Hi guys, thanks for stumbling across my journal. This journal is a weight-loss only journal, but I'm always looking for new friends who'd like to follow my progress (I'd love to follow yours!) If you'd like to be LJ weightloss buddies, feel free to add me and leave a comment so I know to add you back. :)

A bit about me: I'm a 24 year old girl from Ontario, Canada. I'm a nurse. I have a great boyfriend who is incredibly supportive of me and my weight loss efforts. I've struggled with my weight my entire life and have lost and gained weight over and over again. My highest weight was 250 lbs in 2005. I've tried many different methods to lose weight, starting with Weight Watchers when I was 15.

Currently, I'm on the Dr. Bernstein Diet and I'm having really awesome success. It's a fairly expensive, strict diet--with amazing results. If anyone is interested in signing up for this diet and wants more information, feel free to leave me a comment or send me a message. Also, they have a referral program in which the referee can earn free weeks on the program, so again, if you're interested in signing up, send me a message and I'll give you my information so you can help a girl out. :)

So.. I mentioned a few times that transit is on strike here and so I've been paying someone to drive me to my weightloss clinic. She informed me today that she wont be able to drive me anymore. Further, I work this upcoming week, will be on vacation the next week for Christmas, then work the following week, so it'll be even more difficult for me to get into the clinic. I talked to the nurse and she suggested that I take a break from the clinic until I'm able to come in regularly again and I agreed. I'm a little nervous about gaining weight during my break, but my plan is to count my calories and exercise and I should be okay.

So anyway, when I got home from the clinic, I decided to have a little treat by having something off plan. I had a half a peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread (160 calories). The strange thing is that I didn't get the satisfaction that I normally get from eating a PB sandwich (one of my favourite foods). I don't mean satisfaction in a hunger way, but rather, I didn't get that 'peanut butter euphoria' I normally would. It was tasty, but now I just feel heavy in my stomach and I had no urge to have another half (or dig into the entire jar with a spoon) as I normally would have.

So, being a nurse, I work in a mainly female-environment (I only work with two men). As you might assume, gossip runs rampant and you always end up hearing what other people have said when you weren't around. I found this little tidbit that was said about me pretty amusing.

So, I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I've inspired a few coworkers to get onto the weight-loss wagon. The other day, my coworker who is on WW gave in and had a candycane chocolate doughnut and then she was talking about how she felt guilty about cheating.

Then one of my male coworkers chimes in and says, "Well, you know that Janice cheats on her diet too when she goes home!"

Because God forbid a woman on a diet might be able to exercise some self-control! :D

Obviously I just eat superhealthy at work for appearance-sake, then go home and binge on everything in sight and STILL manage to lose 40 lbs in 12 weeks. ;)

For the record, I've been on Dr. B for 12 weeks now and I have NOT cheated! And I don't plan on cheating any time soon. So there. :P

I have broken up with junk food and we are currently not on speaking terms. Perhaps sometime in the future, we will be able to be JUST FRIENDS, but there's been a lot of damage done and I need time for healing before we can attempt it.

Highest Weight: 250.0 lbs
Starting Weight: 190.6 lbs
Weight 3 Weeks Ago: 158.2 lbs
This Week's Weight: 151.3 lbs
3 Week's Loss: 6.9 lbs
Total Loss: 39.3 lbs



I didn't post for a few weeks because I was feeling discouraged, but this week has gone really well.

Well, I did it! I'm a healthy BMI! 1.3 lbs away from 100 lbs lost! :) Yay!!!

I love inspiring others. Most of the people who have told me I've inspired them have been online, after reading my LJ or seeing my progress pictures. I love it because I know how inspired and motivated I get when I see other people's progress.

But lately, I think I've also inspired some people in my personal life. After talking with me about my diet for awhile, a coworker decided to sign up for WW Online and has lost over 20 lbs now! Good for her! Another coworker hasn't said that she's on a diet, but she went from trying to get everyone to get take out on night shifts to bringing in delicious-looking, healthy salads from home. :) Two other coworkers seem to contemplating making a change as well. It feels awesome to inspire people and it certainly makes it easier for me to stay on track when I don't have coworkers eating junk food, baking goodies, or pushing food on me.

Have you inspired anyone lately?

