I am in a big struggle. I am about 220... 5'6", 33 years old. I am overweight and I know that. I had success with Metabolic Research center years ago but am finding all of the weight loss plans, ideas, programs sooooooo overwhelming. Juicing, protein, low carb. I just don't know what to do... PS-seeing my dr today to go over weight and rule out thyroid, etc.

I see that we have similar goals!! Its always nice to find others who are seeking the same thing you are, and that is what 3FC is for! It is incredibly overwhelming to start the weight loss process, but please don't get discouraged!! The most important thing is to not give up. I can't tell you how many times I've began and had one ooops and then thought ok I will start tomorrow or next week. If all of it seems too much, begin with little changes. Cut out soda, or white bread/pasta. I started by cutting out something else "bad" each new week.

Personally I don't do any specific diet, I just have guidelines for myself, some examples are
1.WATER
2. All whole grain/complex carbs
3. NO mindless eating, if I am hungry I eat
4. As many whole fresh foods as possible
5. veggies veggies veggies!

I should also add that I allow a few off meals a week. I want to lose weight (badly) but I don't want to deprive myself of the foods I LOVE

It may be best to pick a certain diet or meal plan and tailor it to your needs. All these different diets out there can be confusing but you've got to figure out by trial and error what is best for you. Also reading these boards here can be beneficial and motivational! I wish you the best in your journey to a happier, healthier you!!! We can do it

Educate yourself about basic nutrition with a book on the subject, not the internet. There is so much misinformation or inessential information out there and people trying to sell something that the important stuff lets lost. So get a book on good nutrition from your library. Once you understand good nutrition you won't feel overwhelmed anymore and you will have a much better clue as to what to do.

Not long ago in one book, i can't rmeembe which, i read that doctors are often not well educated about nutrition and weightloss. So go to your doctor but don't necessarily take what they say as gospel or the way you must go.

If it seems sensible, try it if it seems problematic double check their advice.

Anyway, i pretty much agree with peaceandlove except on one point. If you have difficulty controlling your intake of certain types of food e.g. sweet foods, then it can be easier to cut them out altogether or at least limit them to rare occasions. Certainly at first you can get away with eating more of those types of foods than when you start weighing a lot less.

So what do i do:
I try to stick with eating three decent meals a day. With only fruit in between.
If i get genuinely hungry, i eat something. This usually happens to me when i am away from the home. Life burns more energy when I'm not at home. Learn to know when you are genuinely hungry and when its just food triggers from surrounding sights and smells or emotional eating or boredom eating. Develop ways to resist or better manage those unhelpful tendencies to indulge.

I find making firm solid rules helps me. It builds my commitment.

Cook your own food as much as possible. Severely restrict the amount of processed foods you buy and eat. Fruit, vegetables, natural unsweetened full cream dairy, fish/meat/eggs for protein. Nuts for another source of protein and good healthy fats but in small quantities. Cold presssed oils like olive or other nut oils for salads, not bottled salad dressings. I cook with it too but if you are a stickler, there are other good choices for cooking, just avoid industrially manufactured vegetable oils as much as possible. Those oils use some terrible chemicals in their production.

Keep a detailed food diary and measure your foods with measuring cups spoons and/or digital kitchen scales.

If you weigh yourself regularly, do not be surprised by frequent fluctuations in your weight. Its the general downward or upward trend that matters. The rest is just water up and down all the time for numerous reasons.

diet 80%, exercise 20%.

Don't be in a hurry. slow and steady wins the race.

I quit refined sugar. We don't need it. And it causes me to eat more and more of the stuff and less and less healthy nutritious food. If you eat it, do it at prescribed times and less often.

I think when you are trying to lose weight, it is important to consider how you want to eat for the rest of your life. Because really, that is what you have to do to be successful long term, is to continue doing what you did for weight loss, just less intensely. If you don't want to give up your favorite foods, do weight watchers or calorie counting, or just general portion control. If you want to give up grains, go paleo or low carb. If you want a Mediterranean thing, do that or something like south beach diet. If you just want to eat and feel full, try volumetrics. Ultimately, the weight loss is just the beginning.

