Lisa's Losing It!

somethingnew987

somethingnew987

New member
Hey everyone, my name is Lisa and I am obese...... I actually used to be a pretty active member of these boards, but I went travelling.....ate a lot of delicious, yet very bad for me food, and kind of lost motivation to keep up my weight loss. Needless to say I gained back about 20lbs (which I am pretty happy with that number....I thought it would be more, but you have to walk a lot more in other countries! I think thats what saved me). But when I got back to the good ol' U S of A I went straight for taco bell. This lasted a few weeks, until I finally started trying to get my act together.

I'll put my disclaimer right here:::::: I have been on a diet pill now for 3 days......and I am okay with that. I don't feel like I am cheating, I feel like I'm getting a fair start. Obese people do not eat outrageous amounts of food just for the sake of it. They do it either because they are honestly hungry (not all stomach sizes are the same!) or because they have an obsession with food, usually an emotional one. I fit both of these categories. When I lost 60lbs before, it was hard, but I did not feel like I was always starving. After coming back from travelling, however, my stomach seemed to have stretched or SOMETHING because suddenly I was never satisfied with how much I ate. I could put down 3000 calories or more in a single meal and still feel hungry. Also, my addiction to sweets only got worse from "having" to try different foods (especially pastries!) when I was travelling. I found that if I didn't eat at least one sweet thing (and not just a little piece of chocolate.....i'm talking about 8 oreos) I would obsess over it in my mind until I finally gave in and went to the corner store to grab something.

So, I started to think about diet pills. I am NOT recommending or endorsing them in any way. It's a personal choice, just as gastric bypass is. Of course there might be more satisfaction from losing all of the weight through will power alone, but I was honestly scared that I would never regain the confidence that I could do it.

Now, I have heard all the scary stories about diet pills, and yes they can be dangerous (though the most dangerous are now off the market). This is why I am being supervised by a doctor. The diet pill I am taking can have the negative side effects of high blood pressure or increased heart rate. Because I am in relatively good health, these are things I should still be on the watch for, but not paranoid about. I do check my heart rate if I start to get nervous, but so far it has been totally normal.

So what the diet pills do for me is suppress my appetite. This is allowing me to shrink my stomach down (it takes a few weeks to do this) and also get a good habit and regimen with my eating. It has completely taken away my obsession with sweets, which I am hoping will help me with my addiction to them when I get off the pills just by not being physically addicted anymore....kinda like soda...if you don't drink it for a couple weeks, you lose your desire for it.

Anyways, this diary isn't going to be about diet pills. I am still going to eat right and exercise (exercising is actually a lot harder for me than eating right). I probably won't write down all the stuff I eat, but I will give an approximate calorie intake for the day (I am good at accurately calculating this..... is my friend).

I will also keep track of my weight loss of course :)

When I got back from travelling I weighed 246......but I think I had A LOT of water retention for different reasons, because when I started taking the pills I was 236lbs. As of today I am 232lbs.

My goals:
Ultimately I want to weigh around 140lbs....that will be half of me when I started.....that's crazy to think about.

But for right now I am just aiming to be out of the 200s, hopefully before summer. I tend to lose pretty quickly when I first start dieting and then do a steady 2lbs a week after that, so I think if I put a lot of work in I can reach this goal.

I REALLY want to get back to being a vegetarian, but its just soooo hard. Right now I don't really eat red meat, but I would eventually like to cut out chicken as well (which leaves fish which I don't really like, so that shouldn't be a problem).

Anyways, thanks if you have read this whole thing. sorry if its a little (or a lot) long winded.

So here are my stats:

Original highest weight: 280lbs
weight beginning 1/23/08: 236lbs
Goal weight for 5/14/08: 199lbs (approx. 16 weeks)
Ultimate goal weight: 140lbs by 1/23/09- so 1 year to lose 96lbs
 
Thanks (aunt) mal :) lol. I'm glad to be back. I already feel like I'm getting closer to being back on the right track just by being in a community to share thoughts and ideas.

My travels were AMAZING! I studied in Edinburgh Scotland, but I also got to visit London, Rome, Paris, Dublin, Belfast, and some random smaller towns in England and Scotland. I definitely miss the way of life over there...much more relaxed and active...that sounds like a contradiction but its not lol. I fell in love with walking through the cities, I could get an easy 5 miles in a day just walking to see the different sites (and getting lost). Scottish and English food isn't that great....but they do have pies.....my goodness do they have pies lol. and fish and chips...but thankfully after the first couple weeks I was already sick of those.
 
