If you've successfully lost weight, how did you do it?

[ILoveLucy]

I know the bottom line is eat less, move more, but I like to hear real-life success stories.

Did you count calories, cut out carbs, exercise? What worked for you? Please tell me--a little motivation can't hurt!

[andbabymakes3]

Seriously: Less in, more out. And I worked with a trainer once a week to keep me going and to give me ideas of what to do. Going slowly and not depriving myself of much I lost 15 lbs over about 6 months. I was not really overweight, just the usual had-two-babies-and-kept-a-few-pounds-each-time kinda person. (Of course then I got pregnant and gained it all back again and am working on those last few pounds again now, but that's another story )

A little about me: I like food, and I don't like counting anything--carbs, fat grams, salt...whatever. And I like wine! And I'm a meat eater, but I want my pasta too! So basically none of the 'diets' suit me--I could do Atkins but pretty soon I'd want my breakfast cereal. I did South Beach for awhile but I want alcohol, and fruit too darn it. And carrots! Less in, more out seemed the easiest way to do things. I did count calories, more so initially and then later it was a little more general, like, 'that was probably about x'. I aimed for about 1800 calories a day, figuring I was probably taking in 2200-ish or more pretty often before I started, so if I did 1800-ish eventually I'd lose weight. Also, I didn't weigh myself more than once a week when I was working on losing.

I think the fact that so many different diets all work, from no-carb to all-carb, low fat, high fat, etc. etc. just points out that the real answer is 'everything in moderation'. That means exercise and portion control. It's simple. Not easy mind you, but technically simple.

Good luck! You can do it!

[Fairy]

I'm on Day 12 of a new diet. And I've been very successful so far. Because I'm very motivated to get rid of this weight. I've just come to a point where I'm tired of the impacts the weight has on all aspects of my life. I'm not very good at the exercise, but the food I'm really doing everything I can to be very strict with.

* 1,200 calories a day, within about 50cal either way. Must eat all my calories, cuz if I eat less, my metabolism is gonna slow down, which is baaaaaad.

* No white carbs. Period. I had french bread on day 8, and BOY did I feel taht bad boy sitting in my stomach like a lump.

* Loading up on veggies. Even starchy, carby ones, like corn and carrots.

* Alot of fish, shrimp, tofu, eggs. No chicken or beef unless it's free range/grass-fed/organic (cuz in principle it's important to me).

* Not alot of egg yolk, but alot of egg white. 17 calories vs. 93. HUGE difference. I can have an enormous 3-egg white omelet for fewer calories than the same omelet with one egg with yolk.

* Eating superfoods every day, including blueberries, almonds, dark chocolate, spinach, salmon.

* No artificial sweetner, so that means when I eat oatmeal, I put 2 tsps of brown sugar in it, and that's not alot of calories, yet the sugar is real. No diet pop, either. Just water or iced tea (unsweetened)

* Absolutely positively no lying to myself.

There's more, but these are the basics. I'm trying so hard, I cannot tell you. No clue if I've lost anything yet, as I only just weighed for the first time today; I was afraid to do it when I started. But now I have my baseline. We'll see how it is in a week.

[Momof3Labs]

Weight Watchers online + working out 5 days/week for an hour each time at the gym. workout consisted of 30 mins of strength training and 30 mins of fast walking on an incline (treadmill). I lost 25lbs in about 3-4 months. need to do it again!!

[Fairy]

I should mention, I plan to lose alot of weight each month, not just a pound a week. I'm doing the Biggest Loser approach as best I can with the time I have. My goal is 30 lbs by October 1, then 30 more by February 1. Then we'll see how it goes from thre.

[gatorsmom]

I typed 2 long posts about this subject here:

http://www.windsorpeak.com/vbulletin...46331#poststop

Essentially it says calorie counting and exercise doing something you actually look forward to is how I lost weight after college and after my 2 singleton pregnancies.

It's so hard losing weight. Big, big hugs.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Calorie counting was really it for me. The exercise makes me feel good and more toned but I wasn't seeing results till I really knocked back the calories to around 1300/ day. eta- and my thyroid meds are the right dosage now so I'm sure that helps. I have hypothyroid + OCOS so my metabolism likes to fight with me.

Beth

[egoldber]

I also used the South Beach diet to lose a lot of weight about 6 years ago. I learned then that I need to REALLY restrict my carb intake, even whole grain "good" carbs, to lose and maintain weight. I can't just eat fewer calories, because if those calories are from carbs, my body just holds onto it. I do have a very strong family history of Type II diabetes, so I suspect I am insulin resistant even though my blood glucose numbers are fine at this point (I am in my early 40s).

I also feel like when I exercise HARD for 4-6 days a week, emphasizing weights, that I feel leaner and stronger and better overall. When I am exercising that much though, I can't eat just 1300 calories. I do better on about 1800-1900.

[schrocat]

For me it was to avoid HFCS and milk and breastfeed. When I first moved overseas, I didn't know about HFCS and ate everything. My weight increased alot. When I started looking at labels and stopped buying food with HFCS, my weight started to decrease. The big thing for me was to give up drinking milk which I started drinking alot of after moving overseas. My weight which had been stagnant, started going down really quickly. The same thing happened to DH too. He lost an inch off his waist and 10 lbs after he stopped drinking milk.

[nupe]

I started exercising at least 2/week at gym, and by then I had been nursing for 2 years, and the weight did not come off, in fact I thought I was just a balloon being filled up.

I stopped nursing at 2 1/2 years, cut down on calories, cut out desserts/sweets, and added a mile run 3 times week in addition to 2 classes at gym per week, as before. At first, the weight did not come off, but I was getting slimmer, losing inches, then a few months later, the weight started to come off. So now I'm in a weight loss mode, probably 1 lb/week.