How Easy Was It For You To Lose Weight?
JragonTree
Posts: 5 Member
Hello MFP community!!
I've been using MFP for about 1.5 years now and just decided to check out the forums....I've lost 30lbs and maintained it from simply logging my foods and exercising.
I'm plateauing at 30 lbs weight lost cause I'm finding that I can't reduce my meals (or rather I don't want to, 'cause there's so much good food around throughout the day and it's hard to resist).
Question is: how easy was it for you to lose weight?
The first 30 lbs was pretty easy for me and I didn't change a whole lot in my diet (more greens and smaller portions).
Honestly, the hard part for me was just eating less and being held accountable to go to the gym.
What's your weight loss story?
I've been using MFP for about 1.5 years now and just decided to check out the forums....I've lost 30lbs and maintained it from simply logging my foods and exercising.
I'm plateauing at 30 lbs weight lost cause I'm finding that I can't reduce my meals (or rather I don't want to, 'cause there's so much good food around throughout the day and it's hard to resist).
Question is: how easy was it for you to lose weight?
The first 30 lbs was pretty easy for me and I didn't change a whole lot in my diet (more greens and smaller portions).
Honestly, the hard part for me was just eating less and being held accountable to go to the gym.
What's your weight loss story?
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Replies
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It was relatively easy for me. I had 30 lbs to lose. I was at the top of the normal BMI range.
My calories all the way through and into maintenance were 1200 without exercise.
I didn't like the way I looked so I stuck with my cals and worked out, eating back the exercise cals.
It was slow, a whole year for the 30 lbs, but it was easy.
I wanted my outside to match my inside more than I wanted to eat all the food all the time.
Deteemination to reach ones goals goes a long way.
Something you should do is look at what your calories for maintenance at your goal weight will be. If that is not a calorie goal that you will find sustainable, reassess your goal.
Cal you have a slower rate of loss for this next stage? This will give you a few more calories.
Cheers, h.
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I lost about 65-70 lbs at a rate of about 4 lbs per month fairly easy.
Then like a lot of guys I hit the gym. Lifted. Ate. Stayed at 215-220 for years. My goal had been 204. Never got below 212.
Then I joined Weight Watchers. This was my first experience with a food log. It worked. I lost all the way to 170 in about 6 months. I was uncomfortable some of the time, but it wasn't so bad.0 -
JragonTree wrote: »Question is: how easy was it for you to lose weight?
What's your weight loss story?
Very easy and straightforward.
I stuck to net 1250 calories for the first 16 weeks and lost 15 kg.
Took a 1-month break.
Stuck to net 1350 calories for the next 16 weeks and lost an additional 10 kg ... and arrived at the lowest weight I've been since my early 30s, and also the lower half of my normal BMI range.
That said, there were occasional melt-down days during that time, but I hung in there and usually felt better the next day.
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First 30 lbs or so was extremely easy. I just had to stop eating so much crap and have a more nutritionally well rounded diet. After that I had to start counting calories for the next 20ish lbs but it still felt easy. Once I hit a healthy weight, weight loss was very frustrating and I had some challenges. Overall, I think that the physical act of losing weight has been easier than the some of the psychological aspects of it (body image, etc.)4
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I struggled, a lot. I lost an average of about 20 pounds per year. I would do well and lose 5 pounds then struggle for a few months gaining and re-losing the same 3 pounds until things clicked again and I was down 5 more.2
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JragonTree wrote: »
Question is: how easy was it for you to lose weight?
What's your weight loss story?
Not easy.
I've spent more time maintaining my weight whilst trying to lose than losing.
I've finally had success this year, for the first time since 2012 (mostly pregnancy weight ). I lost about 22 pounds since Thanksgiving. I have lost 15 since April but it's been a struggle. July has felt like a total wash, reminding me of 2013-2016. Bah.0 -
Mixed. I have had a hard 10 year slow Yo-Yo. Lose, maintain for a year, then gain back all the weight plus 15 lbs more. The "hard" part is accepting that I will always need to log, forever, not just during the loss times. I hate logging. I resent the need to pay so much attention to almost every bite I take. But it works so I need to get over my anger that I can't eat like naturally thin people.5
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It's pretty easy for me to lose weight, a bit more difficult to keep it off, but a lot easier with the right tools and attitudes. I had to rearrange my food environment, my eating habits, cook more, educate myself, learn to handle stress and emotions better, and simply start to think like a normal weight person.