I am just trying to limit the things that I can't control myself with. This happens to be bread and pasta, and most things made with flour of any kind. I also can't control myself with white rice most of the time, so I try to limit that, too. And highly sugary things are out, too. And the less I eat refined food, the less hungry I feel, and the fewer cravings I have. If I do find myself in a situation where junk is the only option, I just try to eat a very small amount and make sure the next few meals are really a lot better in terms of nutrition.

It requires some thought, and some planning, but you can do it. You just have to know what your goal is, and stick to it. And when you don't, start again that instant. A lot of small good choices leads to huge weight loss success. Every little thing adds up. Just do a lot of little small things, and watch the number go down!

My suggestion is to choose a weight loss plan that fits your personality. Do you prefer something...

rigidly structured, like Atkins or Paleo?
flexible, like calorie counting or Flexitarian?
with food provided, like Medifast?
that provides a support system, like Weight Watchers?
etc. etc.

Pick something and try it. After several weeks, maybe months, evaluate how happy you are eating that way and how your body is responding. If you hate it and/or are not losing weight, try something else. Maybe you'll get lucky and the first thing you try will be absolutely perfect. Or maybe not...you might be like me who spent 6 years trying to figure out how to make this work for me.

HTH. Good luck!

I want to make another point.

When i am not on a diet and eating badly, i feel i don't want to cook for myself and don't have the energy for eating properly. Having to cook and fuss with food feels hard and like something i don't want to do. But this state of mind actually changes when i am able to make a start and feel good about it.

So whatever you are feeling right now and however hard you feel it may be, this will all change.

I can cook and i know how to eat right. But when i am in a bad eating phase, i hate cooking and nothing healthy tastes any good if i've cooked it and i just wish i had someone to cook for me and make healthy yummy food. HOwever, those thoughts and feelings aren't permanent or reflective of anything other than a current state of mind and body.

So if that's the sort of thing that's bothering you, then rest assured its not as hard as it seems at the start. When you make a decision about which way you want to go forward, if you feel good about it, then things quickly change and things tend to fall into place.

However if you make a choice and then decide its not for you, don't despair. You can always change direction. There's no law of the universe that says the first diet choice you make has to be the "right one". And if you are aware of that possibility of it being the wrong choice at the beginning, then you won't get upset if you have to change direction.

don't think you have to make a perfect choice straight off. Usually when i start a diet, i just start with what i know to be about right and tighten things up as i go along. I also learn more and refine my choices and approach as i go.

If you are following someone else's plan, which could be a good thing if you don't have a clue about what healthy food is, then sometimes people feel they must follow it rigidly and struggle when it doesn't fit them. Most diets allow some flexibility and some really require you to take over control while others seem to demand rigidly following their idea generally for good reasons. So when you make a choice, try to understand how the diet works. And be flexibly minded yourself. And don't make it the be all and end all. Whenever we do something new, there's always a settling in period when we have to learn stuff and make mistakes and correct things etc.

So don't worry so much. Just keep going forward.

Your picture is beautiful

We all grew up eating a certain way. We have centuries now of eating potatoes, bread, meat, fruits and vegetables. These food groups are in our basic genetics. As we know, you don't mess with Mother Nature without consequences and the consequences of trying to re write Mother Nature are all the yo yo diets.

Someone is telling you, you only need to eat a lot of protein with no carbs to lose 20 to 50 pounds in a month. Another is telling you to eat nuts and berries by reflecting that's what the Stone Age man ate, so it should work for us now, while forgetting that we have evolved since then.

This while everyone should know by now that the result of this is a very short term usually rapid weight loss, with weight gained back twice as fast, and then some.

It's really not rocket science, it's eat less, move more. We need to realize that a calorie is a calorie regardless if it's carrots or cookies, or protein or carbs.

If you can stay within your goal weight daily calorie count it's impossible not to lose weight. If you go over you goal weight daily calorie count you won't lose weight, and if you really overdo it you'll gain weight.

My best friend through all of this, that I have been very successful with is myfitnesspal, a free app with 3 million food groups, plus restaurant and fast food that makes it so easy to track your calorie intake during the day. I was stuck on a plateau for months until I signed up. I also sync it with Jawbone Up very similar to Fitbit to get a very accurate picture of how many steps I am taking during the day and how many calories I am burning. It's simple math calories consumed versus calories burned. I broke thru the scale resistance with this and on my way down again with only a few more pounds to goal weight.

