*I'M BACK + BIG UPDATE* - My Story (16st gone + pics!!)

Hello Everyone,

Thank you to all the recent people who have posted, and i'm sorry i've not been around much.

Anyway, some major updates for you guys :)

Yesterday was my 32nd Birthday and what a day it turned out to be, first it was my routine weigh in, and i got on the scales and i was 14st 12llbs which means i've lost 16 stone exactly, i then went out and spent a ridiculous amount of money on clothes (never ever in my life, until very recently, been able to go into a shop on a high street and buy designer clothes). I arrive home and find on the floor a letter marked with an NHS badge, my heart sinks, i open the envelope and to my delight the PCT have finally accepted my skin removal op and have instructed my GP to refer me to a consultant. Not sure how long the process takes from now on, maybe i'll find out soon, but at the moment i'm chuffed to bits :)

Also updated some pics below which were taken yesterday :)

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Thank you again everyone, see you soon.


Cookie
 
Fab pictures, happy birthday and a great big yaaay for your nhs letter!
You are looking great!

As a woman though, need a pic of your shopping purchases! (lol)

Sent from my iPad using MiniMins
 
Wow!!! You look incredible!! You have done so incredibly well and are an inspiration to us all. Fantastic loss, fantastic news on the op too :D Well done you!!! xxx
 
WOWWWW you made a huge transformation holy crap good job man

Wow!!! You look incredible!! You have done so incredibly well and are an inspiration to us all. Fantastic loss, fantastic news on the op too :D Well done you!!! xxx


Cheers guys :) - this might sound strange but it's a very weird feeling getting compliments off people considering the comments and reactions i've had from people in the past due to my size. It's a nice feeling though :)

Just got my appointment with a consultant, it's not until the 24th July (8 weeks) :( a little bit gutted its so long to wait but i just need to be patient!!! - The letter said i shouldn't wait longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment, so going by that i should be having the op Sept-Oct time. It's going to be a strange feeling being treated and operated on at the hospital i work at!!!

Cookie
 
Hi Cookie. You will be fed up hearing what an inspiration you are but you really have inspired me. I am only on day 2 and hearing your story and the commitment and dedication shown by you and others like Pink as well really motivate me to get to my goal once and for all. Thanks for sharing your story, you look great and I hope the surgery goes well :)
 
Hey cookie i just wanted to congratulate you on your weight loss. Im 26 years old and determined to sort my weight out by the time im 30 so your story has really inspired me. You look fantastic and i wish you all the best with the op and maintenance.

Hi Cookie. You will be fed up hearing what an inspiration you are but you really have inspired me. I am only on day 2 and hearing your story and the commitment and dedication shown by you and others like Pink as well really motivate me to get to my goal once and for all. Thanks for sharing your story, you look great and I hope the surgery goes well :)

Crazy cat lady (lol at username :)) - Thank You, and i'm sure you can "sort out" your weight, your stats suggest you only want to lose a little so your goal is more than achievable. Are you a bit of a yo yo dieter and that is what you mean by sort out? Controlling your diet is a massive challenge, it took me a while of experimenting with healthy type foods and finding things that i liked rather than just ate to achieve my goal if that makes sense. Everything i eat now i enjoy and the best thing the majority is healthy good quality food. It took me a while to learn to treat myself with the odd chocolate bar, or a night out for a curry etc as my mind set has been focused so much on losing weight, but i think that eating the one curry will all of sudden put me back to 30st lol. Keep at it and it will come good :)

Rocky Road - I've hinted at it before but considering some of things i've been called in the past, being called an inspiration will definitely not get tiresome :) so thank you!!! The two words you use "commitment & dedication" are something your going to have to get used to, they are obviously very important and you are early in your journey, which i suppose like most people was definitely the hardest point through my weight loss process. In my experience the first month or so was the hardest but afterwards it got easier and it soon became routine rather than chore. There will hopefully be alot of good times and feelings of success but there will be a few setbacks like trying your hardest and sticking to the plan and getting on the scales and having little to no weight loss, i've had a few of those but keep with it and it does come good, believe me, you just try and not let the few setbacks dwindle the motivation. I just kept saying to myself, it took 29+ years to get like this, it's not going to happen overnight and if i keep at it i'll get there, and here i am, waiting for a skin op and then hopefully i'm done and i just need to maintain this for the rest of my life (sounds easy lol) :)