I think you're way ahead of the game because you're honest about what's holding you back from losing more - not eating at a calorie deficit, and not wanting to do that, and acknowledging temptations.
If you want the rest of your weight to go away and stay away (great job on the 30 you've already lost, btw), you have to eat less, there is no way around that. The most effective approach is to want it, but in order to want it, you have to find a way to eat less that you like, because this, you'll be doing for a long, long time (the rest of your life). Exactly what that would be, is up to you to find out, but a suggestion to what you can do, is reframing:
You can still eat good food, and eat what you like, but you have to be more ruthless in your priorities - work smarter, not harder. Plan your meals. Plan for meals you know you enjoy, line up your favorites. Base your intake on rewarding, but not too stimulating, foods. Don't bring home foods you tend to want to overeat, instead eat them at intervals, reserve them for special occasions where servings are controlled because portions are normal, or by social norms. Eating at "all you can eat" buffets are best avoided as much as possible, until you feel more relaxed around food. (Keep in mind that even though you may find eating relaxing, overeating so much that you've gotten overweight, is an indication that the way you are eating, is somehow causing you stress.)
Exercise moderately (whatever that means to you), find an activity you enjoy, keep at it, and change it up when you don't enjoy it anymore.
Get enough sleep and rest, too.
Then accept that no plan is so great and perfect that you'll never feel tempted to overeat, or never find yourself having overeaten. That is perfectly OK! If you make it easier to make better choices, you will make better choices, and if you make good choices more often than bad choices, you will succeed.2 -
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I feel like pretty much everyone else on this thread. The first thirty pounds hasn't been too tough, but now I've hit a plateau. I understand "eat less" and I get the idea that as weight goes down, so does BMR, so net calories need to decline. I have two issues: 1) How do you accurately track calories used? I can count steps, and measure activities -- but knowing how that links to calories used is hard to figure. 2) How much "less" food? I don't have any desire to lose weight fast -- I'm quite happy with 1-2 pounds/week -- but I do want to shed another 30 pounds.0
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I was able to lose at first at 1200 Cal, but then was at a standstill until I increased my calories to between 1500-1650 or so with a light workout. Then the weight and inches started coming off again. Sometimes less is not the answer!6
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I feel like pretty much everyone else on this thread. The first thirty pounds hasn't been too tough, but now I've hit a plateau. I understand "eat less" and I get the idea that as weight goes down, so does BMR, so net calories need to decline. I have two issues: 1) How do you accurately track calories used? I can count steps, and measure activities -- but knowing how that links to calories used is hard to figure. 2) How much "less" food? I don't have any desire to lose weight fast -- I'm quite happy with 1-2 pounds/week -- but I do want to shed another 30 pounds.
1) Estimate low. Don't count all your steps ... only log actual exercise. When you log actual exercise, choose the low/light/slow options even if you think you put in much more of an effort. Then eat 50-75% of your exercise calories back.
2) Have you entered your details into MFP ... selected sedentary as your activity level ... and chosen to lose 1 lb/week? When you did that, how many calories did MFP give you?0 -
Very easy and very hard.
Very easy in that it is a simple rule of eat less than burn.
Very hard in that it takes willpower.7 -
I already owned a treadmill. I didn't have to join a gym for that. Once I decided to do it, doing it was easy. Deciding to do it was hard.3
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I'm not even half way there yet, but I've lost 30 pounds and its been pretty easy so far. Honestly I never really tried to lose weight before because I had an idea in my head that it was going to be super hard and I would fail. So compared to that, 4 months later and 32 pounds down it has been easy. But I have a tendency to assume things are going to be worse than they actually are.1
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »I already owned a treadmill. I didn't have to join a gym for that. Once I decided to do it, doing it was easy. Deciding to do it was hard.
Yeah ... kind of the same thing with me and my bicycles.
There I was struggling and wheezing up hills on my bicycle, and having a miserable time. Then one day in early December 2014, I thought ... "I could continue to have a miserable time ... or I could start to do something about it".
I started attacking the local hills and cycling a lot more ... and then in mid-Feb 2015, I joined MFP. 0 -
Very easy and very hard.
Very easy in that it is a simple rule of eat less than burn.
Very hard in that it takes willpower.
This sums it up perfectly imo.
