What has helped you the most while trying to lose weight ??

Having at least one person that is also trying to lose weight and checking-in with each other daily to share what we're eating and our weight(weekly). Accountability is huge. Even if you go exercise with someone, you can share what your doing. It's something small that makes a huge difference.

Weighing food and being more active. I'd never have lost the weight without exercising.

Pre-logging and having an open diary, being held accountable was a huge motivator for me. Pre-logging was great because it took the confusion out of the day. There were no chances to make bad food choices because I already knew what I was going to eat. Also discovering the difference between want and need. Want wants a specific kind of food and need is happy with anything. Eat when you need to, hold off when you want to.

A lot of weightloss is retraining ourselves into better habits so start there and see how you go.

Two things. First is commitment and not just an interest in losing weight and second is moving more. I lost weight on mfp before with minimal exercise. this time I incorporated simple walking and the weight is falling off faster even though I am just fine with trusting the process and knowing it will take time.

Using a eating structure that you can actually follow. There is a bunch out there vegan, vegetarian, paleo, clean, IIFYM, intermittent fasting, etc.

All of them work for some people. The biggest thing, is learn which works best for you and go all chips all in. For me, I tried meal prep and eating "clean". BIG MISTAKE, for me. It lead to this nasty cycle of binge and punish for many many years. Affected tons of crap in my life, it all stemmed from lying to myself that this was working.

You need to be constient with what you do and trust the process. The reason I like IIFYM so much, is because I can still make my inner fat kid self happy with a cookie or something like that while dieting. Its freaking awesome, I lost fat eating burgers, poptarts, and all sorts of goodies:)

IIFYM, is not an excuse to everything, but it gives you flexibility to enjoy life in a day to day setting without losing your mind eating the same meal day after day. Its like budgeting, money:)

For example, my current macros are P:190 C:270 F:70...so yes I can afford a "bad" treat. However, if my macros were something like this P:190 C:195 F:50 then well "spending" my intake on that poptart may not be worth it at that time.

Ahhh another note, focus on fat loss not weight loss:) Losing weight is easy, stop drinking water and eating food. In doing this you achieve your goal of weight loss, in the short term. Often people like myself using this approach gain all the fat back plus some due to metabolic adaptions and other bodily functions.

Instead make adjustments based on your progress, use the mirror along with the scale:)

1. Logging in every bite.
2. Being accountable - even if it is just to my computer LOL
3. Eating more protein and "good" fats
4. Weighing and measuring my food
5. Realizing there are no "bad" foods. If I want an ounce of chips, I have them. I just make sure they are logged in full-well knowing that they're a lot of calories and I will have to cut back somewhere else.
6. Working out. It keeps me positive, puts me in a good mood, and keeps my body humming and toned.
7. Finally accepting that losing weight is a slow process. A one pound loss is joyous to me now, rather than depressing.