Anyone whose lost 100+ pounds out there? Advice?

Hi I started at 380 pounds and have lost 180 pounds and also have PCOS (but am not insulin resistant). What I did was....to eat 1800 calories, I calorie cycled (so my cals worked out to a average of 1800 cals over the week but I ate different amounts on different days), I tried to have my dinner meal grain free each day...not because i was eating low carb (i wasnt and didnt that doesnt work for me) but it kept my carbs moderate. Exercise I predominantly did cardio but did do 1-2 resistance sessions per week.

I didnt do cheat days....occassionally I did go over but they were never planned.

Best of luck

I have PCOS and am indeed insulin resistant. I can't take Metformin, so restricting carbohydrate intake has been pretty important for me. I also have some food intolerances/allergies (gluten and most dairy). Because of the blood sugar issues and my food sensitivities, I've been eating a low carb paleo diet. It's been great for me.

I started out eating around 2000-2200 calories and have slowly lowered from there as I've lost, but by not a whole lot. I still lose on anywhere from 1600-1800, depending on what I'm up to that week. I think it's unwise to start out at a lower number if there isn't any need to. If you're losing just fine while taking in more calories, do that! You also have to consider "pacing" yourself if you've got a lot to lose, so you don't want to start out at a calorie goal that is really low. 1500 seems awfully low to open with if you've got a long way to go, because when you hit the inevitable plateau, most people start to cut calories. It just makes sense to start with the biggest number you can comfortably eat and still lose on.

I don't do regularly scheduled "cheat days", but if it's a birthday or some other special day, I definitely indulge. I think if having regularly scheduled cheat days works well for a person, then by all means--have those days.

I train with kettlebells and lift weights. I walk everywhere. I started out morbidly obese and was just walking at first. As I lost a bit of weight and was feeling a bit better, and more in control of my new way of eating, I added kettlebell. A few more months passed, and I joined a gym and started lifting weights. When I started, I was going out for walks 3-4 days a week. Now I lift weights 4x/per week and train with kettlebells twice weekly. I walk daily.

As I've lost fat and continued to exercise, my hormones have become much more balanced. That includes insulin. I can eat a bit more in the way of carbs than I could a year ago. Still can't really have a bunch of carbs like people who don't have metabolic dysfunction, but I can have up to three times what I could a year ago. Other PCOS symptoms have really settled down/vanished at this point as well, which is great.

Upper body arm ergometer and desk cycle exercise to lose weight mindlessly and it doesnt cause injury like other exercises. Actually arm ergometer (arm cycling) is the best way to go. I find myself losing weight without cutting too much on my calorieswhen I started arm ergometer where u just sit and pedal your arms. Hope it works for you too.

I have lost about 116 lbs so far and have god knows how much more to lose (I don't have an ultimate goal weight, just a ballpark where I look good and feel awesome)

I have interim targets to keep it feeling like I am getting somewhere, it would be very easy to look at the end point and think my god, it will take too long, be too hard, it will never happen etc etc etc.

Take pictures of yourself now if you haven't already (naked), it will be a good tool to see where you have come from and hopefully prevent you going back there once you have lost the weight (This will be the 3rd major weight loss i have undertaken...never EVER again). Video workouts, cooking, activities, whatever you can that is a part of the journey, it will help with the above and also keep you focused onto providing subject matter for your videos...every little helps right!

I can't stress enough the importance of weighing food, getting used to portion sizes, logging everything that passes your lips and just taking some time to become familiar with food in a different way to how you think of your familiarity with food.

Also log all of your exercise, it will help with all manner of things, least of all just charting in a tangible way how you are progressing. When I first started i couldn't walk through the house without resting, I bought a rowing machine but didn't use it because I couldn't row more than 2 minutes so felt it was pointless doing anything...stupid right. Anyway, I did walk as much as i could but at first with lots of stops to rest and catch my breath, pretty soon, if you can do that every day, by week 2 you can either walk further overall, or walk the same distance with less stops etc...whatever exercise you choose and whatever level you are at, the principle remains the same.