Any more questions just shout :)

Cookie
 
Thanks Cookie. I do have a question. I have tried everything and when I say everything I mean even to the stage of having a gastric band in and then removed. The problem that I always have is how to stay motivated. When I start a diet I have this image of where I want to be in my head and how I want to look but then the image fades and without it the food is just there and easy. I need to have the image to say if I want this I can't have this (namely the food). So I wonder how you managed to keep the motivation. Did you imagine yourself at your ideal weight or was it rather the idea that you could not stay where you were? I hope you don't mind me asking :)
 
Thanks for your advice. I havent been able to update my stats and i had a long break from the site.

Im now 163 pounds or 11 st 9 and im 5'2". Believe it or not Im just a pound short of being obese. I would like to be 8 and a half stone which is well in the healthy range. Its not a lot to lose but yes I am a yoyo dieter. My losses have always been small and slow and ive got fed up with restricting myself.

Recently ive eaten very healthily and exercised but still gained weight which is why im getting my thyroid checked out. And im also looking at finding a way i can enjoy my food but still lose weight, like you have done. Im trying out SW recipes and varying my diet as much as I can. Its just sticking with it, like anything that requires willpower!
 
Rocky Road said:
Thanks Cookie. I do have a question. I have tried everything and when I say everything I mean even to the stage of having a gastric band in and then removed. The problem that I always have is how to stay motivated. When I start a diet I have this image of where I want to be in my head and how I want to look but then the image fades and without it the food is just there and easy. I need to have the image to say if I want this I can't have this (namely the food). So I wonder how you managed to keep the motivation. Did you imagine yourself at your ideal weight or was it rather the idea that you could not stay where you were? I hope you don't mind me asking :)

No of course I don't mind you asking :)

Motivation is hard, extremely so. My guess is your setting yourself too high a goal and because that goal is not coming round quickly, as let's be honest we all would love instant results, your motivation fades. Please say if I'm way off the mark though!! If that is the case then my answer to your other question could be ideal for you this is how I approached my weight loss.

As you know I was just shy of 31st and although I can't lie and say I wasn't imaging myself as the sort of weight I am now, I didn't want to set myself up for a fall so I started small. I wanted to try and first aim for 25st and see what happens from there and that came and went and then I said lets go for 22st etc. literally just went for baby steps and when I reached a goal just set myself another one and that way it doesn't seem so daunting in a way. That's how I saw it anyway!!

In terms of keeping the motivation that is very tricky and comes down to each person. I was lucky in a way because I had very few setbacks and the weight, on the whole, came off week after week and i could see the results so that was a massive motivator. Other ways I kept up the motivation was changing things a little every now and then I.e new exercises or new foods, that way I never got bored. Eating foods or doing exercises you find boring are setting yourself up to fail in my opinion so I would try and avoid that. If your the type of person who has to have a treat then factor that into your calorie intake, and obviously you have to maintain the discipline to say no to having more!!

Hope this helps :)


Cookie
 
CrazyCatLady said:
Thanks for your advice. I havent been able to update my stats and i had a long break from the site.

Im now 163 pounds or 11 st 9 and im 5'2". Believe it or not Im just a pound short of being obese. I would like to be 8 and a half stone which is well in the healthy range. Its not a lot to lose but yes I am a yoyo dieter. My losses have always been small and slow and ive got fed up with restricting myself.

Recently ive eaten very healthily and exercised but still gained weight which is why im getting my thyroid checked out. And im also looking at finding a way i can enjoy my food but still lose weight, like you have done. Im trying out SW recipes and varying my diet as much as I can. Its just sticking with it, like anything that requires willpower!

