[Elisabeth]

I started on Phen. on 4/10 and take the 30 mg capsule. Prior to taking the Phen., my average weekly losses were 1 to 1.5 pounds a week. Since taking the Phen., I have lost a total of 12 pounds!

Physically, I am doing OK but I still experience some lightheadedness and a "strange" headache. The queezy feeling in my stomach seems to be less and less but I sure am tired when the drug begins to wear off (about 10 hrs or so after taking it).

My total weight loss is now 223 pounds with 77 left to go to reach goal. Does anyone know what the average weekly loss tapers off to? I would like to reach goal by the end of the year. Is that realistic? I appreciate any info. "experienced" members can share. Have a good day!

Elisabeth

[KeliK]

you have lost 223 lbs ?
is that correct, or is it a typo?

[Theresa55]

Elisabeth,
I have a problem with my phen wearing off after about 8 to 10 hours. I was at the Dr. yesterday and he prescribed 15 mg to take about 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I will be starting that today. Maybe this is something you can ask your Dr. about, and congratulations on the weight you have lost. I hope I can be that dedicated.

[Lil'Mar]

Elisabeth, Congrats!!!
A good weight loss average for a week is 2 lbs Anything is possible when you set your mind to. You will do great, you already have!!! Keep up the good work!!!
(((HUGS))) Mary

[Raccb]

Kelik,

I think Elisabeth's current weight is 223 pounds with 77 more to lose. In her first statement is says she has lost 12 pounds so far, which is great!!

Good luck Elisabeth, it sounds like you are on the right track.

[Elisabeth]

I guess I should clarify things. I started losing weight in late May, 1998 when I weighed 425 pounds. I achieved my pre-phen loss through diet and exercise but found myself in a holding pattern the past 2 months and I did not want to regain any weight. So, on 4/10, I started taking a 30mg capsule of Phen. to jump start my weight loss again. This is the first time I have ever tried a medication for weight loss and I was shocked to see I lost 12 pounds 17 days. I already have learned to eat healthy but found my portion sizes were too big. With Phen. I can eat a smaller portion of the SAME healthy foods, keep my calorie intake to @ 1200-1400, and the weight is coming off again.

I have now lost a TOTAL of 223 pounds and I weigh 202 pounds. My goal is 125 pounds so that leaves 77 pounds to go. Yup, that means 300 pounds in total to make goal. I hope that clears up any confusion my original post created. Thanks so much for replying to me. It's nice getting to know new people who share a common goal.

Elisabeth

[KeliK]

wow, elisabeth, thats awesome!
you can do it!!!

[janey]

OH MY GOSH!!!YOU GO GIRL...THAT IS AWESOME..I'M GLAD TO HEAR PHEN IS WORKING FOR YOU AND THAT YOU NEVER GAVE UP. I THINK WE CAN ALL ADMIRE THAT!!

[Raccb]

Absolutely, totally WOW!!!!!

I thought that the 223 was a typo, but boy was I wrong. You are doing so awesome!! Keep up the good work, and please stick around and keep us posted on your progress! You have totally motivated me!!

If you can figure out how to post pictures here, there is already a thread started with pictures of phensters. But you can always start a new one with the before, current and soon to be GOAL!!

You are such an inspiration, thanks so much for sharing with us.

Have a great day,
Adrienne

[This message has been edited by Raccb (edited April 27, 2001).]

[Beach Bum]

Elizabeth!!!
All that's going through my head is,
OH MY GOD!!! That is unbelievable..I'm
so proud of you, you must totaly feel
like a new person. You make me feel like
I can do it all the more!
If you don't mind me asking, what made you
decide to lose the weight? I have about 80
pounds left to lose and I would love to
keep in touch and see how our progress goes...
I had those strange feelings at first as well, but in time they went away. I've been on phen since Feb. 1st and the phen still is
working for me, not as strong as the begining
but it curves my hunger enough for me to
eat the right things and a lot less food.
Your goal of 77 pounds by the end of the
year can happen, I think the average loss per week is 1 to 2 pounds, sometimes more. Good luck to you and keep in touch!
Lisa J.

