Lost 100 lbs, how'd you do it?

Eat at a calorie deficit and keep doing it.

There's honestly no secret at all.

Honestly? A lot of damned hard work! LOL Don't let anyone tell you it was EASY for them! When you've got a lot of weight to lose it's not just about how much you move your body and cutting back on portions ('cause that's really what it takes on the outside), you have to be willing to go DEEP within yourself to figure out WHY you gained the weight in the first place. Work on what triggers you to overeat and figure out WHY you really want to do this now. It requires a ton of dedication, commitment and focus. On the outside, start with baby steps. Don't let it all overwhelm you, start changing 1 - 2 unhealthy habits at a time and work from there.

That being said, it wasn't easy for me and I still have a few more pounds to go but I wouldn't change it for the world! My quality of life is SO much better!

Feel free to friend me!

I've lost 121 lb total from my heaviest and to be totally honest, I don't feel like I really had to dig deep within myself or anything. The first 45 lb came off slowly over a period of about 4 years...because I didn't understand about calories. I just moved more and cut back on restaurant meals and Starbucks. It worked, but slowly!

The rest I've lost on MFP and it has not been difficult for me. I've followed the MFP set guidelines for everything and been patiently losing between 0.5 and 2 lb each week for the past 13 months. Thus, I am now at 186 lb from my highest weight of 307. I am still losing, of course.

Please understand I am not trivializing my own progress or anyone else's but I do think it is different for everyone and for some it's not quite as much of a hardcore, difficult thing to do. For me it has been more about math and biology - and sticking to it over time.

ETA: TOTALLY agree with the post above about routines. That helps so much, especially having go-to healthy and/or light meals to avoid difficulties with your schedule and eliminate the guesswork or temptation to grab fast food.

Start, then don't stop. That's my biggest tip. The rest is details.

It helped me to:

1. Break my big goal into many small goals.
2. Exercise. It changed my relationship with my body in a powerful way.
3. Plan. I pre-log nearly every day.
4. Make no changes I was not willing to stick with forever. No weird macronutrient restriction or insane exercise schedule. Just a moderate deficit. By the time I got hial weight, all I had to do is increase calories slightly.

133ish lost. Working on two years of maintenance.

Check out my blog - link in profile - for a lot more tips and pics

Good luck!!

Consistency is key! But to be more specific, I've lost 122 pounds so far by sticking to the following:

- 5 meals a day (breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner)
- I ate foods that were high in protein and low in fat
- beef jerky and special k protein bars were the two i used the most for my morning and afternoon snacks
- I very rarely ate red meat (besides beef jerky). Instead I eat a lot of fish and extra lean ground turkey.
- On a day that I know i'm going to eat unhealthy, I try to get a bigger workout in to help balance it out.
- I obsessively use myfitnesspal.com (on my computer and phone) to help me manage my calories, fat, and carbs
- Avoid high carb foods like french fries, white rice, white pasta, and white potatoes.
- I portion my food when I cook it. This keeps me from over-cooking and thus, over-eating.
- No skipping meals. It just makes you over eat at your next meal.
- Drink 8-12 cups of water per day.
- Find something to motivate you (in my case it was playing with the kids) and constantly remind yourself of that.

It's been 1 year to the day for me and I've had weeks when i've lost 5lbs and weeks when i've lost 0lbs. Just remind yourself that a mistake today doesn't mean a failure tomorrow. Just try to avoid another mistake tomorrow!!

Hope this helps.......

I have lost 91 lbs and I have to say sometimes it is hard. Sometimes I just don't feel like watching what I eat, but even when I don't feel like it, I do it because I know that I feel so much healthier and have more energy. There are no big secrets though. It's a matter of eating less and moving more for me. It does take a while. Since making a SERIOUS effort, it has taken almost a year and a half to lose what I have lost. Good luck to you. Feel free to add me if you want.

Great information. saving for later

I agree with almost everything mentioned here. When I tell people that I'm not doing anything complicated, they always respond that if it would be simple more people would be successful at it. The answer is that it's simple but not easy. The rules are simple but you definitely need the commitment to stick with them.

Here are my rules:

Keep it simple. No complicated meal plans.
Have good food handy for different situations (hungry between meals, in the mood of something sweet, etc.).
Don't eat anything you don't like.
Don't cut out anything you do like.
When you have a bad meal, day, couple of day, week, get right back on. Don't wait until "tomorrow".
Start slowly and don't make any drastic changes.
Take all advice (even from experts) with a grain of salt. Every person reacts differently to specific situations.
LOG ALL YOUR FOOD
I find that logging exercise encourages you to do more of it. I never logged walking until last week. I was very surprised to see how many calories it burns and started walking much more.

Down 99 lbs. 34 more to go. Went to see George Strait in April 2014. Quite the milestone for me.

Everything that has been said is mostly true. The biggest thing you have to due is (to quote Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke) is "get your mind right". Without the proper attitude and finally deciding to do it for yourself , It wont happen.



If you want all the nitty gritty details...here's my blog. You can do it! If I can, anybody can. But its not a temporary fix, its a lifestyle change. Accept that and you will be successful.

Good Luck!!!

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/joecmoore1

I agree with everyone. My personal ways (in addition to what others have said) is distraction and making sure I never get really hungry. I want to eat and make poor food choices when I'm bored, stressed, or hungry. So for the first two I do distraction. Exercise is the best distraction, when I'm bored or stressed, as it burns calories in addition to helping me avoid taking them in. It also helps with the boredom or stress. Quick computer games can help too, if I'm stuck somewhere. Or reading. I just try to distract myself from thinking about food, especially when I just ate, and the interest in eating, when I'm really not hungry, usually just goes away after 10-20 minutes.

For when I get really hungry, I just eat. I make sure that I always have something to eat on me. A healthy granola bar or some nuts, that sort of thing. If I'm going by the grocery on the way home from work, I'll eat something just before I leave work. That way, when in 15-20 minutes when I'm at the store, I'm not starving for dinner and I can make rational choices. If I can't do that, then my rule for cafeterias, stores, or restaurants is that I get only what I was planning to get and absolutely no more, no matter what reason I can come up with while there. So I can go into my work cafeteria when really hungry and just get soup, because soup is the only thing I'm allowed to get right then. I ignore anything else I might think to buy "just in case, for later". I have other food at my desk or in my purse for just in case or later, so I make myself get only what I had planned. Soon it became a habit.

I lost 133 lbs once but gained some, honestly it's will power, learning what you want most over what you want in a moment. I'm back to it and will get the little I gained off. You'll gain a little after you get close to your goal because you'll get comfortable but the trick is, catching it before it gets out of hand.

On weeks when I didn't have a good loss or I only lost .2 or went up a little, it helped to look at the weight loss chart. Life sometimes gets in the way and you don't lose 2 lbs every week, but if you're losing and the squiggly line is going down, it's still a move in the right direction. As long as my weight was decreasing, I wasn't worrried!