If you've lost weight--5lbs or 50lbs--can you share...

made portions very small of anything but salad and plain veggies. no soda, rare treats.

I've lost 14 lbs on Weight Watchers. When I grocery shop, I shop from the outer walls of the grocery store. I try to eat more "natural" food instead of processed. Sometimes I slide, though. It's okay to have a donut once in a while as long as you only have ONE lol.

YES, baby steps...1-2 lbs at a time. I started my journey on WW in January of 2012 and have lost 45 lbs. Still working on the last 15.

It can be done, but you have to have something VERY strong as a motivator. An upcoming vacation, high BP and cholesterol did not work for me, but being diagnosed as pre-diabetic DID. There are no signs of that now and have just been able to drop my BP and cholesterol meds!

If you MUST have something sweet (Which I ALWAYS have on hand), grab a no sugar added pudding or WW ice cream. It hits the spot and is not horrible for you.

Marking my spot so I can watch this thread. I have about 25 lbs to lose and need all the help I can get. 

For some reason the weight didn't fall off after my last kid like it did with the others, and I was pretty ticked off. I don't weigh myself usually, but I am guessing I was about fifteen pounds over my usual weight because I was up two dress sizes. I started taking an extra walk every day, only snacked on vegetables, and limited my portion sizes. It took about three months for the weight to come off, and it has bee about a year and a half now without it reappearing.

For me, I finally lost a significant amount of weight by staying off the scale, not dieting, and adding exercise to my lifestyle. I did not set any weight loss 'goals'. I just decided to truly change my lifestyle and to adopt healthier, but realistic, habits.

I did try to be more conscious of what I was eating, to eat more slowly, and to recognize when I'd had enough. I'd put less food on my plate (I tend to be a plate cleaner out of habit more than hunger) but if I wanted more, I would eat more.

I did add more fresh vegetables to my diet, and will often just have fresh veggies for lunch instead of a sandwich or a more traditional lunch.

For me, when I had previously tried to lose weight in the past, I found that dieting made me feel deprived and made me fixate on food. I would be craving foods I wouldn't even normally want, or at least wouldn't want as often. Knowing I could eat whatever I wanted, and giving myself permission to do so, made me think of food 'less' and crave things 'less'.

Staying off the scale made it more about a healthy lifestyle and making changes I could stick with for the rest of my life, than about weight loss. I used to find it frustrating to diet for two weeks, exercise, then find I hadn't lost any weight. It was discouraging and instead of focusing on the positives like the fact that I'd been making healthy food choices and working out, I would focus on the negative, that the scale hadn't budged.

There are often reasons for that. Loss of fat but replacement with muscle. Where you are in your cycle. You can even see weight changes in the course of a day. So I finally decided that it didn't matter what I weighed. That wasn't going to be a barometer of my health or my success. And I stopped setting short and long term goals (I will be size X by Y event/date). Because I found it discouraging in the past to not meet those goals.

So now I just exercise and try to be more conscious of my food choices. I will eat junk food. I drink. Sometimes I would/will go weeks without exercising. That's okay. That is not failure. That is living in the real world. Which, for me, has been the only way I have lost weight and kept it off.

I am not sure of how much I have lost in the last few years. It has not been a quick weight loss. But it has actually been quite easy, and not at all stressful. I would guess between 50-70 lbs. I am no longer in plus sizes. I did not go into think thinking, 'I need to lose weight, I want to lose X pounds.' I just decided that it was time to be more aware of what I was eating, and to incorporate exercise into my lifestyle. I had always been healthy, no issues from being overweight, but I wanted to make sure I stayed healthy.

I know some people are more goal oriented and being disciplined helps them. But for me, not focusing on the scale, not tracking weight loss, and not dieting, was the only way I was finally successful at losing and keeping off weight.

Honestly, for me, it's 90% mental. I'm not doing anything now that was some new great idea I'd never heard of before. I have a plan, but it's not a diet. This is how I will eat for the rest of my life.

The plan works for me, but only because I was ready. Not motivated, I've been motivated plenty of times in the past. What better motivation could I have had than saving my marriage? Health? No. My job? No. I don't know how I knew I was ready, but I just was. This is the first time since probably my second diet that I haven't been full of fear that I will gain back everything I've lost plus extra, which was proven true every single time.

I have peace because I know if I never lose another pound, this is still the way I eat for the rest of my life. I started July 2, I'm down 21.6 lbs.

My Plan consists of 2 rules and a few guidlines. The rules are hard and fast, I don't break them. The guidelines are more fuzzy.

Rule [HASH]1: No sucrose, no fructose, no artificial sweeteners. I do plan to add back in fruit in the future, because it's healthy in moderation. I'm just not ready for sweet yet. The reason behind sucrose and fructose came from my doctor. Your body doesn't have to expend any energy to break them down, therefore it will use that first and not get to the stored fat. I need to be getting to the stored fat as soon as possible. Artificial sweeteners are my own personal addition to the rule. I think they are poison, and the over-sweetness would just make me crave sugar that much more. I can't say I'm 100% sugar free, because even though I look for hidden sugars when I buy groceries, and I don't order items that are obviously sweetened, I eat out too often and I can't worry about what I can't control. I'm more like 99.5% sugar free.

