Yup. You read that right. I lost another pound and together it’s 14 pounds. I am super excited. I haven’t started exercising yet but I think I will start resistance training and doing some core work. I’ll let you all know how it goes.
How are you doing on your weight loss journey? Let me know. You can also email me at janissoucie@gmail.com
As of yesterday, I weighed myself and saw that in the last couple of weeks I have lost 4 lbs! I’m so excited! I think it’s a great start.
I believe the sugar free and gluten free food I eat are helping me lose the weight but also there is this handy app called Lose It! that I use to track my calories, blood sugar, water intake, three meals and three snacks, exercise, weight, health, steps, body fat, sleep, blood pressure, carbs, fat, and protein intake.
Lose It! lets you try it out to see how you like it, but then for all the features you can buy it for $19.99 and I believe that’s for the whole year. It’s worth it for me because I use a lot of what they offer.
My husband and other members of my support team, on and off, Facebook have been cheering me on and congratulating me on my success.
If you’re losing weight I want to congratulate you and encourage you to keep going on your path of success. If you’re struggling to lose weight, you may have to switch something up. Maybe you will have to try measuring your portions, or giving up sugar, something like that.
Anyway, if you are also on a weight loss journey, how are you doing so far? How long have you been on your journey?
Any questions for me? Feel free to leave a comment?
Best of luck to you all!
So the story is that I have gained some weight from the 283 lbs that I was at in my previous posts. At the start of this entry I am at 327 lbs my heaviest weight ever. I’m not proud of it. It depresses me and makes everything harder for me including walking, breathing, taking a shower and drying off, can’t keep up with my family and often have to sit out on any occasion that requires long distance walking, doing chores is affected, the intimate part of my life is also affected, same with putting on socks and I can’t find shoes that fit me due to swollen feet.
My BMI is at 61 which is morbidly obese. I am at risk for health issues. I already have some like fibromyalgia and diabetes type 2. Well, fibromyalgia is not obesity related but it compounds the whole obesity thing by already being in pain. With obesity comes aches and pains because your body is carry more weight than it was meant to. I have back aches and degenerative disk disease; my knees and ankles ache, feet hurt. Some of my weight is pregnancy weight from two kids I never lost and the rest is due to emotional/stress eating, which I wasn’t aware I was doing at the time.
You may be wondering: what signs of obesity do you have? I have: breathlessness, snoring, (Sleep Apnea), difficulty doing physical activity, often feeling very tired, joint and pain, low confidence and self esteem, feeling isolated, and binge eating.
It’s because of this, I contacted my doctor’s office and set up an appointment with her to discuss losing weight. Here are some of the things that she said:
“@100 lbs overweight bariatric surgery is recommended. Are you interested in this?”
I told her no and that I had already spoken with the surgeon who told me I was not a candidate for the surgery. That it would actually be dangerous for me to under go the knife.
“It is going to be very hard to lose all the weight you want to lose.” I was hoping my doctor would encourage me not say something like she did.
“I don’t feel comfortable prescribing you a weight loss pill when you are already on so many pills already.” Bummer!
“Exercise is good for mental health and for heart health but not so much for losing weight.” It shocked me when she said this.
She ended up putting me on Ozempic. I have only had one dose of the medicine so far. I will write an update after I have been on Ozempic for a while.
I love this quote, “Have a treat once in a while, otherwise you’re not living.”
So that is all I have for this post. As always, feel free to email me janisweightloss@gmail.com with any comments.
My name is Janis. I currently live in Maine but grew up in Northern New York, just outside the city of Watertown. I’m a 42 year-old mom of two children ages 15 and 8 (the 8 year old has autism and ADHD). I have been married to my wonderful hubby for 18 years. I started this blog several years ago and I don’t even remember why I didn’t continue with it. But I was 283 lbs then but weigh 327 lbs now. I have struggled with my weight ever since I was in fourth grade when I started having to wear sweat pant suits because they fit around my chubbiness better.
