You lost weight & have maintained it. Did you focus on healthier foods or just restrict calories????
NVintage
Posts: 1,463 Member
I know exercise is a huge part of maintaining weight loss, but how have you had to change your diet? Do you eat less the same foods or did you focus on eating healthier, more nutritious foods?
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For quite some time I had already shifted my focus from eating to lose weight to eating to be healtier. For that to happen, I had to choose more nutritious foods that were better for me AND help me feel better, while choosing less of the not-so-nutritious ones. When I sought out to lose some more weight, I began tracking my foods, while also focusing on more protein and fiber. I still have some kind of treat everyday, whether it's a piece of chocolate or a small piece of cake (and sometimes more than one). For me, it really helped when I told myself that nothing was off limits, but I had to keep my priorities in mind. The truth is, I just feel better when I eat more nutritious foods.17
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For me it's mostly a question of keeping a high level of exercise and eating less of the foods that caused my weight gain. We eat out much less often and when we do I usually skip fries and milk shakes. I drink only one beer, not two or three. I get a donut about every 6 months instead of every week. My diet was never that bad, but I do tend to let 'treats' become too frequent if I'm not careful.9
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I focused on both, but I know that the reason I lost weight is because I kept a sustainable calorie deficit.
You can eat nothing but "healthy" food (I don't, I still have treats), but that's not going to make you thin on its own. If you eat more than you need, you'll gain weight. There's no way around that.12 -
Going from 280+ to ~155 nothing was off or on the table.
Am I more active? ABSOLUTELY. Both by design and, now, by choice and, more importantly, preference.
Did I change what I eat... yes/no.
I certainly don't go out for all you can eat twice a day. Or even once a day. But I did/do once in a while.
I still eat fast food. Just not the same fast food or in the same quantities.
I DID have the "DELUSION" that some things were healthy... like: let me poor some olive oil on my steak because olive oil is healthy and steak is unhealthy <- yes, this really DID happen. I am much more likely to have my steak without olive oil these days.
I still use butter... by the 5g measure, not by the half a stick measure. But I often don't use butter at all.
So food did change to become more filling for less calories.
But the goodies drawer is STILL deadly... even if some of the ice cream is 90 Cal instead of 300 (though some 300's are still available!)...Current state of goodies drawer and freezer...
(short url): https://v.gd/tafuza
(already expanded): https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipO9yyg4BcEZr78_06a9Gc5VVFfXjxHVhnU6vCjfkt2nR0Ni0FfPo1-P7D_U69uE0A?key=YVZkYV9EaWtrRXFHcGVXUlpXXzhZVFRYcVhtWkN3
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I have always eaten like 50% "healthy foods" and 50% convenience food, fast food, treat food. Before, during, and after. I gained 5-10 lbs over the last year so I'm trying to lose that again, but I'd been maintaining for a couple years before that.
For me, healthy means eating enough protein and fiber, eating a variety of fruits & veggies, and eating the right amount of calories while staying active.
For what it's worth, I only had 20 lbs to lose in the first place. Perhaps the answers will be different depending on what a person's original diet was like and how much their health was affected by their weight in the first place?6 -
My diet was never, overall, bad. Not even when I was obese. There was just *way* too many, and too much of, calorie dense foods. I also always had treats, but occasionally. The problem was, again, I ate too much of them when I had them.
Ie: in a given day I'd use 2tbsp each of cream + a lot of ugar (in my coffee), butter (on toast), a tbsp of mayo on a sandwich and about 4 tspb of ranch on a salad. that is NINE HUNDRED CALORIES for 9 tablespoons of food.
These days I do a cup of unsweetened almond milk and stevia (30 calories), 1 tbsp of light country crock on the toast (when I bother) for 35, I don't LIKE mayo and just skip to mustard for about 5, and do ranch seasoning (5 cal) in 1/2 cup nonfat plain greek yogurt (35) ( I weigh these things MOST of the time but measurements for example) for...110 calories.
That's 800 calories off what I was eating, painlessly.
I still eat a brownie, too. It just used to be if I bought a pack of 3 brownies, I'd eat all 3.
I still go out for fast food sometimes - but I get the chicken and I skip the fries I NEVER WANTED ANYWAY.
The bulk of my preferences were always generally healthy. I just did dumb things.
