Anyone lose it and keep it off . . .

[Van Johnston]

Instead of creamer (which is some sort of processed veg oil based chemical), and even instead of half an half, I switched early on to heavy cream and more lately adding butter too. Much lower carbs in that. Since you're eating fruit and aren't staying fat adapted then you prob wouldn't see some of the benefits. Still, something to consider

Thanks. I was using the word creamer generically. Some years ago I ditched the vegetable-oil based stuff, and tried all the alternatives; milk, half-and-half, butter, almond milk, powders, etc. Finally settled on soy-based as my preference.

 

[Walboy]

I don't think there is a single formula that works for everyoe. Ask yourself why do weight loss regimens come and go? Answer: because people have an idea or product to SELL.

What is the common theme in everyone's suggestions?

Eat in moderation; stop eating a meal before you feel full, this will be extremely difficult at first.​

Avoid sugary foods​

Avoid highly processed foods; if comes in a package ready to eat, skip it.​

Have a general idea of your caloric needs and then pay attention to your intake by reading labels.​

Do your own grocery shopping. See for yourself what is available. Read labels.​

Move - commit to regular excercise, find an activity you enjoy and can stick to (it can be as simple as walking)​

Avoid gym memberships that become a chore; rather find (and create) ways to move in your daily life.​

(you will not stick to a gym membership for a lifetime, so don't even start down that path)​

The journey never ends, it's a lifestyle. You cannot have the mindset that there is an endpoint. Sure, you might reach a weight target, but that is not the end.​

​

It will take a certain amount of experimenting to find what works for you, but if you follow the above general guidelines you'll make progress. I don't think it's reasonable to expect to be able to stick to an extreme diet or approach for a lifetime.

Good luck, you can do it!

 

[Randomskylane]

I read somewhere that carbs make you hungry and it’s true!

I had the perfect low carb situation for me: two meals a day at a cafeteria where everything is sold by weight. Dropped 30 pounds

Changed jobs and they stopped calling me slim.

 

[jbarrass]

Stay away from food that is (or was) white. Obviously, flour and sugar are huge culprits.

I do this and it works. More importantly, it's easy and sustainable.

Like a lot of things, the key is to just start. avoid carbs and sugars as much as you can and walk. Parking in the back of the lot and using the stairs is easy. The step counter on your phone is a good tool.

When I owned my business the crazy stress filled hours were necessary. but i found getting up and walking around the building between meetings was always doable and it helped a lot. I also walked when I was on the phone whenever possible. A stand-up desk was a benefit. Once you see a few lbs go away, it's motivates you to up your game and it becomes a new habit.

 

[kgruber]

Steve Largent is a famous original "Seahawks" player. I have gone from 232 to 206 yesterday on his diet.

NO SUGAR
"Push yourself away from the table."

 

[dbahn]

I do this and it works. More importantly, it's easy and sustainable.

This is actually the basis for the South Beach diet, which was devised by a cardiologist to improve heart disease, and the weight loss was almost more of a by-product. There's a "strict" phase where you essentially eliminate carbs for a period of time and watch your weight drop rapidly and your clothes get looser over a period of a week or two. Then you gradually add in "good carbs" but continue to lose while still eating fairly well. It's all geared to the "glycemic index" of foods and what to avoid. I'd highly recommend reading the book if weight loss is your goal.

 

[Brad W]

I know this will sound odd but honestly don’t exercise. You don’t lose weight in the gym. You lose weight by being in a caloric deficit and you don’t burn much actually in the gym or running. If you want to exercise just go for a walk. Exercise makes you hungry and when you’re weak you give in and binge. Trust me I know.

Start tracking your calories for a solid week. Like everything that goes in your mouth…everything! Weight out your food so you know exactly what’s going in. Then drop calories a few hundred and stay there till you plateaued. Then drop a few hundred more. You’ll lose weight but will take a few weeks to get in that mode.

I used to think this was the total of it all. calories in vs calories out...gain, loose, or maintain depending on the balance. I have recently learned that is is A WHOLE LOT MORE COMPLICATED than that, and proven it to myself through experience. Our bodies are extremely complicated and on a cellular level process the energy in an very different ways depending on many variables that change.

