Nice to hear from you @strawberriesandcream. I hope your fasting and dry January are going well. I was finding posting on the other forum was making me think too much about what I was eating and highlighting that I am finding full fast days just about impossible. I think I need to find a balance as I get a bit overly focused on things. After a whole year focusing on food I need to wean myself off thinking about it so much. I am trying not to constantly think about my weight. I achieved what I set out to achieve and need to break the habit of losing or it could get unhealthy. I was getting alot of satisfaction from my success and I need to find another source for that. Weighing myself everyday and recording it and routinely posting was a good use of time before but not anymore. With my aspergers I am prone to get stuck in routines and need to keep repetitive behaviour in check. I am channelling my focus into updating the charity website at the moment and am in danger of getting over obsessed with that, but it needed sorting, so it is a good displacement activity. Anyone missing my rabbit stories can have a look: http://www.hopperhaven.org.uk/wp. I will be back on the January thread at the end to update it but I am not going to weigh myself again until then. I will just follow the way of eating that I have discovered that works and see if that leaves me at a steady healthy weight. It includes intermittent fasting but not separate fast days and stays away from foods that don’t suit me.

Hi Missy Bear, glad you liked the website, although I have since moved it elsewhere as that host was using an outofdate version of the software which was causing me headaches. I will hook it up to the domain name once I have copied all the material from the old site.

Maintenance is surprisingly difficult. I find it difficult to do without the pleasurable feelings of success that weight loss provided. Strange how the mind works isn’t it? I am only going to allow myself to weigh myself once a month from now on and focus on other things.

I haven’t weighed myself for a month now in a bid to reach a stable weight without obsessing about the numbers. It is really difficult as food is such an intrinsic issue, all bound up with self image and emotions. I have felt as if I ate far too much this month and really thought that my weight might have gone up a lot, but I have only gained a kg which leaves me at a very acceptable weight of ten stone two pounds, or 64.5 kgs. I was pleased at first but I can already feel a tinge of disappointment creeping in that it went up at all. But considering how much I have eaten I got away lightly. The cold weather may have helped me burn some of it off! İ have been wearing so many clothes that İ still look as if I am as big as I was last year, in fact they are the same clothes which make very good layers and are far more comfortable to work in now they aren’t tight. I would say the cold has made me eat more but it really hasn’t been about appetite but more about availability and indulging cravings. I have now learned that dried cranberries need to be taboo too. I have become more anxious again since over indulging on them, and have had more pain. They definitely contain too much sugar. I wouldn’t buy them but not eating them when they have been given to me has proven a challenge too far. I need to be strong and pass them on to someone else when they come my way, even though they are so tasty.

I am going to stay away from the scales again and report in next month. I just want to aim to be less greedy but stick to the basic plan which does seem to be working, that is no food until my work is finished and no sugar or grains.

Oh I want to record this: I had a bad experience that I think was a reaction to lectins (the bad proteins talked about in the plant paradox) that was quite interesting. I am usually fine eating fresh peppers and beans cooked with tinned tomatoes, but now I have had a horrendous reaction after using fresh tomatoes. A dreadful headache and the return of the fibromyalgia pain as if I had eaten grains (which I firmly believe were the cause of my fibromyalgia as well as my obesity). I realised that maybe the difference was that the tinned tomatoes have their skins removed. I always use tinned beans too which have obviously been soaking for ages which has to be better for removal of lectins, and I always rinse them. It goes to show that preparation is everything. I can enjoy these vegetables that I am so fond of as long as they are properly prepared to remove as much of the lectins as possible. As my fibromyalgia has all but dissappeared while I ate lots and lots of beans and peppers it shows that they can be ok. I am not overly fond of tomatoes anyway but they are useful for sauces but I will stick to tins in future. So I am pleased to report that it is quite possible to be a vegetarian or a vegan while still avoiding inflammation from lectins. The plant paradox doesn’t mean a plant based diet isn’t still the healthiest choice.

Hi Debster, nice to hear from you, interesting that you know the area, one of our volunteers lives in Kiddeminster. Funnily enough she us the one who can usually get here in weather like today as long as the buses are running. But today wasn’t her day. I just fed and watered all the animals and am exhausted. That was harder work than I was expecting. The water bowls were all frozen solid. It takes quite a lot of effort to chip ice out even with watering cans of hot water to help. It took an awful lot of hot water. I wouldn’t want to have to do jt during a powercut.

