Mutual support thread for those currently losing or working towards losing a lot of weight

[UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme]

This is a mutual support thread for anyone who wants (and needs) to lose a lot of weight, is mid way through losing a lot of weight, or is nearing the end of a big weight loss and wants to continue to support and be supported as maintenance approaches.

The previous thread has been massively helpful to regular posters, as we share both our losses and our plateau or gains, congratulate or console, and talk about what works for us while understanding that different things work for different people, and we are all different ages, all have different families/ households/ people to plan around, different commitments, different working lives and different health conditions which partly determine our approaches.

We are all on this journey together - this thread is for us to encourage one another, post updates, chat about what we're doing, how we're doing, share stories and thoughts and sometimes wander slightly off topic if we want, but everyone posting should be somewhere along the journey towards escaping high BMI obesity.

The previous thread was started by someone who no longer posts and initially asked how to lose 9 stone - it developed into a support thread for people with varying amounts left to lose but all of whom started out with at least 5 or 6 stone + / 30 or 35 kg + to lose, very roughly...

No links to selling sites or unsolicited "helpful" lectures please - mutual support from existing and new posters all actually living this big weight loss now, or just starting out, welcome!

Previous thread here:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/weight_loss_chat/3894410-i-need-to-lose-9st-help

I'll start - I've been losing weight since July 2020.

I started with a BMI of 41 at 119kg and now have a BMI of 29 at 82 kg.

My reason for losing weight is health - heart health mainly, though also avoiding diabetes and joint problems (family history of all those even in normal weight older family members). Obviously my goal is a healthy BMI and waist size, though I'm not wedded to an exact weight goal.

I do my own adapted version of intermittent fasting - I work long shifts so its essential whatever I do is very flexible. I generally fast for 18 hours out of 24 and eat one or two meals each day and don't usually snack. This is very flexible though - sometimes I fast for 20 hours but eat two meals, sometimes I only fast for 16 hours, sometimes I just eat one meal and nothing else that day.

I recently confessed on the old thread to sometimes eating two dinners though!

I'm 45 and I think possibly at the start of peri, which sometimes seems to be playing tricks on me, but despite multiple plateus and the odd gain things are generally going the right way overall!

Looking forward to hearing how everyone else is getting on.

Found you! @UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme - thanks for the new thread.
My summary since September 2020 is:
Starting weight - 113.5kg / BMI 42.7
Current weight - 89.6kg / BMI 33.7
Goal weight - 63kg / BMI 23
I've been following an intermittent fasting pattern of eating, eating one meal a day on fast days. I'm also calorie counting using MFP as I tend towards LARGE portions and underestimating my intake. I aim to exercise most days.
I'm 49 and my motivation is my health, being around longer for my family and not feeling miserable and self-conscious all the time. Benefits so far, include my knee and hip pain all but disappearing after being in constant pain, and really suffering going up and down the stairs. I also sleep better (I'm no longer woken up by hip pain) and have a lot more energy to run around with my 5 year old.
The lose 9+ stone thread has really kept me going through what is a long slow slog. There are some really inspirational stories there, and also lots of support and encouragement.
Looking forward to catching up with everyone here....

Thank you so much for the new thread.. love the summaries. Heights would be useful. Age 61 height 5ft 7. CW. 98.9. Kilo. BMI 34 ish. Goal weight 70 kilos.I was on the last thread for ages but kept getting stuck so a start date is hard, but I was 105.2 kilos at the beginning of January.
I am doing NoS, although I am also calorie counting and charting that in MFP. I get so much from this thread, it really has helped me to finally get on track.

Can I join? I am currently just over 90kg, and at 5'3 that gives me a BMI of 35. I need to lose 26kg (4 stone) to be a healthy weight, which seems impossible! But yesterday I calculated that even if I lost 10kg I would still be obese!

I am really fed up of just not feeling comfortable in my body, and I feel disgusting, with what I eat. I also have far too much salt in my diet - it's really disgusting.

I'm not following a specific diet at the moment, but last Wednesday I started following the programme from Overcoming Binge Eating. It's not a weightloss programme, but it is one that will hopefully help me get control of my eating, and I think that's something that will help. I might not particularly lose a lot of weight, but I'll see how I go.

I'm unable to exercise at the moment, as I was hit quite hard with COVID at the beginning of the year and am still suffering quite badly. I'm usually quite active but for now (and probably the next few months) it'll have to be just diet.

Hi everyone, I’d love to join.

I’m 38, 5ft7. Highest weight 265lbs (120kg, BMI 42 I think).
Currently: 254lbs (115kg), BMI a smidge under 40 (so out of the morbidly obese category).
Goal: 168lbs (76kg).

