My disordered eating patterns didn't start until I needed to lose weight, and I can't attribute stress particularly to my regain, but otherwise my story is very similar to Ubergirl.

I simply woke up one morning and said, "screw this". Really. I was tired of making beautiful tasty salads, I was tired of eating expensive and delicious seafood, no more oatmeal with fresh berries, and certainly no more fruit from the local orchard. I wasn't hungry and I wasn't deprived. I was just sick of it all. I wanted to eat granola bars, rice crispy treats, and cheap bread with gobs of butter on it. So I did. And here I am.

I can see myself walking three times a week for thirty minutes and doing some easy strength training on the off days. Instead, I read the posts of the people who work out several hours a day and get mad at them instead of doing anything myself. I know, this makes perfect sense...:dizzy:

So, I want what I want, when I want it. I think that might be a character defect and that is what I need to address.

On a lighter note, I am trying to ease myself into exercise that is appropriate for me, and finally, I understand that eating granola bars [under the guise of "they are healthy"] just leads to Rice Krispy treats, Roman Meal Bread, and the end of my "Life-style change". It is almost like "just one drink" for an alcoholic.

LOL.

Oddly enough, that's kind of how it was for me too. I used to feel tired a lot before I went to the gym, and I would kind of dread it, but then I would go and I'd really enjoy it, and was so happy I went, and then I absolutely remember thinking, "I'm tired, I don't feel like going," and then, suddenly, the voice that always said, "shut up and go" just didn't say anything. So, I stayed home. I just LOST MY MOJO. It was as if my MOJO got exhausted, or that my MOJO tank got empty. It was the weirdest thing in the world.

I've read some stuff that said that willpower is finite and that it takes mental energy and when get exhausted after a while. It took me two years, but I just got really exhausted and couldn't force myself to do it anymore. And the weirdest thing is that I really didn't realize that I was forcing myself to do anything. It felt totally comfortable and natural until one day, I just gave up.

Looking back, though, I realize that I did have a HUGE amount of stress and too much to do and I didn't have enough focus and energy leftover to concentrate on weight loss.

This seems like an appropriate time for me to plug intermittent fasting.

While I haven't found the motivation to lose my vanity lbs I've been able to maintain my weight loss pretty much effortlessly by intermittent fasting.

I don't worry about eating "clean" I eat pretty much whatever I want. Just not however much I want. Because I eat only two meals a day those meals can be substantially larger than if they were split into 3-5 meals. Occasionally I throw in a 24 hour fast.

I don't think that for your changes to be lifestyle changes, they necessarily need to last for ever. But I think that changes being sustainable, things that you could conceivably do forever, is important. To me, a diet changes food, a healthy lifestyle involves much more than that - I've revamped how I cook, how I shop, how I excercise, challenged my thoughts around food, what and how I eat, why I eat, started treating myself with things that are not food, educated myself about nutrients, dealt with body image issues, etc.

I lost weight by restricting calories and carbs. I keep the weight off by monitoring calories and carbs. It doesn't matter to me what I call it as long as I do it.

I lost half my body weight because I needed to lose half my body weight. I had no good habits to fall back on; I had a lifetime of eating what I wanted, when I wanted and how much I wanted. I've been at goal for several years now, and it is never going to feel natural to me to restrict my eating. I've just accepted that and I work within the parameters I've got.

Call it whatever makes it easier for you to stick with it.

This thread is so true for me, as well as my family.

At first, I cut calories and exercised enough to it myself into a deficit and start losing weight. As time went on, I began to focus on where my calories were coming from...not just how much I was consuming. I feel it would take me forever to write it all down as eloquently as many members can, but over the last year and a half we have completely eliminated trans fat, HFCS, artificial sugar and a host of other undesirable ingredients from our diet.

This has taken over a year! Seriously... It was slow and sometimes painful, but that is how I know it is a lifestyle change, and not just a diet plan. My whole family's food choices have had to change, too. Our entire way of viewing food has changed, and I am still on the search for new foods and new recipes.

