For me (old guy) OMAD worked very well.

I lost 60lb a few years back (5’3 now 120lb) and kept it off - I switched to 1200 cal a day diet (and limited carbs) as well as jogging. I lost the weight over 10 months, averaging 1-2lb a week.

I’ve managed to keep it off by keeping up with jogging every day and watching what I eat (I need about 1700-1800cal a day to maintain) and if my weight starts going up, going back to 1200 until it goes back down. I have accepted that to not put weight back on, I will have to count calories for the rest of my life. It is what it is.

When I do WW and track consistently I lose close to 2 pounds per week. As soon as I stop, my weight will start creeping up again even if I think I’m eating the same intuitively. I like WW bc I don’t need to cut out anything to lose weight. I can budget my points each week to incorporate things like a glass of wine or two and dessert.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m 5’3” and went from 150 to 110. It took me a good 10 months. I was focused solely on weight loss so I did not increase my exercise- that would have just made me hungry and been self sabotage. I did intermittent fasting, and essentially cut out breakfast. I drank a ton of water and ate at a strict calorie deficit. 1200 calories a day, split into two 600 calorie meals of lunch and dinner. No snacks. Tried to sleep more, going to bed early kept me from snacking.

It definitely sucked and I felt hungry a lot. But I figured that’s the feeling of my body shedding some fat and just powered through. I’ve been maintaining this weight for 3 years now. It was all previously baby weight, which probably helped. My last baby was 9 months when I started, so it’s not like my body had been carrying this weight for a long time and was used to it.

I feel so much better now that I’m back to a reasonable weight. Feel years younger, truly.

What is your calorie range now to keep it off?

1400-1600. I try to just balance it all out. If I eat a big meal, my next is lighter. Which makes sense, I shouldn’t be as hungry.

My mistake in the past was eating light ahead of a big meal, then overeating because I was hungry. Now I eat normally, then indulge, and go light on the following meal.

Mostly just balancing meals/treats and consistency.

Anonymous wrote:I really started taking my weight loss seriously in August, and have lost 16 pounds, six of which I’ve lost in the last seven weeks. It is slow! I have 35-40 pounds to go and I want to consistently lose 1-2 pounds a week until I’m at my goal weight.

I’m 5’3, 170 pounds, have been working out 2-3 times a week but increasing my frequency to 4 times a week (two strength-training classes and two HIIT/circuit training classes which include cardio) and yoga 2 times a week. I’m averaging about 1100 calories a day, drink only water/herbal tea, no added sugar, no alcohol, no caffeine. What else should I do? And how did you do it?

TIA!

You are losing at a very reasonable rate. Keep doing what you ae doing. While some people lose faster losing 2 lbs a week is not the norm and 0.5-1 is actually more realistic. The faster you lose the more extreme you need to be and that often leads to burnout.

I walked/moved/danced for at least 15 minutes each day, usually in the morning.

Once or twice a week I would do a 45 minute to an hour cardio, usually walking.

Leslie Sansone has free YouTube videos.

I worked out with weights every other day, legs and arms 4x a week.

Mostly, for me, I stopped eating fast food. That's really all I had to do to see the weight come off.

1 pound = 3500 calories. That's 2 fast food meals a week.

Meals consisted of breakfast, lunch, dinner. I eliminated most white processed foods and all fried foods. I eliminated even diet soda. I drank coffee in the morning and water throughout the day, usually 32 ounces of water a day.

It's challenging to burn calories with exercise especially if you're already a normal weight and you just want to drop 5 to 10 pounds. You most likely will only lose a pound a week, not really any faster than that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2 lbs a week is insane? Nobody should be losing at that rate.

Has the medical advice on this changed? I've consistently read that you shouldn't try for more than 2 lbs a week but that 2 lbs a week is safe.

I always thought the advice was 1-2 pounds per week per 100 pounds. But that everyone knows it’s not linear and that some weeks will be 0-1 lb.

Anonymous wrote:I’m 5’3” and went from 150 to 110. It took me a good 10 months. I was focused solely on weight loss so I did not increase my exercise- that would have just made me hungry and been self sabotage. I did intermittent fasting, and essentially cut out breakfast. I drank a ton of water and ate at a strict calorie deficit. 1200 calories a day, split into two 600 calorie meals of lunch and dinner. No snacks. Tried to sleep more, going to bed early kept me from snacking.