The past three weeks have been tough, my weightloss came to a bit of a standstill, which led to me becoming discouraged. I toyed with the idea of taking a break from the clinic for awhile, at least until transit starts running again, since it's been really tough to get there lately and that would give me the ability to be a little lax over the Christmas holidays. I was going to finish out this week on "strict" and see if I lost anything, but I almost went off strict midweek. Then I decided to try one more ditch effort to get the scale to budge and tightened up my diet even more (one day of just veggies and lean protein). That seemed to have helped me get back into ketosis, because I'm down 2 more pounds now! So I called the lady who drives me and set up rides for next week. It's better if I stay on strict through the holidays anyway (even though I don't want to), because this way I definitely wont go overboard on all the Christmas goodies.

My biggest worry about the holidays is going to visit Phill's family. My family is super supportive. They've seen me at 250 lbs and they've seen how hard i've tried, how many times I've failed, and how many times I've picked myself up again. But it's hard to explain that to people who don't know you very well. I know I'm going to get "Oh, it's Christmas! It's just one day... one piece of pie won't hurt!" But I want this more than I want a piece of damn pie, no matter how tasty it is.

One other thing that I've been struggling with these past few weeks is that Phill has been stressed out and so he's been eating a lot of junk food. Usually if he has something I can't, he will eat it when I'm not around. But lately, it's been frozen pizza and/or chocolate bars almost every night. I know I don't help myself either. Like, at work someone brought in a box of candycane chocolate doughnuts, and since I couldn't have one, I saved one and brought it home for Phill. :P Argh..

So yeah, I'm 153.5 now. 1.5 lbs away from a healthy BMI and 3.5 lbs away from 100 lbs lost! I definitely want to meet those goals before I go home for Christmas. :)

I've been thinking a lot about dress sizes lately. Overall, I feel like my clothing size hasn't changed much. For the past few years, my weight has bounced around between 170 and 200. At 200, I can wear a plus size 14-16, or a regular 15. At 170, I wear a 13-15. Now that I'm 155, I'm a 13. I mentioned in my last post that I'm about 4 lbs away from a healthy BMI. I always thought that when I was at a healthy weight, I'd be a much smaller size than this, but I'm not. I can't remember ever being smaller than a 13, so I have no idea what size I'll be at my goal weight. It sucks to think that even though I won't be overweight soon, I'll still have some trouble finding clothes, as most clothing stores only go up to a size 12. And what kind of society do we live in where you can be a healthy weight and stores still don't carry your size? (And don't get me started on what I like to call "the dreaded size gap"--you're a size "14", but plus size 14s are too big and regular size 14s are too small, so your choices are either to wear pants that are too big on you or to muffin top over pants that are too small.)

I have this hope that I'll reach a point where my clothing size will start dropping like crazy with smaller amounts of weight lost. I know that when you're bigger, it takes losing a lot more weight to drop a size and I'm sure it has more to do with the percentage of weight that you've lost rather than the number in pounds. I have about 35 lbs left to lose. In the past, I've dropped one dress size in 35 lbs lbs, but I can't imagine getting down to 125 lbs and still only being a size 11.

I guess only time will tell. :)

This past week wasn't that great weight-loss wise. I wasn't able to go to my clinic because transit is on strike, so the nurse told me to stay on 'strict*' and not worry about my vitamin B injections. I lost about 2 lbs the first weekend, but my weight bounced around between 157-158 for the next week and a half. On top of not going to the clinic, I worked 6 12-hour night shifts in a row and wasn't able to sleep well (averaging only about 4 hours a day, yuck). I'm sure that didn't help my efforts. Yesterday was my 24th birthday and I wanted to be a healthy weight by that day, but I didn't quite make it.

This week, I decided to contact someone who was offering rides and pay them $15/trip to get to the clinic. It's a pain, but I'm willing to do it if it means I can continue to lose weight and reach my goal. I woke up this morning and I'm down another 2 lbs! I'm so close to being in the healthy BMI range for my height that I can taste it. I'll probably be there by next week (I'm 155.8 lbs this morning and 152 lbs puts me at a healthy weight! 150 lbs means 100 lbs lost OMIGOD.)

