Most women and more men are concerned about their weight, and diets are probably more popular than ever before. Many work in the short term. I’m curious about any successes you’ve had keeping off the pounds or eating more sensibly. How did you do it?
Yes. Quit eating as a social exercise and take personal responsibility for what you eat.
When I was marrried, , I ate as much as my wife cooked, when she cooked it. Topped out at almost 190. Separated, cooked my own meals, no convenience foods, never ordered out. In less than two years, I was 145 and healthy and energetic. Never even thought about weight loss or diet.
A couple of factors helped. I was a cheapskate, so portions were small. And I quit driving, so everything I ate had to be replaced with a long walk through the hot sun or icy wind.
Bottom line – change your lifestyle first – the diet will follow. You can’t force a square diet into a round lifestyle.
Something that has worked my whole adult life: eat whatever I want, but eat only 2 meals a day. No snacks. Just the 2 meals. I, of course, cheat (especially when drinking). But it seems to have worked for about 25 years.
This is what I have done for the last 5 months or so and have lost 15 lbs. At work they added a second lunch room (formally a large conference room) to allow social distancing. No microwave, no refrigerator, no sink, etc… but much nicer chairs and quieter. Quit bringing food that needed to be reheated/cooked and just have a diet pop or a bottle of water for my breaks. Eat a big breakfast and then supper after work.
Calorie counting – 1200-1500 per day, trying to keep calories from fat to less than 30% of the day’s total. One day per two-week period I eat as much as I want, not caring if it’s 2000+ calories, but I still count so I can keep the calories from fat down.
Last time I did this I lost 42 pounds in 13 weeks. (Unfortunately, in the following two years I slowly gained it all back…)
Very restricted carbs and intermittent fasting–16/8. Works very well for me.
Yes, I lost 25 pounds between October 2018 and January 2019 and I’ve kept it off. I call it the “eat a shitload less food” diet. I’d take 2 tablespoons of a main course and that much again of something to go with it. Once a day. Period. Balanced diet. Get some protein, some vitamin A veggies, bit of carbs. Drink some orange juice or eat a lime in there somewhere.
That’s the “lose weight” diet. The “maintain weight” diet—the permanent one—is closer to a normal helping but restrictions on eating seconds. Weight myself every morning. On days when my weight is within specified range, I get to eat lunch as well
I’ve only ever tried one diet. It’s called the Stop-Stuffing-My-Fat-Fucking-Face diet. It tends to work.
I eat when I’m bored. One of the best “diets” I’ve had was deciding that instead of nibbling something from the fridge when I got bored, I’d go for a run or a bike ride. It worked well at a particular time in my life when I had few other commitments but doesn’t work any more.
Eons ago, I attended Weight Watchers meetings religiously, but when I quit going, the weight crept back. I was never much able to stick to any restricted diet for long.
But not quite 2 years ago, I cut out any food after supper and made an effort to have more fruits and veggies. Then at the beginning of this year, I downloaded an app that helped me track what I ate, and I aimed for 1000-1200 calories per day, plus water and exercise. So far, I’ve lost 80# and I’m walking at least 30 minutes a day at least 5 times a week. I find I think long and hard before having a sugary snack, and I don’t beat myself up if I do indulge occasionally.
It does help that we aren’t eating out - not till the plague is over. I looked on the websites of some of our favorite places to see the calorie counts of certain items - OMG!! One sandwich has more calories than I choose to eat in a day!! That explains how all those pounds accumulated.
I personally am fortunate that my default eating patterns result in me being fairly close to my ideal weight, close enough that I don’t worry about it. Though of course that doesn’t work for everyone.
The diet my mom’s been on for decades now, that works quite well for her, is that every day, she eats at least ten servings of fruits and vegetables, and whatever else she wants. I think the key is that it allows flexibility: There’s no sense of “Well, Thanksgiving dinner blew out my diet, so I might as well give up on it now”.
I lost around 150 pounds doing a mostly ketogenic diet and kept it off for better than ten years. There were still 20 or 30 pounds I could stand to lose, but I wasn’t too concerned about them after being an enormous tub of goo for most of my life.
After I retired I more or less accidentally started doing intermittent fasting. I was putting off breakfast later in the mornings until it started stepping on lunch, so eventually it made more sense just to skip breakfast altogether and go right to lunch, giving me a roughly 18 hour fasting period every day. I started dropping additional weight, and my overall health improved, After around a year of this I pushed the fasting periods longer and longer, and for the last year and a half I do three 42 hour fasts a week. I eat lunch and dinner on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, so only eight meals a week.
I find the eight meal a week thing oddly liberating. You don’t realize how much of your time is spent on planning, shopping, preparing, eating, and cleaning for meals that are really superfluous.
I lose weight when I cut way back on carbs and get regular exercise.
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I grew up eating almost nothing but carbs with some fat thrown in.
(My wife and kids cringe at the dinners that my mom served, lots of casseroles and potatoes and not a green vegetable in sight)
And I still love carbs. Even when I decided to lose ten pounds a month (doc’s suggestion, I took it as a dare), I just shook my head at people who’d say “You’ll get to the point where you don’t even want sweets.” HA! I’d kill for a blueberry donut with maple glaze right now…
So with Events Such As They Are, I’ve put on a few pounds. I’m not going to my petri dish of a gym, and being angry at politicians and non-distancing relatives has necessitated an occasional blueberry donut with maple glaze.
