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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It doesn't have to be miserable.  Good habits beget more good habits (and vice versa).  I think the biggest favor you can do for yourself is to take it slow, manage your expectations, be optimistic, and be kind to yourself.  Weight loss isn't easy for everyone!  (My body holds onto weight much more easily than I can lose it.)

The biggest thing for me, historically, when it comes to losing or maintaining weight is finding exercise *I enjoy.*  I would try running or weightlifting but they just weren't for me: I've always had a much better time getting into my groove with gentler modalities such as dance, yoga, and walking.  If you like it, you will do it.

I would encourage you also to not think of foods as being "good" or "bad."  It is helpful for me to observe how foods make me feel and function rather than putting them in these buckets.  Limiting portion sizes and, yes, sometimes eliminating certain food groups can be very helpful.

Slow and steady wins the race :)[/quote]

I want to echo some of this -- the part about finding things that you enjoy -- and apply it to the diet part.  I have lost over 95 pounds in the last 18 months and went from a BMI of over 40 to 25.  I'm still going and while it has been challenging at times, and there have certainly been times (especially at the beginning) when I felt really hungry, the majority of the time it has just felt like normal, and kind of like another job.  For me, a key was that I needed to focus my diet mostly on protein and vegetables and go very low on carbs, and within that most importantly was to focus on eating foods that I really loved.  So that when I was eating, I was really enjoying the food and felt fulfilled by it, and I wasn't secretly desiring some other food.  That doesn't mean I ate junk foods -- I didn't eat those at all, but I ate a lot of fish that I love, and made a cauliflower mash that I really enjoyed, and used spices and flavorings that I liked.  And every week I'd fit in a chips and a homemade hamburger -- I guess that was my one concession to junk food.  After a few months I also cut down the number of meals I had each day from 3 to 2 -- I would either eat lunch or a late breakfast, but not both.  I think this is basically intermittent fasting, except I'd always have a latte in the morning.  Dinner is my biggest meal of the day and I always feel full afterwards.

I didn't do a lot of exercising until after I had lost 70 or 80 pounds, and even then it's just all been walking not weights or anything, so most of my weight loss was accomplished through diet.

The hardest parts for me have been occasionally hitting plateaus and feeling like nothing I was doing would get me below a certain number AND coming off of holidays or special events when I had indulged and then needed to get back in the groove.  For the first, sometimes I would eat some extra and then on my way back down the scale wouldn't get stuck on the same number, though more often than not I would just white knuckle it through the plateau until the scale went down.  For the holiday/special event thing, by Month 3 or so I just had to look at my weight recordings and see myself trending in the right direction for the stamina to keep it up.  I also sometimes recited my starting weight down to my goal weight for the internal reassurance that I could get from the one place to another, it was doable, you just had to keep going/counting.

Good luck![/quote]

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