[Miia]

Hey,

everyone, thanks for commenting. Your advice and experience is much appreciated.

I lost a total of 40 pounds over the course of 1.5 years and the key was lifestyle and consistency

Congratulations JustinPopovic As much /little I have read, the way you did it is the perfect way to do it..slowly and consistently.

I forgot to mention the exercise part - I`m doing exercises for my abs, back muscles, and legs& arms every day (developed a counting system - started with doing each exercise 40 times, have progressed to 50 by now)+ stretching. I don`t have time to go to the gym on work days and on the weekends I go to my real home which is in the middle of the woods, so no gym as you can imagine. I know I probably should add something like running or dancing to my "exercises", something that would keep my heart rate up for a longer period of time and actually burn fat.... I guess I could go running..but it`s really cold outside so the idea isn`t appealing at all. For now I settled for just long walks twice a day during the weekend, not normal slow walking but I try to do speed walking. Would hula hooping qualify? *blushes* I know nothing about exercising and dieting and probably should do a research but I haven`t had time

Maybe someone could tell me what exactly am I achieving by doing those muscle-exercises? Growing muscle? Am I also burning fat and to what extent? Is it pointless as far as fat burning goes? On the muscle-growth level it`s not pointless since my muscles hurt like hell for the first two days - loved the feeling.

I found that going SUPER early like 5:30am or 6:00am for a workout also helped me create the new habit. There was something very motivating about being done my fitness for the day by 7am. I would have great energy all day.

This sounds wonderful and I would love to try it out but right now I don`t think I can fit it into my schedule

About diet -

The only protein I see in that diet is the dairy, and it looks to be almost entirely stripped of fat. Why? An all-carbs diet is THE single hardest diet to lose weight on.

Big D, would you elaborate on that a bit more? What should I eat?
About fat - I decided to not leave out meat after all - I get my fat from there. Also, I mentioned eating cheese which is full of fat. During the weekends when I go home it`s almost impossible to eat fat-free (the reason - family). We cook mostly wild animal`s meat such as deer`s... it has less fat than the regular meat you find in stores.

One of my main goals diet-wise was to cut off wheat products, I have achieved this mostly, but there was an occasion where (due to my inability to plan ahead) I ate 2 sandwiches and on one morning, when I had woken up at 6 am after going to bed late, I went to the kitchen and found freshly baked cookies on the table... I was just too sleepy to resist them, lol. I also haven`t managed to leave out coffee and champagne and sugar (I replaced the regular sugar with fructose though).

I´m not worried about sweets since I have pretty much hated them since childhood. I get my "sweets" from apples and bananas.
I`m also not worrying about sodas and such since I haven`t been into them in the first place...it`s water, kefir and coffee mostly.

and no over eating

This has been one of the main goals also...I`m an emotional eater. So far so good. After fasting and dieting the next few days, I am now able to eat less and still feel satisfied...before eating I consult my stomach now and ask it if it`s hungry... and listen to it

Oh, I`m experiencing so many thoughts and feelings while going through this process, our relationship with food is really complicated and interesting, hope I will have time some day to put all my thoughts on paper, er, screen. One of the surprising/silly feelings-thoughts that crossed me while starting this "trial" was the fear of dying ... I actually was afraid on some level that if I stop eating like I used to then I`d die or get sick because my body wont be getting enough energy, while in reality I was killing my body with too much junk... and overloading it with unnecessary work. I now try to listen to my body instead of my fears.

p.s. Progress update: I have lost 1.5 pounds so far (not in 5 days but rather like 10, I started watching what I eat a bit before making this thread). (weight is another complicated topic, I mean, it seems that it`s almost impossible to get an adequate weight number since it depends on so many things).

I have mostly managed to stick to my diet, minus the 2 incidents with bread. I have exercised since the beginning of this thread every day.