Share your weight loss success story!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I grew up fat. Fat probably starting since I was a child, all the way up into my 20s.

I never tried serious attempts at dieting. Mostly a lot of half-hearted attempts that didn’t last a day.

For some reason, I finally signed up for WW online. That was June 2001 - I estimate I weighed around 170. March 2002 I hit my goal - 120. I have maintained that loss (+/- a pound or two) for 7 years.

The way I lost was initially following the WW flex program. A few years ago I switched to the WW core program. Currently I am semi-following core, semi-switching to just calorie counting at sparkpeople.

I will admit that since I switched jobs in November, I have been fighting a few pounds. I just signed up for a new gym where I just moved to - and yes, I am actually using the gym. I am getting back to listening to my hunger signals and making smart choices.

For me, even though I have maintained this loss for 7 years, I still have a hard time believing that I will stay at this weight. This can be both a good and bad thing. The good is that I keep myself on track; the bad is that I can get overly angry/obsessed about eating. I’m working on that.

Susan

22

I lost 105 pounds since Feb 08. (Gastric bypass) I keep a food diary, and I can’t put stress enough how that has helped me keep track of my fat and caloric intake. I also exercise, use the stairs as often as possible.

23

I lost 35 pounds and my SO at the time lost about 25 in about 5 months on Jenny Craig a few years ago. Having a weekly weigh-in helped but really it came down to a few simple rules. 1) eat small portions 2) eat throughout the day 3) load up on fruits and vegetables 4) make sure snacks are small 5) exercise moderately (I walk alot and take the stairs instead of the elevator). I permanently changed my eating habits but only slightly, and I have gained almost 15 back in three years, so I’m about due for another three months of more discplined dieting.

24

Yes! When I started trying to lose weight (60 lbs down, about 10-ish to go, first Weight Watchers, now I use Sparkpeople, I’ll have to find the SD team!), I was surprised at how much all the little things that I didn’t think about added up to. A cookie at work, an extra pat of butter, a drink or two, etc…

Learning to read labels and figure out what was really in my food was a big step, too. “Whole wheat” can mean any number of things, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not crap food with a spoonful of whole grains thrown in for good measure. I also learned “trigger foods” - the stuff I eat that makes me crave more, or that I have a hard time stopping with. Like cookies. I don’t keep them in the house because I’ll eat a box in a few days (if it takes that long).

It’s funny, because while I eat less than I used to in terms of calories, I eat a lot more often. Hunger is my downfall, if I let myself get to hungry I’ll grab anything that’s around, which at work is dangerous, because we ALWAYS have treats here.

People at work wonder how I’m “so small, because you’re always eating!”. But I’m always eating healthy foods - yogurt (plain, with fruit) for snacks, whole grains, vegetables, lean protein, healthy fats, all that good stuff.

I also work out - cardio (5-ish times a week) and weights (3/week). I don’t work out for hours at a time, usually about half an hour of cardio, and the same for weights most days, though one day a week I usually do a longer workout, just to mix it up. I also try to get in a lot of activity in my day - take the stairs instead of the elevator, park far away from stores, walk to places that are close enough, spend time outdoors when the weather is good, etc.

When I’m exercising, I find it a lot easier to stick to eating healthy as well, and vice-versa.

25

Eating healthy can be very difficult when eating out. The portion sizes are HUGE! A serving of meat is three ounces. I defy you to find a restaurant that serves a three ounce steak.

For me, I know my restaurant watch words (thanks to Sparkpeople) and I usually just eat half and take the rest home.

26

I once ate at a restaurant that served a 4oz steak, but most have 6oz as the smallest (usually a filet, if I want anything else, it’s 8oz minimum).

27

I started working out and did a sanity check on my diet. I wasn’t actually eating badly or too excessively, but I wasn’t active enough. The first time around I did conventional body-building type weightlifting and aerobics, got too busy with work and planning a wedding to work out much for about 6–9 months, and gained back about half the weight. The second time, I started doing CrossFit.

I’ve dropped more body fat (down to between 9 and 10% according to my fat calipers) and gotten more muscular than I was when I was about the same weight from doing my previous regime, and my performance is incredibly better. I can lift more, do more reps in the same time, and run much faster than I could then. Today at my health check I had a pulse rate of 55 bpm, showing that my heart is performing better than when I was a competitive swimmer in high school.

