I can drop weight without a problem - it’s putting it back on (particuarly, as a bloke, muscle mass) which I simply cannot do.
If I eat enough lard butties and drink more beer I’ll add some fat to my stomach area, but it falls off as soon as I rein back the calories slightly.
I’ve never dieted.
Hey, it was one of the poll options.
Very, very difficult. I have to fight for every half pound I lose - and every one is a victory. There are multiple aspects of this for me:
old habits. I didn’t eat well growing up - lots of processed food. Neither did I play sports of the like.
PCOS - the major (visible) aspect of this for me is the weight issue
stress
Genetics (all you have to do is look at my family to see the genetic heritage I got in terms of weight. I do think this is the least of the factors, but I do think it’s a factor)
All of this combined means that to maintain my current status (which DOES fall into the obese realm, despite what I’ve lost andwhat I’m still working on), I have to have at least an hour of cardio 5-6 times a week. For losing, I up that to 90 minutes 5 days and then do strength 3 days a week. I also have to be aware of every thing I eat. I eat like I am a diabetic, though I’ve not had that diagnosis, because it’s the one that works best for me in terms of helping with weight. I may never be not-overweight, though I’d like to be not-obese.
The other side of this, is all it takes is one bad week for me to put on 5 lbs. A high stress month where I let myself slide would undo a year’s work in terms of weight. I hate it. I wish my body was otherwise, but it’s not. So I do what I have to do. Most of the time.
I chose Other because…
I’ve been working out rigorously and maintaining a nothing-special diet. Meaning I’m not over eating by a ton (especially not for someone my size) but I’m not cramming salads and tuna. I also kept my eating the same and ramped up my exercise halfway through the year. To the result of gaining weight.
But, being that I am so large and work out so vigorously, when I do cut my calories (and sugar) way down, I can drop 10 lbs in a week.
Compared to a “normal sized” woman - every other woman I know - who could take months or even a year to drop 10 lbs because 10 lbs is a significant percentage of their bodyweight. Wheras for me I could lose 10, 20 even 30 lbs and still fit in the same clothes.
So yeah it comes off relatively easy compared to most other women, but no I really have to work at it.
ETA: Hi Lsura! I am exactly like you! Yay!
You got it. I’m pretty damned good at losing weight. Keeping it off? Not so much.
I’m not 100% sure what the question is asking.
For me losing weight’s a matter of will and knowledge. When in 2009 I decided to lose weight, and actually tried to lose weight, it fell off me like glasses off a clumsy waiter’s tray. Of course, before that happened I had to actually start reading labels and learning what stuff would do to me; I did not realize that throwing lean meat and veggies on a dry cup of rice is nutritionally equivalent to throwing them into a Big Mac. (No, really. Look it up.) I didn’t know that a couple of sandwiches can be an absolutely terrible meal for you. I learned that stuff, and holy crap, where are the pounds going? But then I lost interest, and stopped eating right and went back, to some extent, to eating poorly, although I didn’t gain much back.
When I got interest back, again the pounds melted off. It’s just having the will and the drive to do it. It’s very easy for me to lose weight when I have the willingness to watch what I eat. But isn’t finding that willingness the hard part?
And if you don’t know what’s in stuff, you’re doomed anyway. “Counting calories” can be made fun of but I’m endlessly surprised myself, and some people really have no clue. My father’s been trying to lose weight for I don’t know how long and mentined that he goes through an applie pie a week. The processed ones from the grocery store. With a big glass of milk. “Dad,” I said, “That’s like a whole extra meal of calories, and your body gets almost nothing out of it.” He won’t believe me.
So is that easy? I mean, all you have to know is not be ignorant of what things do to your weight and have the willingness to eat right. And dunking a basketball’s easy too, because all you have to do is be able to jump three feet in the air.
Wow. I really have to commend you for not falling back on the old “It’s in my genetics!” excuse. I’m not saying that there aren’t people for whom genetics remain a major hurdle, as there surely are some. It’s way too easy to blame genetics though. I’m really impressed by the fact that you consider weight loss to be a huge struggle, yet you also consider genetics to be the least significant factor behind this.
Damn near impossible.
When I was in the ARMY on active duty in Korea, the CO decided I needed to lose weight. I could only eat food that was given to me and monitored by the hospital. They took me from 1500 calories to 700 calories by cutting 100 calories a week. I weighed 205 the first week and 202 the last week. I also passed out the last week and was taken to the hospital, when I woke the new Dr. said Eat something damnit and give me the name of your CO. I got out of the Army 4 years later and weighed 205. This was all done while I was also put on a very strenous exercise program.
Same here. Thirty pounds since around April of last year, just by eating less and eating better. We also try to walk a couple of miles a day.
I lost a good bit of weight using a protein sparing fast (Dukan Diet). I was never hungry. I had some headaches, a few muscle cramps, and peed like a racehorse though.
When I put a pound or two back, I fast on alternate days and get back to where I wanna be.
Very easy. Now granted, I’ve been skinny all my life and only wanted to lose ten pounds. And it took some trouble-shooting. I initially set my calorie intake too low and I was basically starving myself. But once I figured out the optimum calorie intake for the day and the best way to distribute my calories between meals and snacks, the pounds melted off. I’ve managed to keep them off for about a year now without needing to calorie count any longer (I just calorie-estimate my meals now).