My big hurdles were ignorance (I had NO idea I was adding close to 1K of calories to my food with CONDIMENTS, good grief), and a weird emotional thing where I saw 'treat' foods as some limited resource, making it a 'now or never' proposition every time I walked past a candy bar.
The second was way harder to get a grip on.
(I haven't kept it off yet, exactly. I am still working on my last 10 or so pounds to total goal weight, but I'm pretty confident in what was off the rails with me and that the track I'm on is one I can stay on without effort. )10 -
I was already eating fairly healthy foods, I just had an issue with portion control. For context I lost over 100lb in about 2004 by just improving my diet and exercising with no calorie counting, then put maybe 40lb back on again very slowly over the next 15 years which averages out at a couple of hundred calories a week over maintenance. Not stupidly out of balance but it built up over time.
Actually logging properly and controlling portions has made it all drop off again (and a bit more too - I'm lower than my original goal weight) without really needing the change what I eat that much.4 -
I was maintaining long term with a healthy diet before weight loss, just at too high a weight.
To lose weight I just had to find a way to eat less for a period of time, maintenance at goal weight was a return to normal for me - just slimmer.
As both my activity level and exercise volume have gone up compared to my life before weight loss, primarilly due to retiring from full-time work giving me more time, I eat significantly more now.7 -
I was maintaining long term with a healthy diet before weight loss, just at too high a weight.
To lose weight I just had to find a way to eat less for a period of time, maintenance at goal weight was a return to normal for me - just slimmer.
As both my activity level and exercise volume have gone up compared to my life before weight loss, primarilly due to retiring from full-time work giving me more time, I eat significantly more now.
ALSO THIS.
I mean clearly I don' tlook like your profile pic but when I lost weight I felt better. When I felt better, I moved more. Since I move more and picked up a new active hobby or two, I burn more calories and have more muscle. I've had to INCREASE my calories this maintenance break over previous ones by a good 300 calories to stop losing when I'm trying to maintain.
WILD.9 -
I eat a lot of nutrient-dense foods, but I did that when I was overweight too. My weight management is 100% due to focusing on eating the number of calories that my body needs, regardless of what I'm eating.9
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When I was losing weight, I definitely had a very healthy diet but it also included some treats. Initially my only exercise was an occasional walk, but as the weight came off, I felt more comfortable going back to the pool. Near the end of my weight loss journey, I swopped occasional walks for swimming 3-4 times a week.
During weight loss and during the first few years of maintenance, I tried to meet my nutritional macros but I was definitely not obsessed about it. As I did during weight loss, I continued to eat a mainly healthy diet and carried on the good habits I had developed in order to lose weight.
In lockdown (UK), I definitely don't feel my eating has been as good/healthy as it was although I still meet my weekly calorie goal. I eat a lot of fruit, but equally I eat a lot of crisps! During lockdlown, I am walking10,000 steps plus a day which has definitely resulted in me shedding a few pounds that I didn't necessarily need to lose. I probably should be eating more to compensate for the extra exercise but I do struggle with that.
I think exercise helps keep you in the right frame of mind when you reach maintenance so I will continue exercising in one form or other, even though I am quite lazy and would rather not!4 -
I know exercise is a huge part of maintaining weight loss, but how have you had to change your diet? Do you eat less the same foods or did you focus on eating healthier, more nutritious foods?
When I was obese, I was quite active (training, even competing, as an athlete, for around a dozen years while still obese). I'd been getting decent nutrition, eating a range of healthy foods (had been vegetarian for 40+ years at that point, reasonably attentive to nutrition), but also eating too much, and eating a bunch of less nutrient-dense, calorie-dense stuff. I didn't eat lots of so called junk food, hardly any fast food, close to never drank soda/pop.
To lose weight, I didn't appreciably change my exercise activity. (To do so would cause poor life balance, for me.) I also didn't change the foods I ate, but did change portion size, proportions of the different foods, frequency of the more calorie-dense things . . . and probably dropped a few foods because not all that yummy to me, but very calorie dense (although it's hard to tell, maybe I just changed the frequency to "once every 10 years"? 😆).
I'm now in year 5+ of maintenance, after having been obese for around 30 years before weight loss. I'm still doing about the same amount/types of exercise I've done for nearly 18 years, obese or thin. I'm still eating about the same foods (and drinking the same drinks) I've eaten (or drunk) for . . . jeez, a long time, decades, but still in different portions, proportions, frequencies than when I was obese.