It definitely sucked and I felt hungry a lot. But I figured that’s the feeling of my body shedding some fat and just powered through. I’ve been maintaining this weight for 3 years now. It was all previously baby weight, which probably helped. My last baby was 9 months when I started, so it’s not like my body had been carrying this weight for a long time and was used to it.

I feel so much better now that I’m back to a reasonable weight. Feel years younger, truly.

What is your calorie range now to keep it off?

I'm 5'6.5" and have gone from 158 to 128 since July doing the following:

1. Breakfast: a Fairlife Corepower protein shake (170 cals), coffee with skim milk

2. Lunch: salad with a few ounces of grilled chicken and half an avocado, homemade dressing with very little oil

3. If hungry for afternoon snack, either 2 egg whites or an apple

4. Dinner is a lean protein, salad, half an avocado, roasted veggies.

5. I eat out once a week and have whatever I want.

6. No alcohol whatsoever. I drink at least 100 ounces of water per day and lots of green tea. Up to 3 cups of coffee per day, but usually 2.

7. I walk 15k steps per day.

I'm 45 and have gone from 160 to 145 over the last six months. I could not have done it at 1100 calories a day (and actually haven't tracked/measured calories at all).

I added a high-protein breakfast and 2 snacks with protein to my daily intake, reduced portion sizes for other meals, and focused on increasing water intake, vegetables, fiber, and exercise and limiting bread/grains.

I'm not hungry and don't have the sugar/salt cravings I used to. I feel MUCH stronger and good in my body after six months of consistent and regular (about 3x per week) strenuous exercise. I've lost more inches than pounds and my clothes fit a million times better.

I'm 5'0, and 1-2 pounds a week is not sustainable. I have lost my weight at 1100-1300 calories, but the average of my weight loss is probably 1/2 pound per week. Here are the first 13 weeks. It slowed even more in the last three months. But it did come off, slowly. I'm now in a healthy BMI category. You have to be consistent, and patient. The first few weeks will not be accurate.

It does aggravate me a bit that people act like I've had a huge weight loss out of nowhere. It's been very slow (I've actually been working on it for two years, but more consistent in the last six months).


Week 1 - 0.5
Week 2 - 2.4
3 - 2.1
4 - 0.8
5 - 0.4
6 - 1.0
7 - +0.2
8 - 0.6
9 - .02
10 - 0.4
11 - 0.5
12 - 1.2
13 - +.4

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m 5’3” and went from 150 to 110. It took me a good 10 months. I was focused solely on weight loss so I did not increase my exercise- that would have just made me hungry and been self sabotage. I did intermittent fasting, and essentially cut out breakfast. I drank a ton of water and ate at a strict calorie deficit. 1200 calories a day, split into two 600 calorie meals of lunch and dinner. No snacks. Tried to sleep more, going to bed early kept me from snacking.

It definitely sucked and I felt hungry a lot. But I figured that’s the feeling of my body shedding some fat and just powered through. I’ve been maintaining this weight for 3 years now. It was all previously baby weight, which probably helped. My last baby was 9 months when I started, so it’s not like my body had been carrying this weight for a long time and was used to it.

I feel so much better now that I’m back to a reasonable weight. Feel years younger, truly.

Are you still hungry all the time?

No, I’m not. I still don’t really eat breakfast, but I use sugar and cream in my coffee and eat an earlier lunch. I’ve found maintenance reasonably easy. I just am strict about not snacking after dinner, filling up on water and vegetables, and weighing myself regularly so my weight doesn’t creep up without knowing.

Getting in the mindset of adding good things into my diet - water and vegetables - was such a good shift. I don’t have to axe desserts because I naturally eat a reasonable portion when I’ve just had a filling healthy meal. It sounds so trite, but I think the “French women don’t get fat” book was onto something. Good real food, limited snacking, and you can have some bread and cheese and chocolate, just not too much.

This all assumes you are healthy no hormone problems, etc. of course.

It sounds like you are doing all the right things. It's a slow process.

It is a slow process. I had bad gestational diabetes with each of my three pregnancies. I’m sure I have insulin resistance now, that was greatly exacerbated by the extra weight I was carrying after kids. Even though I was never technically obese, I was certainly suffering from the fat gain. I had skin tags and facial hair. Losing the weight has reversed all those symptoms.

