Losing Weight - Chandler,AZ

I had a similar experience, and I recently learned that I am "insulin resistent". She (Endocrinologist) gave me a prescription to help regulate (temporarily), and have lost 10-15 pounds and feel better.

I suggest suggest that you see an Endocrinologist, someone who will look deeper. My other doctor thought that I was just fat, too. There was no explanation in my diet and daily physical routine to explain such a drastic weight gain.

I would like to say that a weight gain of 40 lbs in 1 year is something that your doctor should be more concerned with. I know you said you had some bloodwork done, but have you actually seen an endocrinologist?

A friend had a similar situation. The screening bloodwork came back totally normal and her PCP told her it was age/diet/exercise. Then she saw an endocrinologist for a second opinion who did much more thorough testing and found that although her total TSH levels were normal (which is all the standard screen looks at), some other ratio was off. Once they fixed her thyroid issues, her weight issue went away.

You might also need to do some lifestyle changes and I'm sure some people here will have good ideas for that. But I really have a hard time believing that 40 lbs in 1 year does not have some medical cause pushing it. Please get a second opinion from an endocrinologist.

ADDED: One tip for calories is to use the free app MyFitnessPal. It's very use friendly. But I still think you should see an endocrinologist first!

You need to find your own answer to why. I had the same problem. I had always been on the thin side, even into my 40s, though I always did some sort of exercise (but I could eat what I wanted). Then I hit my 50s and gained 25 lbs in 6 months! And then I put on another 25 being a caretaker in our home for 6 years. I was so depressed and felt the way you described. But my husband was not supportive. He couldn't be with me intimately. So I just wanted to die. It was not good. My role ended with the passing of grandma, so I decided to walk 10 minutes a day, twice a week. It wasn't much, but it progressed to 20 minutes, then 1.5 miles. It took a year, and I only lost 10 lbs. Then I got a call from an old high school friend. It started me thinking that my life really shouldn't be over - I was 56 - not 93. I had lived my life for my kids and for grandma and for my husband before, but now I wanted to live my life for me - doing the things I wanted to. (I have since gone on my first cruise, went parasailing and swimming with the dolphins!) I decided to get more serious about what I was doing for my health. I decided not to beat myself up about any time I didn't do the right thing, and sent a realistic goal - not a crazy one. I started walking six days a week - though I missed several days. When I would walk, my whole day felt better. When I didn't walk, I would tell myself that it was okay - I would do it again tomorrow - and I did. I was my own best friend. If I had a best friend, I would tell her that she was great and could accomplish whatever I wanted to, so I started telling myself that. And then, I decided to chart my mileage, as if I had walked from my home to another place. I got actual road mileage from googlemaps. I started at the end of January, and walked over 1200 miles that first year. I had charted that I had walked to that friend's house from my house when I had reached 800 miles. Each time I "reach" a destination, I celebrate. Last December, I asked my daughter to walk my 4000th mile with me. Now, after 3.5 years, I could have walked from my home to Ecuador! Or, if I had started in Lisbon, Portugal, I could have walked to Afghanistan. When I had something fatty and caloric, I would say, that's okay, tomorrow I won't. And I found myself believing it. Each day, as I walked, I rejoiced in the day - the birds, the fresh air, all the things I could enjoy. I work full time, so I have to get up very early to do this... and I was never a morning person. But I found that the energy I get from walking gives me 1.5 more hours of awake and energized time - exactly what it takes to walk the mileage (I walk 5 miles per day now). So I am not out any money or time of sleep - and I lost 30 lbs in 2 months, and the final 10 lbs in another 2 months... which I didn't think I could lose. I feel good most of the time, and my heart rate and blood pressure are amazing. I play with my grandkids outside on the trampoline and in the pool and have the energy to do the other things I need to. I did it for me and I didn't EVER say that I failed! I did NOT fail - and neither have you! You just haven't finished it yet. Tomorrow, you will do it again - and you'll be so happy you did! (BTW, I still have cookies, fast food, etc, about once a week. It keeps your body from thinking it is getting starved - and is my reward to myself for doing well!) You can do this! Find your reason - keep at it. You will do it!

For a quick fix for the wedding get the book "the 17 day diet". You'll drop lots of weight quickly so you will feel better ( there is no exercise involved) and that will put you in the mood to figure out why you gained so much weight and what the underlying problem is.

What did your doctor say about your weight? did he think that you needed to lose? and how much? at 5'6" you don't really have a lot to lose. It depends on how much muscle you have, not what the scale says.

I think that when your husband says he loves your body and how you feel to him, he may be telling the truth. A LOT of men really do prefer women with more "meat" on their bones and they don't really like those skinny bony women. I would sit down with him and actually talk to him about HE feels, and do not project any of your own insecurities onto him.