I couldn’t have done that at all before I lost the weight. In fact it was the thought of what would happen to the animals if we got weather like this that really made me get on with it. And I did it. Operation cold weather successful. Well round one with the cold is over. Round two is the snow which is coming down quite hard now. Eek the wind just sucked my window open and showered me with snow! To help make my point! I am so glad the rabbits are all tucked in safely munching on their nice juicy pears and I don’t have to go out again until tomorrow.

Another month of maintenance under my belt but the belt now needs to be let out a notch:(

It has been a very stressful month and I have been comfort eating in a big way and put on another four pounds so I am now six pounds over where I would like to be. I need to get a grip on this before I end up back where I was before (over 250 lbs). I think perhaps the monthly challenge is called for again.

As of today weight 146lbs, waist 28 inches.

Well joining the challenge didn’t work as events kept getting more challenging so the challenge fell my the wayside and my attempts to limit my intake did too. Result – weight up a bit more to 147.5 lbs, and hip and bust measurements up to 36 inches from 35, waist still 28 inches.

Still, putting it in perspective, my BMI is still 22 which is fine and I have only eaten healthy food, no processed carbs or any grains at all. My hands are better as I swapped dairy yoghurt for vegan yoghurt (Sojade make a really nice one). Although I am still getting tempted by cheese it doesn’t seem to have as strong an effect on the swelling in my arthritic hands. But my fibromyalgia pain is back either directly due to the stress or because I am eating more frequently. Fasting was what got rid of it before. And I have taken to eating more frequently, even breakfast sometimes, which is pleasant but doesn’t suit me. Thankfully there is no sign of the fatigue returning.

I am not going to put pressure on myself to get my weight back down this month with all this stress, but I will try to curb the breakfast habit and go back to the extended overnight fast.

Oh dear, another month gone by and movement in the wrong direction again. Up to 147 lbs again. And measurements up too. I do eat too much, I know I do. And too much dairy and nuts. It isn’t what I eat, it is the quantity…

I actually had thought I was doing well. My muscle tone is improving and the skin on my belly is tightening up. I have been walking a lot and am generally staying more active as I feel so much better when I stay on my feet. But when I am more active I get hungrier. And muscle weighs more. I may be fooling myself but I think this is part of it. The measurements increasing might be because weight distribution is changing. The position of the widest part of my hips has changed this month. The place that used to be widest is the same as it was before but the measurement is bigger where I have gained muscle. And my belly measurement is down but that doesn’t get recorded. All in all I am happier with my body, which is more important than the number. I am still carrying extra weight in excess skin so my BMI is probably higher than it would be as a measure of my actual body condition. And 22 is fine anyway. My posture is also improving. I am literally holding my head higher!

It could be that my weight has jumped a bit at the end of the month as there was yet another family crisis, this time caused by my sons. Humans are so difficult! It seems to have fizzled out again for now, but I did do a bit too much comfort eating this last week. And stopped walking so regularly.

I came across a picture of me when I was so big while going through the photos of the rabbits for the website. So I do have a before picture. It doesn’t horrify me nearly as much now it is in the past. I don’t look like that anymore:) My self image and actual self match now except perhaps for the age thing. I feel so much younger these days that I do get surprised by how old I look. My hair is getting very silver and there are lines around my mouth. Still it is infinitely preferable to the way I used to look young and feel old. I remember saying I felt as if I was sixty when I was only twenty four. Now I am fifty three and feel as if I am twenty three.

Hello Cornish Jane, great to hear how well you are doing:) Congratulations!

I had a quick look at the monthly challenge and it seems as if there is a lot less of quite a few people, which is brilliant. Well done everyone.

It is strange but although my weight is only a pound down on last month I feel fine about it even though I was moaning about it in last month’s post. The important thing for me is that I seem to have found a balance. I am not putting the weight back on despite eating quite a lot. And I am getting stronger. My measurements went down a bit to a place I would be happy for them to stay.(waist 27.5 in, Hips and bust 36 in, waist to height ratio 0.4, BMI 21.8) My body is fine as it is now, except my skin could be tighter, but I think only time will improve that, and considering how big I was it is almost miraculous how much it has shrunk. I grabbed a pair of my old trousers the other day and pulled them on because they were the same colour as the pair I was looking for. I could have fit in them twice and I still remember vividly the day they first fit me again having been too small! I have come a long way! And over six months in maintenance now:)

@bigbooty I usually eat nut mixes without peanuts although I do occasionally binge on a jar of good quality organic peanut butter and a head of celery when I don’t feel up to cooking. But I only buy it when it is on sale which limits the frequency of succumbing to this temptation. I seem incapable of eating it in moderate quantities, especially as it doesn’t seem to have any negative impact on the way I feel or even on my weight. I think my metabolism is significantly faster than it used to be.