I have a history of yo yo dieting. I’ve been part of OA fir 7 years but have moved away from it recently. They do help a lot of people but i feel it encouraged my black and white thinking, which lead to binging. I also want to feel empowered.

My motivation is to avoid serious health consequences, and have some niggling pains and aches that have scared me. My mental health has been awful, with PMDD. So want to help with that and to be around for my kids as long as possible.

I’m eating a mostly keto diet, which has worked for me before. I love exercise though struggle more than I did. I do DDP Yoga, walking, and gave just started doing Les Mills 30 minutes classes at home again - Bodypump, Bodycombat and Sh’bam, which is like Zumba.

Welcome @ScottishBeth and @Blerg

@Blerg; @ScottishBeth lovely to meet you. I hope you like it here, and find it helpful.

Thanks @Zebracat and @alphaechokiwi And also hi @Blerg

I am so impressed with how everyone has done before now. I've never been able to lose more than about a stone before.

I am doing well so far. I don't weigh myself till Wednesday, and I am not necessarily expecting a big weight loss (especially if my period doesn't come before then) but regardless I'm pleased. Almost everything I've eaten since I started on Wednesday has been planned, even if it's not low calorie. I feel like I've been in control, which is what's important. Also tomorrow my wife won't be home for lunch. Usually I'd get McDonald's, but I've decided I'll make a treat lunch for myself instead. It will be delicious (probably nicer than McDonald's), and even if it's not the healthiest it'll be a lot better!

One thing I need to think about over the next few weeks is how to manage my eating at work. I work in a large team and there is often loads of food around! Need to come up with some strategies to reduce my eating in those situations.

Hi everyone,

I'd love to join. I'm currently 10 weeks pregnant so my weightloss might be quite slow. However, my dietician has put me on a diet of 1,500 calories a day for the first two trimesters.

My current weight is 115.8kg and I'm only 5ft 2.

I don't have an overall target weight while I'm pregnant. However, the hope is that I can get down to at least 110kg. Ideally I'd be 100kg by the time I enter my third trimester and then not put on any weight during the last trimester.

I lost a lot of weight last year but I have put it all back on and more in the last 5 months. I'm hoping that I can at least try to get to the goals the dietician/consultant have requested and then continue with my weightloss after the baby is born.

Welcome ScottishBeth, Blerg and NetflixAddict and glad you found the new thread alphaechokiwi and Zebracat - thanks everyone for introducing yourselves!

Its lovely to have a mix of new names and regular posters!

ScottishBeth I'm glad your second post is so positive, I was a bit worried by the bit of self loathing in the first post but so glad you're feeling on the right track now. Starting with small, sustainable changes is definitely the way to go with more to lose,. and it sounds as though you know that! I've found its much easier to do this when feeling good about myself, as metaphorically beating myself up leads to defeatism and self sabotage.

Blerg that's a lot of exercise! You're right I think that learning to avoid over dramatic black and white thinking and the concept of being "good" or "naughty" (I hate those words used about eating) or thinking about food in terms of sucess or failure is massively important in terms of keeping going long term and not giving up just because a day or a week didn't go as we might have hoped. Feeling empowered and in control is so important!

NetflixAddict I'm glad you have professional advice and support as obviously weight loss in pregnancy is fairly special - congratulations on the pregnancy too btw!

Good luck everyone!

Hi @NetflixAddict

Congratulations on your pregnancy! Very exciting for you. Good luck with your plan. It sounds very sensible.
If you don't mind me asking, has the dietitian advised you how to eat just 1,500 calories a day? Obviously feel free to not answer if it's very personal. I just figured that a dietitian will have a very good idea of what is a healthy way to lose weight.

Thank you @UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme and @ScottishBeth.

@ScottishBeth My dietician and I came up with a 'realistic and easy' meal plan this morning. I'm not sure how healthy it actually is as it's meant to be an easy diet I can follow for a couple of weeks while I get used to eating at set meals again/reduced calories. They're quite bland meals due to currently suffering from morning sickness too. I'll paste the example menu for next week that we came up with this morning.

Breakfast - Bowl of cereal (dry if morning sickness is really bad)

Lunch-
soup and a slice of bread
salad with either 30g of grated cheese, a hard boiled egg or two slices of ham
2 slices of toast
Left over pasta

Dinner -
Chicken breast and veg
Salmon fillet, asparagus and new potatoes
Veggie lasagne
Veggie sausages, veg and sweet potato
Pasta and veg (no more than 30g of cheese in top)
Biege oven portion e.g. chicken Kiev, quorn nuggets etc and veg
Chicken korma curry and wholemeal rice
Lean grilled burger with a slice of cheese on top and salad side

Permissable Desserts : Sugar free jelly, fruit salad (no more than twice a week), fat free yoghurt

Snacks- a portion of fruit, nakd bar, celery, cucumber and/or carrot sticks, handful of nuts.