In my youth I was skinny. Not slim, skinny. Arms like twigs. And I couldn’t gain weight for anything. Then I hit 40 and also had a couple of injuries that left me with less mobility for quite a while, and the pounds came piling on. Now I honestly try to eat moderately and healthfully, and go to the gym (which I hate) about 3 times a week, and that tends to prevent further weight gain. The only thing that really drops pounds is being sick and unable to eat at all, or having massive diarrhea, neither of which is a healthy way to lose weight. And it comes right back as soon as the illness goes away. Maybe when I retire from my desk job and am more active in general the situation will improve, but I’m not optimistic enough to really believe that.
I’ve always had a weight problem, but never found it impossible to lose . . . until I started insulin injections. Everyone on insulin gains weight, and taking it off takes a herculean effort. I’ve managed to keep my weight level for the past few months, but that’s not good enough.
The diet that worked the best for me was Atkins. But unfortunately, all that protein was screwing up my kidneys.
It’s both easy and hard. It’s easy in that, when I have nothing else going on in my life, I can focus on it entirely, and it doesn’t really seem hard. It’s hard in that if I have other things–such as life–going on in my life, I tend to not do it. I’ve recently lost a lot of weight, and, while I had to upend my entire life to do it, it doesn’t feel hard. But doing it while in a high-stress job would’ve been impossible.
That’s why I chose other. It’s one of those easy things that can be impossibly hard.
Losing weight is easy. Keeping weight off is difficult.
I’ve lost thousands of pounds…over and over again.
I lost a hundred pounds and kept it off for ten years (and lost thirty more). Everyone can lose some weight on a fad diet
By the way, I’m still fat.
Are you my husband? Because that’s very similar to his experience in the Army ('tho I think the CO who did this to him was while he was at Ft. Drum, not in Korea…)
Seriously, I’ve known Tony since 1985. He is never, ever going to “fit” the standard weight/height ratios considered normal and suitable by most organizations like the military. I understand that a man’s frame is generally larger than a woman’s, but he and I are within a smidge of being the same height, and I’m not a frail, bird-boned little woman, but (as an example) his wrists are actually bigger around than my ankles. I can wear his watch on my ankle, with a notch to spare. At 5’9.5", when he wore a 32" belt, he weighed 215 pounds. (And when he had knee replacement surgery a couple of years ago, the orthopedic surgeon confirmed that Tony’s physical frame is a significant percentage larger than most of his patients’. This is a surgeon who performs an average of almost 300 hip and knee replacements per year, so I assume he knows what bones look like!)
Tony is legitimately overweight right now, though - it’s been a while since that 32" belt came anywhere close to fitting. The hardest thing for him seems to be understanding what an actual “serving” looks like, especially since he grew up playing sports, getting lots of exercise, and eating LOTS just to replace the calories burned at hours-long practices and workouts. Also, he often has to either bolt a meal or go without, given the demands of his job. He forgets to slow down and give himself time to feel full. I’ve taken to serving lots of hot soups as meals, since it’s hard to wolf down a scorching bowl of black bean soup. But so far, he’s being good and sensible and all, and has lost about 60 pounds since early summer. He’s learning to choose better foods, to space out meals and snacks to avoid starvation, and to pay attention to the difference between “hungry,” “bored,” and “I’m at my mom’s, so I must need second helpings of dinner and dessert.” I think that these adjustments, plus his slow and steady weight-loss pace, will help him maintain a lower weight in the long term… but his BMI will never be below 25 barring some catastrophic illness.
As for me, I’m lucky so far. Except for one bout of serious weight gain from about 2002-2004, my weight has remained pretty stable throughout my adulthood. And since the effort it took for me to lose those 80 extra pounds in 2004-2005, I go with the “when my pants get tight, it’s time to watch my intake more carefully,” since I hate to diet. I suspect that menopause will change this a lot, so I’m adding more exercise now to try to build muscle mass, maintain bone mass, and keep up my metabolism before the big hormone hell hits too hard.
This has got to depend an awful lot on how much weight you have to lose. I’ve known people so sedentary that all they have to do is go for a half hour walk three times a week for their weight to start dropping. I once complained about how unfair it was that all someone had to do was walk to lose weight, when I was obsessively in the gym for hours each day, watching every morsel of food that I put in my body and still not losing weight. Then someone pointed out that if I were morbidly obese and lived the lifestyle I did, the pounds would be melting away. The closer you get to your ideal weight, the harder it is to actually get there.
Used to be easy to lose and keep off the pounds up until I hit my early 30’s, but now I’m coming up on 50 and it takes hard work and absolute dedication to a 1200-calorie or less diet and religious exercise to take off an average of a pound every two or three weeks. I lost 35 lbs a year ago and kept that off but really need to lose another 25-30 and it’s being a very tough battle.
I voted the second option, though it’s not quite accurate. I do lose FAT, but it gains in muscle. Though I’m female, I will never be ‘skinny’, per se. Nor willowy, nor particularly slender. It all goes to muscle, which fact I got over a while ago, sigh. I will always have soccer legs, never tennis legs. <sob> So my weight doesn’t change much, but it definitely looks better when I’m less gut and butt and more muscle, lol.
“I can lose weight very easily when I apply myself.”
The italicised part is the issue: it’s a mental challenge more than a physical one. I have to kinda gird my loins and command myself not to indulge in all the oh-so-fattening pursuits that I normally enjoy (beer, fatty foods, slobbing around). Once I do that, not only do I feel awesome, but I can dump 15-20 lbs without too much trouble.
I’m 44 and I had been making the excuse to myself that it’s physiologically harder to lose weight when you’re older. Well it probably is, but I suspect only a little, and certainly not as much as I had been claiming to myself. The mental ‘reset’ has been a lot harder - set in my ways etc. But I’ve recently proven to myself that it’s possible; I just need a bit more discipline.