Hi,

I've been posting here a while, usually on the weight watchers forum. I've been doing ww since this past Dec with a few month hiatus after surgery. I lost 15, gained it back, you know the drill!!

My question is, what diet do you find to work the best and easy in your lifestyle. I like to go out on Saturday nights for dinner and some drinks. It seems that on ww i plateau fast, or gain back fast.

I did Atkins (too harsh) for a couple of years a while back. I wasn't hungry but i wasn't losing either. Was looking for some feedback on what plan works for you! i see a lot of calorie counters out there!

Add me to the list of calorie counters but calories, afterall, is the foundation of pretty much any weight loss plan. (BTW, I hate using the word "diet"! )

I also eat low carb. I am doing Atkins temporarily right now (less than 20g of carbs a day) only because I need a carb/sugar detox but most of my weight was lost by eating between 125g and 150g of carbs a day. I found it extremely manageable and I was able to plan around the nights I went out for dinner and drinks.

I also hauled my butt to a gym! I learned that, for me, I burned more fat when I had less carbs in my body.

I believe in WW as my coworker has had great success on it but that point system drove me crazy!

Thanks, that is very helpful! The one thing about ww that bothers me is that you never know your calories exactly. I've been starting exercising more so hoping that helps. I am a chip/snack junkie and need to wean off of that. Starting out on low carb for a bit may be helpful too.

I was thinking about the word "diet" as i wrote it saying to myself i should change that to "lifeystyle"!!!!!

Jorge Cruise's Belly Fat Cure has been a big help. It's Atkins-ish, but much more balanced in terms of vegetables. Weaning from sugar was a big deal for me. he's very educational - yes volume of food does count but the composition of food is very very important. He's all over youtube and if you google him, he shares a lot of information. The library has all his books.

I basically had to change everything, change every single meal I ate and commit to exercise, and most of all - stop lying to myself. I had to stop lying to myself about food and exercise.

No diet has really worked for me. Or let me say that no diet was ever conducive to my lifestyle/body.

Example- Low Carb was impossible. Yes, I did lose 20 pounds on it, but I LOVE carbs. So naturally, I eventually gained that weight back as I tried to eat the carbs I was use to.

What I plan on trying this time around is to change my lifestyle. I plan on just eliminating junk food as much as possible and upping my veggie intake.

I'm another calorie counter. I like the freedom to eat whatever I want. Since I like to be full, that usually means a lot of low calorie, healthy things like lean meat and vegetables. I still eat all the things I ate before. I just account for them now. I also watch my sodium because of water weight.

I do IF (Intermittent Fasting, though for me that usually just means no eating before 12 PM), and I calorie count. And so far... working well for me.

Calorie counting is the only thing I've tried (I've never tried to actively lose weight before) and as you can see it's working out beautifully

I always thought exercise alone could make me lose weight, but I exercised hard for 5 years and just maintained my high weight without much thought to what I was eating. Once I started cutting calories and keeping up that exercise, woah did the weight come off.

Another calorie counter here. Like others, I don't like banning foods. I choose healthier foods that I enjoy with lower calories. Tonight, I'm having a rice medley with corns, peas and rotisserie chicken added in (white meat). Smaller quantity but really feeling with a glas of diet peach tea.

I do best with a combination of approaches. What I am doing now that has been working well:

WW - I like the weekly accountability and having a short term goal (doing well at the weigh in weekly) and find the group format helps keep me motivated and focused on weight loss. I do track points and find that helps me stay focused

Calorie Counting - I've been calorie counting at livestrong for almost a year. I do like to know the actual calories and other nutritional information and not just the points. In some ways I like calorie counting more than I do counting points. However, I have one main but...