Right on though about not burning as much calories through working out as you might think you should. I don't really believe that exerise makes me hungry. Seems to be much more to do with insulin levels...which are of course driven by carbs

I tracked my calories with an app myfitnesspal for a long time. It was the tool I used my second time on Contrave and it was key to a successful weight loss that time. The thing is, it was not the key to keeping it off. I loop that back to my belief now that metabolism is more complicated than that.
I will also add for those interested in counting calories and such.... I found a different app that seems to be even a bit better, called Cronometer. Seems to have a much better database of foods. Very good food and biometric tracker..

Low carb diets are about easily getting into process B. Staying there is a harder problem because our food systems are all about high carb, which is what puts all of us at risk. Carbs are a quick and easy to put energy in, so much so that we can easily get too much. Replace carbs with protein and fat (yes fat) and you'll feel full and lose weight. As weird as it sounds, when you're in mode B, you feel great and have lots of energy...but no stamina.

Agreed! I'd say that staying there isn't so hard eating at home. My wife and kids are not on board with this way of life so I have tons of carbs in the house....but it's still very easy for me to stay on track. It's eating out where it hard, and sometimes nearly impossible. The "standard American diet"...even the so called healthy versions...are just horrible..... if it's not carbs, it's vegetable oils, and it's stuff with antinutrients hidden inside

Thanks. I was using the word creamer generically. Some years ago I ditched the vegetable-oil based stuff, and tried all the alternatives; milk, half-and-half, butter, almond milk, powders, etc. Finally settled on soy-based as my preference.

Watch out with soy. I haven't gotten really deep into this area of plants yet but want to learn more (antinutrients, oxalates, phytates, etc.)....but I have heard a few docs and professors mention in lectures and interviews about soy and soy products being high in estrogen and killers of testosterone.

I heard it said that dairy is great for making a person fat. thinking about it, it's meant for making babies fat!
that said, the closer to the fat you get, the better it is for you.
whole milk better than low fat, but it's still high in carbs
half n half is what I used for years is better than whole milk, but still has high carbs
heavy cream is much better with almost no carbs.....
butter is best, because the process removes nearly all the carbs
and some cheeses are ok too, because the live cultures used convert the carbs...but I have found that even good cheeses still change my glucose levels...and I only eat them in small qties...

 

[TCABM]

Re: exercise. Here’s a recent snapshot from my Thursday night spin class

And a normalish weekend ride

You get out of a workout what you put into it. Most people at the gym aren’t putting enough effort in during any given workout.

Here’s one of my typical 3x daily walks around the office

All that work is additive caloric burn to reduced calorie intake and eating what I know prevents fat build up while avoiding the things I know makes me heavier.

Ex: I smoke chicken wings now instead going to Plucker’s/BW’s/Wing Stop. Smoking them at home and crisping them in the air fryer is 99% of the wing experience with a taste I prefer while keeping me from ordering the large beer at the restaurant.

It all works together.

 

[Brad W]

I thought I'd post a screenshot showing my experience
This is I think about 8 years of almost daily scale measurements. Always at wakeup first thing in the morning

Off the chart to the left before I started doing this, there would be a slow trend upwards from about 165# across several decades up to about 215#. Obese per the BMI range. Scattered through that time would be many efforts to hold constant....stopping sugary sodas (which I have never picked back up), eating more salads, taking up work out regimens and stopping them again because they were unrealistic or didn't really help, taking the stairs and parking further away, etc. There would be some flat spots on the curve but probably not much if any downard trends..... up up up it went

Ultimately the Dr put me on that Contrave which helped a little but it was still torture to get down to about 160. I really tried HARD to maintain, but as you can see a couple years later I was back up to 190#.

So, Contrave again...and this time I went after it with all I had. Took up running. Counted calories using MyFitnessPal. This was a huge effort and took a lot of willpower even with the drug, but I kept after it. I stayed on the drug for a while trying to learn what a maintain diet was, but as you can see it was a wide up and down swing...a real struggle to maintain 150#.

As you can see though, as soon as I ended the drug, even with HUGE effort to maintain and keeping up with the calorie counting, etc... it was an immediate trend upwards again

Third time on Contrave, trying to repeat what worked before but it only took me down a little less than 170#...and notice that the slope isn't nearly as steep.....back up again, despite real effort.

