The long haul and how dieting works for me so far.

mamayoga

I've been on MFP since the end of September, ( 11 weeks, 7 lbs. lost so far) and I still feel like it's a big experiment to learn about how I personally react to different eating/exercising situations. It's really a type of science. You have to log what you do and observe the results, and then adjust. It can take a long time (seemingly!)

People love to make generalizations like , "eating often speeds up your metabolism" and "eating less than 1200 calories slows down your metabolism", but from reading the posts here, it seems like it just works differently depending on the individual. Plus there are SO MANY variables - weather, stress, etc.

So, in general, I think I've observed that if I eat less than 1200 cal a day for a long time, my metabolism just slows way down.

So now I'm experimenting with a base calorie level of 1400, and an occasional day of 1200.

I'm still losing. Slowly. But losing! Relative to the speed at which I gained (about 1 lb a year), it's actually quite fast.

It's hard. But my plan is to keep plugging away.

lutzsher

Take one day at a time, it is the ony way I've gotten through sometimes.
I like to make sure I "calorie shift" every day. I never eat the same thing 2 days in a row, and I never eat the same amount of calories 2 days in a row. I shift from about 1150 to 1300 up to 1400 some days . . . however I do not go too far above 1200 unless I've logged some decent exercise that day.
I found that this calorie shifting did help my results.

It took me the first number of months on this site just to figure out what worked for me, and I didn't lose much at all during this time. This gave me the chance to hone my skills with my food intake and my activity. As long as you are patient and do the best you can each day you will get there as it sounds like you have a great attitude toward "the process".