afraid I won't be able to keep it off

Maybe the reason you've regained is the plans you've chosen to lose weight with. Unless you're planning to drink Slim Fast the rest of your life, you most likely won't be able to sustain a loss? Try a more reasonable approach by eating healthier in general. The weight will be slow coming off, but you'll most likely keep it off.

technically speaking, how fast you lose weight has no bearing on whether or not you will gain it back - physiologically speaking, they are two different time periods and processes.

However, psychologically, losing weight in a way that changes your habits and lifestyle is what you need to be focusing on to keep the weight off.

So, yes, if you can manage to lose weight fast and still be healthy it is OK. If you have the right personality type, you can keep off the weight even if you lose it quickly. However, you have proven to yourself many times before that you don't have that personality type, so I would recommend taking a slower, more methodical approach that focuses on changing habits.

I was planning on only doing Slimfast for the first couple months. The Slimfast diet is pretty structured, and this helps me stay focused. After I lose about 30-40 lbs I plan on switching to Weight Watchers.

neither of those focus on teaching you new habits. They focus on taking the money out of your wallet. Like was said before, unless you plan to eat slimfast and WW forever, you would be better off to learn healthy eating habits.

The key is not to see your healthy efforts as a "diet," but as a "lifestyle." When you slip up on a "diet" -- well, there goes the diet, mentally-speaking, time to wallow in pizza. But when you view a slip up as simply the bad day it was, there's always tomorrow. We all have bad days; what defines us is how we shake them off, start again, and keep going.

I honestly think the best way to learn about healthy foods and portion sizes etc is to eat real food. Slimfast won't teach you anything. Part of it is about knowledge and educating yourself, but a lot of it is about being faced with real temptations, and learning to make the best choice at the time. (The "best" choice might be resisting temptation, or it might be enjoying something in moderation, depending on the situation.)

This is what has worked for me. When I first started on MFP, I concentrated on calories only. I logged my normal diet, and immediately saw where I could make a few small changes to cut out calories and meet my goal. By logging food over time, you quickly learn which foods you can eat lots of and which foods you can't eat too much of, if you want to meet your goal. Some foods, you might decide it's not worth eating them, especially when you are on quite a low calorie goal. For example, I didn't eat much pizza in the beginning, because I find that I'm not satisfied with only one or two slices, and more than that really adds up calorie-wise. Now, I have a larger calorie goal and can easily fit in half a pizza if I fancy it.

As time went on, I started paying more attention to nutrients. Again, I did this just by looking at my food diary. I started trying to meet my protein goal more consistently, and not going over my carb goal so often. Recently, I have been tracking fibre and potassium, and as a result I've been eating a lot more veggies.

This is, for me, for life. Like you, I don't want to have to lose this weight again. I know myself, and I know that if I make massive radical changes to my diet, and only eat "health food", I won't last too long. Psychologically, I need to know that I can still eat the food I like. So, I still regularly have cheese, chocolate, bread, red wine, butter, etc. Obviously, that's not all I eat; my diet is much, much healthier than it used to be, but I have a really varied, balanced diet now, and I can fit those "treats" into my overall goals. The things that are very high in calories, I just eat smaller portions and have them less often.

As for learning about healthy eating, first work out what's important to you. Don't try to change everything at once. There is so much conflicting advice out there about nutrition, you need to work out what you care about. Do you want to get more protein? More vitamins and minerals? Less sugar? Again, just looking at your food diary here is a great way to achieve those goals. Try not to look at foods as being "good" or "bad"; nearly all foods can fit into a healthy diet. You just have to eat them in appropriate sizes.

Things like Slimfast completely take away the personal responsibility and stop you having to think about food choices. That's what is so attractive to a lot of people. As soon as you stop though, you're left having to make those choices again. Weight Watchers is good if you like to have the face to face support from a real life group, but otherwise, you can do better with MFP, for free. Weight Watchers is basically calorie counting, but they make it simpler (or more mysterious) with their points system.