The last drop in weight you see was EASY. EASY. That was all carnivore. Eating beef, butter, bacon, and eggs and occasional fish and other meat...and cheating with a little heavy cream in my coffee. Eating as much as I wanted, not counting calories or anything. There's a little blip back up after the drop. that was when I had surgery to repair a hernia and fix my GERD. It was kind of impossible to stay clean keto/carnivore on a liquid diet through recovery!

I changed over to the Cronometer app to track my data with, so the graph ends...but what you would see to the right, is a pretty much level line for a year now, just over 140#, with a few blips upward in the mid to upper 140's when I went on some vacation trips...I'm holding right smack in the middle of the the ideal BMI range for my height (about 20.8, with a healthy range according to the CDC anyway, of 18.5 to 24.9)

My insulin resistance isn't completely sorted yet, but I'm feeling better and better all the time....

 

[RadialGal]

I lived in Japan for 6 months. They follow a saying called "Hara hachi bu" or 80% eating. I eat untill I am 80 percent full. I never eat untill 100% full. It takes a bit of getting used to but it's been my go to diet for 20 years. I eat anything I want; no restrictions, I'm never hungry, but I'm never 100% full and I'm 5'11" and 130lbs. Slightly underweight but I also have a fast metabolisim. YMMV.

Signed, a skinny Bush pilot.

 

[TXBob99]

Im in my late 40s and I hit 245 about 8 years ago. After being tired of being tired all of the time I started eating low carb. No change in exercise. If I was ever hungry I ate some jerky or Quest bar. I wasn’t super strict but stuck with the rule of being 90% ‘good’ for 80% of the time. I gave myself a cheat day once a week but made sure not to binge. By year two I was down to 180 and have roughly been there ever since (8years). I feel soooo much better too. Eating a sugary food now gives me an immediate headache and makes me very tired.

 

[cessna182b]

This is secondhand information, but I once worked with a man who had always been "heavy" (for as long as I had known him). He was gone for awhile - and returned
a shadow of his former self. I was told that someone had bet him a substantial sum of money that he could not lose 100 pounds. He accepted the challenge, and
did the deed by stopping eating completely for a month or so. He won the bet - and thereafter maintained his reduced weight (by what means I know not). I would
not recommend that method to anyone - but it worked for him. What a demonstration of will power!

I have known scrawny little guys who ate huge piles of food, and never gained a pound - and obese individuals who starved themselves to insanity and could not
lose any. Guess your metabolism makes a difference!

Dave

 

[Initial Fix]

Long story short. I lost around 90 pounds between 20 and 15 years ago and have kept it off. I saved my last “heavy” medical to remind me of the high point.

How did i lose it? I changed eating habits. Kept my exercise about the same (gym, weights, 50+mile bike rides,etc). When I hit the weight loss “wall” I did keto and heavy cardio to lose the last 30. My weight, according to my class 2 medical, hasn’t changed much since.

 

[kell490]

I tried all kinds of diets posted above I lost weight, but eventually put it back on and more. The key for me was meal planning weekly I have meal cards I made. I eat healthy home cooked lower calorie low fat meals. If I have to eat at a restaurant, I get a salad. I exercise for 45 minutes 4 days a week. I tried low carb high fat diets my cholesterol shot up through the roof doctor wasn't too happy about it. He gave me a year to dump the weight, or I would be on meds I didn't want to be on. It's not easy to change your eating habits had all your life. Replace the snacks with fresh fruit and veggies plan out your meals weekly have it ready to go so you're not heading to Taco Bell, or Dominos.

 

[saddletramp]

I've had the overweight issue most of my life. In December I went in for my second class medical & my blood sugar was slightly higher than normal. That scared the hell out of me. I cut the carbs, walked at least three fast miles a day & took off 40 pounds. My blood sugar is normal now.

I'm a 67 year old full time flight instructor & I had to do something now. What really amazes me is how little food I really need each day. My wife says I eat about 1/3 of what I used to eat. As we age our metabolism slows down. I takes daily discipline.

 

[Daleandee]

What really amazes me is how little food I really need each day. My wife says I eat about 1/3 of what I used to eat. As we age our metabolism slows down. I takes daily discipline.

A number of years ago I watched my BP start to climb. Went to the doc and he was straight with me and said, "I can fix it with medicine or you can fix it with lifestyle changes." I asked what to do and he told me to greatly reduce the salt (sodium) & sugar in my diet, lose 20 lbs. and brisk walk at least 30 minutes a day five days a week. He also suggested to drink plenty of water. It worked then and it works still.