Even as an adolescent I was about 180 lbs and wearing size 18 jeans and large or XL shirts. I got used to being that size but I didn’t like it. It wasn’t until about 2000 I just started eating serving sizes of food and only eating when I was hungry not when it was “time” to eat. There were times I would toast a bagel but I would only eat half. I just felt better when I didn’t eat so much.
I kept up my exercises which were resistance training and I did them for about an hour five days a week. I didn’t force myself to do exercises. I didn’t have to. I just knew I felt better after I did them and I felt better about myself.
So I dropped from 180 down to 135 to a size 6. I’m actually a small person though you wouldn’t believe that by looking at me now. I want desperately for that to change. It’s just I’m so big, I am wondering how I am going to lose it all. But I know where I must put my trust and that is in God. And I’ll be doing a lot of praying along the way through this journey.
If you have questions or comments or would like to share your weight loss story email me at janisweightloss@gmail.com
I have gone back to using www.sparkpeople.com to track my food and exercise. I had used this site in the past but should have stuck with it. I’m going to do my best to stick with it. I need to lose this weight because it’s hard to stand or walk for very long because of all the weight on my joints especially my hips. The 20 pounds I lost when I was seeing someone to help me lose weight I have gained back and I believe it was because I was eating too many carbs and I wasn’t watching what I ate at least not as well as I should have been. So I am hoping Spark People will help me be more attentive to my goals and help me reach them. 130 pounds here I come!!! Even if I get there slowly.
On November 15, 2018 there were parent/teacher conferences going on at my daughter’s school. Our scheduled time was 6:30PM. That’s fine. But what I was worried about was how far I’d have to walk because I knew that if I had to walk a long distance my hips, my lower back, and my feet would hurt. I would also be breathless as I tried to move this 300lb body through the parking lot and down the hallways to her teacher’s room.
At first I was okay but then we just kept walking and I was struggling before we made it the teacher’s room. Thankfully there were chairs placed right outside her door and I took full advantage of one. After about 8 minutes we were called inside and the teacher went over how our daughter was doing in school and she was doing great. Even at a higher reading level than her current grade.
So after that we left and I had to huff and puff my way through hallways, through the parking lot and finally back into the car. I looked at my husband and said, “I can’t do this again.” But then I knew just next week I am going to a weight loss clinic to help me lose all of this weight. My husband wasn’t worried. I”m not saying I was but he had no idea how ashamed and ugly I felt.
I had images of stabbing my body until this fatty outer shell fell off and the thin real me came forth. I know how I got this big, but I didn’t understand it as it was happening. But I can stop it from getting any worse and that is what I’m going to do next week after I get some help in this area. There is no shame in saying you need help to lose weight. Sometimes it’s just harder going it alone. A good support system is key even if your support comes from your medical team who is helping you lose the weight. If you can get family and friends to support you too that is great!
So yeah, I was really hating my body last night and felt horrible. As we were walking through the halls I was afraid my daughter would see someone she knew and they would say something about me being so fat and that it would hurt my daughter or worse yet that my daughter would agree with the other kid! Yikes! That would hurt.
But my kids are another reason I am losing the weight. The first reason is me. I have to do this for me because I’m always doing things for my family and I really need to care for myself. Losing the weight is what I have chosen to do. Wish me luck!
So things have changed lately. I”m not on Weight Watchers anymore. I struggled to lose weight on that program and now my hubby and I are on a program called the Plant Based Diet which we got from the How Not to Die book series and cookbook. Several of the recipes are really good but there are some we could easily skip. My husband thought for sure I would lose weight on this diet and I thought I would too.
I weighed myself one morning and found I had lost two pounds. That was great! That’s a start. Then I weighed myself again a week later and I had gained six pounds. This happened again a couple weeks later. I lost two pounds and gained six.
