Hi,
I am ambition. Some of the members might remember me from challenge clubs like 10lbs in 10 weeks (I actually lost 7lb on that one) etc. I am 5ft 3in and currently weigh 147lb.

I have suffered from weight problems as long as I can remember. I remember being teased as a young child and was always embarrassed by the comments made about my weight even by my own family members. I don?t understand how people can be so insensitive to the damage they can do a child's self esteem by making such comments. Anyway, as a result I have always been yo yo dieting and starving myself on one diet or another but never had any great success. I never felt beautiful or even acceptable in the society around me, till I met my husband. He made me look at life from a whole new perspective and I started feeling good about myself. I weighed 136lbs the day we got married. After we got married, I went back to school to complete my bachelors degree and worked long hours at the same time. Seeing much younger girls than me at college kept me working on my weight management. After I graduated from college we had our daughter. I considered pregnancy as my permit to "EAT ALL" and also suffered from "pre-eclampsia" and therefore retained water too. I was weighing 188lbs when my daughter was born. I started thinking about weight loss 6months after she was born and started low carbing when she was a year and a half. On her 2nd birthday, I was back on my pre-pregnancy weight of 133lbs. People looked at me with envious eyes and started asking me about my weight management secret. I knew at that time that I wanted to lose 10 more pounds to be in the safe zone of weight for my height, but I think all those complements made me feel too comfortable with my self and I started to slack on my diet. Meanwhile, I also went through the preparation for graduated school entrance exam and got admission in a highly recognized and competitive master's program. Full time work, demands of a very aggressive graduate program and the guilty feelings of not giving all my time to my daughter, made me go back on the weight gain path.

So here I am today, aiming to get rid of 22 lbs. Although it may not sound like I have much to loose, I know that I have struggled to loose this weight throughout my life. I have spent a lot of time making weight loss plans, planning meals and exercising but somehow I keep getting back to the point of feeling sorry for my self and gaining it all back. However, this time I aim not to go down that path again and I plan to get rid of all of this extra weight till the end of this year. I know that its a tall claim, especially when I have tried to loose this weight throughout my life but this time I want to put an end to my weight crisis and start the new year as a new person. A person who looks good, feels good and knows how to take care of her health. I am in the final year of my graduate studies. I went to the graduation for the last class in August and that gave me a realistic view of the timeline I have till my graduation (a year!). All the graduates looked so nice, confident and SLIM. They looked like they are in control of their lives and I want to look the same on the day of my graduation and most of all I want my family to feel proud of myself.

Through the years of weight management, I have learned a lot of things about my eating habits and I can use those to my advantage this time. I know that I am an emotional eater, I know I use food as a comfort factor, I know I give up hope very easily (If I had a candy today, that?s it I am a failure and now it does not matter what I ate for the rest of the day). I know I start slacking as soon as people start appreciating my weight loss, and I know that last time I did LC, I lost track of all the calories I consumed (as long as it was LC, it was all mine without any portion control) and that?s probably what made me hit a plateau at that time, leading to discouragement and failure.

So, I plan to use this knowledge about my weaknesses to my benefit this time. I have 14 weeks to loose 22lbs, which comes upto 1.5 lbs. a week. I know I will have weeks when I will not be able to achieve this goal, but I will not loose sight of the big goal. I now that I am starting at a good place, journaling will have me keep track of myself and I can count on the great members of this site to keep me going in times of weight loss distress.

So, here we go!!!!!

Nice to meet you Ambition. See you round the forum and best wishes for your success!

__________________
The fox is wild!



5'3" Maintaining 121-125
Original weight 198 +

Welcome Ambition. Good luck on your journey! There are many helpful resources here.

__________________
To think is to create!
So What? Now What?
Tom
Restart LC 7/05/08

Thanks Tom and beachfox for visiting my journal and motivation.

I have an assignment due today and a test later this week that I am not so prepared for and therefore the pressure is on, however, I promise to myself for not letting that deter me from the path of weight loss. My test is on Wednesday and right after that we have a little breakfast arranged for the class and I am pretty sure that there will be only carbs served there. It will be hard to keep away from those after a sleepless night (studying) and then having the relief of being done with the test. However, my real test will be to keep away from the food and I will have to try my best not to give in to the temptations. I have a plan to combat those feelings though. I will arrive at school early and have a good breakfast with coffee and scrambled eggs and water before the test, I will also keep a water bottle with me, so that after the test I will not be starving and will keep sipping on the water to keep my attention away from the carb filled food. Another thing that I am trying to do now is to taper down my consumption of caffeine. I have become a coffee addict, its like whenever I can, I am sipping on a cup of coffee. I need to stop that. Therefore, I have decided that I am going to have a cup of coffee in the morning and then switch to decaf for the rest of the day and then again I will allow myself to have another cup of regular coffee in the evening. The plan is to taper off to just one cup of regular coffee a day.

Yesterday was good. I gave in to the temptation of having a bagel in the morning and after that I thought, okay thats one mistake and I wont let that ruin my diet for the rest of the day. I had meatloaf for lunch with spinach and dinner was roast beef and turkey deli meat with salad leaves. I also had a cup of green tea and kept away from coffee after my first cup in the morning.
I couldn?t resist the temptation of checking my weight in the morning and guess what, I am down 1.5 lbs. Half a day of watching my diet and I am down a pound and a half. That was my goal for the entire week, so the idea is now to keep it off for the rest of the week and if some more weight loss comes along, then that will be added accomplishment.

