Successful Dieting

In My Humble Opinion
1

For the past four months or so, I’ve been on my n[sup]th[/sup] diet and, so far as I can guess, I’ve managed to lose about thirty pounds. I’d have a better idea of the weight lost but I was homebound for three of those months and have only had access to a scale for the past three weeks.

Anyway, as with all past diets, I’ve cut back on intake, substituted healthier alternatives for what I normally eat, and exercised when I managed to motivate myself but, unfortunately, as with all past diets, I’ve reached the end of my motivation. Without fail, after four or five months, my resolve weakens and I’m back to eating enough to feed a small army.

Does anyone have any advice on how they’ve dealt with this ennui? I’m not looking for motivational speeches about how I can do it if I apply myself because I’m already aware of that and I could just as easily watch Dr Phil or Oprah if all I wanted was placation.

I’ve spent the past fifteen years like this and can’t afford fifteen more. Not with the medical problems in my family. Any help would be appreciated.

2

I journal. As in, writing down everything I eat, but more important, when I have the urge to eat something I shouldn’t, I have a rule I have to write in my journal about it: wha I want to eat, why, the situation, etc. Often times I realize the urge isn’t hunger, but boredom or wanting something to do with my hands or being ‘sociable’ with someone else who is eating or other drives. Most of the time when I realize WHY I want to eat, I can think of better ways to satisfy the urge.

OTOH, if I’m just hungry, I eat it. :slight_smile:

3

Whoops, didn’t make the most important point, the motivation thing:

I have two sections in my journal that are just lists – one of all the things I hated about being overweight, the other all the things I’ve gained since I got down to normal weight. I add to these whenever I think of something – ranging from profound (I was 50% more likely to die from cancer) to trivial (All watch bands now fit fine.)

Reading through either or both of the lists can kill an idle desire to each a hut fudge sundae.

For times I am REALLY tempted to go off the rails, I have a nude photos of myself at my heaviest. :eek:

4

Give yourself a reward.

Since I’ve lost x amount of weight I will now allow myself to eat y favorite food once a week. Sounds to me like you’re bored with your current pattern and need a change. Try a different diet, different excercise, or breif controlled ‘break’ from the diet.

Buy a half pint of your favorite ice cream, and eat a spoonful a day, when its gone, its gone.
Do an activity that your previous weight would have prevented you from doing to remind yourself that you already are feeling better.

I also completly concur with listing the alternatives to losing weight like high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, etc. to remind yourself why you are doing it.

Good Luck!

5

You have to find what works for you. Personally, I can’t do the “byte of ice cream” trick. If it’s in the house, I’ll invariably want to eat more of it. The best way to combat that is to remain full.

I found out some very interesting and helpful things in an article published in US News & World Report. Here is the on-line version

The topic of the article is volumetrics. That is to say that in general, people eat the same amount every day, and the idea is to replace the high calorie food with low calorie alternatives.

6

WeightWatchers is the only thing that has ever worked for me. Going to the meetings is helpful and educational, and logging everything I eat really makes me aware of having to keep control of how much I eat.

If there aren’t meetings near you, you can do it on the Web. Almost as effective.

7

StarvingButStrong, that is EXCELLENT advice. I work for Weight Watchers, and we encourage journalling, but most people just write down food they’ve eaten. I think you gain more self-knowledge if you start to track why you eat stuff, when you do, how you’re feeling, and that can help with strategies to deal with overeating.

I also like your lists. Remembering what you didn’t like is good motivation to keep going, but remembering what you’ve achieved is even better. Nice!

8

I’ve been in WW, too, for the past few months, and I’m having more success than I’ve ever had before. The accountability of stepping on the scale and having the results written down gets me through the week, and the fact that I’ve actually been steadily losing the whole time keeps me happy.

If journaling isn’t your thing, WW also has a new program that doesn’t require so much counting. That’s what I’ve been doing and it works, too.

9

Read the book From Chunk to Hunk, it is about a guy who changed his views on himself and on food, and as a result was able to lose weight and keep it off.

Its not a bad idea, i’ve been doing the same thing and I actually desire to eat a health(ier) diet now. I still eat junk but I eat alot of fiber, whole grains, dairy, protein and fruits now. I just prefer it at this point.

Also even when I’m dieting I always try to eat some forbidden/good tasting stuff everyday. When dieting (back when sane dieting used to work at least, after losing 50 lbs the weight loss slowed to a crawl and I probably can’t lose the last 25 lbs w/o serious deprivation) I would try to eat 1000 calories a day in things like candy, pizza or hamburgers so the cravings wouldn’t become excessive, depriving yourself will just make cravings worse (don’t think of a pink elephant and all that). My normal metabolism is about 4000-4500/day and my diet intake is about 3000-3500 a day so eating 1000 calories a day in candy and pizza didn’t increase my overall daily caloric intake any.