I don't eliminate specific foods from my intake, I just eat a lot less of them, two pieces of bread turned into one, and a piece of cake turned into a sliver. I love oranges so that is my after dinner late night snack. If I get hungry during the day a tablespoon of all natural peanut butter is the cure.

Good luck to you, you can do it.

Although "eat less, move more" is an oft-used phrase, it's not exactly true. You do NOT have to exercise to lose weight. Exercising can help create a caloric deficit, it will help you to have a more toned body as you lose, and there are enormous health benefits associated with exercse. But it's totally possible to lose weight without ever exercising.

Technically true. But some people have to focus on macronutrients as well as calories. That's why there are plans like the Zone Diet (balanced macronutrients), Atkins (low carb), Dash (low fat).

I so don't believe in the whole "a calorie is a calorie" thing for me. Maybe in a lab a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. But in real life, 500 calories of potato chips and 500 calories of a vegetable salad have totally different affects on me physically.

Pretending otherwise has never gotten me very far in weight management.

*Waves from north side of Denver*

You've gotten a lot of good advice here, which again is probably overwhelming! I think the most important take away from the great advice you already have here is:

1) Find something that works. That will involve trial and error. It is important to find something that you can stick to for now as well as for life (thinking ahead to maintenance). Maybe you try a low carb diet for a month. If it's working, and you can stick to it and incorporate it into your life, great! If not, adjust. Maybe try counting calories. Another month. Like the idea of tracking foods but finding calories difficult, or lacking a support system? Maybe switch to Weight Watchers, give it another month. And so on.

It's sort of like shopping for a dress for a special occasion. You have an idea of the color and style you want and think will look good on you. So you go to the store and try it on. After examining it in the mirror for a while, you can decide whether you want to buy it and continue to wear it, or return it to the rack and pick something else out in a slightly different style.

And I'll add a second point:

2) What are your goals? Pure weight loss? Eat healthier (and how do you define that)? Increase fitness? Your diet and exercise program should reflect these.

Here is an example of how I apply these points for my specific goals and my own body/personality:

I am at the high end of a healthy weight range for my height, so my goals at the moment are to increase my fitness levels and lose body fat (rather than pure weight loss). Because of this I train a lot during the week and also do heavy (well, heavy for weak little me) weightlifting, as well as track my calorie, protein, and fat intakes. I have a minimum goal for protein and fat each day, and a calorie window I stay in based on a percentage decrease of my maintenance calorie levels.

Over the past few years, after trying a variety of approaches to weight loss, I have found that keeping a food diary and aiming for a calorie goal is the most effective way for me to lose weight.

The move more dictum doesn't mean go to the gym. It means literally move more and its a good idea that's not really hard to do for almost anyone. It means try to spend a bit less time sitting on your bum in front of the tv or computer. It means take a few extra steps or do a bit more housework or do some squats while you are in the loo, take the stairs instead of the lift. It doesn't mean take up running now.

I totally agree with this. The better your nutrition, the easier it is to manage your appetite and therefore lose weight.

But...it's not necessary for weight loss. A good idea, yes, but not a requirement. I lost 50 pounds without changing my "movement quota" at all. Not even a little bit.
Edited to correct myself: Last May, I walked a few times a week and then did the Color Run 5K in June with some friends (but we didn't run).

I'm just emphasizing this because I think it's important to focus on food intake first when beginning a diet. That's overwhelming enough without having to worry about all the other variables involved in becoming healthy.

Thank you so much for all of the responses!!! After seeing my doctor and having a blood test I am clear except for defecient in Vitamin D. I am researching this and will speak with her about some options and treatments. I also recently got the bc implant and may be looking to take it out. It is similar to Depo as far as the hormones go and there tends to be Vit D problems associated with both.

Many of you mentioned having goals. Mine are to be at or below 150 lbs. Feel good, be able to move and not get winded, walk stairs with no problem, not have to hold my breath when I put shoes on. I would rather feel good and weigh more than to weigh less and still not feel healthy. I want to be confident in my health and be balanced.

I think initially I will up my water, veggies, fruit and fish. Include some vitamin suplements. Cut out white sugars, flour and get informed and creative on the alernatives. Keep a food diary and start moving more.