Around 20 years ago, my doctor suggested the zone diet which is basically, eat what you like, but control portion size. So my wife just started cooking considerably smaller portions. I lost 30 lb over a year or so and then gained back 10 in the next year or two. Then I crossed the line to diabetes and was put on metformin and lost 20 lb over the next couple years. This is a well-known side-effect of metformin. So I was down a net 40 lb and stayed at that weight for four or five years. We were still doing portion control. Then I decided to stop eating between meals and over a 2 year period lost 40 lb more. And with small ups and downs, I have maintained that 80 lb loss since 2013.
Starting Feb. 1, we have done on intermittent fasting, about 17/7. I have not lost anything but my wife has lost about 15 lb since we started. But we didn’t do it to lose weight. It was mainly because research shows it reduces inflammation.
Breakfast was a single 6oz yogurt cup. Lunch was a single slice of lunch meat with a single slice of cheese. I forget what dinner was but it was similarly monotonous and just-this-short-of-starvation. One snack a day, on the order and size of one apple. Also was on the exercise bike for an hour a night, every night. Lost 100lbs. My doctor was very happy.
Then my motivation faded, my life circumstances got slightly worse, and my willpower became unable to maintain the grueling lifestyle and I quit it, and gained it all back and more. My doctor is less happy.
No.
Never.
Diet? No.
Lifestyle changes? Yes. More daily exercise, better quality foods, much more veggies, portion control, pre-planning meals for the week, more care when dining out, less alcohol.
I’m not on a strictly weight-loss diet, but I have hypogylcemia, so I have to limit carbohydrates (not eliminate, just eat in small portions), and eat as little sweetened with sugar as possible.
This was really tough until Splenda was invented. All the good sugar substitutes gave me diarrhea, and the one like aspertame (Nutrisweet) tasted awful an couldn’t be used for cooking. You can cook with Splenda, with a few adjustments (you need a little sugar to get the texture right, but I find that 20% sugar, 10% aguave syrup, and 70% Splenda, with 10% cornstarch subbed for some of the flour gets a really good texture. To baked good.
I was carrying around some extra baby weight since my 30s that I couldn’t chuck, and mostly it was stuggling with sugar, and not being to exercise when I needed to because I had a baby. But discovering how to use Splenda correctly got the babyweight off, and has been really goo for my blood sugar control.
I have never been a heavy drinker, but I used to drink on Jewish holidays. A few years ago I quit doing even that, after my second parent to die also died of cancer. I dropped a few more pounds. Not a lot.
But I’m big-framed-- I can bench press 180, and do chin-ups, which is pretty good for a girl. When the army tested my bodyfat in my 20s; I had 18%, and weighed 132lbs, so that meant a lot of muscle for a girl.
Through my forties, and especially after the baby, I got up to 155-- and I’m only 5’5. It’s just been since I quit drinking ENTIRELY, not even sips, and got really serious about my blood sugar, so my A1C tests are what my doctor calls “perfect” (cholesterol & trygliderides, too, but more on that in a minute) that I got close to 132 again. I weight 138lbs right now. I’m well-proportioned, and nice clothes fit me well. I look better in my 50s than I ever did in my 40s.
So it isn’t really a diet, in that I eat what I want, save for a couple of categories I don’t choose food from at all, for medical reasons, but it works for me.
I do bike and walk a alot for transportation, but I enjoy it.
Since they aren’t really categories I need to eat from, but I do not need a high pass this year
I quit eating in between meals and after dinner. If I feel hungry before a meal or at night, I eat fruit. I used to LOVE eating snacks while watching TV. No more - done!
I cut way back on sweets. I allow myself to have some kind of small sweet treat after every meal - mini bag of M&Ms, a few mini peanut butter cups, a small scoop of ice cream. Those little things have become so tasty. It would be tough to quit sweets altogether - I have to have something to look forward to!
I decided to give up sweets all together for Lent last February. I ate a ton of fruit every day instead. Then after Easter, I decided to eat sweets but cut back - I found if I at least had a little chocolate fix, I’d be ok. I was watching the pounds come off so I also quit eating in between meals at that time. Then Covid hit and I was stuck at home. I used to walk 2.5 miles every day during my lunch break at work. I worried that not doing that would result in a massive weight gain. (I was still walking 2.5 miles in the morning and another 2 in the evening). But I have found that the 3rd walk was really doing nothing for me other than just getting out of the office. I lost 15 lbs between February and May - about a pound a week.
Beginning of June, my gf noticed I’d gained some quarantine weight and asked me if I’d consider eating healthy food for a change. She offered to make me lunches since I tend to snack and eat garbage at work. So, since then I’ve been eating a big salad for lunch; a really nice salad with different greens, peppers, cheese, krab, avocado, etc.
I always have eggs for breakfast, so I kept going with that. Our dinners have always been pretty healthy, but I tend to eat junk after dinner, so we bumped dinner up from 7 to 9.
I still drink a lot of beer, but I’ve replaced some of the beer with vodka.
Out of curiosity, I’ve been weighing myself every Sunday morning and have been surprised to find I’ve lost 1-2 pounds per week!