Health & Fitness
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
I am tired of being fat.
I weigh 170lbs. I am 5'2 and I feel like an embarrassment. I work out. Zumba twice a week and I run on a daily basis. I go to Titus, a personal fitness center. I have tried Body by Vi, yet I can't stay motivated...AT ALL! I weighed 125lbs about 2 1/2 years ago. I am eating right and I actually try to lose weight! My fiance' is very honest with me. Yes he tells me I am beautiful but he will tell me that I should lose weight. He knows I try and try and then give up. So in part, I feel like he has given up. I need advice. Any good workouts? Any good, healthy meals? We are moving to a larger city nearby to start our lives together. I just need help. I don't want to start our life together feeling and looking like a blob. I am embarrassed myself. I feel like I humiliate my fiance' in public even though he tells me I am not. What do I do?
Britt1893 is now FutureHutto!
Re: I am tired of being fat.
Are you food logging?
My husband always says how healthfully he eats, until I made him food log a couple days and he realized he was eating WAAAAAAAAAAAYYY over what he should be.. Then he immediately dropped ten pounds without any exercise just by fixing that.
It's a HUGE factor. We all think we eat well, but that still doesn't mean we eat proper AMOUNTS.
I can't remember the last time I commented on the boards, but your post really spoke to me.
On my quest to lose weight, I had the same motivational problems. My husband (BF at the time) decided to lose weight together. He didn't really have any to lose, but we made a plan to run and workout together, even if it meant dragging the other person to the gym. Now we run a 1/2 marathon together every year. It keeps us training almost year round and we have an end goal to keep us focused.
As for the day to day training, we both use myfitnesspal on our phones to track our food intake. We cook practically all our meals and when we do eat out, we aim for something healthy. We like to eat meals with tons of veggies and proteins.
All in all, I definitely recommend signing up for a 5k or activity that you and your fiance can do together. Best of luck!
I am sorry you are having self esteem issues. It may be helpful to talk to a professional about why you gained the weight.
As for losing the weight, start tracking your intake. You may be surprised at how much you are actually consuming every day. I lost about 60 lbs 2 years ago by tracking my food on Sparkpeople.com. I lost 20 of it before ever exercising. I found that I was drinking more than 800 calories a day.
I recommend you start a Spark account (it is free) and read up. You will learn a lot and tracking food can really help you get a handle on what you are eating. Good luck.
If you haven't had one, I recommend a thorough exam with your physician including bloodwork. There are a number of health problems that could contribute to weight gain or an inability to lose weight.
I'd always been slim, even underweight. Out of nowhere I began gaining and have gone from a size 0/2 to a 16 in three years (this is despite eating lightly, as I continue to struggle with the anorexia that put me in the hospital and long-term treatment in college). I've been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a relatively common disorder in women that involves insulin levels. Unexplained weight gain and extreme difficulty losing weight are some of the symptoms.
A consultation with a dietician could be helpful, too, whether or not you have a condition exacerbating your weight. He or she can assess what you're eating and help you find ways to increase intake of fruits & veggies, lower sugar and sodium intake, deal with cravings healthfully, etc. Make sure to see a "dietician", RD, or LD rather than a "nutritionist," because anyone can call themselves the latter while the former requires specific education and state licensing. Your local hospital probably has several on staff, and if your physician refers you for weight management or cholesterol or blood pressure management (should you have those issues that often coincide with being overweight), your insurance may cover the expense.
I share many of the emotions/thoughts you have and welcome you to PM me if you'd like some extra support. Best wishes!
I also understand how you feel, and at 5'6" and 227 lbs I finally made the changes I needed to. It didn't hurt that my husband also made some badly needed changes along with me. Together, we started eating better and running and working out. To make a long story short, he is down 100 lbs and I am down 79. We ran what was the first half marathon for both of us, together a few weeks ago and have plans for more. It's a lifestyle change that needs to be made rather than a diet, so think of it that way and choose something small to start with, then build from there.
Don't feel down on yourself, as you are definitely not alone! Good luck.
1200 calories a day is bare minimum if you are just laying around in bed all day. You need to probably up your amount of calories. I'd calculate your BMR and calories based on your BMR and not use the default on spark people.
You walk around and burn calories in a lot of ways including working out. Your body is getting 1200 calories minus the calories you burn. It is probably holding onto what it has because it thinks it is starving.
