Congratulations on your success. Be patient, you'll get where you want to go. Listen to your body and go at your own pace. It's not a race. Slow and steady is best in the long run.

Our stories are similar. In March, 2010, I began eating better with the Diet Solution plan, then discovered Paleo and have been about 90% perfect since June. I started at 312 and am now 244. I am 61. I did not start exercising until January, when I started doing 90 seconds of squats or 90 seconds of wall pushbacks before I ate, which is a Tim Ferriss trick to push your food into muscles instead of fat. My limiting factor was my left hip, which was quite painful at times. I also have a history of back problems, so I wanted to be very careful with any kind of strength-training exercises.

I recently purchased The Slowburn Fitness Revolution and have started doing the exercises. Using light weights, you do each exercise for 90 seconds in slow motion until you can not do any more. That engages all 3 types of muscle fibers and forces them to grow. 30 minutes, once every 5 days. I also leaned that this method is great for cardio and flexibility. After my first workout, I knew I had pushed my muscles as far as they could go, but I was not sore in the slightest. That's waht I was looking for - something super efficient, but safe. The book is concise and easy to understand and I highly recommend it. Here's an excerpt: http://www.enotalone.com/article/4605.html Here's a link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0767913868?tag=kamurj0b

I know where you're coming from. I started out at 15 lbs per month average, but then I slowed down a lot. The slow-down was frustrating because I thought the rate would be consistent. I foolishly started planning dates of milestone markers, like -50, -100, etc. It will be ESPECIALLY frustrating when you start to hit plateaus.

The moral of the story is, weight loss is a marathon and not a sprint.

I am 5'2" and started out at 247, 6 years later I finally hit my goal weight of 136.

Personally, I think taking it slow really helped with mentally adjusting to the new nutrition and exercise regimens. I lost the majority of the weight, almost 80lbs, the first two years. The third year, I thought I had it all figured out and I went up 20. When I finally hit my first goal weight of 150, my trainer had me learn to maintain that for a year. Then I finally got off the last 15 with Paleo eating.

Personally, I would tell you to start adding exercise into your day if you can. When I first started I could only do 10/15 minutes on the bike or elliptical. If you could start with just some body weight exercises (squats/lunges/planks/etc) for even just 10 minutes, 3 days a week, I think it would help mentally and build your strength.

Most of us don't get to be obese, or near obese, without some issues with food. I think taking it slowly and adjusting your mind along with your body is key to keeping the weight off for the rest of your life.

It's an awesome and rewarding journey! Enjoy it.

Wow! Congratulations on the weight loss. 15 lbs. is awesome! I don't really have much advice, I've just started this as well. I lost 10 lbs. in the first month, but only have another 20 to go. My husband only lost 8 lbs and he still has over a hundred to go. I know he doesn't want to start exercise just yet, and he's still having a hard time giving up the carbs (he loves his almond biscuits!). I think keeping up your motivation is key, so do what you feel is best for you and stay motivated.

My advice right now would be, it aint' broke so what could you fix? YOu are losing weight fast, but losing weight too fast is not healthy either. Paleo is about maintaining a healthy weight but it's also about health in general. You don't want to do damage to yourself in your big hurry to lose weight. Find some patience! Believe me, I know the feeling about wanting to lose quickly, but long term, in order to truly succeed, you have to be concerned just as much about health as about vanity.

As for exercise, I would suggest you ease slowly into a low impact exercise routine. Swimming and/or water exercises are a great way to do that as the water supports your body but at the same time, provides gentle resistance to each movement.

Also got to fitday.com and make sure you are getting decent levels of all useful vitamins and minerals. I don't necesarily believe blindly in all the RDAs, but some of those nutrients truly are important. Since paleo is not a set diet but instead allows you to choose out of a variety of things to eat, it still is possible to end up picking a list of foods that may lack in a few important nutrients. And some nutrients that are important for joints, like magnesium, are not plentiful is many foods. People are tempted to assume many health problems are the result of age and ordinary wear and tear, but many health conscious eaters have been surprised to find that at least some of these problems suddenly go away once a more healthful and balanced diet is achieved.

You might want to check out this Gary Taubes article from New York Magazine titled, "The Scientist and the Stairmaster: Why Most of Us Believe Exercise Makes Us Thinner - And Why We're Wrong."

http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/

Taubes' basic argument is that exercise - especially so-called "cardio" - burns calories, but increases our appetite, causing us to eat as much or more than we burned off. I know that's been my experience.

I recently listened to a Podcast with Taubes, and the interviewer asked whether he thinks resistance training works better. Taubes thinks it could, not due to calories it might burn. Rather, Taubes thinks it might switch the way the body partitions energy into fat or protein (muscle). He said the body might start to think, "every few days we expend energy [lifting weights], so I'm going to put more of this energy into muscle." (My paraphrase). Resistance training has always helped me take weight off.

A lot of overweight people have aches and pains and it's common for these problems to be blamed on the obesity, the extra weight supposedly putting stress on the joints and the feet and what-not. But your weight of just over 200 pounds would be normal for a 6 ft tall guy, and he wouldn't have the aches and pains. Why? Because his body's adapted to the weight. Well, yours adapted to your weight also, unless you gained 100 pounds overnight.

I'm more inclined to blame systemic inflammation for your pain, assuming you did not have that fast of a weight gain. I say this from my own experience, because I have found that simple dietary changes make a world of difference between whether my joints and feet hurt and whether they don't. Lots of carbs and veggie oils = pain, cutting them back significantly = much less pain or none at all.

I know you have done a Paleo 30-day challenge and while you don't give specifics on what your diet is like now, from what I'm reading of what these challenges usually involve, I'll assume you still have some foods in your diet that it's possible to overdo. For instance, how's your intake of nuts and starchy tubers? Anything that's keeping your insulin elevated is going to contribute to inflammation, plus those nuts are heavy on the O-6s.

If you're following a strain of Paleo that's more Cordain-ish and cuts out the saturated fats, that could be part of the problem too.

If it's inflammation and you hit on something in your diet that's causing it, look for your pain symptoms to improve even before your weight loss accelerates, but I suspect that's going to happen as well, if insulin is the problem. It's not fast weight loss that's a problem per se so much as it's losing lean tissue instead of fat reserves.

You could also try testing for autoimmune disorders if that tendency runs in your family. Women who've borne children are more likely to suffer from them. But the tests don't always tell you everything. Still, it's something to consider depending on what else is going on in your life. And FWIW, diet can affect how bad the symptoms get even if you do have lupus or similar.