Hi andyblain,

Great that you started your weightloss journey. Welcome to the forum!

What helped me, is to think in small steps and not in huge leaps. Take it a day at a time and start with small changes. Try to cut out unnecessary calories such as for instance drinking pop. Try and introduce more vegetables to your diet as they fill you up without having too many calories.

If you like introduce a bit of exercise to your daily routine. Every step you walk will help you to achieve better health and fitness.

I started over a year ago and I have reached my goal weight a couple of months back. I am now in maintenance and I have no problems maintaining my weight.

I can assure you every small change in your diet towards a healthier one will help you to achieve your goal.

For example, I stopped drinking pop. I am now a water and tea total. This cut out tons of unnecessary calories from my diet. I also made conscious decisions about my food intake. I tried to avoid as much as possible processed food. I started to cook more from scratch. No more ready made pizzas… There is a saying “what your great great grandmother would not recognize as being food – avoid it”.

A year ago, I was a couch potato who tried to figure out how to walk her dogs without having to walk!

I started with walking. Then I walked longer. Then I walked faster. Then I walked longer and faster. Then I downloaded the free app C25K onto my phone which eased me into running 5km, albeit slowly. From there I progressed to running 10 km. Now after a couple of months doing this I have participated in races including half marathons. The goal for next year, when I will be turning 50, is to run a full marathon.

The reason why am writing all this is to encourage you not to lose faith. Do not worry too much about what the scales say. They are only one way of measuring success!

Obviously, but you probably know this already, you need to calculate your TDEE to know your daily upper limits for your calorie intake and you have to try to stay under it.

If you really change your lifestyle, and if you really look into your eating habits, you should see success. Combine this with a better fitness regime and you should be feeling much better.

Do not expect success overnight. These things take time. At some point your weight-loss will be slower, particularly the closer you get to your goal weight. You will have setbacks where you see no change in your weight. As long as you stick to it, it should work!

Best wishes
Stef.