Everybody wants to be fit. And there are resources available to most to go be fit. But the desire or the information is not the hard part. The hard part is actually having the determination to keep at it (which I'm slowly learning).0 -
If you've plateaued, just switch up on something, whether it be how you workout, frequency, intensity. Or try a different method of eating, such as Intermittent fasting or keto.0
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I lost a total of about 40 Lbs...for me it was pretty easy but I think that is largely due to the fact that I was basically scared for my life if I didn't get my *kitten* together.
I had gone to the doctor for my 38 year checkup and basically walked out of there as someone just over the line of obese with much of my weight being held in my mid section, pre-diabetes, triglycerides so high that they couldn't even get a reading on my cholesterol, and stage II hypertension. Basically very close to full on metabolic syndrome.
My doctor was pretty blunt and told me that if I didn't get it together, I was looking at being quite sick if not dead by 60. My dad had all of this stuff as well and he was diagnosed in his late 30s...did nothing about it and ended up dying of a widow maker heart attack at 62 (though he was still alive at this time, just sick) so I knew my doctor wasn't just blowing smoke up my *kitten*.
At the time I had an infant and a 2 year old boy at home, so I found this to be pretty much unacceptable, not to mention irresponsible. I started really just focusing on my nutrition and improving my diet overall as well as getting off my *kitten* and moving more...I wasn't really tremendously focused on weight loss...I was focused on treating myself better. I improved my diet and started walking a lot...I also quit a 2-3 PAD smoking habit.
I lost my first 20 or so pounds just eating better and walking a lot, but as a former competitive athlete I started getting more interested in my fitness which is when I joined this site and lost an additional 20 Lbs. It took me a total of about 8-9 months or so...that first 20 came off a lot faster (maybe 2-3 months or so) than the last 20 but I think that is due in large part to me being more interested in fitness and eating properly for my fitness. I'm pretty sure that for those first 20 Lbs, I was eating better, but I was also under-eating.
Fortunately, my dad was around to see this transformation and he was so incredibly proud that I had turned things around and chose a different path than he had. He passed away in December of 2013 about 1 year and 3 months after I started all of this good livin' stuff. He, along with my two boys and my beautiful wife are the reasons I will never turn back.
ETA: I never really had some particular weight in mind. I was really just more interested in improving me blood work. It took about 1 year to get a clean bill of health with everything reversed except my hypertension which at this point seems to be a hereditary thing...but I take less medication for it now and it is much better controlled than it was previously. Weight is just a number...I'm healthy and I'm at a healthy 12-15% BF these days and that's what matters to me the most.
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I'd say at first it was easier , being heavier it's easier for weight to come off . First 30 lbs took 6 months ..now have another 30 to go . Now it's getting harder , don't see the scale moving as much , but still loosing inches which is great . Changing up my workouts every week and staying on track calorie wise . For me it's hard to stay focused if there's a special occasion that revolves around food . That usually sets me back , but the next day I start again and get back on track feeling so much better .1
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It's been hard sometimes and easy sometimes. I have lost 105 pounds in four years. Navigating life and parties and celebrations and figuring out how to change lifelong habits and behaviors for good. That was the hard part. The scale not cooperating at times is hard. It is worth sticking with it even if you backslide now and then. If you keep trying and work on consistency it works.1
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I'm 5'4" and getting from 155 to 135 was relatively easy over about a four-month period. I stayed there for quite some time because I had a lot of life happening and decided to maintain until things calmed down. I'm now down to 130 but that 5 pounds took around 3 months. I'd like to get down even more but I'm also training for a half-marathon so my fitness goals are contrary to carrying too much of a deficit.
It's hard at this point because you have to be so accurate for such a long period of time and the deficit is so small that even one day of crazy can wipe out the deficit from your entire week or more.1 -
kommodevaran wrote: »It's pretty easy for me to lose weight, a bit more difficult to keep it off, but a lot easier with the right tools and attitudes. I had to rearrange my food environment, my eating habits, cook more, educate myself, learn to handle stress and emotions better, and simply start to think like a normal weight person.
I think you're way ahead of the game because you're honest about what's holding you back from losing more - not eating at a calorie deficit, and not wanting to do that, and acknowledging temptations.
