Anonymous wrote:It’s absolutely possible. I lost 60 lbs in just over a year through calorie counting and moderate exercise 4x/week. I’ve maintained it for 13 years so far.

There are plenty of people who do this and keep it off. Most diets do not fail because of mysterious biological factors. They fail because people over-restrict and can’t maintain the diet; also, they do not make long term changes needed to adopt healthy habits and more intuitive eating.

I recommend Lose it app. Set to 1 lb/week and it will give you a fairly generous calorie budget, probably more than you think you should have. For example, I lost weight on 1900-2000 calories per day and without restricting any food groups. It is better to eat the most calories you can while still gradually losing weight - otherwise your hunger will go into overdrive and backfire.

Lastly, you’ll feel awesome after losing even 10 lbs. don’t focus on the big number, just focus on milestones.

That's great, I'm successfully losing weight over the last 6 months - however I don' know how you did on 1900 calories! I have to eat only about 1300 to lose weight - and I'm active!! Maybe it's may age? Over 50. I don't know. The weight loss has been slow going but I only have about another 10 pounds or so to lose now..

Anonymous wrote:Sure, I’ve done it a few times. Weight loss is pretty easy, the problem is it’s nearly impossible to maintain.

Why?

You can do it, OP! When I turned 40 I decided I needed to make a change if not for me then for my son. I lost 40 pounds in a year (and have kept it off the last three) by first starting to track my calories and what I was eating. I logged every meal on the Fitbit app. I feel like it doesn't matter what app you use so long as you're comfortable with it and log every meal-no matter how horrendous you went off the rails. Once I had that under control, I began walking. First just 20 minutes extra with the dogs until eventually I was up to an hour a night after my son went to bed. Once I felt comfortable walking I started slowly jogging. Now I love running the local 5ks and I never thought it'd be something I could enjoy.

I basically decided to get my food under control first and then slowly incorporate exercise. It was hard at first especially with the exercise because I needed to do it during times that I would previously watch tv to decompress. Once I shifted my mentality that this is just another (more healthy) form of decompression, it made it a lot easier to keep it up. You've got this

I'm 53 yo, 5 ft 7, and have lost 95 lbs over the last 18 months mostly through diet with a little walking thrown in. I started as obese in the 250s and am in 160s now. Mostly lost through high protein, low carb-ish lifestyle, then started basically intermittently fasting about 5 months in (basically eating just 2x day instead of 3x, so breakfast or lunch but not both). Working on the last 5 pounds before going on maintenance.

Not everyone's body works the same, so I don't know if you'd have more trouble than I did. But for me, a huge part of it was just willpower. I think you could do it! Good luck!

Sure you can. Lose the weight steadily, over many months. Don't try to go low carb- it isn't sustainable. People love the quick results of low carb but they usually gain it back.

Instead, eat whole grains, beans, lentils, lots of vegetables, fruits, good fats from seeds and nuts, some cheese, eggs, yogurt. Limit meat, especially red meat and processed meat. Its a myth that eating a lot of fat and protein keeps you full. It doesn't and you don't have to eat that way if it isn't what you naturally find satisfying. Eat foods you actually want to eat and enjoy that are also nutritious- that is the way to play the long game with weight loss and maintenance.

Track your overall daily calories and find the sweet spot for where you need to be for steady and slow weight loss. You dont have to do this forever, just until you get the feel for how much food you can eat and still keep up with your goals.

To maintain your weight loss once you hit your goal, weight yourself every couple days or daily. Adjust your diet as needed if you see a 5 lb gain that sticks around for more than a couple days.

The reason so many people can't keep weight off is they go on diets that are not how they actually want to eat. Then once weight is off, they slowly shift back to how the actually want to eat. If you've been eating a certain way for decades, go on a drastically different diet to lose weight for a few months/year, chances are your old diet will return. People also don't weigh themselves often enough and take action to change and 5 lb gain turns to 10, then 15 and so on.

Anonymous wrote:Yes. I’ve done this twice — and kept the weight off for 5+ years each time. What it took for me was making changes that were consistent, over a very long period of time.

Each time, I gained the weight back during times of severe stress, when I couldn’t make eating well a priority, and couldn’t build exercise into my daily life.

Wishing you well with this, OP.

This is basically me, except there was a 7 year gap between regaining (which was due to pregnancy the second time around).

^ same pp above.

I tried dieting before and quickly went from 184 to 164. I gained it all back in a couple of years.

So any change I make now has to be pretty sustainable for life. Now I tell people " I am not a breakfast person", and I mean it.

The best way to do it is to decide now that you are already at 135 pounds( or whatever your goal is). What do you need to do to maintain 135pounds? How much food? How much exercise?

