Did you have a particular diet, or was it just fewer calories, more exercise?
Male or female?
How much of the food you consume do you make at home?
How much did this change?
Are there any foods that you just can never eat again because you don’t want to gain weight back?
On a scale of 0 to 10, how much mental and emotional effort do you put into your diet on a regular basis, with 0 being “about as much as I put into breathing” and 10 being “I spend every waking moment fighting against my desire for food”
Bonus: From here, would you say that you are a moderator or an abstainer?
I previously weighed 200 lbs and I lost 80. So what is that, 40%? I can’t math.
No particular diet. I didn’t count calories either, but I did pay attention to calorie information when provided. Thank God franchises with a certain number of locations need to post it. For example, if I was going out for food (not that I did this all the time, which I’ll touch on later, but still), I’d review the calorie info and decide if I really needed to ‘spend’ 900 calories on a single meal, and that I’d probably be fine going with option B at 600. I also didn’t go avoid all sugars, exclude carbs or fats, focus heavily on protein or anything else. Those can work for some people, but I knew I’d feel miserable and give up. I did switch entirely from regular pop to diet, though.
Female (and 5’4)
These days, most of it. I was previously working in a hospital kitchen when I lost most my weight, and so did regularly take home things like a wrap or flatbread pizza for dinner (although you could argue I was MAKING it… Not with my own ingredients, though). As of October though I got a much better job, and now I do make my own food almost every night, and bring in leftovers nearly every single day.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean? How much did what change?
Nope. I still eat junk sometimes, I still eat Taco Bell, I still drink dessert coffees. I just don’t consume those treats as much as I used to. I know some people are very strict with excluding certain foods, and it can work very well for them. Some people are absolutely addicted to sugar and can’t eat one chocolate without eating the entire bag. For those people, excluding all added sugars can be very beneficial. Luckily I don’t seem to have that problem. I can eat one little chocolate a night until a box or bag is gone. Then I don’t get more for some time.
Hmmm. Difficult question. I’d say around a 5 or 6. I do think a lot about what I’m going to eat, but it’s more like I’m anticipating putting together an interesting meal (I’m no chef, but I’ve been slowly learning a lot about how to cook in the last 6 months) or trying something completely new. Not so much, “I ate 20 minutes ago but I’m SOOOO HUUUUNGRRYYYYY!” My biggest issue before I lost the weight was that I was a massive boredom snacker. It’s still something I struggle with, so I do things like keep baby carrots on hand if I want to crunch on something, and go out for long PokémonGO walks in the summer. Things that can safely satisfy a craving or keep myself otherwise occupied.
I’m absolutely a moderator. I think I gave some decent examples of that earlier
If you have any other questions, let me know! I’m happy to answer them.
I think that #4 counts as closer to you not making it at home, because you were making it during your work hours, and you had little control over it.
#5 is based on a very vague observation that people who succeed at diets are probably spending more time eating food they have more control over - i.e. home cooked meals vs Taco Bell vs Stouffers Lean Cuisine
Two questions I forgot - how many hours do you work, and how many times did you try to lose weight before this stuck. (unstuck?)
[completely off-topic] Another Pokemon Go player! What team? [/completely off-topic]
I lost 45% of my body weight going from 520 to 283 over three years
Did you have a particular diet, or was it just fewer calories, more exercise?
I spent most of the first year doing adkins and dropped down to 400 pounds while doing a little bit of exercise. Then I focused on eating less and dropped down to eating 1000 calories per day and started training to run a half marathon. I lost 80 pounds in 6 months and got up to running 10 miles per week. Over the next 8 months I got up to running 13 miles at a time. I also played rugby and did cross fit. But I didn’t focus as much on my diet though it was mostly low carb. I dropped down to 283 the day before Thanksgiving then I ate thanksgiving and blew out my knee skiing the next day. I got back up to 300 while recovering from the knee injury but maintained between 300 and 320 until about two years ago.
Male or female?
Male
How much of the food you consume do you make at home?
Most of my food is made at home
How much did this change?
While I was eating 1000 calories per day it was 100% at home. During maintenance I ate out on friday nights and saturdays. But I went to the gym at lunch and brought my meals to eat at my desk.
Are there any foods that you just can never eat again because you don’t want to gain weight back?
When my life got more complicated and I stopped working out I ate for comfort. That’s a bad idea. No single food I avoided though I generally prefer a low carb type diet as most of my maintenance.
On a scale of 0 to 10, how much mental and emotional effort do you put into your diet on a regular basis, with 0 being “about as much as I put into breathing” and 10 being “I spend every waking moment fighting against my desire for food”
I drank cases of diet soda each day at work to keep my mind off of how hungry I was and basically only thought about food and working out for 6 months.
Bonus: From here, would you say that you are a moderator or an abstainer?
I’m an abstainer. I am much happier having nothing then a little bit of something.
I was on a temporary duty assignment for the six months living in a corporate appartment. I was working 40 to 60 hour per week.
