Obesity Discussion Forums

[Angelia]

Hello,
I'm not sure if I posted in the wrong place for my "introduction" so I'll kinda recap here to make sure I get to meet everyone..
My name is Angelia I'm 31 years old. I have a little boy who is a 17 months old and a wonderful husband who I've been with for 14 years. Currently I weight 293 pounds and I am 5'6". Gosh I hate saying that, but it's the cold hearted truth. I've always been heavy, but I recently just gained about 6 pounds and now I am at the heaviest I have ever been. Gosh I hate being this heavy and I need allot of help. I know I can loose weight because I've done it before (30 pounds here, 20 pounds there), but it comes back when I get down or distracted or get off course somehow. So I need to learn to stick with it because I don't want my little boy to have a fat Mom. I want to be healthy to be with him and my husband for a long time. Not to mention for me to just be healthy. I have chronic feet pain that they are currently trying to figure out where it's coming from. They know I have heel spurs in both feet, but the pain is so bad they're telling me it can't be just the heel spurs. So I do as much excersise as I can (I could do better and need to do better), but I just need to do it.
I don't really have any plan yet. What has always worked for me is just cutting my calories. I just need to find a way to stick with it. I know I can do this if I just have some support..
So that's why I'm here to meet some cool people who I can support and get some support from.
Thanks for listening to my rambling..

[Jasmine130]

Welcome Angelia!!!! It's good to have you on this site. I can relate to your story, I think a lot of us can around here. I wish I'd wisened up early like you are. I *was* the fat mom for most of my 3 sons' growing up years. I wish I'd gotten with the program sooner, but I had several losses and regains along the way and at age 47 ended up at 354+ pounds.

My sons never indicated that I embarrassed them with my weight, but they certainly are thrilled with their "new mom". I even am smaller now than some of their girlfriends. Shhhh!

Angelia, I so hear you about the foot pain too. I thought I had heel spurs at one point and the pain was excruciating, especially in the morning, when I was reduced to limping/crawling my way to the bathroom. What I actually had was plantar's fascitis and it found relief by stretching my feet in the "flex" direction. That helped a lot and once I lost a good amount of weight, I had no more pain. For matter, losing the weight relieved me of a lot of other pain, e.g., in my back, hips and knees.

In your post you say your plan thus far is to cut calories. Have you thought about how many calories you plan for each day, and what food will make up those calories in terms of how much protein, carbs, etc., will make up your meals and snacks? Also I was thinking, again with respect to the pain in your heels -- if you have a pool nearby, there are great exercises you can do in the pool and the buoyancy will help a great deal in not stressing your joints - this way you end up being able to exercise longer than you might otherwise be able!

Jasmine

[Angelia]

Thanks for your reply. Yes I think I am going to do 1500 calories. That is what worked for me in the past so I will start there and then tweek it if need be. As far as what will make up those calories I have no idea how to do that or what I should be getting. I will have to figure that out. I literally am just starting. I do not have a pool, but once it warms up a couple of pools will open up around here and I will have the chance to do that. I just bought an eliptical and that seems to not put too much pain on my feet so I can do 20 minutes on that so far. Not much, but I'm getting there.

I know what you mean about the foot pain. When I told the Dr. it was a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10 he tried to give me pain killers he felt so bad for me. Funny story (now anyway, when it happened I cried my eyes out) one morning my son woke up screaming and he never does that he's the type of baby that will play in his crib for an hour if I let him. Anyway I forgot about my feet pain because I have the monitor next to me heard him scream and jumped out of bed to run to his room and fell flat on my face because the pain was so bad. That happened not to long ago, but I cried for a while because I felt so bad about myself. I need to do something now before it becomes to late.

[Fluffymomma]

Angelia, we are glad you are here. I always noticed the pain in my feet when I would gain 10-15 more pounds. I knew my feet were trying to adjust to all the weight I was putting on.

But what put it in perspective for me was my overall health. My doctor ran some blood work on me and my blood pressure, LDL and Triglycerides were high. It scared me into finally doing something with myself. I have a family history of diabetes and finally came to the conclusion that I needed to help myself if I did not want to be sick the rest of my life.

That fall of yours could have been so much worse for you. That's pretty scary stuff.

One thing that has also helped me on my journey is that my husband is also over weight and has been really good about eating better and making better choices. Him being onboard with this has made grocery shopping easier. No more "get more soda, chips, cookies" stuff like that. I think our grocery bill has gone down some too!

[Angelia]

Yeh that I need to work on my hubby. He is super skinny and just doesn't understand that he needs to be on board with the healthy eating too. I can't cook two different meals and every meal time ya know. He supports me 110% and tells me he loves me regardless, but he just has to be there for the eating healthy too. So I'll be working on that. I have had all the blood tests done the only thing out of wack was my sid rate was elevated so there is some inflamation going on in my body. So they have me on a antinflamatory twice a day which has taken the edge of the pain at least. thanks for the warm welcome. I really feel like I'm going to like it here.