I think the patterns are going to be pretty individualistic, between people. It matters where the issues were.
Weight loss seems likely to be more successful, if somewhat personalized. I'm 100% convinced that for maintenance to be successful, it *has* to be personalized: It needs to be tailored to our own preferences, strengths, challenges, limitations.15 -
I think the patterns are going to be pretty individualistic, between people. It matters where the issues were.
Weight loss seems likely to be more successful, if somewhat personalized. I'm 100% convinced that for maintenance to be successful, it *has* to be personalized: It needs to be tailored to our own preferences, strengths, challenges, limitations.
This!
Weight gain for me is mostly about portion control (though last Easter milk chocolate Easter eggs proved the final straw as I gained back 7kg to end pretty much exactly where I had started in 2014, which is right on the borderline between overweight and obese for me in bmi terms). Generally -apart from those Easter eggs - I eat a healthy, balanced diet, but if I don't think about portions I eat more than I need to maintain. It's not by a lot but my weight just creeps up month by month. Last time I was in "maintenance" it never felt like any monthly gain was enough to do anything about, and then came the lockdown after Easter period and it was all back again.
My aim this time is to set my trigger at the top of my maintenance range instead of the top of my overweight bmi range. This means daily weighing and, a colour coded spreadsheet (lighter green towards the top of my maintenance range, orange above...), and coming back to mfp when my weight creeps back up to the top of that range. I am hoping that long term I'll develop a much better sense of what I should be eating to maintain this weight.
Part of my own challenge is that until my mid 30s I found that I could eat pretty much what I liked and stay roughly the same weight, which was about 7kg less than my present goal/maintenance weight. I never had to watch portions and so I never learned to do it. (At that time in my life I didn't even own a set of bathroom scales.) That changed radically in my mid 30s and my mind took a long time to catch up and to admit that I had gained weight and needed to understand why. That's when i began to think about portion sizes.5 -
I've always paid attention to the food I ate: shopped the farmers markets in summer for veggies, bought meat and eggs directly from farms, hardly ever ate fast food or drank pop. I even ate a 100% plant based diet for a year (and managed to gain 20 pounds). I exercised regularly too. I went to the gym several times a week and walked the dog every day. So for me, it was definitely about portion control. Once I was able to manage that, everything fell into place.10
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Logging the calories has been the key for me i.e. not losing track of how much I am consuming if I decide to have a treat. My diet content has not changed hugely. I follow the 16:8 fasting protocol (have done this since before it became a "thing") as it helps me regulate my calories. I do eat more "healthy" foods now, simply because they fill me up and keep me feeling full, plus I want to fuel my exercise. The biggest change is drastically cutting down on alcohol calories.2
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I agree! I think there are a lot of things that will help everyone like exercise and stress management, but as far as diet goes I think we just have to figure out what works for us, personally. I'm sort of surprised about how many people on this thread AND people I know personally already had a pretty healthy diet, as far as food choices, even before losing weight!I know exercise is a huge part of maintaining weight loss, but how have you had to change your diet? Do you eat less the same foods or did you focus on eating healthier, more nutritious foods?
When I was obese, I was quite active (training, even competing, as an athlete, for around a dozen years while still obese). I'd been getting decent nutrition, eating a range of healthy foods (had been vegetarian for 40+ years at that point, reasonably attentive to nutrition), but also eating too much, and eating a bunch of less nutrient-dense, calorie-dense stuff. I didn't eat lots of so called junk food, hardly any fast food, close to never drank soda/pop.
To lose weight, I didn't appreciably change my exercise activity. (To do so would cause poor life balance, for me.) I also didn't change the foods I ate, but did change portion size, proportions of the different foods, frequency of the more calorie-dense things . . . and probably dropped a few foods because not all that yummy to me, but very calorie dense (although it's hard to tell, maybe I just changed the frequency to "once every 10 years"? 😆).
I'm now in year 5+ of maintenance, after having been obese for around 30 years before weight loss. I'm still doing about the same amount/types of exercise I've done for nearly 18 years, obese or thin. I'm still eating about the same foods (and drinking the same drinks) I've eaten (or drunk) for . . . jeez, a long time, decades, but still in different portions, proportions, frequencies than when I was obese.