I am lucky...kind of, in that I have been diagnosed with diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure etc etc, so I bought a home blood pressure monitor, a withings scale, I video my walks and workouts and new foods I am exploring as I cook and use them etc I can't reliably use the withings scale yet, but other family members can but i log my food intake, my exercise (on runkeeper but it transfers to mfp automatically) my weight, my resting heart rate, my blood pressure and my blood glucose levels.

Blood glucose levels are as essentially firmly within the normal range (from a diagnosis level of 24.8mmol), weight is coming down, resting heart rate is actually pretty good to start with so thats ok, cholesterol is dropping, blood pressure is dropping with my first healthy diastolic and systolic reading only this week and my walking speeds and distances, similarly with rowing is improving all the time.

The reason I mention my personal situation is that without the daily logging and tracking i wouldn't have as close or indeed a controlled a handle on what i am doing and how those changes are helping my health and fitness...looking at your figures for the previous week or month in a graph...quick and easy to see a trend, is awesome, absolutely awesome and that feeling alone helps keep you going just so the trend continues for next week...etc etc

Food wise, because of my diabetes and why I say I am lucky to have it, is that it forced me to not do things half hearted, so I eat clean now, nothing manufactured, nothing processed, nothing refined and lots of water. I have my calories set at 1500 per day, however, I don't massively stress about this as I change it up depending upon how I feel and what exercise and energy I have. I am not using tdee, but i am using bmr to get a maintenance for my weight and activity, and then just cut it back a lot because of my size.

This will be reappraised and changed once I hit my next interim target as I will then be at the stage where i should slow the loss down...You are different, and do not weigh anything like i do so I wouldn't advise you follow this, but do try to accurately figure out where your maintenance cals are sitting and then hit a deficit from there however you are doing it...to be fair though, you sound to have all that covered already.

Diabetes or not, eat the rainbow, as many varied foods as possible from what nature has provided (not the food corps) and you will be half way there already. The weight loss is won in the kitchen, not the gym, something else to remember. That doesn't mean exercising doesn't help, i am just trying to say you can't eat crap and expect an hour in the gym to make up your health targets...doesn't work like that.

For walking i started out doing who knows, maybe 5 minutes and for 0.1 mile (not joking) The longest one tracked so far is 2.7 miles uphill in about 1.5 hrs... with stops and rests though but obviously, improvements are noticeable.

Can't emphasis enough though, go for a walk, and before you actually start walking turn on your phone gps and use whatever app you want to record it...my tracks, runkeeper etc do that for a week and i bet you by the 7th day you can walk further and with less rest needed...it will be hard, but that's the nature of the beast.

For those who started out walking, how long did you start of for, and how long to you do now?

I started out with walking around the block (about 1/4 mile). Over a few months I increased the distance to a half mile, a mile, etc. Eventually I ended up walking about 3 miles in the morning for 6 days a week. It helped with getting active again after years of a sedentary lifestyle. I've since switched over to resistance training and now walk about a mile and a half on my rest days.

The keys to my weight loss were: self discipline and patience.

I started out heavier than you and can probably afford to lose another 100. When I started out it hurt like crazy to move, at all. Even the simple act of walking was rough. It even hurt to stand still, so I started swimming. It's super-easy on the joints and a great full-body workout. My upper arms look better than they ever have in my life, even at much smaller sizes.

Things I did right:
- Measured and logged food. Be honest with yourself. It's not always fun to acknowledge, but you'll be glad you did.
- I didn't give up. Sure I slipped from time to time, I'm human. But I committed to making my life better, and it truly is.
- Set and celebrated small realistic goals in addition to the big milestones.
- I paid attention to my patterns---when I was overeating or eating crap and why, when I felt best and why.
- I started small---thinking more about what I was eating, paying attention to portions, increasing fruits and veggies, swimming 3 x/ week for 45 minutes. Then I started logging, weighing, and moving even more. Right now I swim an hour 3 x a week, workout with a trainer an hour a week, AND I am just begining training for a sprint triathlon in 268 days.
- I have awesome MFP friends and friends, family, and colleagues supporting me.

Things I wish I had done:
- Started sooner .
- Measured myself, not just in terms of the scale, but in terms of wasit, hips, arms, thighs, calves,
- Taken full-body progress pics from the begining.

Honestly the biggest key to me is determination.