How many people do you know who successfully lost weight?

[IAmGoingToTri]

I have a question for y'all: do you know of many people who used to carry a lot of extra weight around, who now are lean?

Personally, I know of very few people who lost weight, and even less who managed to keep it off. Most people are either not overweight to begin with, or they gain weight as they gain weight as they age. Especially this last trend is very clear. I used to be a garbage man (to pay the bills when I was studying) and I could see a very clear trend: the older the men were, the fatter. There are very few people who manage to prevent it, and even less who manage to revert it.

So, here's three conclusions:
1. Gaining weight with age is the natural thing to do in our society. Preventing this requires you to have some different habits than the people around you.
2. Losing weight and keeping it off is not easy, or at least most people don't know how to achieve it.
3. If you do manage to do this, you are in a select class. It is a real accomplishment.

Strangely, I get motivated by this. I am sure that it is possible to lose weight and keep it off. It is hard, but I think the way to go is to change your habits in a step-by-step manner, so that your lifestyle becomes healthier over time. When you do that, the results will follow. So, I argue that the best way to go is to focus on the process and not the results. Secondly, you must build habits that you can appreciate, even enjoy, that can become the new normal to you. Weight loss should not be torture.

I like the process of character building that occurs if you take on a hard challenge. I notice that progress in one area translates to progress in another, because you learn to push yourself harder, again not just for the results, but because you start to enjoy the process of pushing your limits.

So, the reward of all this is a stronger character, and you get to belong to a very select group of people who have been successful at this.

So, don't fool yourself into believing that there is a quick and easy way to losing weight. There is not. There is a hard and long way, but one that gets easier over time, and if you do it right, you will get used to it.

 

[allcdnboy1]

I know quite a few people that have lost weight, but the longer people have carried the extra weight, the harder it is to lose. If you set up bad habits for 20 years, it can take 5 years to completely break all the habits. If it's only been 5 years, I've seen people break the bad habits in 1 month.

Also, think about the size of plates that you are served at almost any restaurant is ridiculously large ... you are eating between 2-4 times the number calories that you actually need (if you were at a healthy weight). I find that if I only fill the inner circle of my dinner plate with food that I'm content for the evening. Many people have grown accustomed to feeling full after a meal, while the reality is that if you are full, you have eaten too much ... do that every meal and the pounds will add up fast.

We have also gone from being forced to be active in school to working jobs where we are now accountable for staying active. Most people don't think about keeping themselves active until the weight has already stacked up. There are some rare companies out there that encourage employee physical activity by allowing longer lunches and including gym memberships, or doing stuff like yoga sessions.

A lot of who we are starts as kids. I am lucky to live on a private street where it's safe for kids to play outside and on the road. When you can look out the window any time during the day and see kids playing, it's impossible to keep the kids inside. Creating good habits and a young age is half the battle.

The only way I've been able to stay relatively healthy is by committing myself to sports. Makes me accountable to my team. That's my rant

 

[Jay Cutler1]

Know a few friends, they really lose weight - but they do not eat (it is not a joke), they drink water and eat bread once a day. And they also have complex about their figure, so do conclusions))

 

[Jprice55]

It definitely has to be a lifestyle change. A fad diet doesn't help you. I wasn't significantly overweight, but I was close to high range for BMI for years. I lost 20 lbs earlier this year and have had no trouble maintaining it. I eat lots of healthy food and workout 30 minutes a day most days. I also play team sports (soccer) 2x a week spring and fall, but I've always done that and don't feel that it helped me lose weight when I wasn't eating right. I ate way too many carbs, not enough protein and veggies. Diet is a huge part of it. I love the portion fix program from Beachbody, I still follow it for maintaining weight. My workouts include strength/agility workouts, plus soccer and I'm training for a half marathon so run 2x a week.

 

[CalicoKitty]

I had family members who lost weight. Unfortunately, my mom gained it all back. She was doing good by calorie counting, stop drinking alcohol and became more active. She just stopped and went back to old habits. My dad was overweight one year, but quickly got back to his normal weight. I guess he was able to jump back on track faster and keep it off since he has been thin all his life.
Lifestyle and good habits helps. I know my lifestyle isn't healthy so I ditched the booze. Now I got to kick out the carbs (been eating too much pasta and bread). Being active is an issue too. My mom likes to watch TV & Netflix. I like to waste time browsing on the internet. Even though I stopped PC gaming for hours, I replace my bad habit with another bad one...Ugh.

 

[Omega]

Well - I'm certainly not lean - far from it - but I think that I can give an interesting viewpoint to this question.

A decade ago, after decades of being very large, I lost 168 pounds with this forum. I went from very very big to arguably too thin - people were concerned about me and quite a few of my bones were showing... It is 8 years since I finished the project and went into maintenance... I stayed fairly good with my food and if anything became more active...

A few years went by and stressful things happened... I stayed very active - but probably reverted to norm in times of stress - comfort eating can run very deep as a reaction... We had a year when my husband had 5 operations... We ended up needing to relocate to the north where my family were from the south where we had lived since the early 1980s. I gained some weight.

For a couple of years my shape was pretty good despite me being heavier than I had been at goal - in lots of ways I'd just filled out the bony areas and I got a lot of compliments about my fitness and appearance - I threw myself into cardio and in many ways my figure was good. I got heavily involved in the local dance community in the north, doing 6 hours per week of the most intense zumba available (ran by a personal trainer who was also a salsa teacher and performer). Some weeks we were doing salsa or zumba (or both) every night... My eating wasn't perfect but the exercise seemed to allow it.

Then my father died and more comfort eating ensued... More stress came from having to deal with my mother too - I'm her carer now (she's 94)... Then an injury over a year ago meant that I had to give up zumba and step down the salsa... Although I am back to dancing maybe three or four times per week - I am apprehensive about doing any zumba as I have dance exams in May and under strict orders not to get injured again.

I am sitting around the half way point between my high weight and low weight...

From one standpoint I have failed maintenance and am now noticeably large. I am certainly not lean and definitely in the OP's "fail" category.

From another standpoint I have successfully maintained a loss of over 80 pounds through a more stressful decade than many would encounter and have kept up during that period a much more active lifestyle than the me before weight loss could envisage...

The big conclusion that I can give from my experience is that

1/ we need to have an active lifestyle - take up hobbies for life that make us move. If I had been just going to a gym to exercise I would have probably given up - but being involved in dance community and zumba that linked from it meant that I danced and did zumba to spend time with friends.
2/ if we have been prone to comfort eating in our past - that is likely to be a natural reaction (no matter about our lifestyle change, knowledge about nutrition, calorie balance etc) when you find yourself in a stressful situation.

I currently am more confident about losing weight again than I am about avoiding emotional eating to keep it off...