10

Since last July, I’ve lost 54 lbs (start weight 192, current weight 138, goal weight 135).

My approach - I changed the way I eat forever, this is not a diet, this is not something I am going to stop doing. I concentrate on eating whole foods with high nutritional value and I avoid processed foods with little to no nutritional value. My diet is based on long term health and disease prevention.

I am fully committed to it because I just feel so fantastic - tons and tons and tons of energy. I am a different person than I was before I started and I don’t want to be that slow, heavy, depressed, couldn’t get out of bed person ever again. My motivation is how wonderful I feel and how wonderful I look. I honestly can’t believe me - who has lost/gained tons of weight, who spent the last 5 years 50 lbs too heavy has adapted so easily to healthy eating and exercise!

For some people, they can’t maintain any weight loss past 2-3 months because they overly restrict calories and cause the body to release starvation hormones. Metabolism slows down and the body seeks to protect itself - one thing it does is cause people to eat (you hear some dieters talk about “binging” a lot). This is not your “resolve weakening” this is your body’s demand to save itself from what it sees as a famine. It only makes sense that the body’s will to survive is stronger than your will to restrict.

Over time, I have been slowly raising my caloric intake so I am now losing weight at over 1800 calories a day. My daily caloric intake still below what a person of my height/weight/age/gender needs to maintain, but I’m eating plenty of food and my body has no need to hang onto fat reserves for a perceived emergency. As I reach my goal weight, I will slowly increase calories until I am able to maintain 2200-2400 calories a day. I don’t want to lose a bunch of weight consuming 1200 calories and mess up my metabolism to maintain at 1200 calories a day!

I’ve lost weight a couple of times in my life, this is the longest I’ve ever been successful and the first time I’ve ever had a plan of “what am I going to do when I reach my goal weight?” Losing the weight is not the big trick, keeping the weight off is key.

You have to have a plan, or you’ll end up like poor Oprah on her Opti-fast diet. She hit her goal weight and she was there for ONE DAY before she started eating “normally” and gained all her lost weight back and more. It’s not enough to hit the goal weight, you have to STAY at the goal weight.

What’s your plan??

11

I have a similar problem. To keep myself in check I’ve been journaling my food at FitDay.com (It’s free!), and keeping a chart on my fridge that I mark daily.

My chart has a line item for each day of that week and a column for each of the following:

Took Vitamin X, Took Vitamin Y, Ate healthy breakfast, Ate healthy lunch, ate healthy snacks, didn’t eat after 9pm (I have a hard time with binge eating at night), Cardio (30 mins+), Yoga/Pilates (20+), Walking (15+), Journaled (my food for that day)

When I complete each section, I cross it off and at the end of the week if I have 35+ marks, I put $10 into my clothes shopping fund. If I have 25+ I put $5 into my clothes shopping fund. If I have less than 25, I get nothing for that week. I may only buy clothes with the money I gain from my charts and may not supplement it with any additional money.

I’m also implementing a monthly reward system where just for filling out each chart (regardless of outcome) for 4 consecutive weeks, I treat myself to a pedicure or something else of approximately the same monetary value.

The rewards systems can always be adjusted (i.e. New video game, new DVD, etc)

I also only have three rules that I MUST stick to.

One, journal my food. All of it. If I miss a day, I have a default caloric entry which is way higher than I probably ate and makes me feel like a total pig.

Two, keep up with my charts. Even if I can only mark off one thing per day, I just make it a point to do so.

Three, make concious food choices. No more mindless feedings while watching the ballgame or chatting on IM. If I’m going to eat some graham crackers and a bowl of sugar, I’m going to question why I’m doing it and I’m going to know exactly how much I’m eating.

This system keeps me from feeling like I’m locked into a particular diet and instead tackles the mentality behind overeating.
I’m down 24 lbs in the last 3 months (since the journaling/charting began) and 41 lbs from one year ago (which is when I started really thinking about why I was overeating and began to listen to WW and Dr. Phil a bit regarding portion control and mindful eating).

It’s slow progress, but it’s the kind of progress that you’re not as tempted to sabotage once you reach your goal. Good luck!