I never did diet before the three years. I was a football player in college and went from 320 to 500 in the year after I graduated. One day I decided I was tired of being fat and started working on time. I got in shape multiple times over the years both before and as part of my maintenance since life isn’t perfect and holidays happen.
changed from a desk job to a more physical/on-my-feet job
male
say 60%
used to be more like 35%
never; no. But I still do have to watch the bread and pasta. I tend to binge of either once I start.
0 but then again we’re talking a change in life and not a planned diet or anything. Work is my gym and with a check at the end of each week I’m sure to go
-70 from a high of 243 (6’ 00" frame), so 30% or so. Max was hit in 2008, 11 years ago. BMI dropped from close to 30 to 23 now.
Pretty much the latter. Very few fried foods, low calorie main meals (always checking labels) w/ light snacking in between, no more binging on massive amount of junk food (my former weakness was Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls). I’ve always been a yogurt fiend, but it helps to give me a “filled up” feeling so that I no longer felt hungry (ye olde “full stomach” thang, even tho I am well aware that the mechanism in question doesn’t work like that).
Still occ. allow myself to indulge (ice cream fanatic), but ensure that such occasions are few and far between.
Exercise side of thangs, 1.5 to 2 hours of very intense exercise per week (3 sessions), can sustain 160 BPM for an hour if need be-at age 57. My heart rate watch keeps tabs on calories burned, and, for the 4 years since a battery replacement reset it, have burned a quarter of a million calories (with the caveat that such a thing is just a rough estimate).
Male.
Most of it is precooked stuff from the frozen food aisle, Lean Cuisine and such. 5% maybe is from scratch. [oh] So only takeout I do anymore is from places like Panera’s or Moe’s [just one small taco too].
Avoid sit-in restaurants too (in addition to McDonalds and such) precisely because of the huge portions you invariably get anymore.
Yep, as said above.
Gotta watch what I buy and put into my mouth, but isn’t a constant struggle.
Moderator it would seem, for sure.
25 or so, white collar job.
I was in the 180’s/190’s for most of my adult life, and only ballooned up in my 40’s. Once I realized where I was headed, just did what I needed to do and lost it. [It was more or less done in stages, -20/-40 1st two years, going down another 10 a couple of years ago.]
The vast bulk of it was on a low-carbohydrate diet. The last 25 pounds or so came from intermittent fasting. I didn’t start the fasting because I wanted to lose weight, it was for the metabolic and hormonal benefits, but I lost the extra pounds more or less accidentally.
Male
I’ll eat around one meal a week out, the other seven are at home.
Not much on a percentage basis. I do eat a lot fewer meals these days.
I’d never say never. When I was low-carbohydrate eating I had to be a lot stricter, but the intermittent fasting lets me have the occasional indulgence without wrecking my health.
Almost no effort at all. I do intermittent fasting and eat eight meals a week. I have lunch and dinner on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. I take in no food at all on the other three days. That gives me three 42 hour fasts and one 16 hour fast every week. I tell people it is oddly liberating.
For great long swaths of time I don’t have to think about food at all. It saves me time in food shopping, preparation, consuming, and cleanup. When I eat I don’t have to weigh or count or measure anything.
I do try to eat certain foods, for example, I eat an avocado every eating day, so four per week. I try to balance my protein, half plant and half animal, and I try to have the animal protein be half marine and half land, but I don’t weigh anything, I just gauge by eye mostly.
I went from 190 to 145 in a year or so. when I separated from my wife, who fed me overly well. That was 12 years ago, and I have stayed around the 150 mark. Before, I was eating as a social exercise, eating what, when and where someone else wanted. The key was** taking control of my own diet. ** There was no conscious effort to lose weight, I just started eating sensibly and frugally according to my own criteria, and the weight just melted away.
Calories in < Calories out = Weight loss. Exercise, even intense exercise, burns few calories. I did it all with controlling my intake. I tried to exercise and never had the self-control to do both at the same time. I could give you one or the other, so I went with counting calories and was rigid and honest about it, which many aren’t.
Male
Almost exclusively out. Maybe one or two meals at home per week max.
No clue what you meant, read your explanation, no, I was eating out before and after.
Why would I never be able to eat a food again. Just eat less unless it’s something you can’t control your intake of and go crazy with.
At this point I don’t spend every minute desiring food. I did in the past, including on my weight loss journey. So today I’d say a 5, though I could get as high as an 8 or as low as a 2 depending on the day. In the past I was a definite 10 a lot of the time.
Bonus: I’m a moderator with some foods, abstainer with others.
Add-ons:
Back then I worked a lot. Self-employed and never counted hours, but started at 9:00am and got home around 7-9pm or so most days M-F, sometimes worked on Saturday.
How many times did I try to do this? I think for me is was maybe one long journey, halfheartedly trying things for quite some time and trying to convince myself that I was really doing it. I wasn’t. I tried different things until I found what worked for me. Intermittent fasting, which for me meant cutting out breakfast because if I eat breakfast I want to eat all day like a maniac, helped control my appetite. I also used MyFitnessPal to HONESTLY count my calories, logging things religiously, and making decisions BEFORE going to the restaurant as to what I’d eat based on where I was for the day.
