I am new here and I am curious what you all have had success doing? I have seen quite a few people have tried weight watchers...Has anyone tried or had success with nutrisystem?

A bit about me: I was always active until I got to college and over the last 4 years I have gained 40 lbs. I tried south beach diet twice and it was fine, pretty easy but I slowly started to fall off the wagon and gained even more weight than I had lost. It's really hard for me to stay strictly motivated for more than 1 month. I've become more and more frustrated with myself and I feel like this is my last time to succeed!

What exercise have you all had success with? And how do you stay motivated for more than a month especially if all your friends want to eat out, go to the bars, and hardly know what a vegetable is??

Interestingly enough I have never done Nutra-system... I have thoughts though- I will ask you a question- What happens to your weight when you stop buying the pre-packaged meals? They don't teach you how to prepare and portion your own food so I think two things will happen. 1. You go back to your "normal" way of eating and regain the weight or 2. You have to learn how to count calories/portion out normal food to maintain your weight. Why not just learn what to do for the long term now? Just my opinion.

I am on WW and LOVE it! I will say you get as much out of weight watchers as you put in, honestly, I have done it a few times before with a bit of effort and got a bit of results. This time I am not stopping no matter what- a bad day doesn't get me off and my results are AWESOME!

The key is really consistency... so whatever plan you choose keep at it! You will lose weight if you do!

I went for changes in my diet that I knew could quite easily be permanent, instead of following a strict plan. I changed to brown rice, pasta and bread, bumped up the amount of fruit and veg, only drink water (apart from my obligatory cup of tea in the morning!), and have lean meat. I also have snacks little and often instead of a giant fat and carb loaded meal at night! It's amazing how much less you crave when you're eating properly!

As for staying motivated, maybe you can find a friend that wants to get fitter as well? I needed support when I started so turned to my boyfriend. Unfortunately, he doesn't particularly want to eat healthily (he's 5"10 and 140lb !!), but he did say that he wanted to get fitter. Now we go to the gym together, and we concentrate on making fitness goals instead of food ones.

A lot of the time we have different dinners. If it's something I shouldn't really be having, I just make sure to only have a small amount, and bulk it up with vegetables - maybe you could do that too?