I think the patterns are going to be pretty individualistic, between people. It matters where the issues were.
Weight loss seems likely to be more successful, if somewhat personalized. I'm 100% convinced that for maintenance to be successful, it *has* to be personalized: It needs to be tailored to our own preferences, strengths, challenges, limitations.
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That's me...I could eat whatever I wanted until I was 34 and stay slim. For me, it's not so much quantity control for everything, as it is just the rich gravies, butter, and cheeses that I used to eat all the time. So I have had to change my diet a little since I've gotten older. If I do eat rich foods like that, especially over pasta, I'll portion it out in little 1/2 cup ramekins and save some for later.I think the patterns are going to be pretty individualistic, between people. It matters where the issues were.
Weight loss seems likely to be more successful, if somewhat personalized. I'm 100% convinced that for maintenance to be successful, it *has* to be personalized: It needs to be tailored to our own preferences, strengths, challenges, limitations.
This!
Weight gain for me is mostly about portion control (though last Easter milk chocolate Easter eggs proved the final straw as I gained back 7kg to end pretty much exactly where I had started in 2014, which is right on the borderline between overweight and obese for me in bmi terms). Generally -apart from those Easter eggs - I eat a healthy, balanced diet, but if I don't think about portions I eat more than I need to maintain. It's not by a lot but my weight just creeps up month by month. Last time I was in "maintenance" it never felt like any monthly gain was enough to do anything about, and then came the lockdown after Easter period and it was all back again.
My aim this time is to set my trigger at the top of my maintenance range instead of the top of my overweight bmi range. This means daily weighing and, a colour coded spreadsheet (lighter green towards the top of my maintenance range, orange above...), and coming back to mfp when my weight creeps back up to the top of that range. I am hoping that long term I'll develop a much better sense of what I should be eating to maintain this weight.
Part of my own challenge is that until my mid 30s I found that I could eat pretty much what I liked and stay roughly the same weight, which was about 7kg less than my present goal/maintenance weight. I never had to watch portions and so I never learned to do it. (At that time in my life I didn't even own a set of bathroom scales.) That changed radically in my mid 30s and my mind took a long time to catch up and to admit that I had gained weight and needed to understand why. That's when i began to think about portion sizes.
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... personally. I'm sort of surprised about how many people on this thread AND people I know personally already had a pretty healthy diet, as far as food choices, even before losing weight!
Yes, I was thinking that too. I remember looking at guidelines to healthy eating and thinking, "But I am doing all that already." Eventually I signed up for a weight loss recipe service with the Guardian newspaper (UK) and it was immediately clear that my portions of many things - especially carbs like pasta and rice - were double or more what was reasonable. (125g of pasta as one serving, for instance.) I didn't use the service for long as I like to cook and to choose what I cook myself, but the amounts they were suggesting were eye-opening. That's when I started looking for a way to work out the calories in what I was cooking for myself, and found mfp.4 -
Like most people on this thread, what I was eating was (mostly) fine and balanced, but portion sizes, particularly pasta and cereal, were not. My weight was the same for years - it's just that I was overweight per the BMI scale. Approaching my 50th birthday was the original catalyst for trying to get to 'normal' BMI. Whilst eating at a deficit, I learned what were reasonable portion sizes for everything and made substitutions to add more veg in place of calorie-laden mounds of pasta. I was weighing / tracking everything I consumed so could see what was what. Now that I've lost weight (and am even below what my original goal was), I've just carried on, but with a few more cals to play with.2
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I think I must be in the minority! When I was obese, I ate anything but a healthy diet and did no exercise. Other than eating a reasonably healthy lunch (only because I had 'witnesses' in a staffroom), I ate hundreds and hundreds of calories daily in sweets, biscuits and icecream. I rarely made myself a proper meal other than if I had guests. This way of life continued for years (decades actually) with occasional reigning in every couple of years when I managed to get back on track, lose a few stone before piling the weight all back on again, often with an extra stone or two. Until lockdown when my healthy eating habits/choices have slipped again, although I am still meeting my weekly calorie goal, I had managed to overhaul my diet completely. Hopefully I will get back on track again soon because I do think a healthy diet is advantageous to good health.
