What has helped you be most successful?

Exercise; realising I can workout at home, that there are tons of workouts for free online (so no excuses!) and that it's not for weight loss (unless you count a bigger deficit) but to make me healthier/fitter overall. Weighing scale too as many people have said.

Also realising that I can eat pretty much whatever I want (within moderation) and still lose weight. I used to think as long as I was eating 'healthy' foods it didn't matter how much of it I was eating, and that I had to have no junk or 'bad' foods. Definitely not the case, a big part of why I think I've stuck with it so long is that I'm not restricting

Eliminating added sugar.

(1) Food scale. (2) Finding other coping techniques for dealing with stress/anxiety/depression. (3) Eating out less and cooking/baking more.

DeguelloTex wrote: »

Patience and leaving emotion out of it. And a food scale.

This.

It's really helpful to me to approach this analytically. So what I did was think of my weight as a problem to solve like I'd approach a problem at work. I figured out what I was doing to gain weight and changed that--obviously what I was doing was eating excess calories, but I figured out precisely how I was doing it and the least painful way to instead have a calorie deficit. I also decided to create good habits, like exercise. And because I like data I used this tool and others (like a spreadsheet) to monitor stuff. When I messed up that was something to fix, not something to get upset or down on myself about. It was a logical problem, not an emotional thing. This made a huge difference in my ability to do it and sustain what I was doing and made it more interesting also.

Creating a community helps too. For various reasons I didn't want to talk about weight loss with people off line, so MFP was helpful there, but now that I'm into exercise and training activities it's easy to find communities and that helps me with motivation (as does training for things). For example, I got into running more by signing up for races and I've gotten much more serious about swimming by signing up for a masters swim group (which is also more fun than laps on my own).

Back in the day it was hiring a coach/trainer. Nowadays, patience.

Persistence & patience & my food scale and weighing everything in grams...no cups or spoons!
Plus i made an agreement/promise with myself..and because i am a person who keeps promises it is hard to break it.
And there are no and i have no excuses to not lose weight.

• Food scale
• Meal prep
• Thinking of exercise as a path to health- when I think of it as a part of weight loss, it feels like a chore
• Consistency

Food scale and water.

Congrats for your longest streak! I'm on mine currently. I've used MFP a few times before but this is the first time it has been sustainable for me.

I agree with others that getting a food scale was the thing that has helped most; there is no guessing measurements anymore! Also learning forgiveness and respect in regards to the process. I'm better at forgiving myself for slipping up and don't just throw in the towel because I've had an off day. Furthermore, learning to respect my body and appreciate it has been really important. I'm changing my lifestyle to get stronger and healthier.