You do not automatically have to reduce a drastic amount of calories to lose weight. In fact, that may be hurting you!
Just wanted to say good luck
You already got a lot of good advice.
Also make sure you're eating foods that are good for you!
A little more information on PCOS for you... It's named a "syndrome," because it is characterized by a collection of symptoms that can present in each patient differently. Some of the more common symptoms besides the weight gain or difficulty losing weight include: weight accumulation around the mid-section, acne, abnormal facial or body hair growth, irregular or absent menstrual periods, infertility, thinning hair (on the head), elevated blood pressure, and multiple ovarian cysts (hence the syndrome's name, even though not 100% of patients exhibit this symptom). It's related to the body developing insulin resistance, which throws off hormone levels. Increased levels of androgens ("male" hormones, which even females have in much lower concentrations) are responsible for many of the symptoms.
Unfortunately, according to my doctor, many doctors do not have adequate knowledge of this condition that affects about 1 in 15 women. If you read up and suspect this may be an appropriate diagnosis for you, I'd see an ob/gyn and then possibly request a referral to an endocrinologist depending on the results of insulin and blood glucose testing rather than relying on a primary care doc. The most common treatments are standard contraceptives (to regulate the menstrual cycle) and the drug metformin (which helps the body use insulin more effectively). In my research, I've come to the opinion that the contraceptive route just "masks" the symptoms rather than resolves them and have actually switched doctors to find someone who's approach is in alignment.
Best wishes!
Read the book "Eat this and live" by Don Colbert. There is information in there about food and the food industry that I never knew about. It is changing they way I make food choices. It is not a big book, I bought it used at amazon! Even though I continue to struggle as well, I will tell you don't give up!
I know I'm very late coming in on this post, but I stumbled across it and would like to add a bit. First of all, good luck on your journey. I know that it is an incredibly difficult one, but well worth it.
In addition to checking with your doctor about PCOS and also enlisting your fiance as a healthy lifestyle/workout buddy (this has made a HUGE difference in all aspects of my relationship), I would also highly suggest these four changes:
1. Stop drinking anything other than water (LOTS of water) and the occasional glass of lowfat or fat free milk. This goes for soda, diet soda, fruit juice, "Mio" or other additives, etc, etc. The calories are important, but they're not the only important thing--the "zero calorie" drinks can be just as harmful if not more so. While there is a world of dissent on using "100% fruit juice" as fruit, I strongly believe that people shouldn't drink it--it's simply straight sugar, without the fiber and other micronutrients that make fruit so good for us. I like to say that the sugar is nature's way of "tricking" us into eating our fruit--so that we get everything else out of it.
2. Eliminate 95% of all refined grains and flour. This is very hard to stick to at first (we're talking white rice, tortillas, cakes/cupcakes, crackers, cookies, etc, etc... almost 100% of everything you find in a box), but if you switch your white rice to brown and your "plain" bread and pasta for 100% whole wheat, while eliminating cheez its, goldfish, oreos, etc, etc. it makes a huge difference in how your body runs.
3. Swear off high fructose corn syrup. This goes hand-in-hand with the above, because they're often found in the same foods, but you'd be shocked at how many sneaky ways that this man-made, cheap "sugar substitute" gets stuffed in our mouths--it's one of the primary ingredients in Campbell's tomato soup and is even found in lots of 100% whole wheat products--read your labels!
4. If it has trans-fats in it, don't eat it. Lots of products advertise now as "0% trans-fat", because it's such a popular food "enemy" on the market. However, FDA regulations stipulate that foods can advertise that way if there is less than .5 grams of the stuff a serving--so it's still there (almost all the time... food companies are very fond of it!), hiding in the ingredients list under the names of "hydrogenated" or "partially hydrogenated" corn/soybean/canola/etc oil. .5 grams is really still way too much, and honestly, most serving sizes are significantly smaller than the average American's portion size, so we end up eating even more than that anyway.
I promise, if you do these things, you will notice a huge difference in your body's appearence and the way you feel--your energy will be higher, skin clearer, nails and hair stronger and shinier... even if you don't lose weight immediately due to a medical condition, you will make yourself so much healthier, so quickly.
Good luck!
I just wanted to say good luck in your journey, The pointers here from everyone are wonderful and I will be taking these suggestions and using them myself.
Good Luck