Rule [HASH]2: No Snacks. I eat 2-3 meals a day, depending on how I feel and how my day is going. I try to keep it at 3, but I'm not going to eat just to get a 3rd meal in (see guidelines below). I do not eat between meals. Ever. I didn't give up snack food because sometimes I have that for my lunch or dinner. I just don't eat snack food between meals.

Guidlines:
1. Only eat when I'm hungry, not because it's time to eat, not because it's convenient now and it might not be later, not because I might be hungry later and not have access to food. If I'm eating with others, this goes out the window.
2. Let myself get hungry. It's ok to be hungry, and, in fact, is probably good for us. Our stomachs weren't designed to have food in them all the time. This was hard for me, because I always saw hunger as pain, which meant something was wrong with my body. Letting myself get hungry helped me learn to equate hunger with eating. I spent my life eating for every reason except hunger. It's been good to get all the emotional eating off the table.
3. Keep track of every calorie I consume. I use an app called Lose It! I've missed a few meals when I was sick or when I ate homemade food that I just couldn't work out the calories for. If I find myself not wanting to enter a meal because I know I overdid it, well then I make myself put it in. I don't want to go back down the denial road again.
4. Average 1200 calories a day. I aim for 1000, but don't worry about going as high as 1499. I don't want to see a 1500. Some days I'm less than a 1000, but I find I lose more weight when my average is closer to 1200. Seeing the calorie count on things I used to eat, I'm sure I was pulling 3-4000 calories a day as recently as June. Wouldn't be surprised if binge days were twice that. And I thought I was eating healthy most of the time.
5. Eat whatever I want as long as I don't break rules 1&2. I can have McDonald's fries. I can have a couple of chips and cheese dip (a couple of chips, not a handful). I eat cheese like crazy. I eat bread, I eat pasta. I also eat lots of eggs. I eat a lot of salad without dressing. The dressings I liked were crazy high in calories, and the lower cal ones, I don't like them enough to be worth any calories to me. The key is watching my portions. If I have soup that says 220 calories per serving, but the container is 2 servings, I measure out one serving. Before, I would have eaten the whole container. The one time I had french fries (just because I could!) I ordered a small, and that was my whole lunch. One small order of fries: 226 calories. I don't eat crap food all the time, because I recognize that it's not healthy for my body. But I can as long as I watch the serving size.


I think that's it. No sugar, no snacks. Keep track of what you eat and don't eat that much of it. Get hungry. Nothing groundbreaking. 

My only tip would be on the weighing in part. Too many weigh in either every day, or if it's weekly, on a Monday. Try your weekly weigh in on Friday. We tend to really work hard Mon-Thursday, so if you weigh in on Friday you can see results and stay motivated. If we're going to be in social situations, it's usually on the weekends. Then, Monday is not good and you've set yourself up for disappointment first thing in the week.

Watch your calories - try to do as much cardio (30-45 minutes at least 4 days a week) and let yourself have a treat every now and then.

Good luck!!! You've got this!

The biggest change I made was SO simple it was stupid that I hadn't done it sooner. I started eating breakfast. Up to that point, I generally skipped breakfast and apparently that is a big fat no-no. After I started eating in the morning, I started losing weight.

I hate traditional breakfast food (except for grits lol,) so I eat "regular" food. A lot of times I will eat peanut butter sandwiches or left overs from the night before.

I have no idea how much weight I have lost, but I have gone down at least 6 sizes in the last two years.

I lost 15 pounds one summer because the kids and I went to the pool two to three times a week. Apparently swimming and walking in the pool was really good for me and I wasn't eating as much because we were at the pool.

I lost 30 lbs o. WW. If you follow their program you will lose weight.

Congrats to everyone! Lots of great advise and success stories here. I lost 60 pounds on WW and have maintained since 1998.

For me it's a mental shift. I can't say I'm on a diet because then I feel deprived and will pig out or when I slip, I'll say screw it and give up. So I just started eating healthier.

I gave up flavored creamer and switched to unsweetened vanilla soy milk in my coffee I do add a little sugar though.

For breakfast, most of the time I have oatmeal with the same soy milk.

I gave up soda except for maybe 1 a month.

I realize that I don't like to cook, so I stalk up on Morning Star veggie patties and frozen veggies. It's easy enough that I will eat that instead of ordering in lunch like most people at work or stopping to get something on the way home from work.

I don't eat after 7pm and I don't keep any junk food or snack stuff around because I know I will eat it.

I have started doing about 20 minutes of stretches a day. I know I need to add in more exercise but I am happy with all the small steps and I've lost almost 30lbs.

Kudos to all of you who have done so well. It is inspiring. Thank you!