Finally my husband and I looked at water retention and my doctor put me on furosemide. I noticed in certain areas of my body the puffiness did go down. But I’m waiting to see how much and just how much I’ve lost. If I haven’t lost much then my doctor wants to go a different route. He doesn’t like how my weight is fluctuating even though my diet is staying the same.
I just don’t know know what is happening but I’ll keep you updated.
Okay, so I found a recipe for 0 point banana pancakes, but I messed with it a bit and decided to try “brownies” instead.
I took an immersion blender and blended about 7 small bananas with about 6 eggs. Then sprinkled in nutmeg and cinnamon and poured in some Hershey’s sugar free chocolate syrup. So I had that all blended and took a ladle, filled it, and poured it into a hot pan. I let it bubble up through like you do for regular pancakes and then tried to flip it. But I it fell apart and I got a big heaping mess. So, with my thinking gear working, I decided to pour the batter into a greased square casserole dish. I baked it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. I really should have baked them longer for about 30 minutes, but they still turned out good and held their shape.
Now I’d add the recipe but trust me this recipe still needs some work. So once I have the final version ready I’ll repost it with the recipe. Something to consider here is the texture of the these little chocolate banana “brownies” is that it’s dense and eggy on the bottom and lighter and creamier on the top. I’m trying to see if I can get it to be more custard like. It might be hard since the eggs are lighter than the bananas. I have some ideas so I’ll try those and see what happens.
Feel free to leave any suggestions to try in the comments.
Yesterday, I went to the doctor’s office complaining of fatigue. Now I have fibromyalgia and thought for sure I would hear the doctor say it was all related to having fibromyalgia. He said it was part of it but another is caring around the 100+ pounds of extra weight. He referred me to having surgical weight loss due to the amount of weight I needed to lose that Weight Watchers would take a long time to lose. Right now all of my organs are operating well and there are no big concerns except for the weight and that it is make my life significantly harder to live.
My doctor did say to continue to lose as much weight as a I can as it will make the surgery easier and have less chance of complications.
The first time my doctor made a referral to surgical weight loss I said no and that I would try it myself. Well I got 10 pounds down but I really struggled knowing that I had so much to lose and that it would take me over a year to lose it all. And even then I wasn’t sure I could do it. I was just hoping I could. So last night’s dinner wasn’t all that appealing:
Just a salad with ice berg lettuce, an apple cut up, diced chicken breast, two clementines, 1 tsp of grated Parmesan cheese and 2 tablespoons fat free Catalina Dressing.
Yes, I started back on Weight Watchers again to try and lose what I can on my own. So this salad only had 4 smart points from the cheese and the dressing. This salad is pretty small and bland from what I usually eat but that’s because I need to go shopping for more foods I can eat while doing WW.
So that is where I stand right now. And I’ll keep updating the blog as a I go. Perhaps I’ll fill it with recipes I think you’ll enjoy and just general updates on how I’m doing with my weight.
Of course, if you have a weight loss story, or struggle with weight loss, I’d be happy to hear from you. You can leave me a comment or send me an email at jansweightlossjourney@gmail.com
Thanks for joining me! I have decided to start a blog to help me on my weight loss journey. Right now I weigh about 330 pounds and I am looking to get down to 120 pounds. I have fibromyalgia so I can overdo exercise or I’ll bring on more pain, but I do do Leslie Sansone’s walk at home every morning and it’s a 1 mile walk. I don’t have the energy to do two miles. At least not yet. I am hoping by keeping this blog I’ll be more mindful of what I’m doing each day to help myself lose weight, especially as I share tips and photos with you.
Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton
Here are a couple of before pictures:
So there you have it. That is what I look like right now. I’m determined to make a difference! I can’t stand the way I look and I’m not going to settle for this.
So who’s with me? Who wants to make a difference in your life and lose that weight?!
If you’re looking for weight loss support feel free to email at: janisweightloss@gmail.com
Jan's Weight Loss Journey 