Quote:
Originally Posted by thaisccs
Hello everyone!
So here's a good discussion: everyone that has had a restart, how did you do it? Cold turkey into a diet? Slowly? Counting calories? WW?
I appreciate any input.
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Hi Thais,
First, kudos to you for maintaining! I am restarting from the perspective of regaining about 2/3 of what I lost the first time around. But I'm happy to share my experience if it's helpful.
I maintained about 90 lbs of a 110 lb weight loss for over a year, but then I completely lost it and had a big and rapid regain over the course of about 6 months. (I'm a binge eater, especially a carb and sugar binger) I've tried restarting two times before, but didn't stick with it. I'm taking a different approach this time and I think it is working a little better.
I've tried to restart twice since the regain. The first time, I think I knew in my heart I wasn't ready, and I just didn't fully commit. The second time, I did fully commit, but I don't think my plan was sound-- I was eating more like the diet that I had been maintaining on, but not as strict as the one I had been losing weight on.... what happened was that I stayed on the plan very well for about two weeks, and the scale never budged at all. I got frustrated and gave up. What I learned from that is that it's worth it for me to really jump back on a fairly strict calorie counting and carb control plan in order to kickstart the weight loss.
I got a copy of the book The Skinny Rules, and read it to see if there were any fresh ideas. What I found was that most of the "rules" were the basic plan that helped me lose 110 pounds the first time around, but there were a few new things that I decided to try: give up the little bit of whole milk that I put in my morning coffee, drop artificial sweeteners and added salt, limit starchy veggies to half a cup and only before 2 pm.
This time, with those slight modifications, I've rapidly shed 9 lbs, which has made me super-motivated to keep going.
Everybody is different, but I can now see that I absolutely HAD to go cold turkey and get on a plan that really helps me shed the pounds fast. Otherwise, I get discouraged and give up.
You should be in WAY better shape than me to get going because you are not facing a regain and did not lose your gym habit.
Kudos on the good work so far and good luck!