Don't worry about the obese tag from a BMI scale, I know it can be a good guide but it can be misleading, I'm still officially still overweight category yet my dr says lose no more but my situation is he is factoring in the weight of my lose skin. But I have seen media stories of kids being classed as obese and there is nothing wrong with their size, also body builders could be classed as obese. My BMI was 54 when i started!! Which was off my drs BMI scale.

If your keeping to a diet and exercising and still gaining weight you may be putting on muscle mass which weighs a lot more than fat so u need to factor that in. You need to use cardio type exercises (treadmills, cross trainers etc) and that will burn fat and not put on a lot of muscle.

Get your thyroid checked though as you never know and if that is factor it is obviously very hard to lose weight with that against you. But I assume the dr would be able to sort that out if that is the case. Eating healthy is great but you need to keep an eye on calories, some healthy type foods can sometime be surprising high in calories. I absolutely love Homous but a small tub from morrisions is 500 calories add that to the crackerbreads I eat with it it can add up to 600-700 calories for a relatively small meal. It is very filling though and has worked a treat for me :) - try protein high meals as that helps to keep the hunger away. You think that to maintain your weight the average person needs to eat around 2000 calories so to lose weight you need to be aiming at between 1200-1500 which is not a lot, so maybe what I'm trying to say is maybe yes you are eating healthy but if the quantity is a little high that maybe holding you back. Track your calories and keep up with the exercise and see where you go from there.

Cookie
 
I do look at the calories, fat and sugar of everything I eat, I think my main problem is sticking to it long enough before giving in.

And I go running 3 times a week. I also do kettlebells to combine cardio and resistance. But again, I go through phases and lose motivation.

By the way about my user name, I do sometimes regret my choice! Im not crazy (much) and I dont actually currently own a cat!
 
WOW WOW and WOW!!! I just want to say congratulations on your huge weight loss, you should be so proud of yourself! You are an inspiration to us all and look like a totally new man! Happy belated birthday for last week and what an amazing present to find through your door! Don't worry the time will pass so quick you won't believe! I cannot wait to get to your stage. I have gone from 25st 7.5 down to 17st 12.5 and back up to just over 21st but am back on the wagon, taking Xen and following low fat/cals and have lost 7.3lb this week already! I hope you keep us all updated with your maintenance and operation etc.

Well done again and good luck in the future.

Tobi xx
 
HI Cookie

I would just like to say thankyou and welldone, after reading such inspirational stories from people like you I embarked on my weight loss journey via Exante Diet and it has changed my life in such a short period of time, its been 17 weeks since I started with Exante and have lost 7 Stone.

When I started never dreamed about loosing the amount of weight I have at all never mind in such a short space of time and am so proud of my acheivement.
I can even now buy clothes in the supermarkets lol for the first time in many many years. :))))

Thankfully I havent had the loose skin problem yet but I no its coming so I no that will be my next big hurdle when the time comes.

Once again thankyou and good luck for your operation
 
Thanks Cookie. I shall take the advice on board and start goal setting. I'll go for 2st 10lb as that takes me to a nice round figure (so to speak lol) and then work on the next goal from there. Seeing the photos on here of people like yourself who have done so so so well are motivating and should keep me on track. I'm down 7lb which is more than I have lost in years so that is a good start. Thanks again.:)
 
Belated Happy Birthday Wishes to you Cookie:553:

Congratulations and well done, you look amazing in your latest photos!:happy096:
 
Thanks Cookie. I shall take the advice on board and start goal setting. I'll go for 2st 10lb as that takes me to a nice round figure (so to speak lol) and then work on the next goal from there. Seeing the photos on here of people like yourself who have done so so so well are motivating and should keep me on track. I'm down 7lb which is more than I have lost in years so that is a good start. Thanks again.:)

That sounds like a good goal and something that doesn't seem like a million miles away from your point of view and hopefully it will help you to maintain that motivation :)
 
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