Like I said it's not very inspiring but should hopefully make the first couple of weeks relatively easy. Another thing the dietician focused on was portion sizes and being aware of calories so I've got my kitchen scales out and will be measuring all I eat to ensure I stick to the portion sizes to track the calories.

Hi all, I need to lose around 7 stone (ideally more but 7 will do!)
I'm 34, 5'5 and started at 17 stone. I've lost 8lbs over the last 6 weeks, but it has been a struggle. I was very unwell back in 2018, hospitalised for a month and have been on near constant steroids since. I gained 4 stone over the last 2 and a half years, partly due to the steroids and partly because I lost all ability to be active. I thought once I was weaned off the steroids the weight would come off naturally, but it's actually been very hard to shift which leaves me really dejected. I religiously weight and measure every calorie I eat, never going above 1200 but I still can't exercise much other than a bit of gentle yoga, so I'm not burning anything off. My health is slowly improving, and I'm due to have pulmonary rehab which will hopefully get me back to a better level of fitness (I can't even walk up the stairs without stopping for a minute currently).

Welcome @KentMum2008 and @NetflixAddict too.
I'm sorry I had a long response typed and I lost it as I tried to post. I hope you all find some support on this thread.

Thanks @UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme Yeah, I know I was a bit negative the first post. Honestly at times I have felt quite ashamed of how I've eaten. But this last few days I think people would think almost everything I've eaten was perfectly reasonable. How are you getting on? I'm so impressed with how much weight you've lost so far, especially working shifts - I know what that's like!

@NetflixAddict that looks very sensible. Glad you have support in this!

KentMum2008 welcome to the thread! The respiratory issues sound really difficult, and combined with steroid related weight gain that's quite a challenge! You've done really well to lose 8lb in 6 weeks and hopefully can keep on going - actually thats a really good rate of weight loss eby anyone's standards, not just with health problems making it harder! When you've done your pulmonary rehabilitation hopefully things will get a bit easier, and maybe you'll be able to go for short walks and build slowly to longer ones.

The only exercise I do is walking - I walk quite a lot (I make sure I do at least a couple of 5-9 hilly mile walks each week and at least 2 or 3 miles most of the other days, depending on shifts and family commitments and who wants to come with me - I walk further when I go alone generally, but also feel compelled to encourage my husband and kids to walk). I think it helps me psychologically more than in terms of burning calories, but it certainly does burn calories no matter how much "serious gym bunnies" make disparaging comments and try to insist that you need to run instead - an 82kg person walking at 3 miles per hour for two hours burns about 600 calories - at 16.5 stone/ 104 kg its over 700 calories burned which certainly beats not walking for those two hours!
caloriesburnedhq.com/calories-burned-walking/

ScottishBeth glad you're feeling better about your eating atm! Do you work shifts too?

I secretly rather like shift work as I crave variety, and I work in a supported living facility so its completely different depending which shift you work - and we all do all the shifts, from earlies to day shifts to lates to the 20 hour late plus on call sleep-in plus early everyone does once per week.

I also rather enjoy mixing up intermittent fasting around shifts - if I'm doing a day shift I fast all day and just eat dinner, which is hard to do at home as usually I eat lunch with DH and often the kids too (we're in Germany and even when the kids are in school they're home by 1pm, and I usually break my fast with lunch). As I admitted on the old thread, my main problem is being expected to eat with the residents at work at dinner time - cooking dinner together is a major feature of their day - and then my teens saving me dinner at home and wanting me to eat it as they're proud of having cooked, so sometimes I end up eating two dinners so as not to upset either household!

I'm actually finding weightloss fairly easy because I started at a time my life became a lot easier - I was studying for what is effectively a learning disabilities nursing qualification from 2017-2020, and doing it in my second language with 3 kids at home and only neighbors and DH supporting with children (mainly the youngest who was 6 when I started and is dyslexic) in a notoriously traditional region with no paid for childcare available after 4pm, was the hardest thing I've ever done. I qualified in July and immediately decided to address my weight, and with the psychophysical "weight" of my course lifted (it was a rather old fashioned course and drove me nuts on various levels as well as the language issue) I've had massive motivation for my next "project".