Speaking of temptation, I succumbed to a special offer on sourdough bread while checking out my online grocery delivery and so ended up eating bread for the first time in at least a year. It was gorgeous and I ate half the loaf straight off. But it was so not worth it. The effect it had was profound. My anxiety came crashing back down and I had a sleepless night with lights flashing in my head imagining all sort of things that could go wrong and remembering lots of things that I should have done to prevent other catastrophes from occurring. I used to think those flashing lights were because of the pain killers I used to take for my fibromyalgia but the bread triggered them all by itself. The next couple of days were unpleasant too especially as cravings set in and I gave in and had more bread and an even worse night. And to think I once spent a year baking bread every day and eating masses of it. No wonder I was a wreck! It is so hard to separate all the symptoms and attribute them to what you eat when most of what you eat is what is causing the problems. I ate bread and/or pasta or rice everyday without fail. I am so much better off without them. I have come up with delicious ways to make vegetables filling and know I can get by without the padding provided by the grain based carbs. My reactions to them are on the extreme end of the spectrum but I suspect most people would feel better without them.

Good morning to you too. It is geat to hear you are in maintenance now. I think to some extent once we get close to our goals we need to let our bodies decide what our weight should be. I thought mine would be lower when I went under ten stone but it wasn’t to be. C’est la vie. Qué será será…

I miss taking part in the forums and have had a poke around to catch up a bit with all my friends here but life is really busy and I really can’t commit to the time required every day. I am sitting here now with yet another carrier full of bonding rabbits. We now have 96 of the wee beasties after taking in 9 last friday from a breeder that was giving up selling them for meat. Five of them are still babies. We haven’t had babies here for ages so it is rather nice, although soon they will start spraying each other with urine as their hormones arrive and turn yellow instead of white and not be so attractive. Two of the females we took in feel pregnant so we may have more than our fill of baby rabbits by the end of this. There will be white rabbits everywhere! The poor does are in horrible condition with respiratory infections and sore feet as is the big buck. And this was not a particularly bad set up for a breeder. The standard of welfare for meat production has a very low bar. Wire floors are standard. Even the babies already have misshapen feet from standing on them and from lack of room to move. I greatly look forward to watching them blossom as they get to live proper lives. Here are the babies in one of our stables embarking on their new life https://youtu.be/l1KaegNfsls and it will only get better from here on out. Their mums are already looking brighter too and have learned to negotiate their much bigger hutches and are enjoying tasting lots of new foods.

thanks for dropping in @coda, @fasting-me, @bigbooty and @merryme 🙂

@merryme there are lots of digestive issues experienced by people on the autistic spectrum. In fact a ketogenic diet is known to be helpful. I looked at it years ago for my severely autistic son but concluded it was too extreme. Now I am wishing I had given it a go when he was younger. As he is now in a care home it is out of my hands now. But my youngest son who has Aspergers too I am still working on although he refuses to give up bread entirely and has recently gained some of the weight he had lost back. My middle son who I am sure has ADD also refuses to give up bread and cake and shouts at me if I try to talk to him about it. He has his father’s temper sadly:( Who also has ADD. As does my sister. I think the two sprectrums do lie quite close together. My sister is feeling better from eating my food but also refuses to give up bread and always complains about feeling exhausted. And my mother would live on toast if I wasn’t around to cook. As it is she still has a pile of it for lunch every day and yet wonders why she has become so fat and why she has always had to battle a lack of energy. People are so attached to bread!! It just doesn’t seem to work telling them how much better they would feel without it. I suspect the intolerance is quite common but because it is so embedded in people’s lives it is never absent so isolating it’s effects from the everyday isn’t easy. I never imagined the effect it was having on me. I used to say I could eat anything! But I had constant headaches and had no energy but they just seemed normal and I didn’t blame my food.

I weighed myself for the first time in ages this morning as I wanted to measure myself because I think my belly skin is finally shrinking. I thought I might have lost inches if not weight. Well I certainly haven’t lost weight in fact I have put on quite a bit and am almost eleven stone. So much for maintaining at ten stone seven… But my BMI is 22.7 which is fine so I will try not to panic and my belly is smaller captured by my largest hip measurement travelling downwards even further. It is now 37″ at the tops of my legs. Waist 28″ , bust 36″. Definitely pear shaped. But the skin is still shrinking, which is a relief as I really don’t want to wear my old fat suit forever.