97 days to the New Year and 20.5lbs more to loose. So here we go with another day :cool:

hi there, good to see that you're so focused! you can do this!!
i am also going to grad school and work full time. i'm getting my MBA at northwestern university (kellogg) in chicago.
what are you studying??
it definitely makes weight loss more challenging - less time to exercise and messed up eating schedules - but having an eating plan in place makes it much easier for me!

__________________
**************
Carrie
SBD since 9/12/2005
Re-started 5/8/2006
My new journal: Just Breathe

Thanks for visiting my journal Carrie. I am also attending a university in Chicago and I am doing my masters in a health care field. That?s why I want to practice what we as health care professionals preach i.e. leading healthy life styles and weight control. However, through my personal experience, I know it is much easier said then done. Carrie our weight ranges and goals are kind of in the same range too (well, kind of, I am surely heavier than you at this point). I kind of feel like we are in the same boat. SO good luck !! Lets keep rowing the boats.
My day has gone good so far. Breakfast was an omelet with veggies and cheese with my cup of regular coffee and lunch was pot roast with veggies. However, I am so used to the stuffed feeling after eating carb loaded foods that a good low carb meal doesn?t make me feel satisfied or full. So now 2 hours after lunch, I am hungry again. I am also craving for my usual cup of coffee, so I decided to control myself and had a piece of fruit and am sipping on green tea right now. I think that its working (by the way I munched on some peanuts in between too). I know the reason I am feeling hungry is that I am studying for my test later this week and the anxiety of the test and my habit of munching on something is whats giving me the hunger pangs. Bad habits are hard to break. I am trying my best not to go toward the cafeteria at this time. Lets see if this works ....I just need to prove that I am in control and not the food. :fork:

Well, I did prove yesterday, that I am the one in control and not the food :fork: However, it took a lot of effort on my part, I think that I was not having such a hard time controlling myself last time when I started on LC as compared to now, but I also understand that the first few days are going to be hard and then I should settle down with LC eating with time.

Today, I prepared food for the whole day before I left home in the morning. I made myself an omlette for breakfast and had a cup of regular coffee. I have salads for lunch and dinner and boiled eggs for snack time or craving times. I am studying for my test tomorrow and therefore need to keep away from the craving of munching on something. I need to make sure that I maintain the loss of 1.5lbs till the end of this week, so everytime I feel like eating something, I think of 1.5 (ha,ha) its working so far
I am not getting much time to walk due to the upcoming test, but I plan to start on it from tomorrow after school.
So, lets see if I can stick to the meal plan for today :bear:

So far so good. I had to try hard to keep away from the tomato soup at lunch. It was on menu in the cafeteria, and looked full of corn starch, so I stuck with my salad that I had brought with me

Just stopped by to say Hi!
Good job sticking with salad for lunch. On coffee, I found that I had to get off regular coffee and regular diet sodas except when I'm physically active. If sitting in the office the caffiene gives me the munchies. It is much easier for me to make it to lunch with decaf. That is why during induction your advised to get off of caffienated drinks.

__________________
To think is to create!
So What? Now What?
Tom
Restart LC 7/05/08

Good advice. I am trying to switch to decaf too.

The lunch salad worked well and now for dinner I have chicken salad. Hopefully it will work

Hi, Ambition! I remember you from the 10 in 10 challenge. I thought I recognized the name. It's nice to see you back. You seem like you have it under control. Good for you!

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Hi Ambition! I remember you from the challenge and you and I had similar goals. Welcome back! As you can see, I, too, am still trying to get to that elusive goal. But we haven't given up, right?? Sounds like you are definitely on the right track! How did the tests go? Hope to see you posting often!

~Crystal

__________________
Started Atkins-1/2/04
174 lbs at heaviest



5'0 154/136.5/130

Hi Maxibee and crystal, thanks for visiting my journal. I am so glad that you remembered me. Crystal, although you have not reached that goal yet, you are much closer to it than me. You stuck to the plan and I slacked. That?s so embarrassing but that?s the truth. Maintaining the weight loss is always my issue. However, this time I plan not to repeat the same mistakes that I made last time, and the good thing is that now that I am saying it is front of you, I know that I will try harder to keep away from those mistakes. By the way, my test today went well and I was able to keep myself away from all of the carb loaded free breakfast that we were served. :jump: I have to say I almost gave in to the temptation, but then I thought "How will I face my daily journal after eating this big piece of pastry". I really believe that maintaining this journal is keeping me in checks.

Yesterday went well, after combating all those cravings. I stuck to my salads and consumed two cups of regular coffee throughout the day and had 2 cups of green tea instead of more coffee. I am beginning to develop the taste for green tea.

Today has been good so far.

BF: Scrambled eggs and a cup of regular coffee

Lunch: chicken salad

Snack: low carb candy

Water: 16oz (I need to catch up)

Green tea: 1

Well done on saying "no" to pastries! I think that is great! Glad your test went well too. Don't feel embarassed. I have been up and down so many times I am dizzy! Just realize that this is a way of life. None of us are perfect but we have to just keep plugging away. Post often...I really think it helps!

__________________
Started Atkins-1/2/04
174 lbs at heaviest



5'0 154/136.5/130

Hey Ambition! I was drawn to your journal by the title, I'm a repeat LCer, too. I want to lose 20-25 by New Years, and I started back today (after one week back on and then 4 days off!). You'll do great! Keep it up, and check in on my journal if you like (Page Two) I'm borrowing your mantra! "I am in control, NOT THE FOOD!"

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Heather
182-2/27/08