Tell me how *you* lost 1-2 pounds a week consistently

[Anonymous]

In the last year, I have lost 50 pounds. I am no longer “obese” by the BMI metrics. It is not always steady - I will lose a pound a week for a while and then get stuck. That’s actually normal.

Here’s what I did - not even saying it’s healthiest, but it works for me. Read all the labels and find two,things to count. For me, it was wheat (which I’ve known for years upsets my system) and salt, because my blood pressure was high (runs in my family). I went cold turkey on wheat (which did wonders for my digestive system and when I had very small amounts this year at Christmas everything got bad again), and aimed for things that were 40 grams of sodium or less per serving, or better yet, no sodium. With those two things, you basically have to make your own food, eat no convenience products etc. It’s actually kind of sucky because you will be places and there’s nothing for you to eat. I’m the one eating the carrot sticks at the potluck. Everything also doesn’t taste that great with no salt, so you don’t eat very much. I also limited myself to one serving per the package, and I measure everything into a dish and put the package away. So if the serving size of salt free corn chips is 10 chips, I take out ten chips. If I have a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in the fridge (there are a few flavors that are pretty low sodium and no wheat mix ins), yes, I am going to get 6 or 7 days out of it. It also means you probably aren’t going to eat out much, or if you do it’s the salad with no dressing, so you don’t want to. I drink a ton of water.

I didn’t count calories or fat grams per se, but by counting the other things that was a by product. I did more exercise, and losing the weight made it easier. I am back in regular sized clothing. Yes, before you say it, eating is no fun. But fun eating made me fat and also sent my digestive system into a mess where I always had to know where an accessible bathroom was at all times. I also finally hit menopause so it’s even slower than the one time 25 years ago when I did low carb and the weight fell off.

As I said, I don’t necessarily recommend it. It just worked. If your body isn’t at a naturally thin set point, there is no magic bullet. I’m someone who has always lived with food noise, and when I’m counting that’s literally all that’s in my head. We had an interesting conversation over the holidays where some of us tried to explain food noise to the others who didn’t experience it and who had thought that one of the reasons they were thin was that they were morally superior to those who weren’t and just because they passed on the occasional heavy dessert they knew all about counting and dieting and just were better at it than the rest of us. They didn’t get how envious we were of people who simply looked at something, thought it looked tasty, and ate it without any further thoughts about it. No guilt, shame, or self-recrimination.

[Anonymous]

Wegovy and Exercise