What made you finally stop the cycle and stay on track?

I was a supreme yo yo dieter. Could never keep weight off or not feel hungry. Love sweets and carbs. The thing that finally worked for me was to give up sweets and high carbs for a short time. I just decided I could do at least 10 days. I noticed that I was not having cravings after a few days. Snacked on raw almonds and ate lean meat and veggies stir fried in olive oil. Ate quinoa and whole grains. Lost 25 lbs and had lots of energy. I used Dr. Oz's 10 day rapid weight loss plan to start. I'm not a big fan of a lot of things on Dr. Oz site, but this worked to get me started. You can then add more foods to keep the variety interesting.

I've stopped setting unrealistic expectations of myself. Instead of trying to make radical changes and lose the weight overnight, I've been making small changes I can sustain over time.

For the first time in my life I actually stayed the same weight over Christmas and new year, so this is a huge difference for me!

Daily walking really worked for me and helped me maintain my weightloss even when my diet was slipping.

In my experience, the starting and stopping and restarting mentality has a lot to do with unrealistic expectations of living this perfectly healthy lifestyle...nobody is 100% on all of the time and understanding that you're going to have good days and bad days and good weeks and bad weeks and even good months and bad months over the course of the hopefully many years of your life can help break that cycle. People tend to have a bad day or bad week or whatever and just throw their hands up and give up when what they really need to do is just acknowledge it and move on. When my oldest (5) was a toddler and learning to walk, he'd always fall down and I'd ask him, "what do we do when we fall down?" and he'd say, "get back up." When people take that all or nothing approach, they tend to struggle getting back up when they fall down...reality is that falling down is part of the process and should be embraced as such.

I'd also say, focusing on overall health and wellness and concerning yourself with maintaining an overall healthy lifestyle rather than focusing so heavily on maintaining a specific weight. When you maintain an overall healthy lifestyle, everything else tends to fall into place.

I've lived on both sides of the fence...I grew up involved in all manner of sports and athletics and was pretty active and fit until 30 when I took a desk job and started my family...I became more sedentary and my diet, while not horrible, wasn't that great either and I have a lot of hereditary predispositions so when I was 38 I decided I wanted to take back my health and returned to many of the healthy habits I had growing up and as a young adult...the rest took care of itself. Having been on both sides of that fence now makes me realize how superior being fit and healthy is which is motivation enough for me to maintain a pretty healthy lifestyle.

The day I got on the scale and it read the highest I'd ever been. At that moment I finally realised that only I could do anything about it. That was 5 months ago and I haven't looked back.

Changing the goal. If the goal is to get to a certain weight, then when you get there, it feels like you should be done, and thus begins the slide. If the goal has more to do with overall health and wellbeing, well that doesn't have a done point. FWIW

Over the past couple years, I just have been gaining weight and when I got motivated to lose it, it never lasted for long. This time I decided I just wasn't going to be in a hurry to lose, that I'm just going to keep at it. My real motivation is retirement next year. I'm tired of feeling exhausted, heading toward high blood pressure and pre-diabetes. I don't want to go into retirement that way. I want to be able to enjoy traveling and walking to see the sights.

Before I didn't have the knowledge I needed to keep weight off. Now that I do, there is no going back. It's a long process but well worth it. CICO and MFP to maintenance and beyond.

i was doing really well without external motivation, when i became pregnant and gained it all back. it was so hard to find the motivation to do it all over again! so i decided i would reward myself with a prize for every two weeks of logging. NOT even keeping to a calorie limit, JUST logging (wanted to really break things down into bite-size pieces. but logging everything made me keep to a caloric deficit anyway!) i decided what the prizes would be beforehand- they were not expensive and did not involve food, it was just something to look forward to to celebrate another two-week victory.

the funny thing is, once the pounds started coming off, that in itself was my motivation and i never once even bought one of the prizes on my list!