I am glad this thread was kept alive. I am back again several months later trying to START again. Still feel the same way - almost hopeless about it. Every day I try to start. I will keep reading boards and get some inspiration from all of you.

I also am so glad this thread survived -- because those of us who are lifetime dieters need the support of others like us!

To me, it's discouraging to hear of how many people have lost, gained it back then lost again, over and over. Why the regain? I have heard so many times that maintenance is harder than losing. Well, I just can't lose. I feel if I could just lose it, I would do whatever it takes to keep it off, but it just seems impossible.

Hi All! That's the problem, at least for me anyway is that it seems I have gotten to a certain point where there seemed to be no progress and then just give up.

Maybe that's why you'll find very few that has lost it and kept it off. Then the yo-yo effect comes in to play. I gain back what I lose and then some.

Hopefully this time I have found the secret that was there all along...

Hang in there, and when you get to that plateau, change something till it works.

I have to say the answer, for me, is…sorta no. I'm a lifelong weight and diet struggler. At age 59, I can look back and see that my weight has been a major player in pretty much every stage of my life. When I was younger and lighter, I worried about the 15 pounds I should lose. When I was in my 30s and in my baby having phase I gained weight every year until I ended up weighing 250 pounds. After a decade of that, I finally had enough. I just simply stopped eating unhealthy foods. No counting or measuring, no stressing over the scale. I lost 75 pounds, three pounds a month, every single month for two years. I never once went off that eating plan because I wasn't "on" a diet. That was just how I ate, end of discussion. After two years, my body finally stopped losing when it hit the balance between what I was eating and what I was burning. I stayed that weight pretty much without struggle for about TEN years because that was just how I ate now.

Wow, I was a weight loss success story!!!!

Ok, well, wait for it, wait for it…

...life got hard, I had a major health issue that derailed that delicate balance and I started gaining weight again. I was horrified, I went back to my old patterns of desperately dieting again, trying to lose those pounds as quickly as possible. Of course, none of that worked and I finally hit 200 and freaked out. In even more desperation, I started Medifast, lost all of the 25 pounds I'd gained. Whew…that was a close one! I was a success again!!! But, after all that extreme deprivation (an 800 calorie a day diet) my body was seriously out of whack and I had to eat almost nothing to keep from gaining weight. And that lasted about a year and then I started gaining, again…and now here I am back on another weight loss "journey", six pounds over the weight I was when I was so horrified last time!

So, I've been thinking a lot about all this frustration and angst around losing and gaining weight and realizing I've been back in that "going on a diet" mentality, which just does NOT work long term.

The cautionary tale, I think I am telling here, is that traditional diets don't tend to work. Deprivation seems to have a slingshot effect on the body that sends your weight speeding back up to where it was as soon as you lose focus. However, truly, deeply, profoundly putting food out of your life forever, does work. Or it did for me for ten years until I lost focus through illness, got too much sugar in me and couldn't get back off it again.

I think if you can sincerely say that you are completely done with sugar/simple carbs for the rest of your life then you have a good chance of maintaining a weigh loss. Most of us, though, are very traumatized at the thought of never touching anything with sugar again. No birthday cake? No pie at Thanksgiving? That's not a balanced life! I tend to agree, until I think about what we expect from alcoholics--to never again touch the one thing in their life they love the most. And many many recovered alcoholics do just that. Shouldn't those of us with lifelong issues with going up and down the scale be that committed?

Maintenance is no different than dieting, maybe you'll eat an extra couple hundred calories a day but, in general, you just stay on the lifestyle plan for the rest of your life. If you are willing to accept that, then you shouldn't have any trouble maintaining your weight.

That's my soap box for today (and it is all for my own benefit, as I'm talking myself back into a "lifestyle" and out of a "diet!")

I lost 40 lbs in 2006-2007. Kept it off through 2014-2015. Have gained 9 lbs. Working now on getting back to lowest weight. Answer = eat less & exercise more.

Lynn