Then start doing that. This way, it becomes a lifestyle change and not a diet. If you approach it from a " dieting to lose" standpoint, once you have lost, you will lose motivation and start eating too much and/ or exercising too little

This is my approach, and it's working very well. I am 5'8", and I am down to 175 from 188. I was 148 before my first pregnancy and look very nice at 148.

I decided that I am already 150 pounds, so I eat to maintain 150. It's not a diet because this is how I will continue eating for the next 10 years. I made 1 change: cut out breakfast. And this is going to me my lifestyle forever: no breakfast, early lunch/ brunch.

My next step was adding exercise. I have added 30 minutes of dancing to my favorite music on most nights. The kids join in, so it's a fun activity. That's all the exercise I am willing to do as a lifestyle change for now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is your height and weight? At your age, I think you can still do it without medication, but agree you should change your thinking on timing. The longer it takes, the better for keeping it off.

I’m 5”3 and 165-170. Used to yo-yo between 120-135/140. I work full time and have two little kids so you can imagine my “diet and lifestyle” which I am looking to truly overhaul.

I was you - same exact stats. I gained a ton with my pregnancies, did not shed weight easily. When my son was a toddler I was finally able to shed the last 25 pounds pretty easily. Since time is hard to come by for exercise, you really really have to focus on controlling your diet. I ate mostly vegetables and drank water and didn’t drink alcohol or have sugar. It wasn’t that fun but it was effective. Able to maintain with a more “normal” diet, but do have to focus on portion control (as we all do as we get even marginally older).

Oh wow, NP here and this is me almost exactly (I was 5 lb higher than you at my highest). I was a pretty stable weight most of my life before kids but I never lost the weight after my babies, I to also gained a few more pounds at the beginning of the pandemic when I was so stressed out. My youngest is now 4 and I’m finally able to make an effort again. Well at least intermittently. I’ve lost about 5-7 lbs in fits and starts since the fall. It sounds like very little but I have hope that slow and steady win the race

OP - I lost 30 pounds strictly through diet (mostly just portion control and healthy eating) and exercise over the course of about 10 months. This was after weight gain after 4 kids. It can definitely be done.

Yes, for sure. I’m a decade older than you and down 50lbs since May. No medication or surgery. Just diet and exercise. I had also lost 35 lbs after my last pregnancy and weaning at about your age. I let some weight creep on when I changed jobs in 2019 and then I stress ate through the first 2 years of the pandemic. So like you, this was not a life long overweight problem, more of a situational thing, though I have taken off an additional 15ish lbs of weight I’ve always wanted to lose. I’ve typically been between 140-150 my adult life, so it remains to be seen if I can keep it down in the upper 120s. I know I can keep it at my typical weight as I’ve only gone above that while pregnant/nursing or when extremely stressed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can definitely lose it. Whether you can keep it off for more than a few years is an open question. DCUM is full of people who swear they know a ton of people who lost 40 lbs permanently through diet and exercise alone, but I am always very skeptical of those posts because those anecdotes don’t track years and years of rigorous population studies.

You sound like so much fun to hang out with.

Is basic science too hard for you to understand? I don’t really understand what is so challenging about factual statements but who knows. DCUM is always surprising.

No, not at all and neither is humor, I understand that one pretty well too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can definitely lose it. Whether you can keep it off for more than a few years is an open question. DCUM is full of people who swear they know a ton of people who lost 40 lbs permanently through diet and exercise alone, but I am always very skeptical of those posts because those anecdotes don’t track years and years of rigorous population studies.

That’s fair. But have you ever considered many people have zero interest in being studied or sharing that kind of health information in a way that it would be recorded for a study? I didn’t and I have zero interest in that. I already have people saying garbage non stop about my weight loss years later. It’s exhausting.

The studies that track weight loss aren’t about what people like. Typically they come out of large longitudinal studies. And there are approximately fifty years worth of them.

All I’m saying is that I side-eye the fact that DCUM seems to have a very high number of extreme statistical outliers, and that makes me inherently skeptical of everything else they say.

I am not sure you are following what I am saying. Quite literally these studies require participants, even if they are not focused on weight loss and instead study a whole variety of feature sets. I suspect there are a large number of people that have managed to turn their health ship around that simply don't want to be studied, never wanted to be studied, and won't be part of any longitudinal study for anything. I would go so far as to say those that are part of these studies might even create some kind of selection bias.

So we are going to have to disagree concerning "extreme statistical outliers." That's BS defeatist thinking in my opinion.

Yes I’ve lost 30lbs with Intermittent Fasting and working out with another 15 to go. It’s very possible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can definitely lose it. Whether you can keep it off for more than a few years is an open question. DCUM is full of people who swear they know a ton of people who lost 40 lbs permanently through diet and exercise alone, but I am always very skeptical of those posts because those anecdotes don’t track years and years of rigorous population studies.

You sound like so much fun to hang out with.

Is basic science too hard for you to understand? I don’t really understand what is so challenging about factual statements but who knows. DCUM is always surprising.