Question for Dieters and former Dieters

In My Humble Opinion
21

In my early 20s, I dropped pounds quickly by cutting out drinks with calories and walking more. In my late 20s, I moved to New York and walked A LOT. I ate and drank whatever I wanted and was thinner than any other time in my adult life.

Now I’m 40 and I have two kids. I have tried changing my diet and only eating certain things, but that didn’t work for me. I could come up with a sensible plan (don’t drink calories, have a fruit or vegetable with every meal, no snacks except fruits or vegetables, dessert once a week), but I couldn’t stick to it.

On the other hand, counting calories works for me. I use an iPhone app called LoseIt. You plug in your starting weight, height, age, sex, goal weight and rate at which you want to lose (for me, 1 pound a week). Every day, you track everything you eat and all exercise. You record your weight loss, and the app lowers your allotted amount of calories per day accordingly. My initial goal was to lose 20 pounds. I’ve lost about 15 pounds (my lowest was -18 pounds) and kept it off. I keep gaining and losing 3-5 pounds due to laziness (and ice cream), but I feel confident that if I want to lose more weight, I can just follow the plan more strictly and it will happen.

22

I was a Dieter until they kicked me off of Sprockets. Now I am a Karl.

23

I lost 80 lbs in 6 months a couple of years ago by counting calories. I kept it off the same way. My major difference is that I focus on calories in a week versus per day so I can have that slice of cake or the whole damn thing if I’m willing to starve the rest of the week for it.

That worked for two years. Then I moved cities and in with my fiancé, I lost my routine, workout partner and had meals made for two not a starveing bachelor. I put on about 50 lbs. But since st. Patrick’s day I’ve gotten back on the program. I’m eating just under 8k calories per week and I’ve started working out again, I’ve lost 40 lbs since then.

Losing weight counting calories isn’t fun but its easy. I aim for a two percent loss per week so I can stay motivated and subtract that from my BMR. Then working out is gravy not something I’m forced to do. Once I get to my goal weight I just add my workout to my BMR and that gives me what I can eat. I don’t worry about following too closely since if I start to gain a bit I can always just drop my calories for a couple of weeks and stay where I want.

24

I eat as little as possible of highly refined foods, which in practice means no sugar, no flour. I also count calories, trying to limit my intake to less than 1400 per day if I exercise, 1200 if I don’t.

25

WW plus minimal potatoes, pasta, bread. I’ll eat them during special occasions but they’re not part of my every day eating.

26

The best way I’ve heard it put is calories in, calories out. If you want to lose weight, eat fewer and/or burn more calories than usual.

This is key to most peoples’ tragic misunderstanding of diets. Diets are for life, if you want to keep the weight off. If you lose thirty pounds on your diet, and then slowly slip back into old habits, those pounds are going to start slipping back, too.

27

Yep - portion control and willpower to resist snacking, that works every time for me.

What I haven’t quite resolved yet is how to stabilise my weight - I can shed it quite easily, and gain it very easily - what I really ought to do is work out a regime that does neither.

28

Do you mean dieting specifically to lose weight, or a lifestyle diet for maintaining weight? Two very different things.

The “rules” also change depending on current circumstances and why the weight was gained in the first place. My first “diet” was basically just chucking my old, shitty lifestyle of eating junk and sitting on my ass. I still do that, so nowadays if I’ve gained weight, there’s generally some extenuating circumstance that needs to be dealt with (for example, I gained weight from chemotherapy, as well as from other meds at various points, which needs a different approach than weight gained because I never exercised).

Anyway:

For losing weight, calorie counting. I use SparkPeople.com, but I record everything, and keep myself around a certain calorie level (that’s lower than normal, of course). I already exercise, and through hard experience have learned that even if I have time to exercise for an extra hour or two per day, it does jack shit for weight loss. So food it is.

I also try to skew my calorie allotment toward protein, simply because it helps me stay full, and I have no problem eating within the healthy range of fat and carbs. Beyond that there are no forbidden foods, though. If I can and want to carve out the space in my daily allotment for it, I can have cake, or whatever. Though I know damn well that it won’t keep me full like better foods will, so sweets largely go by the wayside for the duration. That’s less a rule than just wanting to be smart about it and not wanting to feel hungry all the time.

For lifestyle, the only “rule” is to keep up my running/exercise routine, and don’t be ridiculous about food. I generally don’t have much desire to be ridiculous about food anymore, and mostly WANT to eat a well-balanced, varied diet, and stop when I’m full. I actively dislike stuff like fast and processed food these days. I don’t go out of my way to avoid eating anything; the daily exercise allows me to absorb such indulgences when I want them. I do have a sweet tooth. Obviously this wouldn’t include ridiculous binge eating, but that’s not something I’m terribly motivated to do.

I am a vegetarian, so there’s that, but I’ve been for most of my life and managed to eat like shit (and get fat) AND eat well at various points of my life, so it really hasn’t been much of a factor that way.