[lose]

That is fantastic! That inspires me to do better.

lose

[Kcgirl]

Elisabeth- WOW! That weight loss is truly amazing! Please tell me since I consider you an expert...if you could give us some bits of advice on how you were so successful what would it be?? I think my 30 lbs is alot to have to lose...but you are amazing! Take care and I look forward to your response! KC

[the8tremom]

Elisabeth -- is this a great bunch of folks or what? And you should be so proud of yourself -- #1 for what you have accomplished so far and will accomplish in future, and
#2 for finding us. We will always be there for support.
Keep up the good work.

[Lil'Mar]

JUST AMAZING!!! I am so proud of you!! What an inspiration to us all!!!!
(((HUGS))) Mary

[Elisabeth]

Thank you all for being so kind and supportive in your messages to me. I have no magical answers to weight loss but I will share how I got to where I am now at in the hopes it might help someone else.

On the day the scale registered 425, I was fed up. I was tired of being short of breath after walking a short distance. My knees and back hurt me all the time. I was tired of not fitting into chairs with arms and hated the looks I got from people when I went out in public. I knew it was only a matter of time before I could no longer perform my job of teaching RN's to work in the ICU settings at the large University Hosp. I work at. In short, I had become a prisoner of my body and I needed to make a very simple decision; live or die?

Since I am still among the living, you know what decision I made. Looking at 300 pounds to lose is OVERWHELMING and focusing on it is a sure recipe for failure. So, step one was to ignore the number 300 and concentrate on 10 pound blocks. For some reason, 30 ten pound blocks seems a lot more feasible than 300 pounds.

The first step was hard. It involved me taking an honest look at the outside of me in the mirror as well as taking an honest look at me on the inside. It's what goes on inside that creates the outside and that's where the key to success lies. If you don't love yourself and believe in yourself, how can you expect to be successful in ANYTHING? I am a food addict and I have been all of my life. I LOVE fattning foods and have loved them for as long as I can remember. Food was always a way of making me feel better. When something went wrong, I ate. When I was happy, I ate. When I was bored, I ate. Do you see a pattern here? My life was food but food was slowly killing me. I knew I had to make some changes and I knew I had to learn new ways of coping with pain, happiness, boredom, etc.

Next, I took at look at my diet history. I have been overweight since childhood and been on diet after diet after diet. They all had one thing in common; they didn't work. Well, if dieting never worked in the past, what was the point of dieting now? Clearly, I needed a new approach and it started with my decision to NEVER diet again.

In order to develop a plan I could live with, I had to decide what I could not live with. Here's the list of things I came up with:
- no calorie counting
- no counting grams of anything
- no weighing foods
- no plan where they charge big bucks for that awful food they require
- no elimination of any food group (fats, carbs, and proteins all stay)

OK, now that I knew what I was NOT going to do, I had to decide what I WAS going to do. I thought about the amount of calories I was consuming on a daily basis. WOW! To maintain a weight of 425 pounds, I HAD to be taking in a little over 5000 thousand calories a day. Well, if I were to go from tons of calories to 1500, 1800, or even 2000 cals, I would surely fail. Then I thought about people with other addictions. Studies have proven that smokers who gradually taper down the amount of nicotene in their body have the greatest success rates at stopping smoking for life. Hmmmm... I don't smoke but I sure am an addict to food. If a gradual approach works for one kind of addict, why can't it work for another kind? My decision was made.

I decided to refer to my new eating plan as a work in progress. For all my life I ate unhealthy. This journey was going to be the greatest learning process of my life and that was going to take time. It took nearly 40 years to turn my body into 425 pounds of poor health and it was going to take time to learn how to reverse the process. So, I started with small changes. Decision one was never to eat fast food again. Oh, my! It seemed as if the moment I made that decision, I immediatly began to have a case of the "poor me" syndrome. This was definitely NOT a positive sign. So, right then and there, I made another decision. If I took something away, I was going to replace it with a healthy and workable substitute. So, in deciding to eliminate fast food, I substituted treating me to a dinner out one night a week; money was no object. For two weeks, that was the only decision I made and the only change I made to my life. The result (at the end of 2 weeks) was a 12 pound weight loss. Hmmm... those 2 weeks weren't bad at all and I didn't feel deprived of a thing. What should I do now?

