This time last year i weighed 386 pounds, today i weigh 255, a loss of 131 pounds! I was totally wheelchair dependant ( power chair) as i am an amputee. I had a rlapse of my MS that paralysed my remaining leg, transferring from cahir became a nightmare and i was scared to death that if my leg did not improve my independance was at risk ( i live alone and have no family to assist, and at 385 pounds that would require lifters etc to move) at 44 i felt i was close to needing residential care! Thankfully my leg improved but then i relaised i needed to get real about losing weight.
I use a web site called www.fitday.com to journal my foodintake, i actually purcahsed the full version and it has been a wonderful tool, i went ack to the basics and measured and weighed all my food, calorie counted. TO start with i was on 1000 to 1200 calories per day but did not lose weight so i went to a dietician at the Ms clinic and we decided that as i was wheelchair dependant i needed to drop my intake to 800 calories.

I eliminated processed foods, and stuck to low to moderate GI carbohydrates. Good quality but lean protein ( i have about 90 grams of lean meat per day such as chicken or turkey), i have swallowing problems from the ms that are worse first thingin the the morning so i have an optifast shake for breakfast or sometimes very sloppy oatmeal. I also found a suppor forum on line that had a lot of members who had large amonts of weight like me to lose and that has been invalable. Now that i have lost 131pounds i can use a manual wheelchair uch more than i used to and i have had a prosthesis made for my amputated leg and can now walk for limit amounts (my "good leg" is still MS affected so infact i have to rely mainly on my amputated limb so it is limited to my good days.

There are many ways to lsoe weight, the trick is to keep it off long term andi think motivation is the key- for me the far or losing my independance was all i needed, it was worse than the knowledge that being moribdly obese would shorten my life. Being indpendant is imprtant to me. I still have about 80 pounds to lose but i know that i can do it, its a lot slower now but thats ok, slow weight loss is healthier.
Good luck with your weight loss, whatever method you decide on

Kebsa
 

Kebsa,
I have so much admiration for you. That weight loss is fantastic! I'm so very proud of you for tackling that problem headon. Independence is important to me too.

I too am having limited movement problems (but not nearly as bad as yours). I am limited to my weight on crutches and it's not a good swinging movement like you see. Mine is one crutch accross the other supporting my weight movement. A little like walking on crutches. Kills my hands and wrists and shoulders because all my weight is on them. None on floor yet.

So I too have to lose weight. A year ago they were begging me to eat more, to gain weight. Now I gotta stop. It has hit me finally. So I'm consiously watching what I eat. (Terrible time to start a diet, Christmas and Thanksgiving). But I'm of the opinion that for me, it will not be so much what I eat, because I eat well, but it will be the amount. And skipping my dessert every other night. Every calorie counts.

I tried something this week that has worked miracles for helping us get better meals. I used my large crockpot to do it. I placed two small sirloins on the bottom then a layer of carrots, then I placed a layer of chicken breasts, then a layer of potatoes (quartered), then a layer of turkey sausage, and finished off with some more carrots, celery and onions). All the vegetables were a little chunky but cut small enough to layer and poke around the meat. I also left the meat frozen. I added no additional water, broth or anything. I cooked this on high in the crockpot for about 8 hours. You can tell if it is done by checking the chicken.

This gave us food for the entire week and then some. One night we had turkey sausage, potatoes and carrots. Then the next night, chicken, potatoes carrots and we also cooked some green beans to go with it. Then the next night we had the sirloin, potatoes, carrots and we steamed some cabbage to go with it. Now, I have enough left over to make a very tasty stew which we can eat for several days. This is the important part. Very limited work required to do all of this. And....no worrying about what we will eat this week. And I don't have to eat what my husband is able to cook. :D

I'm going to do it again this next week with a small pork roast, chicken and sausage.

Billye

Hi Kesba, what a fantastic job you have done, you are a real inspiration to those who want to loose weight, i admire your determination, well done :)
I have lost 7 lb since starting this thread, so i am pretty happy with the progress so far, although all the temptations [especially at parties] has been real hard to resist, but i am real determined to shed another 14 pounds which will be my target weight.
good luck to you with your goal weight too,
Brian :)

KEBSA:

Woo-hoo---good for you. That is SOME substantial weight loss. I know. I've been there. Have a few more to go, but I'll get there.

Shiny Sue- I read in one of your posts that you think we are sick because we don't eat. I had to laugh. Believe me, we eat. It's WHAT we eat and HOW MUCH we eat, that either makes you sick or makes you well.