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It's mainly been being more mindful of what I'm eating. I still treat myself when I want to, but try to eat less processed foods. Definitely a struggle since I don't make as much home cooked meals as I should be. Overall doing a decent job at maintaining my weight, but I still have a ways to go until I feel like I've accomplished my fitness goal.3
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I know exercise is a huge part of maintaining weight loss, but how have you had to change your diet? Do you eat less the same foods or did you focus on eating healthier, more nutritious foods?
I just eat what i enjoy eating. Mostly 'healthy' and sometimes 'not so healthy', whatever that means. As I never followed a specific diet to start with but only ate less there was no transition into maintenance for me. Just eat a bit more again at a time and see where I end up.2 -
Yes I changed my diet completely. It was unhealthy from the start. Eating junk food all day and drinking sodas. Didn't ever eat real meals. I didn't eat fruit or veggies. Now I do and a lot of them. I also drink water most of the time. I still have my snacks everyday. No where near as I did before. Eating a box of cakes or eating a whole six pack/value of Reese's. Don't even have the taste. For most of the things. That got me to gain weight. I ate so much of it before and I mean a lot.6
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I changed my decision-making process when it comes to food.
The decision to eat a particular food or not, for me, is not necessarily based on nutritional value.
I know my maintenance calories, and log roughly in my head throughout the day. Some days I know I'm over, but some days I must be under, because it seems to even out.
To maintain my weight loss, I use the knowledge I gained logging calories to make thoughtful decisions. I never have, and never will, give up the foods that I love. Some of those foods are "healthy", and some are considered not. But, to me, they have to be worth spending the calories. That's the decider for me.
As a real-time example...as I'm typing this, I'm eating a pre-made salad that was handed to me. It has various greens, and is topped with almonds, dried cranberries, and blue cheese chunks. I picked out the blue cheese to save some calories. The almonds and cranberries probably have more calories than the blue cheese, but I like them better and want them on my salad. Blue cheese...eh, I could take it or leave it. So, I left it. Not worth it. In the past, I would have just eaten it as is without thinking about it.
I was also offered some questionable strawberry shortcake. It didn't look amazing, so I declined. Not worth it. Again, in the past, I would have eaten it because it was there.
So, I guess long story short, it's about the calories for me, and being aware of how I use them throughout the day for maximum food enjoyment.14 -
I have always tried to eat healthy food, just ate too much of it (mainly trail mix-type stuff like unsalted nuts and dried fruits). And portion sizes were not controlled at all. I am now keeping my exercise at the higher level with which I started maintenance but not eating back those calories. And I log every day and stay under a cap that I've set because it seems to work for me to stay in the range I want, within a few pounds fluctuation only. Also keeping up with the water. So it felt a bit like still being on a diet the first few months but has now evolved into a plan that I think I can basically stick with for the rest of my life. I do NOT want to go through this again!4
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For me it's a bit of both.
I eat fruit in the morning. (sometimes) Between breakfast & lunch I will sometimes eat a 100 cal or lower snack. Lunch I have at least a 300 calorie or lower meal, frozen meal or a (very) light salad. Dinner is when I try to have the most calories in a day. Last I noticed I slowly built calories. Mon (365). Tues (505). Wed (795). Thurs (185). Fri (180). Sat (425). Sun (520).1 -
I lost weight by walking every other day for 2 summers. (I am physically disabled and walk on crutches, so I most likely burn a lot more calories walking due to the way I walk). I didn't consciously change my diet. I have managed to keep off about 50 lbs 12 years later. I just had a shift in attitude about eating. I decided I didn't have to eat everything, and didn't need to eat sweets every day. So somehow I manage to stay at maintenance without much thought. Although I do intermittent fast due to my work schedule, which may or may not help. I no longer walk for fitness or work out at the gym. Although I would like to get back to the gym lifting weights.6
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I just personally watch my calories.3
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I eat reasonably healthy but I am not obsessive about it. Basically, there is nothing that I will not eat as long as I have the cals available to so do.
All I do is keep track of everything I eat by logging it in MFP and weighing myself daily With that "data" I can keep track of what I'm eating and "why" I'm gaining or losing weight because of it and, if I'm gaining, I know exactly why and what I need to do about it.
Lost 40# and have been maintaining my weight going on 5 years just doing this. It's very simple.6 -
A combination of eating smaller portions, and making better choices seemed to do it for me. It was the mindless snacking on snacks that did me in, especially in the evening.3
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