What is the FS website to you?

I recently saw a forum post titled "How Often Do You Weigh" and I started wondering....is the FS website something we become forever dependent on (and lost without), or is it a tool, a program, that helps us form good habits and sends us on our way, to greet new users who are in need of help?

I do weekly weigh-ins as part of my participation on the FS website. Personally, I believe they are most appropriate, because I don't see all the the distracting fluctuations, but it's frequent enough that I can adjust my training and nutrition, or to determine what effects changes in my diet (or a lapse in my diet) has had. This to me is part of my trial and error in learning and forming good habits. I thought what was very revealing about the question, "how often do you weigh" was it begged another central question, "Do we really make permanent lifestyle changes nutritionally and training-wise to maintain a healthy weight?" Do we learn the basics of nutrition and apply them to every meal? Or do we participate in the guessing game and weigh-ins daily (or several times daily) so that the scale can reveal to us if what we're doing is good or bad for us? If we understand nutrition, and eventually tackle the psychological and mentality parts of eating well and daily physical activities (read: will power, dedication, perseverance), then we need not step on a scale again. How we feel, how we look physically in the mirror, how we fit into our clothes, and our occasional medical test results will all be enough feedback. I look at a scale, as I do the FS website, as tools to help me form good habits that are permanent and that I can take with me wherever I go, and I need not always have a scale or the FS website to keep me on track.

For me it’s 90% a tracking tool. I weigh in every day, track every calorie in and out. I don’t obsess about minor daily fluctuations at all. When I don’t track, I drift very easily. I occasionally read some posts, record a journal entry… but mostly it’s about keeping me on track. I really like having my weight history over time to. It would be nice to have some kind of similar graph for workouts too.
When I track what i'm eating I almost find it hard to go over

Great question, Mark. I've used this site for the support, encouragement, community and information and for the accountability of a weekly weigh in to keep me on track. I did one stint on here starting back in 2008 but fell off the wagon, so to speak, in August of 2009. I started back here in April of this year, having gained and lost some 45 of the original 79 lbs I'd originally lost in the interim.

In my life of yo-yo dieting (I started my first diet at the age of 12!) I have never reached my goal weight, whatever it was at the time (I've gradually increased it over the years but still never made it there). I think I always knew how everyone says you have to make a lifestyle change but the words were lost on me. I was always "on a diet" or "off a diet". I started a daily exercise class a few years ago, thinking that alone would be enough to help me lose weight. Nope. But then something clicked.

I was diagnosed with borderline high blood pressure and was put on a diuretic. A couple of months later my father was told by his doctor to go for a stress test and within a few weeks he was having quintuple bypass surgery! I realized I was looking at my future. So, for the first time in my life, I started examining my "lifestyle". I started making small changes (my husband and daughter were both on board for their own health goals so that made this so much easier).

I stopped eating red meat and saturated fats

I stopped baking desserts and cookies on a regular basis. I even stopped most of my Christmas baking which had always been a hallowed tradition and, instead, would only make one special dessert for our Christmas meal or bake something to take to a party but not take any home. I realized that, if it was in the house, I'd eat it.

I found new, low fat ways to prepare meals.

I stopped eating fried, deep fried, and most processed foods. That meant no more fast food, either.

I found out I am sensitive to milk proteins (I lost 8 lbs of inflammation in one week on an elimination diet!) so I stopped eating dairy. Interesting sidebar: I read that we usually crave the things we are allergic or sensitive to and my favorite foods/weaknesses were always ice cream and cheese.

I added in meatless/vegetarian foods that I had never tried before (and found I liked them!) - lentils, veggie burgers, beans, etc.

I started eating more fish. Where I might have had fish (if canned tuna or salmon count!) once or twice a month, now I often have it 3 or 4 times (or more) a week and have tried many new types of fish and healthy ways of preparing it.

This April, just before I started back here on fatsecret, I joined a gym so I could increase my exercise intensity, frequency and duration. In the middle of May I also hired a personal trainer to help me get into a weight lifting routine. This, from a person who was never athletic and never stuck to any exercise program in her life.

Just about a month ago (if memory serves), I did something else I have never done. I got rid of my "fat clothes". I donated all of them to charity. I have no more safety net.

I stopped counting points and calories and started trusting my instincts and listening to my hunger cues, eating consciously and slowly and stopping when I'm full.

And I've started to slowly change my opinion of the scale. Most of my first year and a half of journals on here were devoted to discussing how my scale was evil! But now, little by little, I am starting to just see it as it is - a tool and nothing more. I still wrestle with the emotional impulses of my past but I am evolving, slow but sure.

I have a scared little voice in the recesses of my mind that worries about falling back into my old habits. But I suppose that's normal considering I'm 48 years old and have always battled with my weight. However, this is the first time I feel more hope than doubt that I can really do this.

I don't know if I will always continue to journal on fatsecret. But I don't have plans to stop any time soon.

FS to me is first off a macronutrient tracking tool. It also serves as an accountability tool, a place to learn new things from others and share experiences, and a support and motivation site. This has helped me learn life long habits. If I didnt have access I'd be fine without it, but I enjoy keeping in touch with folks on here and being motivated and motivating others as well.

I completely understand that fs is a resource for users with regards to personal accountability, tracking progress, sharing ideas, support and motivation. I think if any site like fs has lifetime users, that is not equipping its users with the entire picture of what a successful weight loss/weight management picture would look like. While support is a key component, a successful weight loss story is one that requires not just an emphasis on weighing-in or on calories-in/calories-out, but an emphasis on physical exercise, and on things like how to start a fitness regimen, ideas on physical activities,self-help articles how to deal with emotional eating/triggers, information on supplements, how to replace bad habits with good ones, and advice in general that help users make informed decisions. So much of our weight challenges and obstacles happen in our heads, that no tool on fs, and certainly not the disorganized forums, has served as an adequate resource to make the breakthroughs that lead to permanent and necessary changes. As far as my personal habits and the information I would need to make successful changes, I think fs has left me mostly on my own to figure them out.

**Evelyn, you write quite eloquently. I am inspired by your life changes. I am sure you inspire countless others. To me, it is about not losing a single day more of your life than you need to - to be your best, to attain your weight goals and learning how to stay there, and being left free to pursue all that life has to offer.

FS started for me as a calorie counter app to log food (and exercise too). And I like my journals, always have.

Then I weighed in weekly, now i weigh in daily, and I like it.

For exercise info, recipes, supplement info, and other information I go elsewhere mostly. FS to me is almost like a "starter" site to get you going on this journey. Many people take off into running, cycling, or other forms of exercise and this site may not be a suitable community for that purpose. Suffice to say, some of us outgrow FS for healthy reasons.

Mark13, what you describe above sounds like live strong. While there is a ton of data there, much of it is not very useful. Kind of like about dot com. Its like they expect the users to have just crawled out from under a rock, and be "Oh, eating vegetables is good for me???"

Thanks, Mark. Never in a million years would I have believed that I could be an inspiration to anyone but these past few months have been life-changing for me. You have hit the nail on the head about this being more than just the weight.