On Livestrong I can set a number of calories per day. It will vary according to activity (that is if I record exercise it assumes I will "eat" that activity and adjusts my calories accordingly...that is if I had 800 calories left for the day and did a 200 calorie activity and recorded it, then it would say I had 1000 calories left for the day). What it doesn't do is allow me to have days where I eat more calories than others without it saying I've "gone over" for the day. That is, as you know, on WW you get a certain number of daily points (29 for me). Then you get 49 weekly points. So on one day I might use 29 points, another day 39 and another 31, etc. I tend to end up using about 20 of my WP each week. And the WW online tools lets you clearly see that.

On MyPlate at Livestrong, if I set my calories for 1250 calories a day and I ate 1250 calories one day, and 1600 the next and then 1200 calories for the next 5 on the 1600 calorie day it would show me as being 350 calories "over" for the day. I might consider it fine and might feel I have X amount of calories above the daily target that I can eat throughout the week (sort of like the WP on WW) but there is not a way to really show that on MyPlate. (I can see the calories over the last 7 days and I can manually calculate an average). So, for me, the calorie counting recording procedure doesn't work as well since it seems to assume I will eat the same calories every day. I realize this is a software issue and I could manually keep track of it how I want but it is just an annoyance that I have.

Lower carb -- A few months ago I went to lower carb eating, sort of a combination of Atkins/SB. I did a modified phase I/induction (basically Atkins but I allowed nuts). Now, I'm well into it. I do keep track of net carbs (atkins), am fine with full fat (atkins), but do watch saturated fat (South Beach) and allow a greater variety of foods than pure Atkins and am not as structured (South Beach).

I think I've been posting over and over for the past 4 weeks that I'm calorie counting now, but started on WWPP, and in the 8 weeks of PP lost 4 pounds (up/down/up/down--so frustrating) and in the past 4 weeks calorie counting lost as of today 6. I love knowing exactly what my foods contain, instead of an arbitrary point issued to discourage consumption. For instance while I don't drink wine, people are upset that it has so many points when it is comparable in calories to something with less points. So they don't have the wine and have the fabled apple, or they have the wine and suffer the points.

I even went so far as to trying to make PP work for me by tweaking it...but really, now I don't see the point. Why would I want to rely on WWPP for everything I put into my mouth when I can simply rely on the calories? WW has lost me. Come November, I will not renew. So disappointing.

Calorie counters will tell you that calories are calories. Do we know that 100 calories of veg/fruit/whole grains/dairy is better for us than 100 calories of chocolate? Of course. But every now and again, we're gonna want that chocolate just to keep our sanity, and keep us on the path.

I truly believe ANY diet plan works, as long as you follow it to a T! Same thing with ANY exercise plan, as long as you do it daily, you will see results. Bottom line, pick & choose a diet & exercise plan that you can sustain for life, because once you reach your GOAL, you gotta continue with the basics that got you there, if you wanna be a MAINTAINER!

For me it's been carb counting that has made the difference. I tried calorie counting/WW type things but it never worked for me unless I cut my calories to less than 1000 - which meant I was ALWAYS starving and it just wasn't sustainable.

On low carb I've been able to eat between 1500 and 2500 calories a day and lose weight so for me it works. I'm a carb junkie but this seems to be what works best for my body.

I lost weight using the Richard Simmons Foodmover - which is essentially the exchange program.

Now in 'maintenance mode' I am needing to control the simple carbs, but I haven't gained any weight back so what I am doing is working for me.

I'm a calorie counter as well. Something that's essential to me though is I don't eat anything in the morning (I know that's not what everyone recommends, but that's what works for me....I prefer to save my calories for the evening). I do eat a snack after I workout or sometimes, I'll just have my coffee...it depends on how I feel and I listen to my body. When I do eat, I make sure it's protein like pistachios, greek yogurt, egg whites with salsa or maybe some string cheese. I try to eat protein at every meal or snack.

When the urge to snack beyond my calories strikes, I either chew gum or eat sugar free (15 calories each) popsicles, or drink hot tea.

I still have a problem with binge eating, but I'm doing the best I can and that's all we can do.