I know losing weight is incredibly hard and complex - I was obese to morbidly obese for ten years and tried and failed to lose weight half heartedly (joined gyms, followed diets) multiple times! For me weight and stress seem to be intrinsically linked and when I'm not stressed and life feels easy losing weight is easy, but my main battle this time will be not to put it back on next time I hit a stressful time!

Zebracat sorry, you pointed out that heights would be useful and of course you're right, its massively different to be whatever weight at 4 ft 11 than 5 ft 11!
I'm 5 ft 6, so Mrs Average height wise I think!

@ScottishBeth - don't worry, it seems normal for women to feel shame and disgust around their weigh and what they eat. I suppose it's important to challenge that tendancy in ourselves. One look at the S&B plus size thread shows that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.
Something in your post chimed with me, I think it was about eating to plan and I wondered if you have ever come across Gillian Riley's book Eating Less or her online course? You might find it helpful.
@Blerg 7 years of OA....wow! I tried it once and I really couldn't click with either defining the concept of abstinence when it comes to food, or checking in with a sponsor....But the people were lovely and very supportive. Good luck with Keto. There's often a low carb bootcamp on the go on Mumsnet. I lurked there when I tried keto, and although it wasn't for me, they are a very friendly well informed supportive bunch.
@KentMum2008 I can empathize with you. I started losing weight in September 2020 after a full year of serious health issues, my BMI was just touching 43, and taking various meds which impact my hormones and metabolism. It felt overwhelming. I think you've done amazingly well so far. I know it can feel really difficult at the beginning and it looks like a long road to travel, but you will get there...
@NetflixAddict congratulations on your pregnancy and really well done for taking steps to tackle your weight. You won't regret it when you are racing around after a toddler
Waving at @Zebracat and @UntilYourNextHairBrainedScheme .... wishing you all a good week

Can I join please. I’m 5”1 and currently 11st 2. I was 14 6 and lost just over 3 stone but now I’m stuck. I have another 2stone to be a healthy weight and 3 to be where I would like to be but I can’t stop eating biscuits even when I’m not hungry. Every day I start again which lasts until mid morning. I just seem to have lost all motivation though the aching joints etc should be enough. Can anyone suggest anything to help me get over this mental block?

@Stuckanddesperate. You’ve done so well. Be proud. I think that we all have weights we get to where our body says this is good, let’s sit here for a bit.unfortunately mine is 16.5 stone!
Ive(just) got below that and I think NoS really helped me. We are retired and my Dh makes constant cups of tea and we always had a little something with them. Somehow knowing I could have sweet things, seconds and snacks at the weekend has enabled me to break the habit.

@Stuckanddesperate - you really have done so well to get this far. And it's not a race. If it's time to take a break for a while and just maintain, do that..

Also, I read somewhere recently that losing weight required discipline not motivation. I thought that was an interesting view....you might find it helpful.
But mostly, don't beat yourself up, you've got this far, you can get the rest of the way when you are ready to.
@Zebracat I'm 1.63m / 5ft 4in... A bit of a shortie

Thanks @Zebracat and @alphaechokiwi really appreciate the support. I’m just feeling that the progress I’ve made could quickly disappear as it is much easier to put in weight than lose it. I think the comment about discipline is helpful I think deep down I feel i should be able to do it without too much “pain” and maybe accepting that it is going to be hard is the way to go.

Hi to all- I have been following the last thread. Posted once and then lost focus. Started again in feb really re-reading from the beginning of the thread and had a great week over half term (I’m a teacher so had the week off, lower stress and more time to focus).

Started at 16st 10, 5’5” and got to 16st 0, but have been fluctuating between 16st 1-2lbs for a couple of weeks now. Really want to get into the next stone bracket but feeling a bit stuck.

Reading previous posters successes on the previous thread made me feel really positive as realised I didn’t need to have 100% perfection and then give up completely when I “failed”. My aim is to get back on tracking my calories and following IF. If I don’t track my calories I have a tendency to gorge on too much during my non-fasting hours.

What are peoples views on weigh ins? I’ve been weighing every day to try and avoid “losing control” as I have in the past. I’ve been known to regain all the weight lost in a week of not thinking about my eating. So I have been committing to weighing every day, but I wonder if it is too much.

Some of the stories here are so inspiring. I need to start to believe it can be true for me too. My biggest thing is making sure I make time to prioritise planning food and exercise. My downfall is getting too busy and stressed and then binging.

Anyway, enough about me. But glad I’ve got the courage to post as I’m generally quite shy, and, when it comes to weight loss, very private. Really keen to have the support of other who “get it” though.