Today is going really well. The pills are still working very well, but thankfully I seem to have lost the little bit of jitters they gave me.

I'm already becoming obsessed with the scale again.....I need to ask someone to hide it.

I keep telling myself that I can't really get into exercising until I get back to school. My favorite thing to do is just walk....in the neighborhood or on the track (I HATE treadmills), but unfortunately my home here in houston is in a rather "ghetto" area of town, in which creepy men and pit bulls abound. And the local track is not any better, I have actually gone there with friends and been harassed by guys mooning us lol. I think I'll go shopping tomorrow....you can get a lot of walking done in a mall :)

Since I got back from Scotland I seem to have found my new obsession....wanting to flip a house. Before I left for Scotland, I spent soooo much time researching, planning, budgeting, etc...for the trip, and I enjoyed it. But now that I am home I think I need some new and exciting adventure to look forward to, hence my desire to flip a house. A lot of my friends think I am crazy lol, but I told them if they help me I will pay for our trip to New York in a year and a half lol....so they changed their outlook a little :p . I think I have a rather compulsive personality (compulsive overreating!) so when I get something in my mind it just stays there. Which I guess can be a good thing, I mean friends and family know that when I say I am going to do something, I WILL do it....but sometimes I think I'm a bit excessive.

Anyways, thats my thoughts for today. I may end up talking about flipping houses on here some more, because as I said....its on my mind a lot lol.

Hope everyones day went well :)
 
I have to say, the only side effect of this pill thats really bugging me is not being able to sleep. I am hoping that will wear off soon though as my body adjusts. Normally I'm the kind of person that requires 8-10 hours a night, but with this stuff I've been averaging 4-6 hours. Usually I can't get to sleep until 4-6AM. I think tonight I am starting to get a little tired though, which since its only 12:20 is a good sign. But, Ugh, I have to wake up at 6 to finish my schoolwork anyways.....its gonna be a long day tomorrow. But at least tomorrow is the last day of my class. My school has this one month mini-semester in January called Jan-term where you take one class for 3 hours a day. Usually the classes are fun, but they can still be hard. I'm taking a philosophy class about other minds/broken minds....whether we can tell people we know actually have minds.....how do we know they are not just in our minds.....all that kinda stuff. And then it also deals with stuff like mental disorders, drug addiction, etc...which questions the basic assumptions we have about the mind. Lol sorry.....I'm sure no one actually wanted to know any of that. But anyways, I have to write a bunch of stuff tomorrow since the class ends....and doing it on this little sleep could be interesting. Since I take the pill during the day, though, I don't feel "tired" in the sense. Sometimes I will get a little burst of exhaustion, but it goes away after a few minutes.

Today I tackled one of my biggest opponents.....no, not Taco Bell.......but a mexican restaurant in general. My friend wanted to go to lunch together, and since she works at the mexican restaurant and we get half off there.....and we are poor students......we went there lol. I did really well in comparison to what I normally eat at mexican restaurants. I may have gone a little overboard on the chips and queso, but I actually left about half of my rice and beans on the plate....and other than that I just had one tortilla with some chicken in it (but it was ooooh so good). I ate that around 3, so I just ate a snack for dinner and I'm not hungry. So I may have gone over my calories a little bit, but nothing to worry over.
 
Another good day today. I realized that I have not eaten any sweets for a week....which is huge for me! I think I will just consider today to be the end of my first week, even though its actually tomorrow. That way it will be in sync with the challenge I'm in on here. So, my weight this week is


Starting weight:236lbs
Current weight: 231lbs

Loss this week: 5lbs

I go back to school on Saturday, so I can start walking again once I get there.