The exercise part of the CF program has worked so well that I’m seriously considering making the commitment to eat strict Zone, as is recommended, instead of just Zone-ish like I would naturally if left to my own devices. The real fire-breathers all seem to eat that way most of the time and it wouldn’t be that big of a change in how I eat now. The problem would be getting my wife to go along with the idea; rice is a real staple in the Japanese diet and I’d have to ask her to reduce my portions to smaller ones relative to the other foods than she’d probably be comfortable with.

For me, so far, I’ve found that exercise makes more of a difference than just diet. I didn’t make any big changes in how much I ate, but I lost weight steadily as long as I was exercising regularly. And I eat a lot. My minimum daily intake is about 2200, on a day when I’m headachy and hungry because I missed a snack and/or meal. I usually eat somewhere between 2500 and 2800 kcal, as of my last spot check, and I’m an average-sized guy with a moderately muscular build.

The main thing with any weight loss is that the changes have to be permanent. Temporary diets will absolutely fail. If you change the way you eat it needs to be sustainable for the long term — effectively forever, barring occasional splurge days.

Exercise needs to be a habit, or you’ll stop too easily if your life gets more complicated. Once the habit is set, you’ll have a stronger drive to continue. It helps A LOT if you like the program you’ve been following. Body building and aerobics were boring and repetitive. CrossFit is fun for me, in a masochistic kind of way.

I have only been able to squeeze in occasional workouts over the last couple of months because I found a new job, moved, and went back to the US to visit relatives before I dived into the new (much more stressful) working environment. The difference between now and a couple of years ago when I gained back some of the weight I lost is that exercise is something I do. It’s part of my life now. I feel weird when I haven’t done anything physical for a couple of days. I set up improvised workouts using body weight exercises when I didn’t have access to a gym during my family visit, and on a recent 3-day retreat I had to do with the new work place, I substituted a log and hanging from an I-beam for a barbell and a pullup bar.

Exercising is so ingrained now that I’ll go to those kind of lengths to actually get a workout in. I’ll be really glad when I get access to a gym again sometime next week.

28

Brit here,when I lost my wallet ,I also lost a hundred pounds Boom Boom.
Sorry I’ll get my coat…hangs head with remorse.

29

Almost 3 years ago (early May of 2006), I weighed over 240 lbs. By Christmas of 2006, I had lost 45 lbs., and I’ve kept it all off since then. I went from about 30+% body fat to around 16%, which was my goal.

You have hit the nail right upon the head. There are lots of diets that work in the short term. But all the ones that work in the long term – come back a year after you’ve hit your target weight, and see if you’re still where you want to be – involve paying attention to what you eat. Making eating a conscious, not unconscious act.

It doesn’t mean eating only foods you hate, because if you hate eating them, that is unsustainable.

It doesn’t mean forgoing the pleasure of eating favorite foods, because if you derive pleasure from eating, that is unsustainable.

The keys are: learning portion control, eating when you’re hungry and not when you’re bored, calorie counting until the scale is internalized, and making sure your food quality on average is a B+ grade or better. Adding some exercise is also a big help, such as 3 or 4 workouts of 30 minutes duration a week, but eating habits trump exercise when it comes to losing weight and keeping it off.

Sleel is something of a counterexample here, but it sounds like he’s become a real gym rat, not a wanna-be like I was. I was quite religious with the workouts while actively losing weight, but have seriously slacked off on my regimen due to working longer hours (yeah, that’s always the excuse isn’t it?), and my workouts were relatively light: 3-4 miles of treadmill running/walking and 2-3 sets of 4-6 various exercises for arms, legs and chest. I’ve still kept the weight from returning by watching my food. I found the additional exercise to be very, very good in reaching my target relatively quickly, and when I find the time to do it I feel great afterward, but ingrained better eating habits have been primarily responsible for me staying there once I reached it.

30

#1 - If you know you’re going out for steak, plan the rest of your week’s eating accordingly. I know I do!

#2 - Nobody says you have to finish what they give you. Do not be embarrassed or ashamed to take home leftovers or just to leave it on the plate. Very often, for lunch, I simply take my serving, immediately divide it in half, and save the other half for when I’m hungry again. Usually that’s 3-4 hours later.

31

Well, sort of. The CrossFit workouts are challenging, intense, and varied, but they aren’t usually very long. Some of them are very, very short, actually, as in the warmup takes longer than the main workout. I haven’t spent more than an hour per session since I started it almost two years ago, and I haven’t had the chance to work out more than about 3 days a week due to restricted gym hours and work interference with my schedule. Before, I was putting in more time at the gym and getting less out of it. Now, I’m sometimes in and out of the gym in 30–40 minutes, including warmup and stretching afterward; the main workout might be over and done with in 10 minutes.