I eat nothing processed. Nothing refined. I cook it myself. That alone, makes me know what goes into my body. I don't cook with salt. I do use it a bit on my foods. But never cook with it. Of course, when you buy fish or chicken, you don't really know where it comes from, so until I get to buy my own farm, or go fishing in the ocean, I have to trust the local fish store, and local supermarket where I get my fish and chickens. So far, Alan and I are still alive.


Melody
P.S BILLYE~~~~ Excellent idea about the crock pot. What a great way to make a week's worth of delicious food. Good job!!!!:)

Does
 

ANYONE REMEMBER WHEN A DENTIST WOULD WIRE YOUR MOUTH SHUT,
SO ALL YOU COULD HAVE WAS LIQUIDS, //////MY FRIEND LOST WEIGHT AND
TEETH....:eek::eek: THIN BUT STRANGE. SUE

Sue:

I heard of people having their mouths wired shut, but honestly, I never believed it really happened. But as your post indicated. It really happened.

My god!!

mel

Thanks for all the great encouragment! Fear was my major motivator to begin with, before the MS flare, the thought of needing to lsoe way over half my weight seemed just impossible but if you break it down into small goals 5 to 10 pounds at a time it is much easier. Now I am confident that i will eventually get to goal weight. I had a bit of a set back recently as i was on high dose oral steroids for a couple of weeks then 5 days of methylpred- boy, do the steroids increase appetite!

Silver lady, the crockpot idea is great! I forgot to mention that the other thing i did was a pantry clear out, i literally disposed of naything that may be a temptation trap, if i want ice cream, i have to go to the store and i buy a single serve- that is something that has helped me a lot, you really think twice about eating the problem foods if you have to make the extra effort to get to the shops to get it!
I can understand the problems with the crutches too, i walked like that for years, you can get crutches with shock absorbers in the main shaft and they really do take the strain off your wrists, you can also get anatomical handgrips (each is shaped for a particular hand so one is right hand only and one left hand) they are great. A PT pointed out to me that walking with crutches long term changes the way you use your upper body, you tend not to move it in the same way as when you do not use walking aids, over time it leads to back and shoulder problems- i was referred to a PT who used the feldenkreis tecnique, they look at the way the body moves as a whole. I was given some excercises to do that seemd rather strange to begin with but it really did help me.

K
 

tHANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS WITH US,AND ALL THE READERS,,,YOU
KNOW WHO YOU ARE...DEAR ONE'S READ ,WRITE,BUT MOST OF ALL
LEARN..hUGS TO ALL ,US,NEUROTALKK STAFF,DR. JOHN :grouphug:
SUE

Kebsa:

Ever watch the biggest loser?? I never miss an episode. These people have lost 100 plus pounds. The look on their faces says it all.

The other night, they had just voted off someone and Alison Sweeney, handed them all an envelope. Each of these people had lost between 37 and 100 plus pounds, so they now looked WAAAAYY different than when they first came on The Biggest Loser.

Well, the look on their faces when they opened the envelope and they were looking at photos of themseves on the first day after they arrived at their Biggest Loser Camp, well, that look was priceless.

They just stared at their former bodies and absolutely every one of them said "oh my god, this was me??" It gives people the impression that they really didn't know what they looked like. AND THAT WOULD BE CORRECT.

Because when I weighed 300 pounds, I really didn't know what I looked like. I wouldn't look into a mirror, I denied my obesity. I used to pig out in front of the tv at night and blot out the world.

No one could reach me. Now it's a completely different story when one has a weight problem because of medication. Nothing they can do except do the best they can and not over-eat.

I remember one of the trainers on The Biggest Loser telling the people "Do you know what is happening to your body when you are hungry??"
"Your body is burning fat". See, I never even knew this.

So every time I get hungry (and believe me, I get hungry just like everybody else), so every time I get hungry, and it's not time for a meal, I just remind myself "oh, your body is burning fat, how cool is that??" Now to do this at age 60 is probably ridiculous to the average person, because the average person expects 60 year old woman to be sitting in rocking chairs and doing knitting. I can assure you, I am not sitting in a rocking chair and knitting anything. (Actually I have no one to knit for, no grandchildren, etc.).

I cleaned out the cupboards years ago and replaced them with staples that I know I will use. Like no-salt tomato sauce (my husband likes that on everything, I can't stand the stuff). I have cans of sliced black olives (packed in water), that I add to all of my salads. Doesn't impact my sugar, I lost weight, so this is a good fat for me. There are no cookies, no candy, no ice cream in the fridge (hasn't been for over 6 years now). I don't buy it.

