Dear JustGina

[Yambabe]

Hi Gina, I hope you don't mind me writing this down as a kind of open letter rather than a pm. I kind of thougt that some of the things I wanted to say might be useful for others at some point too.

I don't know you, we've never met, but I've been following you on your weightloss journey via here for 4 months now and I've seen you start and stop, start and stop, and now you seem to be losing heart with it all.

Please don't. You've been such an inspiration to me and others. Your strength, determination, humour and sheer willpower when things weren't going quite the way you wanted them to have been truly awesome to watch.

What I'm going to suggest now might seem a bit off-the-wall but please take some time to think about it.

I think you shold stop dieting! No really. I don't mean you need to immediately go and slap your face into a pile of cake, but I think the time has come (as it will for us all) where you are so close to goal that you are perhaps losing focus a bit.

After all, at the end of the day, what is "goal"? It's an arbitary number that we have chosen cos we like the sound of it, or we've seen a photo of someone else who weighs that and we'd like to think we will look like her when we reach it. It's not real, and it's not necessarily the be-all and end-all of where we are going.

Reading your recent posts it seems that you despair of ever reaching that number, so my advice to you is - stop trying. Concentrate instead on what matters to you. You seem to be unhappy with your shape still, so instead of watching those numbers on the scales work on your body. Losing more weight will still not necessarily give you the bod you want, doing some research and some targetted excercise might though!

Stick with the WS or even Simple for maintenance if you like, work through the refeed process, but don't let that goal be the only thing that matters.

You have done such a fantastic job so far, and what's more you've done it twice.

So chin up girl, look the world in the eye, work that body and be proud of what you have achieved. You deserve to be.

Love

Yam

 

[justgina]

Aw Yambabe, I'm really touched by that. And yes, I think you are probably right. I was always between 9st and 9st 4lb before I had kids but that was 5 pregnancies and almost 17 years ago. I think I have to face up to the fact that I'm now 45 and should accept that my body will never be the same again. Its now time to work on both my mental attitude and exercise.

I've been giving it a bit of thought and think I shall work up through the weeks in the booklet and then try to maintain a weight of 9st 12lb (my present weight).

I'd like to get back to running (which I took up last Spring but gave up after my collapsed lung) and hope to do this once my youngest starts nursery in September. My husband would come with me in an evening now but a) after a day looking after 5 kids and the consequent housework I only feel like putting my feet up come 9pm and b) I hate exercising with other people, don't know why but I'd much rather challenge myself and feel more motivated when I am not feeling pressured by anyone elses expectation. Anyway, in the meantime I'm going to walk more and try to do one of my exercise videos on a regular basis.

Obviously, I'll still be hanging around on here and putting in my tu'penny worth occasionally, but don't expect any weight updates unless things start getting hairy in an upward direction and I feel the need for the support of you ladies on here.

Again, thanks for thinking of me......

 

[Magggie]

The very best of luck Gina

I am getting close myself, only another 23lbs,that would make my bmi 21
I am pretty much bmi 25 now
but I want to get right into the "normal" bmi range
should take an average of 7/8 weeks at my losing rate

were you just not losing anymore ?

Did it slow right down as you got so close to your goal?

 

[justgina]

Yes Maggie, once I got to BMI 25 I virtually stopped losing. I've had a few weeks when I've messed around too much and a few when I've been 100% but it didn't seem to make too much difference, my body just wanted to hang on to the remaining weight. In May I was 99.9% but only lost 1lb. I've now moved up to week 2 in the booklet so will be leaving Exante behind totally in a 3 weeks or so. I hope to not put any weight on and have upped my exercise this week. (It helps that my car is in the garage having the clutch fixed altough I don't recommend walking 3.5 miles to the library, then the supermarket (and carrying books and shopping home, whilst accompanied by a 3 year old!!!!!! It took 4.5 hours to do what would normally take me around 1)

I still intend to stick around here and poke my oar in every so often, I've even joined the June challenge, with a goal of 0lb either way......

 

[Magggie]

Yea Gina- may be an idea to see how I will do too, now I am BMI of 25
I am still pretty much total (maybe another extra half a bar on a night ) with a strict shake, soup & bar threesome a day
I have only had one week on a 1lb loss, and I can imagine I will start getting pretty much Pee'd off if I don't lose

I am getting hungry as well, so subconciously I know I am close

Good luck on your Nil gain for June