So basically, I tried for some time. It was an up and down journey. I started at 250+ and as I went down I’d slip up, find myself going back up and falling into old habits, but then I’d set a number at which I’d get mad at myself and I’d go hard at it again. I remember 235 being an number, 230, 218, 213, 204, all being numbers where I’d start going the wrong way and I’d hit those numbers again very easily and have to fight some more. I got down to 199, then let off the gas and I have hovered between 204-210 mostly in the years since. It took a while but I kept at it, I went for progress overall and not perfection, and all the while battling depression and anxiety. I made it, and was very proud. I also learned to never buy new clothes because I put on weight. If my clothes felt uncomfortably snug, that was a signal that I was going the wrong way even without as scale.
Around 20 years ago I lost, let’s see, 20% of my weight in 2.5 months. I then deliberately, slowly, gained 10 of it back while exercising to gain muscle.
I managed to maintain to within 10 pounds of that weight until fairly recently but I am still well under the old weight.
My trick: move more, eat less. That is it. That is all you need. Obviously.
The rest is just mind tricks. But I admit mind tricks are useful to some.
Ones I used: Skip breakfast (note that partial fasting like this is now popular). If I skip breakfast then my appetite is dialed down for the rest of the day and that helps. I also recognized the “time to browse” thoughts and would start working on something mentally distracting. (Note that watching TV and the like is sort of the opposite of this.)
I’d say I had a lot of control over what I made at work, since I was putting whatever I wanted on my wraps or pizza. I wasn’t following any specific recipes, since it was entirely for myself. I didn’t choose what kind of turkey or lettuce I added though, so maybe it could go either way.
As for your new questions:
I work 40 hours a week. It was the same at my food service job, although the hours were different (I worked every other weekend and had the odd day off during the week). But the number of hours was right about the same.
I didn’t actually have any prior weight loss attempts. This was the first time I really put in the effort and didn’t just think, ‘ehh, I don’t want to lose weight that bad,’ after a day.
Fewer calories, more exercise. Specifically I cut out snacking & big desserts, which I had been doing on a frequent basis. Also made sure to exercise at least 3 times/week.
Male
I eat maybe 1 meal out per week, so 95%.
I’m cheap, so I’ve always eaten maybe 1 meal out per week.
No
2/10, mostly resisting the urge to snack. I still eat big dinners, that hasn’t been an issue for me.
What percentage of your body weight did you lose? 14% 221 to 190
Did you have a particular diet, or was it just fewer calories, more exercise? Fewer calories, more exercise
Male or female? Male
How much of the food you consume do you make at home? Most. I eat out about once a week
How much did this change? Not at all
Are there any foods that you just can never eat again because you don’t want to gain weight back? I have not eliminated anything from my diet
On a scale of 0 to 10, how much mental and emotional effort do you put into your diet on a regular basis, with 0 being “about as much as I put into breathing” and 10 being “I spend every waking moment fighting against my desire for food” While I was learning portion control, I thought about it quite a bit. Now I don’t think about it at all.
Bonus: From here, would you say that you are a moderator or an abstainer? I am a moderator, without clicking on the link.
1. What percentage of your body weight did you lose? 15%
2. Did you have a particular diet, or was it just fewer calories, more exercise? Not even that. It was less food/ A whole lot less food. No breakfast. For lunch and supper, one tablespoon of main course and a tablespoon each of vegetables and starch. That was for losing. For maintaining target, I eat considerably more but not like I used to.
3. Male or female? male
4. How much of the food you consume do you make at home? probably 70%
5. How much did this change? not much
6. Are there any foods that you just can never eat again because you don’t want to gain weight back? Nope.
7. On a scale of 0 to 10, how much mental and emotional effort do you put into your diet on a regular basis, with 0 being “about as much as I put into breathing” and 10 being “I spend every waking moment fighting against my desire for food” I’d say 3. I’m OCD about weighing myself every single morning, even though day to day fluctuations don’t reflect much. And I think ahead to what I can eat for lunch, which is dependent on what the scale says. I have an “OK weight range” and if I’m above it I don’t get to eat lunch and if I’m in the upper end of it, it’s going to be a sparse lunch.
Bonus: From here, would you say that you are a moderator or an abstainer?
[/QUOTE]
Moderator, but interspersed with strict rules I arbitrarily impose on-the-fly in response to what the scale says.
I went from 238 to 145 in 6 months, got laid off in the recession and lost my house. I’m a dude. Kept it off since 2010. I weigh a better 160 now. No diet changes, except I can afford food now where I couldn’t in 2010 when I lost my house. I lost my sense of hunger then and never got it back. I no longer enjoy eating anything, and can go at least 5 days without food unless people start worrying about it and bug me to eat. If I didn’t cook it, I don’t want to eat it generally because food just makes me feel sick when I eat it. I can keep my weight eating once or twice a week, but I ensure food at least once a day so I don’t hear my wife complain about it. I would almost never eat out unless it was for my wife, so I order something so they can feel okay about eating it. I might eat it, I might throw it away without eating it.