I really hope I can maintain it, I feel so much better. I know a lot of it was just the postpartum fog (I had three kids in 4.5 years, with a 12 week miscarriage in there too). But I feel years younger now. Being big and slow and sleeping and eating poorly was no way to live. Good luck.

Anonymous wrote:Why no caffeine?

This is OP. For a few reasons, I quit caffeine when I quit alcohol and since then I’ve seen the weight loss accelerate. Not here to debate, but I get/got a lot of good information from the decaf subreddit. Many people report similar, and the theory is that caffeine increases cortisol in the body, which makes it more difficult to lose weight.

Otherwise, I always drank coffee with cream and sugar so a convenient way to avoid those extra calories.

For reference, I’ve always been active and at a healthy weight, but am overweight currently due to downstream insulin resistance from my last pregnancy (I had gestational diabetes). I’m nearly two years postpartum. Three kids.

For people saying 1100 is low: it appears I have to keep my caloric intake this low to lose. Eating 1500 calories a day would not enable weight loss, for me. I don’t really feel hungry. I drink a lot of water and tea, and prioritize vegetables. I haven’t cut out any food groups entirely, but keep grains/breads/processed carbs to one serving a day (or less).

Thanks all for the helpful feedback!

Probably not that much but in 4 months I've gone from 144 to 135, plateauing the last month (which is good) and maintained this through the holidays. I am 5'7''.

I did it by getting a concerning blood glucose reading and trying hard to lower it over 3 months (September to December), which I did. This meant less bread, fewer white carbs, more salads and veggies (which I already ate a lot of), more protein (full fat dairy, lean chicken, tofu), pivoting to things like cottage cheese when hungry instead of chips and dip, and fewer desserts. I enjoy healthy foods and didn't 100% deprive myself. I just bought less junk and thought a little more about what I eat.

To be fair, fall was STRESSFUL so I did have a period of low appetite, which also helped to reset my hunger cues (because when they came back I had been eating differently). I honestly feel my relationship with food has changed.

Examples from this week: I made guac last night and had a little before dinner. Just set it out and had probably 6 chips. Before I would have made a larger plate or just kept eating and eating. Several times this week I was hungry between meals and had either cottage cheese or a very small serving of TJs snack mix (just the one serving, an actual single serving as opposed to a whole bowl). Before I would have had 400 calories of cheez-its or an apple and string cheese and chocolate, and chips, etc... Finally, I had some ice cream this week. Probably 5 servings from a pint over 2.5 weeks.

I walk briskly almost daily for 30-50 minutes and I am early 40s.

It took a health scare for me to actually be honest about my food choices, which were fairly healthy but I now realize had some fluff in them that was keeping me 5-10 lbs heavier. I do not feel hungry or deprived at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m 5’3” and went from 150 to 110. It took me a good 10 months. I was focused solely on weight loss so I did not increase my exercise- that would have just made me hungry and been self sabotage. I did intermittent fasting, and essentially cut out breakfast. I drank a ton of water and ate at a strict calorie deficit. 1200 calories a day, split into two 600 calorie meals of lunch and dinner. No snacks. Tried to sleep more, going to bed early kept me from snacking.

It definitely sucked and I felt hungry a lot. But I figured that’s the feeling of my body shedding some fat and just powered through. I’ve been maintaining this weight for 3 years now. It was all previously baby weight, which probably helped. My last baby was 9 months when I started, so it’s not like my body had been carrying this weight for a long time and was used to it.

I feel so much better now that I’m back to a reasonable weight. Feel years younger, truly.

Are you still hungry all the time?

No, I’m not. I still don’t really eat breakfast, but I use sugar and cream in my coffee and eat an earlier lunch. I’ve found maintenance reasonably easy. I just am strict about not snacking after dinner, filling up on water and vegetables, and weighing myself regularly so my weight doesn’t creep up without knowing.

Getting in the mindset of adding good things into my diet - water and vegetables - was such a good shift. I don’t have to axe desserts because I naturally eat a reasonable portion when I’ve just had a filling healthy meal. It sounds so trite, but I think the “French women don’t get fat” book was onto something. Good real food, limited snacking, and you can have some bread and cheese and chocolate, just not too much.

This all assumes you are healthy no hormone problems, etc. of course.

It sounds like you are doing all the right things. It's a slow process.