Willing to learn

mrsmasterchief77

Hi my name is Dee and I'm looking for help with taking off 15+ pounds and maintaining. I've been on every diet in the books and always gain it back plus some.

AnnPT77

Hello and welcome!

"Going on a diet" is taking on a project that by implication has an end date.

Reaching and staying at a healthy weight is a long-term - ideally permanent - thing. Achieving that takes a different mindset, at some point.

When I lost weight - 10 years ago now - I decided I wasn't going to do anything to lose weight that I wasn't willing to continue forever to stay at a good weight long term. That put my focus on finding new, relatively happy new eating and activity habits - at minimum tolerable and practical ones - that could continue almost on autopilot when other parts of life got demanding (because eventually they do).

That meant I needed to find new habits for my daily routine, but also that I needed to figure out how to handle holidays, other food celebrations, vacations, you name it. The routine things on repeat day in and day out are the biggie, though.

I experimented with various tactics. Not all the experiments worked, but I could learn from that, and adjust tactics going forward accordingly. Eventually, I worked my way to liveable habits that led to reasonable calorie intake and good overall nutrition on average, without micromanaging each and every day. When I got to a healthy weight, all I needed to do was add back enough calories to stop losing weight, and keep going with those well-practiced habits. After being overweight/obese for around 30 years, I've been at a healthy weight and in the same jeans size for 10 years since losing weight.

"Going on a diet" too often involves restrictive eating rules, never having treats, maybe cutting calories to the bone for fast loss, maybe choosing one of the trendy named diets. Some people then stack a punitively intense, miserable daily exercise program on top of that. That doesn't usually end well, but most often seems to end quickly.

An option to consider is doing something more gradual and manageable, focusing on gradually finding sufficiently more positive routine daily eating and activity habits, rather than defining the goal as "lose weight". What those habits are will be very individual, because we each have different preferences, strengths, challenes and lifestyles.

Just my view of it, though.

Best wishes for success - it's worth the effort!