How can I successfully loose weight and keep it off ?

champion818 · July 2018

Hey hope everyone is having a great day ! I want to come on here and just get some honest help and advice hopefully .

To give you a brief summary about me , I do suffer from obesity and have a major weight problem. I can safely say that a majority of my weight gain has been within a period of 2 years. From the age of 18 - 20 years old I have managed to put on a whopping 80 pounds . May of 2018 I weighed in at 305 pounds and since then have lost around 15 pounds which puts me at 288. I have struggled with gaining a mass amount and loosing for a while. This time I feel like it has been a tougher time for me because I actually hit 300 pounds and that was a weight I told myself I would never reach. I do not suffer from binge eating disorder because I never sit and just eat a mass amount of food . I believe I make poor decisions on what I eat overall. Looking back at how I ate food , I could have easily been consuming 4,000 calories a day . Now I consume 1,700 -2,000 calories a day which keeps me satisfied . I do light exercise and occasionally go to the gym during the week. ( no set plan , just come and go when i have time). I have been following this for about 2 months now ( besides last week i went on vacation and ate whatever i wanted.

I feel like I will become 600 pounds by the time i turn 30 because when i look at my weight history it shows i loose 20 pounds , but gain 40 more within the next 6 months . I spoke with my doctor and got blood work done . I am 100% healthy and my thyroid and hormonal levels are amazing , so it must not be anything medically wrong with me . He also brought up the discussion of considering weight loss surgery because I do technically fall under the requirements having a BMI of 44 being only 20 and suffering from asthma , depression and loosing my period completely because of my obesity .

I just want this to be the last time I go on a weight loss journy and fail at it because deep down inside i think i might not bounce back if im so far gone.

I included a photo of my weight gain just in 2 years so u can see how much damage i have done to myself .

kommodevaran · July 2018

Successful weight management starts with neutral and balanced information (and purging misinformation and emotional attachment). You need to know how weight is lost and gained, in order to understand how to maintain. You need to know yourself (psychology) and others (sociology). When you have that in place, you can start to take responsibility for your actions, trust yourself, trust the process, enjoy the process, enjoy yourself.

Weight is controlled by calories in/out. You control calories in/out when you eat and move. Your basic instincts, and your friends and family, and the restaurants and shopkeepers, will try to persuade you to eat more and move less, but your rational mind can override that. At the same time, media conveys social norms to be thin and strong, but also that it's perfectly normal to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, in unlimited amounts, and just sit all day, while at the same time that you shouldn't eat what you want, but that you can eat certain things in unlimited amounts, as long as you follow a specific, random, constantly changing, meal schedule, and that you should constantly be on the go. If we take in all this without a functional BS filter, it will create a deep conflict that makes us stressed. When you're calm and confident and well-informed, it's quite easy to not consistently eat too much. When you're anxious and feel helpless, food feels soothing, for a short while anyway.

Weight management is part body, part mind, part soul. It's hard work, and quite easy. It's doing the same day in, day out, but not boring. It's challenging and frustrating and rewarding. It's something important that we have to choose to do, something that noone can force us to do.

88olds · July 2018

Start a food diary. Log in everything you eat and drink that has calories. Use the MFP calculators to calculate a modest calorie deficit. At your current weight, you might start aimed at 2 lbs per week, but don’t get married to that number. 1 lb per week is more realistic. Get a food scale. Weigh everything you can. Measure liquids.

Use NI to crunch numbers at restaurants when possible. If you don’t know the numbers for a particular meal or dish, make a good faith estimate. Forget? Go back and fill things in as best you can.

Make your food diary priority #1. If you go over your number, keep your diary anyway. Totally mess up? Keep your diary anyway.

When you get to goal weight, keep your diary. Accept that there is no weight loss finish line

Think about how you will deal with the time it will take to lose the amount of weight you want to lose. Read this board, you’ll see what happens to people who think there is a weight loss express train. Think about how you will cope when discouraged. Good luck.

Jedi_Jo · July 2018

I too had a BMI of 44, and a health scare gave my the determination and mindset to change. My Doctor did explain about weight loss surgery, I declined as I knew I had to get my head in the right place.

I’ve changed my mindset I’m no longer on a diet, I’ve changed my lifestyle. My lifestyle change includes weighing, logging all my food/drink in MyFitnessPal, I take pictures of my food and upload my food diary on instagram. I don’t have cheat days/cheat meals as I no longer want to associate a certain food/meal with being bad! If I go over my calories, I still log everything. I’ve also completed C25K and I’ve now discovered a love for running/exercise.

It’s hard work at first, then it just becomes second nature logging all your food. Best of luck to you.

pinuplove · July 2018

Do not view your change in eating habits as temporary (a 'diet'). Maintaining control over how much you eat (and to a lesser degree, what you eat) is lifelong. Yes, at some point you will reach your goal weight and enter the next phase, maintenance. With that will come a modest increase in calories, but not a free license to go back to the habits that got you to 300 pounds. Commit to it for the long term. Don't do anything to lose weight that you aren't willing to do for the rest of your life.

And everything @kommodevaran said

fiddletime · July 2018

Someone on a different thread wrote that they “wanted to eat like normal people do”. To me, that implies that counting calories and limiting portion size isn’t what normal people do. It should be. This weight management process takes practice and is never “over”. The alternative seems far worse, to me. Just do what the app sets for you for your height and weight and weight loss goals. You’ll have slip ups. We all do. The most important thing to me, is what I do after I over eat (like the other day when I was 1300 calories over- but still logged it). There’s power in knowing that this is something you CAN do. It isn’t easy, and it has its hard times, but is something most of us can master.

How can I successfully loose weight and keep it off ?

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