12

This part really struck me, and since everyone else is doing such a good job of giving ideas re: food, I’ll go with this part.
It’s very difficult to lose weight by ONLY reducing your caloric intake and occasionally, when you feel like it, exercising. You need to exercise regularly. My recommendation for that is, instead of “exercise for the sake of exercise”, find something that gets you moving around and exercising that you enjoy doing.
For DogDad and I, we found Geocaching. It’s hiking with Geek Gear! Fabu! It gets us up and about, we have a reward at the end of each hiking trip (found the cache!), we get to see things we’d never have seen before. We’ve gone to nature preserves we didn’t know even existed, and hiked around some we did, but never had the “motivation” to visit. The other day at a cache, we got buzzed by a Small Blue Bird and saw a Crane or Heron (not sure which, it was a ways off), and saw a Goose family: mom, dad and 4 little adorable goslings. One day, we were FOLLOWED by a young whitetail buck - and he was so tame he let us scratch his ears. Really. And best of all, we get to choose how much exercise we’ll get! Not everything is a five-mile hike one way from the nearest parking spot. I highly recommend it. Can you tell? :smiley:
We also use a lot of “down time” planning our next geocaching run, instead of parked in front of the TV, bored and snacking.
It also doesn’t hurt that we have an exercise buddy in the form of our dog. If he doesn’t get walked every day, he goes completely spastic and makes everyone, including himself, miserable. He’s just got too much energy to not be exercised on a regular basis. But it’s the Geocaching that really got us up, moving around, eating less, and exercising more. (I’ve lost 30 lbs. so far - DogDad is going on…um…wait, I gotta do the math. either 25 or 35 lbs. I forget which. Anyway, I do know he’s dropped 2 pants sizes so far, and the jeans we just bought him are now going into the Too Big range. ALREADY!)

But find something you LIKE to do, or find something you enjoy about what you’re already doing; something that’ll motivate you to get up and DO it. If you go for walks, take some time to listen to the birds and smell the fresh-cut grass, or something. If you do yoga, notice every little stretch, and how you feel before and after - how it helps you feel better, more flexible, more energetic. If you lift weights…well, sorry, I can’t help you there. I don’t enjoy that so I don’t know how you could make it enjoyable, but you get the point.

If you want to know more about Geocaching, feel free to email me. I’m ALWAYS happy to help a new convert. :smiley:

13

Not to hijack too much, but squee this looks like fun! What kinds of things do you find? What do you leave for others? Have you created your own cache? What was in it?

14

I’ve thought about doing this but I don’t have a digital camera and would either have to have film developed at Wal Mart or have to borrow my boss’ digicam and … uh … no.

I like the idea, though. Maybe in a few months.

My main problem is simply overindulgence and lack of willpower so this wouldn’t work for me. I bought a quart of ice cream this weekend and it’s already gone five days later when I don’t even like ice cream that much. If it’s something I really like, it’ll be gone faster. Like in one.

That’s the rationale and behind my plan – to change the way I eat forever and not have it be a diet but My Diet – but it’s not working so well. I know it’s not a matter of a short term fix but if I can’t even lose the weight, keeping it off will never be an issue.

Nothing structured and basically what I said in my OP – healthier alternatives, smaller portions, and exercise if I can motivate myself. I’m trying to educate myself but it’s hard to do when a novel is so much more interesting than some dietary manual.

Exercise is a bit of a problem for me right now as I’m healing from a broken leg I received in an automobile accident while walking to work this past November. I was only cleared to work a little over a month ago and, for a couple weeks, was walking two miles to work five times a week but after my knee started giving me trouble after only two and a half weeks, my boss gave me her car so that I wouldn’t reinjure myself. Even after that, my knee still wants to give out on me sometimes and there’ve been at least half a dozen times I thought it was going to.

I’ve thought about swimming as an alternative but, unfortunately, membership to the Aquatic Center in the city I live in costs $350 I don’t have right now due to the aforementioned accident, a costly airplane ticket to visit my family this summer, and having to help my mom out with a financial emergency.

15

Stop eating. I’m serious. What worked for me was to be simply savage to myself mentally. You don’t have to put the food in your mouth. Exercise willpower, think about what you are doing, and stop it. Crack down on yourself, don’t make excuses, don’t tell yourself that you’re really not eating that much, or that you won’t eat dinner because you had too big a lunch. And if you are stupid enough to give in and have too big a lunch, don’t eat dinner. Suck it up, it really won’t hurt you, and you’ll eventually get the point and stop eating too big a lunch.