It's funny how much meaning numbers take on when you're losing weight. Here are a few of my most meaningful ones:

250 - highest weight ever
199 - an achievement I think anyone who has weighed more than 200 lbs celebrates, being under 200!
182 - no longer obese!
170 - my 'low' weight. Every time I've tried to lose weight, I seem to be able to get to 170 lbs and then something happens and I plateau and/or gain weight back. I've gotten there probably about 4 separate times, and this is the first time I've ever been able to break that barrier.
152 - a healthy BMI for my height!
150 - 100 lbs lost!
144 - weigh less than my boyfriend
125 - 1/2 my weight lost and my goal weight! :)

What are your significant weights?

*strict: This is some Dr. B terminology. The diet is broken up into two stages. Strict is what you follow during weight loss. There is a list of allowed foods and you can choose 2 servings from each category (i.e. protein, fruit, vegetable, bread alternative), but of course, you can split those up any way you'd like. After strict is maintenance, where each week they introduce new foods that you can have until eventually you reach the stage of "all things in moderation".

And for fun: The Pizza Diet Mmmm..

Hey guys!

So yeah, like I mentioned in my last entry, I passed my RN exam and I feel awesome. Hopefully now that this stress has been lifted, it will also effect my weightloss positively.

The bad thing, however, is that the transit system here is on strike and I rely solely on transit to get around, including to my weightloss clinic appointments (which I'm supposed to go to 3x per week). I considered walking, but google tells me it will take me 2 hours (which means another 2 hours home). I called the clinic today to see what I should do and they told me to continue on the diet, buy some vitamin B6 and B12 supplements, and come back when I'm able. There are people offering rides for a fee on kijiji, so I e-mailed someone and inquired about getting a ride, but I haven't heard back yet. I'm worried that my weightloss will slow because I won't be getting my vitamin B injections (which are more readily absorbed by the body than the oral version), but at least I won't be paying for the weeks I'm missing. The clinic is also having a promotion right now where if you buy 4 weeks, you get one free, or if you buy 8 weeks, you get two free. It's on until December 31st, but they told me that if I'm unable to make it to the clinic, I can purchase them over the phone.

So, I guess I'll just keep on trucking and see how things go until I'm able to return to the clinic.

I WILL NOT USE THIS SETBACK AS AN EXCUSE TO QUIT.

I passed my RN exam!!!@#@#

Highest Weight: 250.0 lbs
Starting Weight: 190.6 lbs
Last Week's Weight: 161.4 lbs
This Week's Weight: 158.2 lbs
This Week's Loss: 3.2 lbs
Total Loss: 32.4 lbs




This isn't a whole week (only 4 days), but I've kind of been all over the place with my "weigh-in day", so I've decided to make it officially Monday.

I went home to visit my family this weekend. It's sad to say, but I haven't been to visit them in almost a year, even though they just live a few hours away. Anyway, i had a lot of different reactions to my weight loss.

My mom and sister were so proud of me. They made me feel great. Especially my mom. She's always been super supportive of my weightloss, and never in a way that made me feel bad for being overweight or guilty over what i ate, etc. She couldn't get over how small I am and was bragging to the entire family. I showed my mom my progress pictures, and my stepdad was really excited and wanted to see too.

I then went for dinner at my grandparents place and my aunt and uncle where there visiting as well. My grandma and aunt told me I looked really good, but both told me to "be careful not to get too skinny" and "don't lose too much more!" Uhh.. I'm not going to accidentally lose weight. Trust me. I've been working HARD on this for years. My entire life, it seems. If it could happen accidentally, good lord... But the thing is, I'm not even close to being skinny. I'm still 10 lbs overweight and have a lot of lee-way once I get into the "normal" weight range for my height. I'd like to lose another 30 lbs or so.. and that would be healthy for me! Wouldn't they rather me be healthy than overweight? It's not like I'm going to all of a sudden be underweight. I think maybe a lot of it has to do with the fact that I've always been the fat girl. That's how they know me. Maybe they're afraid that if I change on the exterior I wont be the same person on the inside.. or I wont fit into their "picture" of me.

The best reaction though, that totally made my day, was from my kid brother. I guess my mom told him that I weigh 160 lbs now because he says to me "Guess what, Janice? You weigh less than me now!"
Me: "Oh yeah? How much do you weigh?"
Him: "165!"
Me: "oh... lose weight, fatty. :D"
(p.s. he knew I was joking and laughed, I would never make fun of my brother and mean it because I loves him too much).