What makes the difference is motivation. CF is fun, I’ve done it long enough that it’s a habit too. I also put on a lot of muscle, and the more endurance-oriented exercise (which CF refers to as metabolic conditioning due to the overlap in aerobic/anerobic systems) is actually more fat-burning than traditional cardio. For me, at least, increased muscle mass and a higher overall level of activity have let me lose weight with only half-assed attention to portion control.

It helps that my natural inclinations are toward healthy eating in the first place. Before I knew anything about fitness and diet I had a preference for eating more often instead of large portions, I prefer raw vegetables to cooked, I don’t like lots of fat in anything, and more than a small portion sweets make me sick to my stomach. My main problem wasn’t actually diet, it was a drastically decreased level of activity and subsequent muscle atrophy.

32

-16 and counting now. I should be at my target weight (200) by the end of June/middle of July.

33

In 2007 my wife and I decided enough was enough and we wanted to get into shape. We started on the South Beach diet as reccommended by several people. The detox phase was very tough but once we got into Phase 2 it went well. Since then we have been eating on our own modified version but basically sticking to the following rules:

Lean meats
No processed carbs (white bread, white rice, etc)
No processed sugars (including high fructose corn syrup)
Replacing soda with water
I have cut out all beer and only rarely drink alcohol now

We also strive to have most of our plate be vegetables, with a smaller portion of meat and a grain of some sort.

I did really well on weight loss on diet alone and now I have added in exercise at least 3 times a week that includes cardio and weight lifting.

After 18 months of dieting I had lost over 100 lbs, this includes a few on again off again slip periods where I didn’t eat the best. I went from seriously obese to just overweight and I hope to lose another 30 lbs.

34

Holy cow, good for you BurnMeUp! Keep it up, you’re almost there!

35

Burnmeup and I are former coworkers and good friends - I am so happy for him and his AMAZING progress!

36

Back in January, I found I weighed the most I ever have - 220 lbs (on a 5’11" or 6’ frame). When I got back to Sweden anniz got me a gym membership as a present and I took the basic approach of cutting back on my portions and, if I absolutely had to snack, eating something like a rice cake or a slice of toast with some cheese.

It’s not the most scientific approach and I haven’t adhered to it rigidly, but I’ve been working out an average of 6 days a week (treadmill walking and light weightlifting) and have lost just over 20 pounds in the space of about 3 months. I think I’ve hit that plateau mentioned upthread as I didn’t lose any weight at all last week, so perhaps now is the time to look into the Sparkpeople or Fitday plans and tune my approach up. I’m aiming for around 180 and enough definition so I look OK with my shirt off, and I’ll be happy with that.

37

I just signed up with them - I’m not looking to lose weight, just curious to see what my daily caloric intake is.

And wow…they think 1500 calories should be my daily allowance? Goodness - I can’t quite determine how they came up with that, as no one asked my activity level. I probably screwed it up somewhere, although I can’t see where. The mayo calorie calculator says I should be at 2000 calories, so that’s kind of a significant difference.

Nifty tool though, my puzzlement with the caloric goals, aside. And I am terribly impressed with everyone in this thread - I’ve seen a whole lot of people in my life who have never managed this stuff.

38

There seems to be a lot of misinformation and urban legends surrounding dieting and weight loss, so much so that searching for the “magical” weight loss formula seems like a Holy Grail for some. Like I said I just read every label and back it goes if there’s too many calories. I can still snack, and I’ve racheted up my willpower to resist the “one more cookie” syndrome.

39

SparkPeople doesn’t offer a “formula.” They advocate a lifestyle change. By watching my portions, I was able to enjoy hamburgers and potato chips and pizza and still lose weight. But now that I know how many calories and fat is in a Bacon Doublecheesburger, it just looks yucky to me.

40

Nevermore, you may want to consider using a calorie “glide path”. For example, say you want to loose 20lbs. This would require burning approximately 1,250 more calories than you consume per day for two months (a very aggressive and potentially dangerous weight loss goal). Instead, target a lower amount the first month (e.g. a 650 calorie a day deficit), then reduce this a little the next month (e.g. to 550 calories) and so on. With a little advance calculation, you will end up at your target weight at the same time your mind and body have re-adjusted to a healthy consumption rate. It takes a little longer, but it is healthier and can help reduce the tendency to yo-yo. (Just keep in mind that, all else being equal, you burn fewer calories as your weight goes down.)

Best of luck with your fitness goals!