I still use intermittent fasting to stop myself eating non stop. I feel so dreadful if I eat breakfast that not eating until I have finished working is the best option. Then all my energy can go to digesting. I feel so much better in a fasted state. But I love food so no worries about becoming anorexic. I still eat mostly vegetables and fruit with beans, nuts, seeds, and a bit of cheese and chocolate. I wish I could eat yoghurt but it aggravates my arthritis. Vegan yogurt gives me migraines so it is no good as a substitute. I think it is the nuts that have made me put on weight recently.

I have to regard the upwards trend of my weight as a readjustment rather than a disaster. All my post weightloss clothes still fit. I still eat a very healthy diet, I haven’t gone back to my previous bad habits and I am still far fitter than I was before although it is disappointing that progress stalled. I still have to remind myself not to pay attention to the pain or it threatens to take over. The pain is always there lurking but at least the fatigue stays away while I am not eating. It would probably do me good to do an extended fast but I am such a creature of habit I doubt I could manage it. And nutrients are important. I have gone through all of this never missing my five veg a day. That is a habit I don’t want to break.

This is just a note to keep things up to date. I can’t go back to regular measuring or I get too obsessed by it.

Having been through another few stressful months I was a bit nervous to step back on the scales but my weight is roughly the same as the last time. It does seem to have stabilised. My bmi is 22.7 this morning, waist to height ratio 0.41. I am successfully maintaining:)

Life sidestepped the issue of my having multiple helpings when I cook so that I feel like a pig by taking my access to a proper kitchen away so I am eating mostly raw food and tinned beans. Lots of nuts, cheese, salad and beans. I continue to fast while I work but am trying not to eat as much late in the day as I think it stops my sleeping well. I am trying to decrease my coffee intake for the same reason. I have taken to eating a small amount of chocolate with my nuts which improves my mood and sense of well being. As it is summer the garden is full of fruit so I have eaten loads of berries and the apples are ready now. I am eating a bag of salad a day and raw carrots and peppers to make sure I get my five a day.

I discovered the hard way that I can’t eat dried fruit. I let it creep into my diet and my anxiety levels went through the roof:( I feel much better now that I have not eaten any for a while. The only way I seem to be able to tolerate sugar is in chocolate. Anything else with sugar or that converts to sugar makes me miserable and leaves me with a hangover but chocolate suits me. That discovery probably accounts for why my weight is stable rather than falling. And the nuts…but I am controling how many I eat better. I can stop after 100g as long as the bag isn’t nearby so I measure out my portion into a cup with a few chocolate buttons and eat it with salad and raw veg for lunch or dinner. I have gone back to two meals to try to stop the crashes that were happening when I ate too much at once. It works better when I am working alone and can take a lunch break and sit and digest it before carrying on working. With other people around I can’t relax and so don’t eat until they leave.

Another year since I posted! I haven’t returned to my previous enormous size but my hips and legs are steadily getting bigger and my clothes are tight again. I don’t know if this is because I am eating too many calories or simply because my lipoedema is progressing. In either case I suspect the culprit is the corn meal porridge that I have been eating every day. I fell in love with the stuff having got fed up with a life without stodge. I can’t tolerate wheat or rice or even barley, even seeds give me headaches but corn meal is relatively benign. But probably the effects are simply less immediate:( But I crave it. Sigh. Been here before!

I am struggling against my asthma again too. The prescribed inhallers give me dreadful palpitations and angina. So I have bought an air filter, a salt pipe and studiously avoid dietary triggers like dairy and nuts. I wouldn’t know if I had covid as I constantly have all the symptoms. And it predates the epidemic so it isn’t long covid. The fatigue was terrible earlier in the year but has improved since I added engevita to my diet. I have become rather addicted to the stuff. It definitely is an aquired taste but I have certainly benefited from a steady source of B12 and vit D. But that goes on my corn porridge contributing to that problem. 3 steps forward and 2 back….or the other way around:~

I would fast again if I had the will power. I only recently stopped fasting until afternoon every day because I was cramming in too much food in a short window that it couldn’t have been healthy. I probably do feel better eating breakfast but it. as always means I eat more over all.Long dark lonely evenings make eating even more attractive…
This may not be the time to be too hard on myself re the corn porridge particularly as it does successfully curb other cravings for worse foods. It sits very nicely in my belly where veg only would leave me hungry…

It is a pity I don’t know my weight but is possibly for the best as it might upset me and thus send me into a cycle of more severe cravings and depression. I hold on to the fact that if I were to regain a serious amount of weight I could deal with it again. Losing weight is easy, maintaining it is the trick I haven’t quite mastered.