Hello everyone!

I haven't been on here in a while so I'll introduce myself again.
I'm Thais, I'm 27 and I need to lose weight. Well, more weight.
I started at 236 lbs a couple of years ago and stalled at 174-178 for the past year ( my tracker is at my lowest weight so far).

Looking at it from a positive perspective, I maintained - which is, in itself, a really hard task.

But, I still have about 50 lbs to go, so I'm trying to get back into all of it.
Exercise is not an issue - I have been going to the gym perfectly for the past two year (celebrated that in August) - but my diet needs a lot of work.

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.

I am just now starting again, but I have not maintained. I have regained all my lost weight plus much more. I tried small steps with different approaches over the past few months and it did not work for me. I need to jump in all-or-nothing. That is how I did it last time and it seems to be what fits my personality. I am going through big life changes right now, so I feel inspired to get going with my weight loss again. The other changes will be permanent, so maybe these will too if I just do it all at once.

Congratulations on maintaining your weight loss, that is hard to do.

I had been trying for several weeks to get re-started after a large gain, but just couldn't get started. I decided to go back to Weight Watchers, and now I have been back on track for three weeks.

Thank you for the answers, lovelies.
I think I'm going to start writing everything down for the next couple of days.
Also, I'm going to go all in. I figured I should just discipline myself again once and for all.

It's wonderful that you have had this wonderful weight loss and have maintained it for an extended amount of time too. This is really awesome.

I have restarted many times. I usually start off kind of slow the first few days as I ease into my plan. This time I went to see a dietician. While I already know alot about nutrition, I just needed a fresh start. I am using the exchange food plan. It's similar to a diabetics food plan. However, I am not a diabetic so I can sometimes eat more carbs at one sitting. The dietician really helped me to see what I needed to include in each meal/snack. I found out that my eating a very small breakfast was one reason I struggled during the day.

Glad you posted!

Congrats on maintaining and getting back into it!!

I am not a believer in the "making small changes" approach, as I don't really think it works. But I don't think a "diet" is necessary either, although it seems to help some people... just healthful eating, watching the calories and making sure they are GOOD calories, plus working out does work.

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!

i started again by tracking calories on Sparkpeople. I started again last Monday, and have so far stuck to it all week and am feeling good.

Hey everyone,

First of all, thanks for the input. I decided to go cold turkey too. If I keep making exceptions, I'll never stop.

I'm tracking on my fitness pal and I'm going to use this forum a lot, I expect. I have a friend in Spain who is a fitness buddy as of yesterday. We'll lean on each other for support. I was missing a support system so I'm going to try that. I forgot how important that is.