So how has everyone been doing?

I've recently switched to a clean, very healthy life style and dropped 13 pounds of fat in about a month. Now my abs are showing and I can start working on the full pack. I can already see it forming.

Just had to cut out all processed foods (I cheat every once and awhile), go organic, and eat lots of fruit and vegetables of various kinds all the time, lots of grains and whole wheat, nuts, etc. and the pounds just melted off super quickly.

Since I work in a Kitchen/Cafeteria/Snack Shop I'm always around food. Last year I gained the most weight I've gotten my entire life. So when we quit for summer vacation I decided that I would start to work out. Now during the first few weeks I did great and kept to my schedule. But as time has gone on I've failed to keep to it steadily. But overall I've managed to slim down and once I get back to working I've vowed to not munch on everything that I see.

The hardest part about the workout routine is getting used to not making it optional. If you say that on 8 pm on Mondays you're going to the gym and someone proposes something else, you have to say, 'you're busy,' to them as opposed to saying, 'you'll catch up later,' to yourself.

Been doing a lot of biking this summer. Now I am only 6 pounds away from my target weight (150). I feel better than ever. All through my childhood I was The Fat Kid. 7th grade, I hit 200 pounds. Also I have been eating a lot of fresh vegetables from the local farmer's market, which I found are at least 40 times better than supermarket vegetables. But yeah. I'm getting my shit together, I think.

In december 2009 I was 170lbs, my highest weight ever. I started cutting calories down to 1200cals a day and exercised sparadically. I started losing weight slowly. I then had a two month free trial gym membership to LA Fitness and I went 5 to 6 times a week for a minimum of an hour and a half and I am now down to 155lbs, but I'm stuck here without the exercise component. I can maintain this weight easily, but I still want to lose another 20-ish pounds.

I just can't get motivated to exercise in my apartment and there isn't anywhere I can safely walk to here. I wish I could afford the LA Fitness membership fees I loved going to the gym so much! I would get seriously motivated and push myself, without a trainer or anyone egging me on. I felt so much more energized! I miss the gym

Props on the weight lost! Gl on finding the funds or alternative ways to lose the rest.

You can shed that last 20 pounds easily with lifestyle diet changes, Kitty.

It's not even that hard. Big part of it is just upping your vegetable intake (and with a wide variety everyday) to about 6-10 handfuls a day, and lowering the crappy food intake to almost none. The fat would melt away. I've heard it said a lot that out of every single meal we have, the majority of it all should be vegetable. They do wonders.

I'ma post some pictures in the next while. Making my change to healthy living has seriously started to beef me up (along with frequent weight training). Can't believe how terrible I looked in my old first photo's. Jesus christ I look so much better now. I'm starting to get the body I always wanted.

Kitty, I'd also recommend taking pro-biotic pills for awhile. 30 one a day pills might cost around 35ish dollars, but each pop gives you upwards of 50 billion cultures of many different kinds. Healthy people are supposed to have 2 pounds of bacteria in their gut, so that any invading bug or germs literally cannot get a hold of your intestines and then into the blood.

I highly recommend you all take these. I've been reading that the multitude of factors of daily life (pollution, chemicals, etc) and diet (too much processed food, severe lack of proper nutrients) has basically obliterated this good bacteria and let the bad take over. This is extremely dangerous, because this is basically an organ, and one that contains 80 percent of your immune system.

Kitty, I'd also recommend fasting for one day out of the week. Digestion takes up so much of the body's energy that the detox system isn't always turned on. Only 8 hours after your last meal does it ramp up because of the triggering of the signal to enter detox mode, and then it needs 4 more hours to be effective. Your body's cells coat toxins and invading things in mucus, and then stores it. When the body enters detox mode it pulls the toxin and the mucus off, leaving the toxin (and the mucus) to flow through the blood stream, and back into the intestine as waste. If the full 4 hours are not given, the process could be incomplete and allow harmful toxins to circulate in the blood. Must always not eat for at least 12 hours at a time.

What fasting does is reallocates all of that energy towards your body's detox system, because its not competing with the digestion system. This ramps it up and allows your body to have a rest, and for it to heal. Spread out, your intestine covers the surface of a football field. Within all that space, small openings can form that let in tiny chunks of food into the blood stream that your body fully mobilizes to neutralize. Fasting helps to heal this damage.

Of course, the day before, during and after must be really nutrient rich and healthy. They say doing this allows your body to drop all of its sludge and reduce peoples weights by up to 10-20 pounds. Also taps into reserves of energy people didn't know they had. I'm a firm believe now that this is a must of daily life. The digestive system works very hard, all the time. It needs a rest often and for that energy to remove the wastes our body's have accumulated and stored. Its more essential now then ever, with the toxic cities we live in.

I haven't started my fasting yet. I'm going to start in a few weeks, though. I'll begin with a one day fast, then move up to two. I'll try a 3 at some point but I'll probably just do it one day of the week for the most part.

Fasting is not conducive to weight loss, when you're exercising at least semi-regularly and trying to form a diet your body can get used to. Speaking from experience, it might actually have the opposite effect - causing you to gain the weight you worked all week to lose.

For reference, here's an article that deals with a lot of what Lotro is talking about, as well as what I'll reference.

Fasting, at least as of yet, hasn't been proven to do anything constructive to your weight (or cleanse your body of toxins, says the experts...) - and actually harms what you're working to achieve. Your body's programmed AGAINST fasting; when you don't eat for a certain amount of time, your metabolism automatically slows down to compensate. Although yes, this does lead to a sense of "dipping into bodily reserves", the problem with this is that when you start eating the next day (assuming you just fast one day a week), your metabolism's still slowed down going in to it - and your body ends up gaining all that weight back (and sometimes more) because your body is putting more into reserves with that slower metabolism.

