Introduction

bswolfe8847

Hi to you all. My name is Billie and I'm new to MFP. I feel like this is my last chance to lose weight as I've tried everything else without prolonged success. I have 116 pounds I want to lose. Any tips,tricks, and encouragement very appreciated. Kind regards to you all.

springlering62

Hi Billie. Welcome to MFP.

I was you four years ago.

The best advice I can give you is to get engaged in the boards here. You’ll learn so much, get advice on logging, what to eat.

Even if you don’t post, read religiously.

There’s boards for food, exercise, and my favorite, success stories.

My own loss has been as much reading and absorbing as counting calories and logging.

AnnPT77

Hi, Billie, and welcome to the Community.

Good advice from @Springlering62 up there (as usual from her).

IME, prolonged success is going to require prolonged changes, and for me that put a premium on finding new habits that I felt I could sustain long term almost on autopilot when life got complicated.

I don't know about you, but for me, willpower or motivation are very limited resources. I can't rely on those to keep changes in place permanently!

Me, I found it helpful to use those limited bursts of motivation to find and groove in some pretty-tolerable, pretty-easy positive habit change - even a pretty small one . . . then keep going with that on semi-autopilot until I had more motivation in the tank to make another change.

Chipping away, rather than going for max speed via extreme eating/exercise tactics, pretty much.

I'm in year 6+ of maintaining a healthy weight range, after around 3 decades of overweight/obesity before that . . . so far, so good. (Really, really good, actually: I couldn't have imagined how much quality of life would improve, honestly. Worth the investment, by far.)

Every individual needs to find his/her own best path, IMO - personalization is key to success. FWIW, this is the eating approach that worked for me:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

That won't work for everyone - no one thing will - but it's one to consider.

You might like Springlering's thread about having her husband see her success, and decide to lose weight himself. She reports what he did and thought along the way: It's a like a fun-to-read travelogue about successful weight loss, with lots of great tips embedded along the way. Find it here:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10841733/at-goal-successfully-maintaining-so-why-am-i-doing-this-all-over-again/p1

It's getting to be pretty multi-page (successful loss takes time, and others have commented on the thread), but it's lively and enjoyable to read. (I follow it for the fun, even though it started when I was already through the loss phase.)

Regardless of what strategies you adopt, I wish you great success - I'm cheering for you from the sidelines!