I have a feeling that he may really like you. I also think that at 130 or even 140 you were probably too thin.. and just because you are used to it, does not mean that that is where your body wants to be. As we get older, about 35 or so, our metabolisms slow down. So we are prone to putting on belly weight, and the only true way to fight that is with exercise.

I would say that you are maybe having a depressed slump which was probably brought on my stress. Also you have gone from a very active job (daycare) to an office job. Can you do your job on a yoga ball? that will work your abs and you don't really have to do anything special, just sit there. But, obviously maintaining a good posture will work your abs.

Have you considered some time of talk therapy? sometimes you just deal with so much that you are mentally overwhelmed even though you don't realize it, and you just need to get it all out so that you can move past it and lose the "weight" of life and then the outside will work as well.

Are you cutting out foods or eating less and less often? this can put your body into a starvation cycle even though you are technically giving it enough calories. The best way to break this is to eat more often. It took me a long time to get this, but after my nutritionist and my naturopath both told me to eat more often, I have had a lot of luck with trimming down my belly area. The scale only says a few pounds, but I have gained more muscle and have more energy so I feel less depressed too. Its a synergistic affect.

I don't know that this will give you the motivation you need, but, I sure hope it helps. But, the most important thing to do is to talk to your husband about how and what he really feels about your body, and please really LISTEN to what he has to say. I have a feeling he really does like you this way.Women are supposed to be soft and smooth and a little squishy, not like what is portrayed on tv and by fashion models. Good luck and we all wish you the best!

You have a lot going on. :)
I have found a website: www.sparkpeople.com
to be helpful. It is free, they allow you to track your food/exercise - but what I find the most helpful are the articles and the motivational things they have. It is a positive environment, where any small step in a better direction is celebrated.
For those of us with kids and crazy schedules - it is easy to feel defeated in this aspect of life. The stories and articles they have encourage me to not give up.

That said, I agree with the others - make sure you don't have more medical issues going on, as that will negate most of the efforts that you try to make. Good Luck!

It's so hard to get motivated but that is what you need to do. You have to learn to love eating healthy and you can do it. You have to eat healthy for a long while to reset your taste buds and then I have found you no longer crave the bad foods. I went to this 3 day fitness retreat a couple years ago led by these women who do things like 100 mile races. They had some talks on fitness and nutrition...and one thing I learned is very little of losing weight is exercise. Most of it is eating less. If you want to exercise to lose weight you have to do weight bearing exercise using LARGE muscle groups. I suggest you sign up for a PowerUp class at a local YMCA. You can start off meeting with one of their trainers and learn how to do each of the moves correctly. You can begin the class with no weight on your bar (the bar itself is heavy enough for a beginner). With time you add weight. The most important thing though is how you eat. Don't keep the bad foods in your house. Get rid of them! You have to try to eat very little sugar (no sugary drinks -switch to water always), and less flour, less bread products. Healthy meals should be lots of protein and veggies. Snack on things like apples, raw almonds, a hard boiled egg, etc. Just try to eat less of the bad stuff and try to cut back on how much you eat. I don't know how to motivate you. It seems like once people start doing something like a PowerUp class it really helps get them started with eating right also. Go sign up for something like that (or CrossFit) and then your motivation will come!

You have to do this for YOU. Not because it's not fair to your husband, but because you WANT to. It's so easy to procrastinate, and when you look at a goal that seems insurmountable, inertia sets in. There's an old question: "How do you eat an elephant?" The answer is "One bite at a time." It might be better for you to not look at 40 pounds or a gala in March.

I think it's more telling that you "don't enjoy eating healthy" - that may be because you have always rewarded yourself with salty or sugary or convenience foods, or because you were raised that way. (I was and it's an eternal curse!) There's also a perception that you have, that "healthy eating" is tasteless and boring, endless rabbit food and based on deprivation, because the "good stuff" is fat and white flour and sugar.

Looking at a treadmill or a workout tape and getting motivated for a solitary stint on the equipment is easy to postpone especially with a full lifestyle - 6 kids is a handful, and there's always something "more important" to do like laundry or food shopping or working to integrate a blended family of kids who come and go. That's a lot of stress!

Now, let's look at the 6 pounds in 8 days. You didn't lose that weight. You deprived yourself somehow and lost mostly water weight. That's why it came back so quickly. It wasn't real, so forget about it. If it WAS real, it wasn't healthy! So you deprived yourself, and your body went into starvation mode, and started storing calories as fat. It's an evolutionary and primal response to food deprivation. So you have to get past it.

You all have to agree as a family about how you are going to eat and what you are going to buy. I realize it's hard with a yours/mine/ours set up and 5 out of 6 kids who spend at least part of their time with another parent. You are probably trying to please everyone as well as not spend your life in the kitchen as a short order cook. So you go for what's popular, easy, tasty and palatable for everyone.