And if my friends come over, they know I have sugar-free stuff in the house. If they want something fattening, they can bring it. They never do. My friends are diabetic, so it would be a no-no in this house. I don't have any "triggers" any more. Things I can't be around. I've been doing this so long, it's like fried into my brain, eating this way. I get excited about my grilled chicken over greens (if you can believe this), but I do. Haven't touched red meat in many MANY years. Not that there's anything wrong with an occasional steak. It's a good souce of protein and B-12, but I eliminated it from my diet.

So I don't diet. I just eat fresh foods, no junk, no sugar, no preservatives, nothing with sorbitol (gives me the runs), no white stuff, (I will ocassionally use flour to coat something but that's on a holiday and not an everyday thing. It's something to look forward to.

Now my husband, he's completely different. He has "triggers". He told me "don't make the sweet potatoes with the brown sugar and marshmallows". I said 'oh really, how come?? I mean, it's Thanksgiving and you love that on Thanksgiving". And he said "Yeah, but I'll eat the whole pan".

I said: "oh, it's a trigger" and he said "absolutely".

I finally realized that food is no longer a trigger to my self-medicating, last year at a birthday party. It was actually my birthday, but someone gave my brother-in-law a birthday party and it happened to be given on MY birthday.

So I'm there with all these bowls of candies, snacks, pretzels, pretzel chips (never even heard of these things). They are baked, not fried, but really, when you come to think of it, when you pop these things in your mouth and you are sitting around, well, you just keep popping them in your mind. It's like you don't really know what you are doing, you just enjoy the salt in your mouth, and the beverage that goes along with this. Like when they keep pretzels at the counters in a bar, so people keep buying the beer.

So I'm sitting there looking at 15 bowls on a table, filled with the amazing assortment of sugar laden, salt laden, crispy, baked, fried, whatever thingees, right in front of me. Now the old me would have just kept picking.

But I had re-trained my brain a long time ago, so here I was staring at one bowl and it had this new product, a pretzel baked thing that was flat and it's all the rage in New Jersey. I had never tasted this before.

I said to myself "I wonder what this tastes like". So I had one. It was the most delicious thing I ever ate. Everybody comes in the room and they are scooping up handfuls of these snacks (like people do without thinking about it), they just sit, enjoy conversation, and pick at the snacks. I've done this all my life.

Well, this one day, I had exactly 6 items. I know because I counted. I wanted one from this bowl and one from that bowl. I wanted one cracker with some salsa. I wanted to experience but not let myself just keep shoving things in my mouth, because in the other room, there were the platters of food (wraps, cheese, etc, chicken, salads, etc. ) All food, that I would be sitting in front of and I would have to choose to put on my plate.

I made some good decisions that day. I ate the salads (and I even tried something new. It's called Cran-raisins. My niece had put them in the salad. I have never tasted anything so delicious in my life. It MADE the salad.

I then looked at the box on the counter and said "okay, you treated yourself today, but this has sugar and carbs, so no more after today". I never bought a box.

I even allowed myself a piece of birthday cake.

But the real test was when someone had gone to Costco and bought all these chocolate chip cookies. It was right in front of me. I had just poured a nice cup of coffee and I said to myself "why not have half a cookie". I took off half a cookie, put it in my mouth and ultimately realized "I do not like the taste of this cookie, it's tooooooo sweet". So I put the rest down and I finally had the lightbulb moment that I DON'T HAVE TO EAT STUFF I DON'T LIKE. That i used to eat because it was right in front of me.

I don't need to to this. The old me would have devoured 3 or 4 cookies, even if I didn't like the taste. That's why I got to 300 lbs. I ate wrong, and didn't allow my brain to take over and make the decision to treat my body better.

Once I realized all of this, it got so much easier. I look at food completely different. (I only wish I did this 30 years ago, but I wasn't ready).

Now I think of my body as a Rolls Royce, the food is the fuel that goes into the Rolls Royce, and the carbureator, the shock absorbers, and all the parts of the Rolls Royce, well, these are my kidneys, my heart, my various body parts. I say "what will this do to my engine, etc. etc.

Makes eating a whole different experience. Last night I had grilled salmon with garlic and fresh parsley. I imagined all the Omega 3 going into my arteries.

So I am so proud that you made all these changes in your life.

I know many people with MS. Various degrees.

Here's hoping you have better days ahead.

Melody

Melody I'm sure you know but be careful with certain fish cause of mercury? It seems like many here have made huge progress to health. I know the battle well in the opposite but still it takes a lot of strength. A huge part of weight is mental and making the right choices for yourself. Then of course some is genetics/metabolism so it makes it hard for some. Not everyone can be a size 2 and is more about health.