If you want the rest of your weight to go away and stay away (great job on the 30 you've already lost, btw), you have to eat less, there is no way around that. The most effective approach is to want it, but in order to want it, you have to find a way to eat less that you like, because this, you'll be doing for a long, long time (the rest of your life). Exactly what that would be, is up to you to find out, but a suggestion to what you can do, is reframing:
You can still eat good food, and eat what you like, but you have to be more ruthless in your priorities - work smarter, not harder. Plan your meals. Plan for meals you know you enjoy, line up your favorites. Base your intake on rewarding, but not too stimulating, foods. Don't bring home foods you tend to want to overeat, instead eat them at intervals, reserve them for special occasions where servings are controlled because portions are normal, or by social norms. Eating at "all you can eat" buffets are best avoided as much as possible, until you feel more relaxed around food. (Keep in mind that even though you may find eating relaxing, overeating so much that you've gotten overweight, is an indication that the way you are eating, is somehow causing you stress.)
Exercise moderately (whatever that means to you), find an activity you enjoy, keep at it, and change it up when you don't enjoy it anymore.
Get enough sleep and rest, too.
Then accept that no plan is so great and perfect that you'll never feel tempted to overeat, or never find yourself having overeaten. That is perfectly OK! If you make it easier to make better choices, you will make better choices, and if you make good choices more often than bad choices, you will succeed. [/quot
I really really love everything you said.0 -
A lot of what's been said already... driven by bad bloodwork, I knew I needed to change my diet. I also knew I didn't just want to lose weight; I wanted to be fit. Lost 30 lbs and traded photography for running as a main source of personal entertainment starting early 2016. Maintaining since November. I underestimated how much of a mental game maintenance would be... way harder to maintain than it was to lose.2
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A lot of what's been said already... driven by bad bloodwork, I knew I needed to change my diet. I also knew I didn't just want to lose weight; I wanted to be fit. Lost 30 lbs and traded photography for running as a main source of personal entertainment starting early 2016. Maintaining since November. I underestimated how much of a mental game maintenance would be... way harder to maintain than it was to lose.
Curious what you mean by mental game.. ?
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I have lost 32lbs so far, in order for me to get this far, I exercise, i cut out salt, I no longer eat pork, beef or fried foods and i count calories.l also drink plenty of water. When i get bored with my diet i indulge in things that my diet dont consist of but i dont go overboard and i still count calories and get right back on track because i am motivated by the fact that i am the only one that can do this, noone can do it for me. But it was not easy for me1
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It hasn't been easy at all. I don't have much support. Its not easy to get to the gym. Everytime I tell my husband I'm going to try to eat healthy he buys me something sweet knowing I have an insatiable sweet tooth and no will power what so ever.0
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Don't make annoucements about what you intend to do, and throw salt or something bitter on to whatever sweet things he brings home
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Maybe it's a subconscious thing. He doesn't want me to lose weight so that others won't look at me. Not that I'm much to look at but he was interested. So.......0
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It was very difficult for me. For the first 2+ years, I tried eating at a calorie deficit. Based on the CICO formula, I should have been losing significantly faster - about 4-5 times faster. During that time, I have several "true" plateaus where I was still eating at a deficit and just wasn't losing weight. I tried various things to end each plateau, but ultimately they ended on their own at unpredictable times. Fortunately, plateaus ended with a "whoosh" and the longest plateau was about 5-6 months, so that "whoosh" was several lbs. over only a few days time.
After spending more than 2 years struggling, hungry, and yet still losing only 25 lbs.; I tried switching to low carb. I started at the high end - 150g per day - and gradually decreased carbs over 6 months until I was at about 20g-30g net carbs daily. I lost steadily over this time, and the CICO formula finally matched the scale and I lost almost 25 lbs. more during that 6 months. Then I stalled out at 20g-30g per day. After stalling for 6 months, I decided to go zero carb / carnivorous, which has been successful for a few months now.
The part I continue struggling with is low calorie intake. Now that I'm down to 10 lbs. left to lose, and my RMR is 1,500 (tested in a lab); I need to exercise a lot to eat much or just not eat much. My calorie goal, before exercise, is 1,300 daily. I have a difficult time sticking with that. At this point, I'm going to stay zero carb / carnivorous because it helps keep BG stable and has proven to work better and be easier than anything else I've tried as of yet. But to get the last few lbs. of fat to go away, I'm starting to switch away from fatty meats (pork, beef) to eat more lean meats. If I get 120g-150g of protein per day from fish, chicken, and eggs; there is less fat with that and fewer calories than the same protein from pork and beef. As a result, I'm going to need to use body fat for energy rather than dietary fat. I'm hoping I can get rid of the final 10 lbs. by the end of 2017.3
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