There has been a lot of failure. Buying foods that we didn't like, failed recipes, expensive foods that weren't worth it, etc. Radically changing every edible item in our house was huge. And I still struggle...occasionally forgetting to check a label and succumbing to convenience foods. But I keep on the hunt, and for my family, we have had to make a conscious effort to save money in other areas, so that we have the freedom to buy healthy food, not only in abundance, but also variety and a bit of convenience, too.

I had an interesting trip to Whole Foods this morning. It is always sobering to realize that even in a store filled with healthful goodies....calories still matter. I can't eat a stick of butter just because it is organic! Lol But I have learned that my body feels better when filled with natural, healthy choices. And that since I don't eat large quantities of food anymore, I'd rather have my food be high quality and nutritious.

I've been struggling lately with the surprising emotions that go along with this whole idea of changing our food choices forever. I am basically trying to undo a generation, or more, of chemical-filled convenience foods that I was raised on. And liked! I still like the taste of these things, even though I no ,longer eat them. Sometimes I feel a bit frustrated, or annoyed, when I go into the grocery store and it seems like 90% of the food on the shelves is not something I would buy anymore. I hate trying to sort through endless aisles of crap to find a few things that fit our family's nutritional guidelines. I should just stick to Whole Foods, but it is expensive and a lot of their items can be found much more cheaply at other stores.

I have resigned myself to the fact that if I want variety and a bit of convenience still, it requires time, money and the effort and planning that goes into shopping multiple stores across our town, sometimes up to 45 minutes away.

So for all these reasons...good and bad...I think making a lifelong change has to be the best choice. Should you do it all in one day? Can you?? Probably not. Gosh, I hope that in a mere two more years I might feel totally comfortable with our food choices and expand my culinary (and child-approved) menu even more. :)

Yes!!!!

Absolutely - This is my story exactly.

I kept my weight off for about a year, and right up until I suddenly gave up, I was all excited about keeping it off long enough to be in that weight-loss register.

As I trudge the road to normal weight, yet again, I am asking myself how to avoid another regain. Unfortunately, I don't know the answer. I am pretty sure that if you and I got together, found the answer and published it, we would be rich!

In my experience, what's important is to pick changes that you like, because they're much more likely to stick for life. After going through dieting and consequent disordered eating patterns, I realized that I just couldn't cut everything "not good for dieting" from my life, or I'd feel so deprived that I'd just end up bingeing all the time. So I had to devise plans to incorporate those. For instance, I still eat cookies, but I stick to mini-cookies, and keep one pack only in my pantry. I don't buy ice-cream any more, but I buy sorbets (less calories). If I go to McDonald's or a similar place, I stick to the smallest burgers/fries size. (The latter may be easier for me, because I live in France, and I think our portions here are smaller than those in the USA--but I could be mistaken on that one.) I also got into the habit of eating from dessert plates, so that I can fill them, which visually and psychologically makes me feel like I'm NOT depriving myself, but of course they still contain less food than a full regular plate.

Those were small changes, and some of them don't even seem useful at first. But they did help me getting into habits that I think I can sustain for life, because at worst I don't mind them (the plates size, for instance). And I found out that still allowing myself junk food, but in lower quantities, 1) I didn't reinforce the contrary urge to binge after depriving myself, 2) now I can't even stand eating as much junk as before, or my stomach and liver will just commit joint suicide. ^^;

I TOTALLY understand this. Sometimes I read people's posts and wonder if they're for real. They seem so rah-rah about their new lifestyle, so turned off by the foods they used to eat, so committed to their steel-cut oatmeal, Swiss chard, cauliflower and water-packed tuna. Don't get me wrong, I like these foods too, but I also like other foods (in my case, gourmet foods with lots of interesting sauces and rich European desserts). I also like quantity.

What's helpful for me is to acknowledge the sacrifice involved in living leaner and healthier. We ARE giving up something. Something GOOD. Something PLEASURABLE. Something COMFORTING. I find it more helpful to face this head-on than to deny it. It reminds me that I'm making a choice and that, on balance, the choice is well worth it. If one day it stops being worth it I can make a different choice.

