What diet has really worked for you over the long run to lose weight?

I figured what calorie deficit I needed each week to lose the extra weight and then adjusted how many calories I was eating to match that. I did that for a few months and dropped around 50lbs.

kommodevaran wrote: »

The eat whatever I want in appropriate amounts diet worked for me. I lost 50 pounds in a year.

If 10 pounds is all you have to lose, as in, that will make a significant difference to your appearance, one month is a very short and possible too short timeframe. You can expect to lose up to 1% of your total body weight per week, provided you do everything right - which is, logging correctly and consistently, hitting your calorie goal every day, no cheating, no forgetting.

^^ This but sometimes I cheated. I would however put in longer workout efforts afterwards.

nupururja wrote: »

There are so many different diets out there, having tried the low carb, south beach, LCHF ,Low calorie diet etc..which one has worked for you ? How much weight did you loose and in how much time?

I need to lose 10 pounds in a month before my wedding in december Help please!

Less calories in than calories out - or more calories out than calories in. They both work.

trigden1991 wrote: »

Eating in a calorie deficit, using tools like MFP and a food scale.

A calorie deficit is the only "diet" that works.

This.

nupururja wrote: »

There are so many different diets out there, having tried the low carb, south beach, LCHF ,Low calorie diet etc..which one has worked for you ? How much weight did you loose and in how much time?

I need to lose 10 pounds in a month before my wedding in december Help please!

The "diet" where I eat less food.

My Fitness Pal is great for this exact diet. You eat food you like (measure your portions) and then log it. Set a reasonable weekly weight loss goal. Hint - no more than 1 pound a week (fast weight loss is for obese people). Then meet that calorie goal.

If you choose to exercise, then log that activity & eat a portion of those earned calories as well. Only a portion because calorie burns are estimates. You can do this.

I lost 70 pounds following the south beach diet. I found it easy to follow and satisfying. The problem I found is that once you get closer to your goal weight, I stopped losing. It Is possible to follow the diet quite closely and still consume excess calories. I was able to maintain the loss until I got pregnant. Now I am just counting calories on mfp and have lost additional weight and now am 2 pounds from my initial south beach goal and plan to lose an additional 5 pounds before going to maintenance.

eating less calories than I burn.

TLDR: You have to choose what best works for YOU and adjust your consumption and energy expenditure as necessary to lose, maintain, or gain weight.

cwolfman13 wrote: »

nupururja wrote: »

There are so many different diets out there, having tried the low carb, south beach, LCHF ,Low calorie diet etc..which one has worked for you ? How much weight did you loose and in how much time?

I need to lose 10 pounds in a month before my wedding in december Help please!

All diets work on the same principle...all diets are designed to help put you in a calorie deficit...there's nothing magical about any specific diet plan...do the one you can do consistently.

Personally, if I were to pick an actual diet plan I would probably pick South Beach...the last stage is supposed to be your maintenance stage and you're supposed to do it forever...my eating closely mirrors Phase III of the SB diet but I gravitated towards that on my own.

This revelation/discovery was the biggest game changer for me. I don't like following diet plans created by others with rules like Paleo, Keto, Special K, etc. just to obtain a deficit. Once a named diet starts telling me what I can and cannot eat, I know I will start feeling unhappy and deprived. If that diet makes me feel that way, then I cannot adhere to it forever.
While none of us are special snowflakes to the laws governing CICO, we're all special snowflakes in HOW we best create the deficit needed to lose weight. For weight management, I only follow the one rule that matters: a balance of energy.
Being active helps. I walk a lot, mostly for fun, and the extra burn gives me wiggle room to eat more than I would otherwise have to eat if I were sedentary.
I personally find a food diary the best sustainable plan. It's just so easy to plug in whatever I crave for the day. Of course, I'm not silly enough to eat chips, candy, etc. all day long and expect to stay full and healthy, but I can fit in enough to keep me happy while maintaining a healthy weight. I don't feel deprived, and I'm healthy by pretty much all measures.
Still, I know some people don't like counting calories, and it drives them crazy enough so that keeping a food diary would not work for them in the long term. As such, once they come to better understand proper portion sizes, they come up with ways to keep them from overeating like not eating at times where they're likely to overeat when they'e not truly hungry (early morning, late at night, etc) or skipping/adding snacks if their body weight goes up/down.
The one thing everyone who maintains their weight loss successfully does do, however, is consistently eat as much as they burn.

I've lost 84 lb this year but this isn't a diet. All I do is eat Breakfast, Dinner, and Supper, using the MFP food diary to record what I plan to do and plan to get plenty of protein. I also use MFP to record the exercising I do, and I have done more exercising this year. I've even cooked some dishes I never tried before, and bought some books* I never would have heard of before. I've recently even learned to make traditional Neapolitan pizza dough and started culturing and consuming kefir. My weekend plans include my first attempt at culturing yogurt at home. But no, this isn't a diet. It's just a new life I'm living.

*Ken Forkish

The Run your A s s Off Diet.