What is the formula to success? Please tell me!!

I am just like you, I lose slowly and often get discouraged just like you and fall off.

This time may be different because I am trying to wean myself from weighing and just concentrate on eating healthy and listening to my body. I might need to get rid of my scale, LOL, sometimes down the road, since I still weigh myself and having hard time resisting the temptation, but every time I weight myself, i regret it. )

Good luck to you, and stay away from the scale, hide it somewhere in the house for a few months and just eat right and exercise.

invest your time of MFP, read the success stories every day and stick with it. There is no easy answer, which is why we are all here. I get great inspiration from other success stories, and like you want to be able to post my story one day. Stick with it, and with us ! Good luck

THIS times a MILLION.... you WILL get tired, you WILL lose motivation, there are days you WILL be in doubt.... BUT... you have a goal.... and there MUST be something that motivates you... so KEEP IT CLOSE.... those success sotries will surely help..... I read them EVERYDAY...... and this time around ( since i have joined MFP in September), I cna actually feeli like I will STICK to this once i'm at my goal.... I would have given up by now... but the success of others tells me that I CAN DO IT TOO!... And so can you! Dont be descouraged. Find some friends on here as well to motivate you. You can add me if you like All the best!

This is what I've picked up from reading success stories and the Internet -

1. Calculate your TDEE - theres a good thread on how to do this somewhere on here. But basically this is how many calories your body uses in normal daily activity. Breathing, resting, cooking e.t.c. You'll be surprised how many calories your body uses to just exist. Mine was around 2400 and I have a desk job.

When you have your TDEE, take 20% off. Eat to that amount of calories each day. Mine came out at 1900!! Now I've always eaten less than 1600 cals when I've been on diets before. The thought of eating that many calories and losing weight made me laugh! BUT give it a try for 2 weeks. You may be shocked!

I'm losing the same amount of weight on 1900 cals as a I was on 1600. Except it's much more sustainable over the long term to,eat 1900, i can stick to this long term and that is important.

Alwyas Weigh your food before you log it - this makes a massive difference. It's very hard to know what you're actually eating weight wise by just looking.

2. Lift some heavy weights - have a look for the strong lifts for women group. Most women don't lift heavy because they worry about bulking up. That doesn't happen honestly! The women I've seen look beautiful and toned and curvy. The more muscle you build up, the more calories you need to just live and the more fat you burn. It's fat that we all want to drop usually.

3. Don't rely on the scale to measure your progress. When you lose weight, you could be losing water and muscle. I don't want to be light and flabby, I want to be small and toned and have a good healthy lifestyle. That goal of mine means I need better metrics than just looking at the weighing scales.

So what I do is measure my waist, hips, thighs and arms in cm. just with a tape meaure, once a week. I do Cm because i can see small losses easier than i could with inches. Also I know if my hips go up but my arm has shrunk, that it's probably water retention, so I find that handy in keeping me motivated.

I also have daily goals - very simple ones. I have the goal to stay under my calories, and to weight lift a minimum of twice a week. that's it.

I record my progress on a monthly calendar that I keep on my coffee table. I get a green heart sticker each day if I eat my calorie goal, I get a pink heart if I exercise and I get a big star if I lose a cm off my body!

That might seem very silly, hahaha, I am like a child. But having a visual reminder is great. I think it's very easy to forget how well you've been doing. If I have a bad day and don't get my sticker, I look at that 1 page and see a whole month of what I've been doing - and that actually I have done a lot of work. That stops me from throwing the towel in. I know that all I have to do is achieve at least a sticker each day, and that will build up over time leading to my goal.

When my daily goals become 2nd nature, I might add a new one in like thinking about protien intake e.t.c.

The sticker is a bit of a reward as well, it makes me feel good to put that on each day! It also reminds my husband which is handy.

Other rewards I have lined up - I've bought a dress which is 3 sizes too small, and I aim to get into that by June. I've hung that up in my bedroom on show.

So far, I've been doing the above for 2 weeks. I've had 2 days where I missed my food goal (1 by just a bit, 1 by loads!) and 1 day where I didn't do weights because I was still recovering. BUT I've lost 2.5 inches off my tummy, 2 inches off my hips, 0.5 of an inch off my arm.

Weight wise I've lost a couple of lbs, but I'm more pleased with the inche loss. I've also found a new love for weight lifting, it makes you feel amazing! I'd have never thought it. It's so quick to do and achieve something as well compared to cardio.


So that's my knowledge so far, condensed. It's taken me a long time to practice other diets, to see how cardio worked for me and analyse other successful people and collect that up. I think that the above is really sustainable and makes sense health wise now, so fingers crossed.

Reward yourself with new clothes etc. It's worked for me so far!! Read people's success stories!! It keeps me fired up to see people meet their goals, especially if we were the same size!! Set monthly goals!

eat less/move more. that'll be $99.99 thank you.