My next step was going to involve tackling meals one at a time and make healthy substitutions. I started with breakfast. At 425 pounds, I could EASILY consume 2 buttered bagels or 6 donuts, or 2 buttered english muffins, etc. (for me heaven is hot crusty breads and butter - LOL) and not even feel full. I knew changes were going to have to be slow and not extreme. I started by eliminating donuts and doubles. That meant one muffin, one bagel, etc. I replaced the "loss" with fruit. So, I would have my single bagel and pair it with a half of a cantaloupe melon or some grapes or an apple and orange. Again, I never felt deprived. After one week, I made another change. I decided to eat cereal 3 times a week (with fruits) and bagels, etc., 4 times a week. It was working! My plan of SLOWLY substituting one healthy food for one unhealthy food was causing the pounds to leave but I was not feeling any of the "poor me" symptoms.

I continued this approach for 6 months! Yup, it took 6 whole months before I had made the changes necessary to my 3 meals a day. This journey was too important for me to screw it up. If I felt I was pushing me too fast with too many changes at one time, I pulled back until the feeling of deprivation was no longer present.

Now, nearly 3 years later, I am at a point where I am eating and living healthy. I stuck to the things on my list that I said I would NEVER do and devoted time to me and my journey. What exactly does that mean? Well, once a week I go to Barnes and Noble and give myself one hour to me. I pick up a book on diet/fitness/ exercise/nutrition and I read and learn. You name the diet and I have read the book (Atkins, The Zone, CALP, etc.). None of the books I have read would work for me but, what does work for me, is bits and pieces from everything I read. Learning is a process of trial and error and trying again. Mistakes happen and can actually be positive IF you learn from them.

I like my new way of eating and living. My back pain is gone. My knees still bother me at times but not to the point of restricting my life in any way. I have tons of energy and a bright new outlook on life. My motivation comes in simple ways; fitting into a booth, fitting into any chair in any restaurant, fitting in a movie theatre chair, buying a blouse in a regular store, etc. I wasted so much time allowing food to control me. Well, no more. I now eat to live and I control what goes into my body. Nearly 3 years later, I am still learning new things, still experimenting with foods, still learning new recipes, and still not liking to exercise (LOL). With 78 pounds still to leave my body, I imagine I will have many more trials and errors to face but that's OK. I am ready for them. Achieving a weight of 125 pounds was not my goal. My goal was to learn to live and eat as a healthy person for life. I have achieved that goal!

As I mentioned earlier, I hate exercise but know that it's a very necessary part of healthy living. I decided to take the same approach to exercise as I did to food and, beginning in October, 2000, started a walking plan. I mapped out a few 1 mile routes to walk in my neighborhood and make me walk a route every other day. To force myself to do it, I drive home from work, park the car in the driveway, and IMMEDIATELY go for the walk. If I set foot in the house, I KNOW I will not go back out and walk. Well, surprisingly, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. When I did the first mile on the first day, it took 37 minutes. Now, it takes 25 minutes to do 1.2 miles and I do 5 walks per week. When it takes me 20 minutes or less, I will increase the distance to 1.5 miles. Walking is something that I can do for life and it's not torture on my body. LOL. I hope to include some light weight lifting for my upper body one of these days but I'm in no hurry. When the walking becomes more of a routine, I will tackle weights (preserves bone density).

I hope some of what I said in this message makes sense to you. I can't stress enough that this is what works for me but it doesn't mean it's the right plan for everyone. My plan is still developing. As I learn new things, I make changes. Some work and some don't. That's fine. It's being afraid to try new things and embrace a healthy lifestyle that's not fine. The one thing I do know is that the mind and body are VERY connected. If you want to get your body in shape, you also have to get your mind in shape. Learning to love yourself is not easy but if you don't love you and care for you, how can you expect others to? Nurture you mind and your body and you will achieve your goals. Accept that you are human and will make mistakes. Know that you can learn from your mistakes but that you can't turn back time. So, if you have a bad day, examine why it was bad, learn from it, and move forward to embrace a new day full of endless possibilities. I wish you much success on YOUR journey to discover the healthier you.

Elisabeth