If emotional eating or binge eating is an issue, then those are things that can take time to overcome. For me, calorie counting has really helped to get things under control, giving me the time to work on the emotional side of things. I haven't read any books by Geneen Roth, but I've heard a few people recommend her books for emotional eating issues. Maybe have a browse on Amazon and read the reviews there, there are tons of books on the subject.

Hi everyone, I'm a 24 year old female and I've been a yo-yo dieter ever since I was in high school. I've lost 40+ lbs and gained it all back on 3 separate occasions. Losing weight is usually pretty easy for me because once I'm motivated, I stick to it.... Almost to a fault. I'm very neurotic and I start getting obsessive about calories.

My problem is that once I go off track, I completely give up and pig out. If I make even the slightest slip up, I'll think, oh well what's the point, and completely go back to my old ways.

I need to lose about 80 lbs to get to a healthy weight for my height. And I've started doing the Slimfast diet. I've already lost 8 lbs since I started last week, but I'm assuming most is water weight. However, I was eating horribly before, sometimes consuming 3,000 - 4,000 calories a day, without exercising.

Now I'm eating 1,200 calories a day, and doing 30 min of cardio at the gym everyday.

It feels great to see the scale go down that much after only being on plan for a week. However, I'm worried that if I lose weight too fast I'll end up gaining it all back like I have done in the past.

I feel like I'm starting to ramble here, lol. So my question is, as long as I'm eating no less than 1,200 cals a day, is it safe to lose more than 2 lbs a week, or will I most likely gain it back? I really want this to be the last time I lose this weight.

I'd really appreciate some advice/wisdom. Thank you!

I think the issue is primarily psychological, not physiological (if yo-yo dieting really damages the ability to lose weight, as some theories hold, you've already done that to yourself).

Are you eating at a level that will allow you to transition to a more normal level of calories during maintenance or are you creating a constant feeling of deprivation that will create a backlash once you stop dieting?

I also think that many people, no matter what they say, are resistant to change. They think they can go back to what they were doing, excepting eating less. You have to change your focus if you want to maintain your weight. You have to eat differently (most of the time) and be active for the rest of your life. Find activities that you enjoy doing and do them until they are second nature.

As you know you have a tendency to binge eat, you should try to avoid activities that place too much emphasis on eating.

If you REALLY want not to regain weight, you can. But maybe you don't.. And I'm not saying it will be easy all the time.

Get neurotic and obsessive about healthy eating at the right calorie level and activity, which includes exercise.

One book I would recommend for you is "Women, God and Food." Don't let the word God freak you out, it's not a religious book at all, just connects food with our larger view of ourselves. It's not a diet plan, and it won't teach how much to have of what. For me, what it did is connect me back with why I started eating, what I was hoping for, and how I can meet those needs without diving for the bag of potato chips. It's real, challenging, and easy read, hits home, and gets to the core of the emotional eating that is so common for women who have struggled with weight for a long time. She's also been there (yo-yo dieter) and gained and lost over 1,000 pounds before finding her way and writing the book.

Good luck! Hang in there, and don't give up on yourself!

I definitely agree that you should ditch the Slimfast. Wouldn't you rather lose weight eating normal, tasty food? Why punish yourself? I think doing these kinds of diets make it much more likely for you to regain the weight because you're not learning how to eat for maintenance. What happens when you hit your goal and go back to your old diet? You gain it all back, and then some. Focus on making healthy habits that you can stick to forever.

How do I learn healthy eating habits? I never really learned any from my parents as a kid, they always got fast food and were binge eaters themselves.

I'm not blaming them, I know I need to take responsibility for my own actions. But it's hard to break out of the habits that I learned as a young child/teen.

Are there any helpful books out there you could recommend?

There are many good books available on nutrition, you could start by perusing your local library. I can recommend a few that I like: What Should I Eat? A Guide to the New Food Pyramid by Tershia d'Elgin and Fad-Free Nutrition by Fredrick Stare and Elizabeth Whelan. I also got a lot of good information from the Volumatrics Eating Plan by Barbara Rolls. You will start to get the idea.