But yeah, it blows me away that I weigh less than my brother. Mind you, he has put on a bit of weight.. but when we were younger he was always super fit and had a six pack and guns like woah.

Now when I finally weigh less than Phill, I might faint. He's around 145 lbs, so I've still a ways to go, but I'll make it there eventually. He calls me "Little Janni" as a term of endearment, so it will be really nice to feel like it's true.

Here are my progress pictures from the last two months! I'll eventually dig up some from my highest weight, but I thought I'd share these with you guys for now. :)

( Progress Pictures )

Is it bad that my favourite thing about The Biggest Loser game for the Wii is that it told me I weigh 157 lbs? haha.

I haven't had too much of a chance to play yet, but it seems pretty cool so far. It has recipes, and food and exercise tips. There seems to be a lot of different workouts - cardio, upper and lower body, core, yoga, etc. You can also compete in challenges just like on the television show. You have the choice of beginner, intermediate, or advanced workouts. And apparently there's elimination every so often! eep. You get to choose a contestent to play as and I'm playing as Michelle right now. Watch your back, Ali! :D

I'll update you guys more about the game once I play it some more, but so far I think I like it. :)

Highest Weight: 250.0 lbs
Starting Weight: 190.6 lbs
Last Week's Weight: 165.5 lbs
This Week's Weight: 161.4 lbs
This Week's Loss: 4.1 lbs
Total Loss: 29.2 lbs




Well guys, I'm so close to 30 lbs lost and to being in the 150s. I can't even remember a time when I was in the 150s, so I'm pretty excited. I'm going home this weekend to visit my friends and family and they haven't seen me since I started losing weight this time around, so hopefully they'll notice a difference. :) I've asked my mom to pick me up some healthy groceries that I can eat while I'm at her place. The only downside is that I have a lot of people to visit this weekend that I haven't seen in some time, and visits tend to be focused around going out for meals. Hopefully no one will mind that I decline eating out with them and suggest that we do something else instead.

The other day I pulled out a box of old clothes from when I was at my lowest weight before and tried them all on. Pretty much everything fit, which is awesome. A lot of my size 13 pants are starting to fall off me. :) I don't think I've ever been smaller than a 13 before.

I went birthday shopping with Phill yesterday (even though my birthday is still about 2 weeks away). He bought me The Biggest Loser game for the Wii (so excited to try it out!), and two new bras. The bras are 38C and fit perfectly. I decided to try on a 36C for fun, and it almost fit!

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Halloween weekend was really difficult. Phill and I went to Toronto to visit friends, so I packed all my meals and brought them with me. I love Toronto because there's a million amazing restaurants and tasty foods that I can't get here in London. I really wanted to go to Chinatown and get some steamed buns, but I resisted.

Halloween itself was hard because all of my friends were drinking, but I stayed sober. The next morning we went out for brunch, but they didn't have anything that was diet-friendly, so I just drank my water and made myself a tuna pita when I got home.

I felt kind of crumby about not being able to endulge when everyone else was, but when I came home, I weighed myself and I was 165.5 lbs. That's 25 lbs lost. It made it all worth it and I know if I had cheated I would have just felt badly about it. And I realize that food and alcohol aren't what make something a good time--it's the company instead. :)


More Halloween pictures, including some of my cute boyfriend as Max from Where the Wild Things Are! :)

Highest Weight: 250.0 lbs
Starting Weight: 190.6 lbs
Last Week's Weight: 170.5 lbs
Weight Two Weeks Ago: 165.5 lbs
This Week's Loss: 5.0 lbs
Total Loss: 25.1 lbs

I judge people at the grocery store. I subconsciously eye what people have in their grocery carts and make assumptions about them.. health nut, dieter, bachelor, student, should you really be buying all those chips and cookies? I know that my assumptions about these people could be completely off.. maybe they're throwing a party, maybe they're buying for someone else, who knows. I guess since I've become more aware of what I'm putting into my own body, I've started to take more of an interest in what other people put in theirs.