Lest you think I’m trying to be cruel, I’m not; I’m telling you what worked for me. It wasn’t a diet, eating healthier foods, etc. It was stopping the shoving off too much of anything into my face. If I had a piece of cake, well, that was the entire meal. I dropped from about 305-310 to 175-180, and have been at 175-180 for about six years now.

I’m not saying it will work for you, but the only thing that has worked for me was to stop babying myself, wake the fuck up, and act like a disciplined human, instead of a fat fucking insensate animal.

16

No offense taken and that’s what I’ve been trying to do in conjuction with the healthier alternatives. I’m making dinner right now and all it is is a turkey burger with mustard and sauted onions and a diet soda to drink, for example.

17

If it works for you, go ahead. But I lost much of my excess weight just fine by almost forcing myself to eat a cheeseburger and some candy everyday just so I wouldn’t have to deal with cravings. As long as your daily total calories remain the same (it didn’t matter if I ate 3000 calories a day in healthy food or 2000 in healthy food and 1000 in pizza/candy, I still ended up at 3000 a day) you should still lose weight and it’ll be easier on you.

However, as I said, that was before. Going from 38% bodyfat and 302 to about 25% bodyfat and 260 was easy, going from 25% (I’m at 22%/250 now) to 13%/220 is something totally different.

18

Some scattershot advice:

When I went on a diet last year (lost 75 pounds in 10 months), I deliberately did not make it a strict diet. I just reduced portion sizes and cut down on snacks. Also, I made a point of not completely swearing off any food. So, instead of saying “I will never eat french fries again”, I said “I will eat french fries whenever I want”; but then when I would get the urge to eat some fries, I would think “nah, I better not”. So even though I didn’t swear off french fries, I didn’t eat them more than a couple of times - and I used to eat them 3-4 times a week.

About exercise: Do it! Exercise is great because it is much easier than dieting. Dieting is something you have to do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Exercise, on the other hand, is something you can do for 1/2 an hour and then stop. You can spend the rest of your day on the couch if you want, if you get that half hour in.

The more you exercise, the more you will be able to eat. If you have an exercise routine you diet doesn’t have to be so onerous.

Track your progress. Weigh yourself every day and make a graph or something. Seeing that line slope downwards can be very motivating. And if it starts to slope in the wrong direction, you know you need to buckle down. (BTW, don’t try to lose weight too fast. 1-2 pounds a week is good progress.)

Have a goal weight in mind, and when you reach it, don’t go back to your old ways. Continue exercising and dieting, but make your new goal to keep your weight the same. You will be able to eat more at this stage.

If you’re not used to exercising, it is difficult and painful and miserable and no fun at all, BUT it does get easier after a while (for me it took about two months) as your fitness improves. Besides the weight loss, the improvement in strength, fitness, and muscle tone is a nice reward.

About motivation: I bet sometimes you don’t feel motivated to go to work in the morning, but you do it anyway. Try to be the same way about exercising. Do your exercise (whatever it is) at the same time and on the same days of the week so that it becomes a routine, like your job. I don’t know, I find that makes me less likely to skip a session. Also, when your fitness improves, you might find yourself looking forward to your exercise sessions.

19

Oh, and good luck (which I should have said last time). Although I think it is nobody’s fault but our own if we get overweight (I refuse the pity or excuses angle), that doesn’t mean you don’t have people pulling for you to get it done and lose the weight. Keep at it; you’ve already accomplished a hell of a lot bigger weight loss than most people manage. That didn’t happen by accident - you’ve done something right. Ride it out and stay consistent.

20

It’s a blast. We have found all KINDS of things - stuff from silly little stuffed frogs to old coins. On occasion, someone will make up a REALLY PRIMO cache that has a lot of expensive stuff in it. I heard of one guy who had a prize in it of $100 for the first person to find it!

We generally try to leave stuff with general appeal, like a deck of cards, a pack of AA batteries, stuff like that. Sometimes we’ll leave “kid stuff”, like a pack of twisty straws, glow sticks, or matchbox cars.

We’ve created two “regular-sized” ones (ammo cans). We like making them kid-friendly: not too difficult to find, but not REAL super easy, and then packing it with stuff that appeals to all age groups: again, decks of cards, colored pencils, small toys. Lots of dollar store stuff, but it’s gotta be stuff WE would like to find. We don’t like to leave “oh. One of THOSE.” kind of things - which are different for every person. Keychains are popular around here for some reason.

Yowch. I remember that thread. There’s still lots of exercise alternatives, though. Don’t discount it just because you have trouble walking. There’s a LOT of yoga stretches that you can do just sitting down, for example - and that helps use up more Calories than you may think. Ask your doctor about exercises you CAN do.