You really are setting yourself up for disappointment, but you are also setting up 6 children for a lifetime of frustration because they, as adults, will fight the weight and the food choices they make now. I think the solution has to be making food a family affair - finding new foods to eat and experiment with, making cooking a joint project that everyone has a part in, and making it all FUN and not deprivation. Making a family salad bar can be a lot of fun, and you can get kids to try new things if they can a) choose them b) prepare them c) dip them in something like hummus. Making a taco bar lets you choose a little bit of "bad" food and mix it with healthy add-ins. There are all kinds of magazines and cookbooks that make simple and healthy additions - try Rachael Ray (how to cook a week's worth of meals with just a few ingredients mixed in different ways) or J. Seinfeld (how to sneak food into kid-friendly recipes that are FUN. Have everyone pick a recipe and then everyone gets to try it.

You can also make some easy substitutions that will keep you all more satisfied. For example, sweet potatoes cut in spears and oven-fried on a baking sheet with a little olive oil are much better than French fries. A nice lean meat turkey burger (or half grass-fed beef and half turkey) with added vegetables for moisture (we use frozen spinach, chopped onions, some horseradish, refried or other mashed beans) and put it on a whole wheat bun with a slice of tomato and some lettuce - it's filling. We make our own chicken nuggets with wheat germ and Parm cheese, sometimes with ground up almonds mixed in, quick fried in the skillet with olive oil just to crisp up the outside, and then finished in the oven. We grill all kinds of vegetables including broccoli, green beans, asparagus, corn, beets, kohlrabi, and zucchini. I make lasagna with whole wheat noodles, a mix of cottage cheese and tofu instead of ricotta (mix in the seasonings and no one can tell), and I even puree some cooked eggplant or mushrooms in the sauce. We make stir fry for healthy Chinese food. Kids like to sort the veggies by cooking times, and they can choose chicken or beef or tofu. If you want any recipes, let me know. And you'd be shocked at how much good stuff you can put in an enchilada - great refrigerator "clean out" recipe, with some brown rice made with a little tomato puree instead of all water.

The other thing might be to join a gym with a class of women like you. I have a phenomenal class that I joined when the instructor stopped by my treadmill and invited me in. We do a lot of weight training which is good for the muscles as well as the prevention of osteoporosis. We encourage each other, laugh, sing along with the music...and we have pot luck dinners every couple of months (we call ourselves Women, Weights and Wine and similar cute names!). So if you make exercise a fun, social event, either with other adults or the family or both, it won't be punishment that you force yourself to do and hate. I also take a book to the treadmill at the gym and get lost in what I'm reading - the book covers the timer, and I have a special clamp that holds the pages open. I'm shocked with how much I do without feeling pushed. And it's 30 or 45 minutes with no one asking me for juice or to referee a fight.

You may also be nourishing yourself insufficiently - so comprehensive supplementation is really important to meet your true nutritional needs and keep you from craving the stuff in the cabinets that is just empty calories. I've had extraordinary results, and have fewer health problems, less medication, and phenomenal lab results. Believe me, you don't want to weight until your doctor says your cholesterol is 260 and your blood pressure is 160/90 and you need medication. Don't do conventional grocery store or health food vitamin pills - very low absorption, waste of money, insufficient nutrients. I can help you more in this area - I've found much more stamina and energy for working out without being hungry or lightheaded, and without any injuries. If you're not an exercise fiend, any ache or pain is enough to sideline you.

You can substitute some healthier snacks - almonds have more protein and will hold you longer than pretzels, but they still give you the chance to crunch. Don't get hungry - that's the key. Eat 3 meals and 2 snacks for sure.

Drink more water - a lot of "hunger" is really thirst. And it's filling, and it helps process the rest of the meal.

There's a simple zucchini crisp snack that's yummy: zucchini disks dipped in a little olive oil and then dipped in a mix of Parmesan cheese (which is already salty) and panko bread crumbs. Sprinkle extra crumbs mixture on top. Bake about 15 minutes at 350 or so until the crumbs are browning. Way better than chips -- and I'm a serious chip lover.

I think you are also dealing with some stress - you say you have some stressors but basically everything is fine. My guess is, you are making everyone else's life fine, and sacrificing yourself. Stress also produces hormones that lead to fatigue and brain fog - so some mental clarity and healthy energy might help. There is new science in this area. Do not get into caffeine or other stimulants, but there is a nutrition-based product you can use for more focus. But I think your lifestyle can be overwhelming - I am a stepmother and a mother, so I know a little about the scheduling and the integrating of different families into one - and it's a lot for anyone to take on!

So I think this is a multi-faceted issue and one you are trying to do all by yourself - and then beating up on yourself when it doesn't work. So many of us have been there and we do understand. But there is help available!