Advice please from someone who has lost weight and kept it off.

If you are not losing at 1200, you are eating way more than you think you are. Buy yourself a food scale (who cares what your husband thinks, I doubt he would care too much) and start weighing everything you put in your mouth.

Check all of the stickied posts at the top of this board, follow the advice they give you, and you will have no trouble losing the weight.

How tall are you and how old are you? I lose a pound every two or a bit less weeks at 1600 and I am 5 foot 8, currently 155lbs, down from 215. You don't need to starve yourself at 1200, you just need to log accurately. You use a lot of generic foods like 'One potato' which mean nothing, really. You need to weigh your food

ETA: you said you have not lost a lot of weight. How much have you already lost? You didn't put 50lbs on in 2 months, it won't come off that quickly. Weight loss is not a sprint, it's a marathon.

This is how I lost weight and kept it off for years-
Weigh all solid food on my digital food scale.
Measure caloric liquids in measuring cups and spoons.
Eat at a deficit and then maintenance.
Move my body for health and extra calories.

Simple yet effective!

stacerenea27 wrote: »

I also count things so when it says x number of pretzels, I really did count them. My family thinks I am nuts.

The scale is worth it. SSSOOO much easier than counting and estimating. My fam thinks I'm nuts too, but then I'm the most in-shape one in my family so they keep it to themselves.

Nope. I log it all and bank calories for the weekend.

I have kept most of 50 pounds off for 8 years. I am kinda fighting with the last 15 pounds. I agree that learning about portion sizes and weighing food is going to help. I think some people aren't really aware of how sedendtry they are. The daily movement...walking to yoga class, ironing, putting things away, cooking, carrying groceries home from the store are what make the difference between a scale that won't move and steady loss.

Also lean muscle mass plays a big part of whether you can do the same things as you did 10 years ago. The less muscle mass you have, the quicker and easier it can be to put the weight back on. What kind of exercises did you do to lose the weight? Did you continue to do them during the time you gained the weight back?

As we age, unless you concentrate on keeping and/or building some lean muscle mass (LMM), the amount we naturally have will start to decrease. Running and cardio does nothing to build or keep lean muscle mass, but you will "earn" calories for the day. You can only keep and build LMM by weight lifting or challenging your muscles with some sort of weights. Have you ever heard the term "skinny fat"? When you don't have muscles, but you are a skinny weight, it is quite easy to gain the weight back.

I'm going to be attacked here for not being a calorie counting fan. I actually track my macros a lot more closely than calories (I have previously trained for bikini competitions and followed the nutritional advice of my coach), so I do know how to get very lean. Try focusing on clean foods. Whole foods that will fill you up and foods low in glycemic loads and complex carbs. Egg whites, rolled oats, sweet potato, chicken, ground turkey, veggies and try to only eat 1 serving of fruit per day, such as berries or half a banana, and you'll be really surprised how fast you lean out. And if you don't already weight train, really give that a try. I do zero cardio, ZERO and maintain a low body fat by eating the right foods and weight training.

The only way to avoid the see saw of weight is to set a calorie goal for the REMAINDER of your life. The up and down comes from dieting, hitting a goal, and then going back to BAD eating habits. Exercise is a WASTE of time if you are not going to watch your INTAKE. I have lost 37 lbs and STILL use my food scale EVERYDAY. I haven't been to the gym in months.

I thought having a food scale would make me seem a lil crazy, but its helped a lot, and I couldn't imagine this journey without it! Plus my husband doesnt mind it. It sits on the microwave til I use it, and I only use it when I eat. Its not that crazy. He made jokes when I first bought it, but it stopped by the second day.

I lost about 65 pounds (from 215 lb. to 150 lb.) over the course of two years, most of it (about 47 pounds) in the first year. I've kept it off since December. Here's what I did:

- Created an MFP account, entered my stats (44-year-old male at the time, 5' 10", 214.8 lb., lightly active), and set a 1.5-pound weekly loss target. MFP estimated my calorie goal with a 750-calorie daily deficit.
- Logged as accurately as I could for several weeks, using a food scale for solids when preparing anything that was calorie dense (i.e., weigh peanuts, but not celery).
- Continued to get lots of cardio exercise (I've been a cyclist for years), log exercise, and eat back those calories.

After a month, I discovered I was losing more like 1.1 pounds a week after the initial water weight. OK, that's 200 calories a day I was either missing in my food logs or overestimating in my exercise or activity. I set my activity level to sedentary. After that, my losses matched pretty well with my logs. In particular, my exercise calories (estimated by a pretty fancy Garmin cycling computer/GPS/HRM, and when I run, by the equivalent for running) matched my actual loss. Note that my Garmin stuff estimated only 50-75% of what MFP's database estimates. If I had trusted the MFP database, I would not have lost as much weight.

The key lessons to take away from my experience? I think there are three.

1. Look at your results and readjust your goals as needed. I found I was losing slower than I intended; when I changed my activity level in MFP, the numbers came into alignment. All these numbers are estimates, so you need to monitor them and change them if results don't match the prediction.

2. Use a food scale, at least for calorie-dense foods. After a few weeks you might get pretty good at eyeballing things; even if you do, pull out the food scale from time to time as a reality check.

3. Cardio exercise is great, not only for the long-term health benefits and the way it makes you feel good, but also because it lets you lose weight while eating more than you could if you were sedentary. You don't have to go overboard, but even just a 30-minute daily walk would allow you to have a cookie, or three clementines, or over half a pound of carrots, as an additional snack. I found that made a huge difference in how satisfied I was, compared with times I couldn't get much exercise and had to eat a lot less.

Good luck!