Hi Nyda and all, I just started my over 50, over 100 journey. I'm prepping for weight loss surgery, but that won't be happening until well after September. I have to have 4 months with a Nutritionist before i qualify with my insurance so I have been at this since the middle of April with 8 pounds lost. I know it took me many years to get where I am, but it's so frustrating knowing it will take nearly as long to loose it. I have a lofty goal to be at 300 pounds by mid September, my 54th birthday and hopefully close to my surgery date.

We need to remember to move forward and forget the past. Don't try to make huge changes, baby steps. I've read that it takes about 3 weeks to form a habit. So I hack my life and work on creating new good habits to replace the old bad habits. Before I would mess up one day and give up. Now if I mess up one day I forgive and forget and go forward. We can do this.

This is truly great advice!

The vast majority of flavored diet sodas I've seen don't have any caffeine in them. Why not diet ginger ale or diet lemon lime soda or diet root beer? None of those have caffeine. You could also try herbal teas and sweeten them with some stevia or sweet & low. I don't like to drink unflavored water either so I find ways to hydrate that don't have calories.

Just don't drink the sugary soda. Some people on here are a little bit extreme with their opposition to artificial sweeteners. If that's what you need to be able to get through the day without sugar soda for a while then use what tools you can.

Weight loss is about calories.

There have been a number of articles stating diet soda makes people fat because aspartame signals the body to produce more insulin because of the excessively sweet taste. After I read about some of the other bad ingredients in diet sodas like citric acid that causes cavities and benzoate that causes a long list of health problems I just decided to stop drinking it. I haven't regularly drank soda for over 2 years. Then I got back on it for a week or so buying several 12 packs, but I discovered I didn't like the burning feeling on my gums that the citric acid causes and it now causes me stomach pain. So here I have 3 12-12packs of soda sitting here for months. I discovered soda is just a chemical dependency just like cigarettes or alcohol. I just gave it up and don't regret it. The stuff is nasty; the diet soda is just toxic chemicals. I also gave up my other habit chips and fast food. I don't miss it. When I traveled and ended up having to eat fast food and eating some free chips that were given at my hotel I found both made me sick at my stomach. I cook my own food and have little junk other than occasional treat of ice cream or one small piece of chocolate (not a whole bar). I've went from 274 to 230 having lost the same 15 lbs three times because I had to live with family for over a month and gained it all back because they only eat fast food and then I went through a spell in winter where I ate a bunch of baked goods. But I've managed to lose 12 more lbs in past 3 months. Giving up the junk is worth it I think because skinny people get treated better plus they just make nicer clothes in the small sizes.

:D Hello everyone. It has been a while since my last post. I lost my job last week, and was in the deep depression for a few days. I feeling much better. I do have some good news though. I have been losingthe same 10 pounds for the last year.Today I finally broke the 260 barrier and dropped to 259.5 a wieght I have not been at for a long time.
wohali and ruby stars about the soda. I am drinking less then I was 6 months ago and now I am home and am drinking more water and crystal light then soda.
Mama_Loca welcome to fitday. Here you will find people going through the same problems you are. We help each other over the bad times and always look forward to hear from you. I too would beat myself up over a slip, then go all the way and not eat right from sometime. Now when I eat to much of something I shrug it off as best I can and go forward.
I have the big party of the year today. I have a bunch of stuff to get done. Menus is porkloin and salads. have a great 4th of july!!!

Hello Nyda! Where in Idaho do you live? My inlaws live in Melba, and i have a couple of friends from church who live in Boise! We visit there once or twice a year! I am 51 and have been on a constant weight loss journey, have been every size from 20 to size 5 all from my 30's til now almost 52! I am currently 150 and am trying to get the last 10 pounds off. I have RA so what I eat matters if I am to do anything physical. I love love love soda, and it took awhile, but I can say with time and better habits you got this<3 I now only drink maybe one a month if even that. Everything takes time, I have been patient with myself and the results come. Its been encouraging reading your threads! Keep on keeping on!

Congratulations on breaking through that weight barrier. You are doing something that works, so keep it up! Weight fluctuates, so even if your weight creeps up a bit (hormones, water retention, etc.), you know that it can and will drift back down if you stay on track.

Sorry about the job, though...

This is a great thread, but if you would like a more active one, and more voices chiming in, you may want to look into the "100+ to loose" thread in the weight loss forum...It's a unisex thread, and a lot of the guys there have great comments and suggestions that may not come up in a women only thread...

Just a thought ;).

BTW, my suggestions about soda...

If you like the carbonation, try unflavored club soda or seltzer water. You can add a bit of fruit juice to it for flavor with little or no sugar, or you can go to a health food store and pick up some flavor drops and sweeten it with stevia instead

If you don't care about the carbonation, but just want to add some flavor to your still water, you can either use fresh lemon or lime juice, or make an herbal tea that you sweeten with stevia or some other no calorie sweetener

I don't drink coffee or tea, and I don't have much money for carbonated beverages of any kind, so my favorite drink is really watered down crystal light. I take an empty 2 liter bottle, fill it with filtered water, and add one of the "single serving" packets that you are supposed to add to a 16 oz bottle. I find that adding the packet to 16 oz is just to strong for me, but in a 2 liter it's just right

Hope these suggestions help you on your journey

Hi Nyda, I'm new to FitDay myself. I also have over 100 pounds to lose, and have cut out soda recently. Something that is definitely NOT easy in the house I live in. Speaking from my own experience, water gets easier to drink the more available it is to you. And the less available other options like soda and sugary drinks like kool-aid.

I used to live in Idaho myself and we frequently travel back there. From what I remember of Mountain Home, there is often not a large variety. Perhaps your local grocer carries La Croix water? It's carbonated and flavored. Or you can also get non-flavored. I wouldn't recommend drinking it often but I know that moving away from carbonated drinks is difficult. This could be a fix for that carbonation.

.:Sidenote:. I had recently heard in a podcast that carbonation was actually being considered as another taste. Like salty, sweet, bitter, spicy and umami, carbonation may actually be a taste that we begin to crave. Thus for a lot of people, just dropping carbonated drinks is not as easy as it is for others.

Another option you could try, that someone else mentioned was putting lemon or lime into your water. My dad recently had to cut all soda from his diet. He is dealing with kidney failure and a host of other issues, so the soda had to be severely limited. He now keeps a pitcher of water in the fridge with a cut up lemon in it. Always cold and the lemon gives the water a taste without adding anything he doesn't need.

Finally, you might just want to invest in a water filter if you don't have one all ready. Either a Brita filter with the pitcher, or the faucet connector filter from pur. You should always have bottled water stocked and on hand in case of a natural disaster, but it can become expensive constantly restocking bottled water.

I look forward to seeing more about how you're doing.

:o I am still unemployed. For the first 3 months I have been a depression hole. It has taken a lot of hard work but I fell like I am coming aout of it. I don't dreink as much soda as I use to. I have a well so not on city water and don't need a filter. I am drinking much more water then pop these days. I spent about 2 weeks getting the yard ready for winter. I pulled thistel and sweeped the walk ways and cleaned out the garage. We can now find stuff and can park our cars in it. I hate scraping windows. I have been surrounded by firies here in eastern idaho. For most of the month of august it was iffy if you could breath outside. There alters out abut staying inside if can. I leave next to a very tall hill and some days it looked like there was fog around the top, but it was smoke. So I am happy to let you all know I have finally lost another pound. I am going to try to writ more often. Have a great week.