Hello! I'm new to this forum and Fat to Skinny but I'm really liking it so far! I've been following it since this last Friday the 24th and so far I've already managed to drop 4 lbs! That is astonishing for me! I've been on and off Atkins for over 3 years and haven't been able to lose much weight (in fact I'm heavier than when I started to be honest I wasn't very faithful to it). I'm not even that sure what I'm doing differently except that I feel less limited somehow (?) even though I am eating less carbs. I love the concept of "don't feel deprived, just replace the foods you miss with better foods" and I never had that mentality before I guess. I have a pantry full of low carb baking stuff I'm dying to use and I'm feeling like a whole new world has opened up to me again! I can't believe how much better I am feeling already!
As for my goals, I honestly have no idea anymore how much I need to lose because I'm very out of touch with my body image. So I think measurements, sizes, and photos may be what I need to use for assessing my goal. Right now my goal is to get back down to a size 10. I'm a 12-14 now but honestly I think I look better as an eight. That's where I felt my best. However I am realistic - I am older now than before and I'd be ecstatic to be in my size 10 clothes again!
A little bit about me: I am a 38 yr old IT Director for a local government agency and have two of my six kids at home. Two are step children so they live with their mom and my oldest two are grown and in college. My kids still with me are my youngest child (7) and my son who is 17 and graduating on Saturday (yikes!).
I was always a very skinny teen but then I got married young and had three kids back to back (in 3 yrs) which took a toll on me physically. I gained weight after my second child was born and never lost it. Then I got divorced, a few years later, remarried and a couple years after that had my youngest daughter. I gained weight after she was born too. So I ended up about 60 lbs overweight or more. I lost 60 lbs on a pre packaged low calorie diet in '07 but had to starve myself even more than they recommended to make any significant amount of weight shift. I even did a super low calorie "rotation diet" and that worked the best for me but was so hard to stick to! I could just barely keep my weight off with lots of effort and lots of running.
Over those few years I ran about 6 half marathons and one full marathon (which burned me out on running for a couple years) and countless 5 & 10k races. Now I still "jog" once or twice a week but I'm just not that into it anymore. I'm happier to go for a walk or ride my exercise bike and watch a movie. I never did get to my goal weight after all of that. It was a constant, very hungry, miserable and grumpy time for me and I wondered if I'd have to starve the rest of my life to stay slim and run 30-35 miles per week forever.
In 2010 I found Atkins and I started out running about 35 miles per week on induction and felt a good endurance boost from burning fat as fuel instead of sugar (I used to have to eat up to 6-7 of those icky gels during a 10-12 mile training run). I suddenly was able to reduce my gels to 1 or none! That alone was amazing and about 5 lbs came off. My
weight loss stopped after that first week and never really resumed. However, I got lazy pretty quickly and I was running slower without all of the sugar. However, I used to justify eating more carbs with "oh ill just run it off". It's a bad trap and I didn't reduce my carb intake when I wasn't running so I still managed to gain weight! So I gradually stopped running altogether. I also managed to gain about 20lbs too.
Thanks for reading! I've been lurking, reading, and learning from this forum and I really like the attitudes here: very accepting, kind, encouraging and not nit picky. I can't tell you how great the simplicity of this program is to me. Now I can eat at home, eat out, travel, and not stress about "What am I going to eat?" What a huge relief! This busy lady is actually creating menus, shopping, preparing meals ahead of time and packaging up snacks and making plans to make beef jerky. I am very impressed with the recipes so far. I made the chicken cordon blue, some taco meat for tacos or taco salad, spaghetti (with shiritake noodles), and roasted chicken ahead of time to eat later this week. My husband said to keep doing whatever it is I'm doing because I seem so happy and am looking good. *smirk* Nice to hear!
I love to cook so I will be trying lots of the recipes I am sure.
Have a great day everyone!
-Michelle