Your body will increase your metabolism AFTER you start eating, of course, which means you'll only have the illusion of dieting that most people have - "if I don't eat, I lose weight", but the moment they start eating again, they gain it all back.

All of this might be reduced somewhat by eating nutrient- and vitamin-rich foods before and after fasting (to recoup the loss of all that you didn't get in on the day you fasted), but it's definitely not recommended for everyone. Doing it long-term will screw with your body in ways you might not be able to expect, and could cause problems. So if you decide to start fasting, make sure to do your research on it from many sources, and see if it's right for you.

Healthy eating, like Lotro mentioned early on in his post, would definitely help towards that loss of weight. Just make sure to do a lot of exercise, as well Not exercising does almost nothing for you, except make you eventually realize that when you don't lose the weight you want, it'll be because you "feel lazy" (no offense intended here).

Even for me, I eat more or less healthy, since I cook my own foods, but as I don't work out for any period of time, I don't actually lose any weight (in fact, I think I've gained a few pounds...bleh). I'm trying to look into changing this, but currently I need to look into whether I want to take the Insanity Challenge or do P90X. I've seen both work, as when I was in the military some of the trainees ordered either or, and both worked for them. I'm leaning towards the Insanity Challenge at the moment, but I'll have to look more into it before I spend the money for the DVDs.

Lotro, Lotro, Lotro.

That link didn't work, unfortunately. Why do you say that, Joz, as if now I know I'm wrong? I'm still of the belief that fasting has great benefits.

I wasn't talking about it being used as a weight loss tool (and I didn't mean during the fast you tap into energy reserves). I meant as a by product, fasting lets your body eliminate all of its stored waste, and then tap into energy you didn't know you had. Gets rid of accumulated sludge, and a lot of the bad bacteria in your gut. A healthy gut is the absolute first step to health. It needs frequent rest, repair and detoxing. In the world we live in, we're constantly sucking up pollutants and chemicals from everywhere. Fasting is a means of ramping up your body's natural detox system and keeping it on for a long time. It allows your body to switch to it more often, and with greater effect. During the fast, you provide your body with at least 5 liters of fluid, a lot of it fresh vegetable juice, and it gives the body everything it needs to ramp your systems up. The substance of food is not always required. Its the minerals and vitamins your body will feed off of, and quite well. Drinking veg juice are meals in themselves, because your body just breaks down the food to get at all the nutrients anyway. So you are eating, you're just skipping an intensive process. It must always be a heavily supported juice fast, or yes, I believe that it can really hurt you.

You can trust your medical experts, and I'll trust mine. Your body is designed to fast. It does it extremely well every night. Your body gets everything it needs, but the digestive system doesn't need to be chugging along so all that energy is spent on fixing damage, cleaning you out and making you a better body.

I do believe you misread my meaning. I wasn't commenting on any specific thing, just your attitude towards life in general. You never do (or believe) anything less than 110%.

Also, I'd be a LOT more inclined to believe ANY of the above if you linked references .

All my links seem to work fine, Lotro. I fail to see how they don't work for you, unless you're just bad luck :p

Also, I seem to be slightly confused by what you mean by "fasting". In my eyes, fasting is not eating or drinking anything (with water being an exception), but you reference in your second post drinking vegetable juice during your fasting days, and using them as "meals". That's not the same thing as fasting; it's simply modifying your diet one day a week. In fact, it's modifying it into a diet that many people do a week or two leading up to major stomach surgeries (many of my family members are doing this surgery, which is an "easy" way to lose weight).

Still, I have to disagree on your viewpoint about fasting causing detox. The vast majority of experts, at least in what I've researched on this thus far, have yet to get behind it or think it proven.

I haven't checked into here since the challenge began. I admit, I started strong at first; going to the gym 3 days a week for about a half hour then it all went downhill from there. The only "exercise" I've did, was the constant walking at work. Now, a year or two later, that's going to change. I have a new life now. Things are going to be hard to change at first but they'll get easier. My girlfriend wants to lose weight and I'm going to join her so I can gain weight in the form of muscle. We're going to get fit. I bought a new bike so it's a start. I'm also thinking about using the attic as a place to work out.

Oh yeah, sorry about that. Thought I had mentioned it in my first post. The way I've come to know it has been juice fasting, which I'm told is a form of fasting.

A lot of the reason I believe what I believe has to do with common sense, once it was explained to me. Giving your intestines time on a regular basis to flush themselves and heal in a much cleaner environment is a brilliant idea, and one a very many people believe in. They wouldn't believe in it if they didn't have a valid reason to do so. Juice fasting (which is the only safe way) has been done for thousands of years as a way to cleanse and detox the body. And in today's world, your detoxification systems need all the punch they can get.

I'll let you know how it goes for me when I start doing it regularly. I'm hoping that a healthy enough state will allow my body to turn off the genes that are causing my hyperhidrosis of the palms and feet. If my body developed it at one point (when I was 14) I can sure as fuck fix it. I need for my brain to sort out its nerve issues.

So I'm only just not overweight. Looking to lose weight until my BMI is about 21.5. I aim to do this through running and taking up a sport regularly. Although I won't be starting until midway through October, I'm still up for a check-in on the 1st December.

That was way back in '08. My BMI was 24.5. I've settled around 22.4 but was down at 21.8 for a good long while. The important thing is that it is stable, although I'm the first to admit that I didn't do it in a healthy way. Looking to change that this coming (academic) year.