That being said, I went to the grocery store today and I felt really judged myself. By the cashier. I was buying what I would consider the "dieter" groceries. I eat mainly whole foods, so it was mostly fresh fruits and veggies, chicken breasts, etc. and I also had some whole grain cereal and Lean Cuisines for Phill. I had also picked up a copy of a new magazine that someone mentioned in one of the weight loss communities called "Off The Couch" because they said it was good and I'm always looking for interesting health and fitness magazines to keep me motivated. As the cashier is ringing it in, she eyes it and says in a sarcastic voice "Wow, you get a free pull-out poster of some skinny girl". I thought it was kind of rude for her to comment negatively about something one of her costumers was buying, but I made light of it by jokingly saying "Yeah! That's the reason I'm buying it!" Then she goes on to talk about how her daughter put pictures like that all over her bedroom (my thoughts: thinspiration?) and how her husband was on her case about it. Then she proceeds to comment on the girl on the front of the magazine who had lost a few hundred pounds and says, "Yeah, I bet she came into a whole lot of money and no longer had any stress in her life." Or.. maybe she changed her diet around completely and worked her ass off at the gym? Who knows. I imagine that this woman was probably just bitter about her own failed weight loss attempts, but really. But yeah, since she poked fun at my fitness magazine, I can only imagine her assumptions about me (a chubby girl trying to buy healthy food), probably something along the lines of "Nice try with the healthy groceries, I bet that won't last long.")

But speaking of health and fitness magazines, what are your favourites? I haven't read this new one yet, but hopefully it's good. I find that good magazines are hard to find. My all time favourite magazine, which I can't remember the name of for the life of me (I want to say it was something like Looking Good Now magazine), is no longer being sold. It was a really down-to-earth read, geared toward the average dieter (a lot of magazines tend to be geared toward gym nuts). When that one stopped being sold, I got hooked on Fitness. Good content, a lot of variety, not too hardcore, not too many ads. The only thing that would make Fitness better is if they took out the beauty section. I hate when they put a beauty section in a fitness magazine. I want to read workout tips, success stories, recipes, etc.. not "How to Transform your Day Make-up into Evening in 3 Easy Steps!". If you're going to have a beauty section, tell me what kind of sunblock I should wear when I'm swimming, what's the best chapstick for cycling, or is there a product that I can use to stop my inner thighs from chaffing when I'm running? If I wanted to know "How to Apply the Perfect Blush!" I would buy Cosmo. And anyhow, my perfect blush comes naturally from sweating my ass off in the gym (Is it weird that I always think I look super pretty after a tough workout?).

Weight Watchers magazine is okay. They have a lot of ads, but I don't mind them because they're usually new food products, and I'm always interested in trying new things. But.. I don't know, content just seems to be lacking a bit in WW. The recipes would be nice, but I find that WW recipes (I have a lot of their recipe books) tend to be a little more complicated than I'd like (I'm a 5-ingredient or less kind of girl).

Most of the other health and fitness magazines fall into what I think of as the "hardcore" category. Things like Oxygen and FitnessRX. Even Shape. Their recipes also tend to be pretty complex, the models are all bodybuilders (and while I appreciate how much effort they must put in to look that way, it definitely isn't to my taste), and they have ads galore for protein, supplement, and diet pills. Yuck.

Edit: I just realized that this Off The Couch magazine is put out by Oxygen. Though, it does say "Motivation for Real Women". I'll let you guys know how it is. :)

Highest Weight: 250.0 lbs
Starting Weight: 190.6 lbs
Last Week's Weight: 173.4 lbs
This Week's Weight: 170.5 lbs
This Week's Loss: 2.9 lbs
Total Loss: 20.1 lbs



Only 0.5 lbs away from my short-term goal of 170 lbs (and I've lost 20 lbs!)! Yay! :) 170 is what I consider my "lowest weight evar!!@#". Technically, there was a time that I got down to about 165, but I didn't maintain it for long. It seems like every time I try to lose weight, I get down to 170 and then struggle to get down any further. I'm able to maintain 170 for awhile, but I always find my weight slipping back up. Not this time! I'm in this for the long haul. After 170, my next short-term goal is 152 lbs, which will put me in the category of a normal BMI. I can't wait, I feel like there's never been a time in my life when I wasn't overweight. :) (I didn't even realize it, but I flew by the point where I went from "obese" to "overweight" - that would have been 182 lbs. :)

Hope everyone else is doing well!

Biggest Loser for Nintendo Wii

Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2010 for Nintendo Wii - I've heard it's a lot better than the first one.

The Biggest Loser Workout - Last Chance Workout

The Biggest Loser Workout - 30 Day Jump Start


Oh, excited! :)