Age: 42
Height: 5' 2"
Start Weight: 12st 8lb
Current Weight: 8st 12lb
Goal Weight: 8st 12lb
Weight Lost: 3st 10lb
Working to Rate of Loss: 2lb per week
Weight Loss History
I’ve tried calorie counting before but the only formal “plan”
I’ve followed is the F Plan. You certainly don’t feel hungry on
it but I sincerely hope never to see another bowl of Fibre
Filler again. Did have a book once which recommended 3 days of
eating cheese and raisins!
Have you lost weight before
and regained the weight?
Yes twice. I regained weight after using the F Plan
successfully. That was just a gradual creeping up. The second
time was after calorie counting. I’d begun to put the weight
back on but was then posted to Baghdad where I spent 9 months
eating American food (fat, sugar and more fat!) and then sitting
around in the evenings drinking gin – well you couldn’t exactly
pop down to the cinema! It was said I had more gin and tonic
than anyone else in Iraq! I then compounded it by spending my 6
weeks R&R leave when I came back to the UK drinking more gin,
claiming I needed to de-stress. I ended up in August at my
heaviest ever.
How being overweight has affected you…
I’m a fairly confident person so I was never unduly bothered
about being fat from a social point of view. I’ve never liked
shopping anyway and if Marks and Spencer don’t sell it I don’t
buy it so didn’t feel particularly limited.
My blood pressure was going up in the year before August
which I was putting down to stress but while that may have been
a part, I’m sure a good bit of it must have been down to my
weight and my lack of exercise.
Conversely, while I never noticed a “lack of attention” while
fat, I’ve noticed a lot more attention now I’ve lost a fair bit!
Motivation to Lose Weight
I think I’m like a lot of people, there just comes a moment
when you think “enough is enough”. Mine was when a friend sent
me some photos of me on a business trip to America (the before
picture above – and that isn’t the worst one, I threw those
away!). And I wasn’t even at my fattest then. Also I was
bursting out of size 16 clothes and while for a while I
justified that by saying well the average UK woman is a 14 now,
there was no way I was buying a size 18 at my height.
Discovering Weight Loss Resources
I came across the site while looking for a calorie counter. I
already had a diet programme for my Pocket PC which has a
similar food and exercise diary so I thought I would probably
use WLR mainly for the UK food database. But I soon realised it
was much more than that. I still use the Pocket PC programme for
entering stuff when I’m out and about. Not that I’m obsessed but
not only do I complete my food and exercise diaries on WLR but
it is all entered on my Ipaq too – doing everything twice! (Can
I have extra calories for that please?)
How Weight Loss Resources Helps
The Food and Exercise diaries are obviously the key part and
they are brilliant. I’ve counted calories for years and can
quote a fair few back at you but this is the first time I’ve
seen a real numerical link between food and exercise. Of course,
I’ve always known that exercising is good for you and that if
you exercise you can eat more. But I’ve never seen the numbers
stacked up next to the food before so that you can see that
getting the tube to work instead of walking is the loss of a
whole potential gin and tonic (seems to be a gin theme creeping
in here!).
I’ve also got a clearer idea of what I might have been doing
wrong when I’ve put the weight back on before. When I get to my
maintenance weight, I will be allowed between 1650 and 1900
calories (without exercise) since I think I’m somewhere between
moderately sedentary and moderately active. Until I saw the
number on this site I hadn’t really grasped that short people
can’t eat as much as normal height people!
The recipes are great – wish there were more of them
actually. I usually look up ideas for Sunday lunch elsewhere,
die of shock at the calories and come back to the site to see
how to do something just as tasty with just a bit of adaptation.
The Best of Weight Loss Resources
I use the food and exercise diaries every day and the food
planner for when I’m trying to be more adventurous with my
cooking at weekends.
I didn’t think I would use the Message Boards but I’ve found
them to be really great and everyone so supportive. There is a
limit to the number of conversations you can have with regular
friends and family about the 48 cals in a walnut but it’s great
to have a group of people around with similar interests who
understand and to share what you are going through with others
in the same situation.
I’ve used chat from time to time and it’s fun. But does tend
to lead to an outbreak of g&ts in my case!
Rachael's Weight Loss Tips
Write everything down. Even (or especially) on bad/splurge
days. It’s only if you write things down that you know what you
are doing. I’m not saying don’t have the Peking Duck. I am
saying, at least know what having the Peking Duck means.
Try not to obsess too much. I know I do and I’m trying to
relax! I can get ridiculously over anxious about not going to
the gym or having a chocolate. Life is too short!
Don’t worry about the odd 100 or 200 cals. This whole process
is at least in part an art rather than a science and it’s not
100% accurate anyway so it isn’t worth ruining your evening over
a Jaffa Cake.
Having lost the weight twice before and put it back on and
now getting close to my goal, I’m getting quite anxious about
maintenance and putting it back on again. It’s great to know
that the site and the people will be here to help with that. I
really think I might manage it this time!
|
