I realize everyone is different, but for those who have reached their goal, approximately how long did it take to lose those annoying last ten pounds?

I've had about 8 pounds to lose since August now. I get down to that and then won't lose a pound for 2 weeks and then fall of the wagon. Something will come up, a big event or a trip or something (I know, excuses excuses), and I plan to just have a small cheat but next thing you know it's been four or five or ten days! I'll finally get back on track for a week or two and then something switches in my brain and I can't get a particular food out of my head and I NEED to have it. I know, it's pathetic how little will power I have, but that's besides the point.

I'm trying to get a realistic idea of how long it will take me to lose these last pounds. Everyone always says they're the hardest to lose, and I am definitely seeing that, but just wondering who else has experienced this and about how long it took them.

Thank you!

I personally don't think the experience of others is going to be helpful to you because you're only asking about the last 10 lbs. This is fairly meaningless as a 5'0" person might have their goal weight be 150lbs and the last 10 lbs might have been a lot easier to lose than a 5'0" person who has a goal weight of 100 lbs and is sitting at 110.

Ultimately when it comes to vanity lbs it is going to be difficult. Body fat percentages really matter much more than lbs of weight on a scale due to how differently people are built.

For a woman not in her teens or early 20s getting below 20% body fat and staying there is not going to be easy.

Getting to 25% body fat though isn't going to be too difficult for most.

For a man getting below 15% isn't so easy but getting to 20% shouldn't be too much trouble.

Finally - the less you have to lose the slower you need to lose it. At your size losing 1/2 a lb of fat per week would be pretty good progress in my opinion.

Hopefully this was somewhat helpful.

I found that i got to within 2 pounds and went to phase 2, 3, etc and the weight continued to fall ( slowly) so I'm actually 5 below where i wanted to be 10 days into phase 4, i think there are a lot of variables involved , i think my eating 'better" has helped the modest losses continue....

I know everyone is different but I was surprised that I was able to lose weight pretty quickly even though I started off not very far from my goal weight. So I guess it took 3 weeks to lose 13 lbs? (Admittedly these were vanity pounds which is why I expected it to take longer) I decided to stop and go to phase 2 since my body fat was getting kind of low. You can do it!!

on 6/13 I weighed in at 129.8 and 25.74% bodyfat
on 7/25 I weighed in at 120.4 and 22.04% bodyfat
That is 6 weeks for 9.4 lbs, average about 1.5 lbs per week

I was working out 6x/wk for about 5 of those weeks, 3x/wk with a trainer in a conditioning/circuit session and 30 min cardio the other 3 days.

I felt at that point that my body was really working properly (finally) as that was some of my most consistent weight loss over a total of 40 weeks, and I was eating extra IP (and the high calorie mango drink bottles and strawberry wafers at that) plus extra eggs due to the working out.

As JohnP suggested, YMMV. Especially to consider is unrealistically low body fat (somehow being at "acceptable" body fat at 130 seemed too soon to stop when I wanted to hit that 120...).

I also experienced some further weight loss in P3 and P4, as paulfromport.

My suggestion to you is to phase off. Your statements on the "cheats" and "excuses" would suggest you have lost your focus. You might want to consider phasing off properly, and maintain at your current weight until after the first of the year. Then go for the vanity weight if you've gotten your focus back.