Hi all, had a crazy couple of days with the kids so not been around much.

I’ve really uped my exercises this week (or tried to between the craziness) and been trying hard to keep within calories. The idea being that I have some kind of cushion for holiday and then not far off track when I get home.

Loving the ideas for vegetables recipes, I’ve really got to start trying some of them.

Oh, I ran up the stairs yesterday and wasn’t too winded! 😄 Felt like superman! Not that I think I could manage it two times in a row!

Last night I was going to make prawn risotto, but partner decided he desperately wanted a burrito takeaway, so instead of wrecking his night I got a 'naked' burrito which is basically just brown rice in a bowl with chicken and veg - so that was a good choice, right? Right? I looked on their website and the calories would have come to about the same as a normal dinner, but I'm just really dubious because I didn't make it myself I guess!

Loving the ideas for the veg!

Sounds like it Bear. I know what you mean though... When I ate out it felt naughty even though it was only chicken and rice!

Hi everyone, great to hear of your respective successes/struggles. I've not posted for a while, partly because I have been feeling a bit fed up with the whole weight loss thing.
I started on 2nd Jan at an all time high of 16 stone 12, and have since lost about 1 stone 3 , bringing me down to 15 stone 9. However, I lost most of that weight in the first six weeks of the year, and have been pretty much plateauing since then. I've been religiously logging everything i eat on MFP, and have noticed my average calorie count creeping up from around 1600/1700 to around 2000, so probably too much to lose significant amounts of weight. Though surely, even if I stuck to 2000 cals a day then within say 6 months/ a year I would very slowly lose, as to maintain 16 stone 12 I'd need a lot more calories than to maintain my goal weight of 11 stone.

Anyway, I have also come to realise very starkly how much alcohol hinders my progress. It's not just the calories contained in the booze itself (though not insignificant), but the loosening of inhibitions which results in me scouring the house like a plague of locusts trying to track down anything remotely sweet. ADded to which, the inevitable hangover hunger, which I was struggling with yesterday, ended up with me scoffing a bag of cadbury's mini eggs, a pain au raisin, a white bread roll (thickly buttered) and loads of nuts, all on top of three perfectly healthy meals. So basically one night on the piss ends up in two days effectively wiped out of the week in terms of weight loss.

I know I have a bit of a drink problem in that I can't stop at one. On Monday night, for example, when I'd vowed to only have one glass of wine i ended up drinking the whole fecking' bottle and as a result eating badly for two days. So my new resolution is to go cold turkey for the next four weeks. I'm going to Spain with some girlfriends at tne end of April and would love to have lost another 10lbs by then. Which I know is more than possible partiucarly if I crack the habitual boozing.

Anyway, sorry about this self indulgent ramble, but writing stuff down certainly helps clarify things!
And if anyone has any helpful advice for cutting out booze then do let me know. I've just bought a book which has come highly recommended called Mindful Drinking by Rosamund Dean. Will let you know what I think!

can i ask if anyone here has considered bariatric surgery pls?

I’ve considered it and very briefly looked into but from the Little I read it wasn’t for me as I’d be scared of something going wrong

Well done on the "naked burrito" choice Little Bear - I've done similar when having a naked burger at a restaurant, so it really was just grilled chicken and salad, but somehow felt like I was getting away with something!

Nobeach writing stuff down and spotting patterns sound like brilliant ways of increasing your sense of control over drinking, I hope the book is useful too. Drink is not my particular downfall but I recognise the pattern very well (for me it's just a sugar trigger rather than alcohol). The folks on this thread have massively helped me to practice drawing a line and carrying on, without the spiral of feeling bad and then eating more.

Basseting I watched a few episodes of "my 600lb life" and that cured me of any vague wonderings about bariatric surgery to be honest! Definitely not for me, but everyone's different and has their own circumstances and challenges. I am definitely a person who occasionally stupidly avoids consulting a health professional unless absolutely necessary though. I have a feeling if you do a search, there is a thread on here by someone who has had the surgery, which would give you better info.

I've briefly considered it (bariatric surgery) though hilariously was told by my GP that I wasn't fat enough. But in the end I was put off by the side effects of the surgery, such as never being able to eat normal size portions of food, (apparently many people can only eat egg-sized portions of food at any one time) dealing with reflux and vomiting and stomach cramps. Anyway, it's not the "cure" we're all looking for, I saw a headline on one of the women's weekly mags regarding Fern Britten and her "weight gain hell". And she has had much publicised bariatric surgery, in fact she came in for a lot of stick when she initially attributed her weight loss to healthy eating and exercise and it turned out she'd had surgery, not that it's anyone's business how she achieved her weight loss! But my point is that you can still gain weight again if you don't learn to modify your eating and accept that you can never ever go back to your bad old ways because that was what made you pile on the weight in the first place. Having struggled with my weight since the age of about 13, (when I thought I was fat, but was only 7 and a half stone), I now realise at the ancient age of 52 that weight loss is not a journey with a final destination when you can relax and let your hair down, but an ongoing, never ending trek, that is often arduous, plodding and bloody hard work, but you can never give up. Christ I make it sound like Scott of the Antartic's expedition, but you get my drift!!

Yeah I agree that for me having that surgery wouldn’t be enough to stop me over eating/pushing the boundaries with how much to eat and then I’d end up with complications from it.

Also the thought of going to the doctor and facing up about my weight

No way to the bariatric surgery question. I know I'm likely to end up with loose skin so I want to minimise that by losing weight at a sensible speed and doing toning exercises. Bariatric surgery seems to have the effect of popping a balloon in a lot of cases. You go down quickly but your body struggles to adjust. The post surgery lifestyle change scares me too - as mentioned above. No thank you. Not for me.

Yep, I agree with you all - bariatric surgery is not for me, because it won't solve anything. The physical ability to fill my stomach is only a very small part of my weight - the underlying reasons 'why' need far more work, and having surgery wouldn't 'cure' anything. For me.

I did read a thread a while back (possibly the one Nobeachbody read) where the post-op posters had issues with their digestive systems, malabsorption etc etc. Not a silver bullet by any means.

Will be back later!

Hi no you have done well to lose that much. There is a website that gives you an idea of your tdee. I did mine sedentary at about 16stone and it came up with 1800 calories although I am short too. May be worth a try to give you an idea.
I did ok the last couple of days but has a splurge this evening.

Found the keys thanks, in the garden ! I knew Surgery wasn’t for me, it was, still is and always will be about where my head is at.

Goodness knows how as in theory I’ve eaten 1400 calories more than i’ve Used and AF was due yesterday and not here but I appear to have lost a pound, taking me to 7 stone off. Must be lugging sheds and breeze blocks around. My start date was Nov 2016. Skin holding up amazingly well considering I’m 48, though leaning forward and looking at my stomach is not the best idea ! There is some but so much less than I was expecting.

Loss this week 1lb
Total loss 98.25lb
To lose 11.75lb

NoBeach depending on your TDEE yes you will slowly lose on 2000 a day and if that feels more comfortable i’d go with it. Going cold turkey on alcohol if you can seems sensible .

Sorry I’m a bit out of synch with the thread at the moment.

Wow post, bit congratulations on the weight loss especially this week as every says it’s harder when you get closer to your goal.