I'm also amazed at how little food I need to maintain weight and feel healthy. You are correct that metabolism slows down and the older we get the more muscle we lose that turns into fat/flab. I do a light workout most everyday and the benefits are quite rewarding and welcomed.

I've heard it said that some folks desire to "live fast, die young, & leave a good-looking corpse" but I'm beyond being able to do any of that now ...

 

[Brad W]

I'm also amazed at how little food I need to maintain weight and feel healthy. You are correct that metabolism slows down and the older we get the more muscle we lose that turns into fat/flab.

x3!.... I too found it surprising I first noticed it when I was on one of my many calorie counting diets (that did work but didn't stick) how little fuel we really need....even if very active
and that discovery been doubled down in an even bigger way now that I'm eating a more satiating high fat very low carb diet...sugar is a quick burn, like dry pine needles on a camp fire...a nice show but very little heat and doesn't last.... while fat is like a nice big oak log....

about muscle loss....just this morning while walking my dog, I listened to a lecture by a doctor.... one of the things mentioned was that keeping ketones in production, even for lean and active athletes, is a key to preventing that muscle loss (even if at a low level (<1 mmoL/L))

 

[ebetancourt]

Over many years I've gone from 238 to 152. Tried most diets at least a little. Counting calories worked, I called it my 3x5 diet since I wrote everything I ate down on a 3x5 card I kept in my shirt pocket. About a year ago I read about the Bredesen protocol to reverse or reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer's. I've adopted some of the protocol. The good news is I feel great and am a pretty active UFO. The bad news is there are some favorite foods I have given up totally. Potato chips come to mind.

I strongly believe in a Keto lifestyle, not a Keto diet. That means the reverse of the weight loss diet Keto recommendations of lot's of meat. Meat is a condiment, vegetables, fats, and "resistant carbs" are primary. Each human is different, and since I want to maintain or even gain a little weight, I just monitor my level of ketosis with a "Biosense" breath meter. (Don't waste your money on the Amazon knockoffs, they don't work. Yep, it's expensive (and patented). I eat plantain chips, lots of berries and manage to stay in at least the low range of ketosis. Also sweet potatoes occasionally. Fresh whipped cream made with a $10 milk frother from Amazon and fresh heavy cream on the berries. Lots of EVOO on salads and good vinegars. An occasional piece of whole wheat bread with EVOO. Lots of almonds and pecans daily, lots of vegetables.

I feel so well, I can't imagine changing my lifestyle, other than finding time to work out more consistently.

Edit: Do an internet search for "clean keto."

 

[John Collins]

I have been able to lose weight, mainly using eating discipline and reduce carbs to a minimum. But eventually I would gain it all back. I also have type II diabetes and when it gets scary A1C wise, I re-adopt discipline, but like I said, I regain my weight after losing it again. However, for me, I have found a miracle drug, Mounjaro. Since I have begun taking it, I have slowly lost weight, almost 30 pounds. What is different about the medication is that I have no desire to binge as one of the effects is to signal the brain that I am full. I have to be reminded to eat lunch because I just don't get hungry and I take much smaller portions or I will waste a lot of food. I am losing weight without any personal discipline being applied. Right now, the medication is only approved for diabetes treatment, but it is much more effective than Ozempic, which can be used for weight.

 

[Let'sgoflying!]

I started changes about 3 months ago and 202->178 (24 lbs).

I was delighted I could do this without feeling starved all the time.
I can eat as much as I want of most things.
I do not have to eat carrot and celery sticks!
I did not have to intermittent or otherwise fast.

This was enough for me; one day I cold-turkey...
a) swore off all the pastries, donuts, cake, candy bars
b) stopped coke & Dr Pepper
c) stopped everything alcoholic

We do eat planned meals, all stuff we like - suggested menus provided by a company although it is not rigid at all.,

to wife last week: "that was another huge and satisfying meal last night - I'm not hungry this morning and I lost another pound!"

 

[Mahneuvers]

@Let'sgoflying!, good for you! Keep it up!!

202 to 186 here with a goal of 170. Large volumes of exercise to get to this point. The last two weeks, I've joined my wife on a program she started to support her and to try something different. I'll report back if it works.