I'm also a firm believer in planned indulgences. I have a 4,000-calorie meal about once a month and several more modest splurges throughout the month. This level of indulgence might not work for everyone, but I find it helps me maintain my equilibrium and sanity around food.

F.

That was me, and I meant it - at least I thought so at the time. Maybe I was whistling in the dark.

Good point. I do like steel-cut oats, but I also liked my bread and butter. Not only was it comforting, but it was familiar. I have spent many more years of my life eating my old way than the healthier way. So, I need to recognize that this change is a sacrifice.

I think I get hung up on the idea that cheap bread with butter is "bad", therefore I should be thrilled to death to like something "good" like oats.

"Diet" & "Lifestyle Change" mean the same thing to me. Sometimes I call it my "Healthy Weight Management & Fitness Journey" or something like that.

It is just semantics to me, not something I worry about.

I am so excited to have this term, "lifestyle change!" I wanted a quick and easy phrase to explain to people what I am doing. I wanted that phrase because it's hard to pass along a big long description of a change that seems to have happened inside of me and which has lots of facets. But, I am definitely in the excited pink-cloud portion, just beginning, so I know that I want to tone-down how I deliver my news to people or else I will drive everyone around me crazy.

The most basic, fundamental parts of what I am doing is that I:
- Eat better (remove many, many carbs, sweets, snacks, fat and drive-through food - begin cooking again and use fresh and wholesome ingredients)
- Eat far less (small portions + learning to tell when I am hungry - especially since I often am thirsty and experience thirst as hunger)
- Exercise more (have only begun with walking but am amazed how much I am enjoying that - wow is it hard! I have gotten so much weaker these last 3-4 years!)

Then there are so many other, small bits that go into this, and it's hard for me to describe so far, because every day more bits float to the surface - what I can and can't do with my feet and knees inflamed - how work is going and whether I can use anger to motivate me to exercise more - how clean the house is which allows me to cook more easily - how I'm doing emotionally, and whether I need to pay attention to doing nice things for the little kid part of me - keeping up with my spiritual program so that I have a foundation for everything else - finding a balance among getting out and socializing some so that I don't take myself so damn seriously, having some alone time which lets me rest and refuel, and having time with my family because we share a house and I love them.

Etc, Etc.

For me, a diet is a basic and simple structure, a set of rules, a frame, a list of do's and don't or yeses and no's. For me, having now heard this "lifestyle change" phrase, it gets at what I now want. I want more *health*, more *fit*-ness, more emotional stability, more balance and ability to go with the flow. Actually, I guess it means caring about me and taking care of me across a span of self-care ways. Food and weight are important pieces of this span.

Previous to this, I had stopped several big habits that had really hurt me, and developed a lot of much healthier habits in their place. But the eating part was the part I was always unwilling to budge on. I wanted to hold onto the .... emotional shield that eating provides me between me and The Big World.

Now ... I am on the "little bit at a time" bandwagon. This week - and I do view it as a one day at a time kind of way to make changes - I've gone from work to Taco Bell once and Firehouse Subs once and looked up their nutrition first and gotten high-protein, low-calorie choices; I've walked 5 days out of 7; I've cooked probably 6 or 7 times when I almost NEVER have cooked for years, only eaten fast food or my partner's Southern cooking; and I've gotten up to do some sort of active work that isn't exactly exercise, like housecleaning or gardening, instead of just sitting at the computer or TV, every day.

This all started with having to order work pants in a size bigger than I've ever been in before. Then my tolerating my food habits and sedentary habits suddenly clicked off and I get fed up and the next day my viewpoint just seemed to have changed. I can't explain it. It feels like I am just seeing so many things differently. It's like a great big hand picked me up and moved me to a different position on life's map and so now I am seeing things from a fresh position and they look different and feel different. I am so grateful!

I have a deep gut feeling that I will lose weight and become slimmer with this, but I am so new that the proof is not yet in the pudding. What I do know is that I am liking me and liking life a whole lot better, every day, when I had been feeling like a fat grey lump for the last few years. Now I feel like an awake, alive person. I hope the weight comes off, too.

I am making a LIFESTYLE CHANGE, thats the way I am looking at it!