How long have you kept the weight off?

I lost 42lbs over 20 years ago and have never put on more than 5lbs.
1. I always knew I really wanted to be a specific weight and I reminded myself of it on a daily basis
2. I got a PT (although I'd always been highly active) did a fat-burning 30 day challenge to kick start a routine, and most important found a weight loss coach
3. I too my time to change my habits - 6-12 months. It takes 66 days to develop a new habit on average. It's a change for life without deprivation eating real delicious food.

If you'd like any more advice, please get in touch. It's my passion helping others get slim and stay slim forever.

I lost 100lbs in 57 weeks in 2005-2006, from 260lbs to 160lbs (at the upper end of the "healthy" BMI range for a 5'8" woman). From 2006-2012 my weight was stable in a range +/- 5lbs from goal and I kind of patted myself on the back a lot. Now, at almost 11 years out, I can more cautiously say that I have kept off MOST of the weight MOST of the time since I first hit goal.

This is because more recently, several things happened that changed my weight that weren't under my control. In 2012 I gained and then very quickly lost again about 30lbs after I developed thyroid disease and had treatment. Just as my weight was stabilizing back in my preferred range, I was hospitalized and then diagnosed with another much more serious and life-altering illness that resulted in me being put on high dose steroids (prednisone) for the last three years. Weight gain is an extremely common side effect of several of the drugs I take, especially prednisone, and especially when combined with an illness that left me mostly housebound and too sick to do even do basic exercise.

By this spring, when I finally started to get better, I was up about 25lbs from my original goal at 185lbs, even though I was very careful with the things that I could control (calories in, mainly). Despite this gain, I have been very lucky in this respect -- it's not unusual for people to gain 50-100lbs on the mix of drugs I currently take. I do think that being accustomed to managing my weight helped me keep the gain down to "just" 25lbs. I am now working on getting back to my preferred range. I have about 18lbs to go.

In the 12 years since I first started losing weight, I think these are the 3 most important things I've learned:

1. The thing that worked above anything for me was trying out different things, and working out which of them had the potential to be PERMANENT changes. Not "Ugh, I'll put up with this for now while I lose weight but then I'll stop", but "I'm willing to eat like this forever, starting now." That meant, basically, learning what and how I really wanted to eat and then eating like that. So, these days, I eat the same number and types of meals whether I am losing weight or maintaining. I eat, broadly speaking, the same foods, just more or less of them. I made some big changes in 2005-6 when I initially lost weight, and I put my ability to maintain down to the fact that although they were big, a lot of them turned out to be changes I have been able to sustain for over a decade.

2. The ideal maintenance range for you is whatever weight you like and can maintain. Not the number in some calculator on the internet. Not what your mother thinks you should weigh. Not what some random person on a website says. The weight YOU like, and the weight YOU can maintain. For sure there are women the same height (5'8") and build (large, based on my wrist and elbow dimensions) who weigh a lot less than me or want to weigh a lot less than my personal ideal weight range. However, I have to be honest: I am pretty sure if I had to work really hard at just staying the same weight I would very quickly get tired of all that effort. I like 160lbs, it's within the "healthy/normal" BMI range for my height (just barely) and above all, it's a really easy weight for me to maintain. I'll take sticking at 160lbs easily over struggling to maintain and/or yo-yo-ing up and down around a lower number every time. Only you can decide how much effort you're willing to put into maintaining over the long run.

3. When you think about the long run, you have to acknowledge that sometimes things are going to happen and your weight is going to be affected, and that's OK. Some of those things are out of your control: e.g. I got sick and ended up on a drug that causes weight gain. Unless you lead an incredibly charmed life, you are going to have difficult, stressful or upsetting times, and then things that ARE under your control can start to slide. When I'm maintaining around my preferred weight, I do hit the upper end of my weight range (around 165lbs) sometimes. For me, personally, I am probably always going to struggle not to eat my feelings. I am probably always going to struggle to make myself go work out when I'm stressed rather than lying in a pathetic heap. The only thing I can do is try to recognize when that happens, stop if I can, and start again from wherever I ended up. You can't hate the pounds back off -- self-loathing will not make you thinner, it will just make you miserable.

It's five years this year that I lost 140lbs. I gained back 41 last year but at this juncture, I've lost 36 of those 41.