I have been eyeing this house on my street that is for sale that looks like its in really bad shape. I called the broker and found out its actually a foreclosure house that has been on the market for 40 days. I doubt it still will be, but if it is still on the market when I come back for Spring break I may go ahead and buy it (if an inspection goes well of course). The house is currently listed at $71,000 for 1800sq. Similar houses in the neighborhood are selling for around $120,000 as long as they are in good shape. So, I think it may be a winner. I just get so excited thinking about flipping a house....I have so many ideas, I'm pretty sure I'm starting to get on my family and friends' nerves with how much I talk about it.
 
hmmmm

I am still glad that I am on Phentermine, but today I feel a little weird. But lately I haven't been able to sleep much at all (4hrs or less a night) so that could have a lot to do with it. I feel really shakey and sometimes dizzy when I stand up. My heart rate is fine though. I may go to some store to use the little blood pressure machine and make sure thats ok too. I'm probably just being paranoid like I always am, because it most likely is the lack of sleep. I haven't been sleeping much in part due to the Phentermine, which makes it harder to fall asleep, partly due to my being stubborn and watching tv until 3AM, partly because I have had to stay with my grandmother overnight since she had surgery, and partly because I am super stressed out trying to do a bunch of homework....I have never gotten this little sleep in my life, but the Phentermine still makes me feel awake.....so thats why I'm thinking the shakeyness is from that. I remember when I first arrived in Scotland I had been up for more than 24 hours and couldnt' check into my hostel for another 6 hours, so I had to walk around the city looking like a zombie....and I was definitely shakey and dizzy then too.

Hmmm......

Well there is nothing I can really do about it now I guess lol, I just have to wait to sleep a lot, which hopefully I can do a lot of tomorrow.

My mom is doing the Phentermine with me and she seems absolutely fine, if not a little peppier lol. But she hasn't complained about any of this stuff, so I think its the sleep.... Anyways, my mom lost 8lbs this week! I am so happy she is doing this. She is about 30lbs heavier than I am and since she is reaching nearly 50, I am starting to worry about her health. She hasn't had any issues yet, but it doesn't take long for a heart attack to creep up on you. Next we will just have to work on my brother (not with Phentermine) he is only 13, but he has inherited our family's eating habits. Sometimes I try to play mom and tell him he can't eat things or tell my mom he is eating too many sweets in a day, but it just doesn't really work like that. When I was his age, if there weren't sweets at home, I would find them somewhere....and I would binge on them. So, at this point I think it will have to be up to him someday to make a change. It's just hard because I know what its like being an overweight teenager. I didn't have the normal teenage experiences, because I was too busy being shy, self-conscious, and unconfident. Also, unless you are one of those people who just has an amazing bubbly personality, its much harder for overweight people to date as teenagers....or at least it was for me......but I have pretty high standards.

Okay, I'm going to go try to finish my homework....I just feel so out of it and spacey. I probably don't look too great right now either (feeling for bags under eyes).
 
Today was much much much much better. It was just the lack of sleep that made me feel all funky. I was getting dizzy every time I stood up....it really started scaring me. But i slept for about 10 hours last night and feel somewhat better today, though I am still pretty sleepy.

I'm still eating really well. Last night I had Taco Cabana with some friends (notice, it was not taco bell lol) but I ate a lot less than I normally would...I actually ate a lot less than my 140lb friends did.
 
You look like you're doing well. Keep it up. :D I like that you're aiming for "good" rather than "perfect". I think it's a very healthy attitude to have and will serve you well in the long term.

I say definitely try the house thing. Better to crash and burn than to be safe and stifled on the bus, I always say. ;) Actually, I've never said that before, but I am now. So, yeah.
 
[Focus];391086 said:
You look like you're doing well. Keep it up. :D I like that you're aiming for "good" rather than "perfect". I think it's a very healthy attitude to have and will serve you well in the long term.

I say definitely try the house thing. Better to crash and burn than to be safe and stifled on the bus, I always say. ;) Actually, I've never said that before, but I am now. So, yeah.
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Thanks for the support!

Yeah, I figure If I do fail miserably and have $50,000 in debt, I'm young so I still have plenty of time to pay it off lol. I'm not supporting a family or anything, so it would just be me not being able to feed myself (which could help with losing weight....hmmm.....thats a thought lol). I actually went online and looked up all my credit reports, which are good, and then I ended up on my bank's website seeing if I pre-qualify to buy a house. And I did! I don't think my mom realizes how serious I am about this, but that definitely surprised her that I had gone that far.


I ate my first sweet today, but I meant to. My mom got these ice cream things for my brother and they have been kinda tempting me for the past few days (but not nearly as badly as if I weren't on Phentermine). But today I decided that since I really wanted one, I would go ahead and have it, that way I don't have to obsess over it anymore.
 
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