I've seen and heard a lot of people talk about not going on a diet, but instead making a lifestyle change, and thinking about my own experiences, plus reading and hearing about other people's, I get the sense that this is an important idea. There are so many things that can throw us off track, if we let them. I was thinking about it, and it seems like that would be much more true for a diet because a lifestyle change theoretically goes deeper into our relationship with food. But for me, I don't think I've really made much headway in making that deeper change. Right now, mine is a diet. I'm not sure what steps to take to make a lifestyle change. In a lot of ways a diet is math, but a lifestyle change...I'm not sure. I have a sense of it, but I'm not sure how to get there. For those of you that have made that change, what did you do? What makes it a lifestyle change for you and not just a diet?

Well, for me, I always went about weight loss by methods that weren't sustainable forever. I cut calories FAR below what would likely be my maintenance calorie range (the average for women being somewhere between 1500 and 2000 calories), and I sacrificed many important parts of my life (deciding not to date, avoiding social occasions with friends, putting all my energies into the weight loss) and eventually I would get sick of all the sacrificing and would just be so burnt out and exhausted that I would start to backslide.

This time I decided to diet "backwards," in fact I decided I wouldn't "diet" at all. I committed only to changes I was willing to make indefinitely. I wasn't going to cut my calories any further than was comfortable, I wasn't going to do any exercise that I couldn't see committing to forever.

I stopped trying to work at my absolute maximum possible intensity with the hope of being able to ease off "some day."

I decided that weight loss wasn't even the point. I was going to make small changes until they felt so comfortable that I'd be ready to make another, then I'd make another change and when that felt comfortable and just part of my normal, I'd make another.

I'm never tempted to "quit" because there's nothing to quit. This is just how I live my life. My weight isn't the most important aspect of my life, in fact, it's not really in the top ten. It just happens to be responding to the other changes I've made in my life that have been important to me.

Overall health, strength, stamina are my bigger goals, and even when the wight isn't budging I know that my habit changes are improving all of those, as well as my sense of accomplishment and my mental clarity. The more I do, the more I'm able to do.

I don't know when I'll be satisfied enough with my accomplishments that I'll decide that I'm done making changes. I may in fact never get to that point, because there'll probably always be some challenge I want to meet, or some aspect of my life I want to do better.

I've refused to make any changes that I'm not willing to continue with forever. Maybe there are changes I will abandon, but it will be because I decided they weren't right for me, not because I couldn't "keep up" with the change or because I knew I wouldn't be able to keep at it forever. I just don't do those kind of changes anymore. If I can't see myself doing it forever, I don't even attempt it.

Now there are things I am willing to do today that I wasn't willing to do when I started, but that's because I worked up to those changes. I could barely shower on my own when I started (I needed a shower chair and my husband's help to get into and out of the shower). As I've built strength and endurance, the more I do, the more I'm capable of doing, and the more I'm willing to do.

In the "old days" I would have put 99.9% of my energies into the weight loss, and when I felt worn out and deprived, I'd give up because it just didn't feel "worth it" to give up so much (and it wasn't).

Now I just live my life, and weight loss is part of it, but not the only part of it, and not even the greatest or most important part of it - just a part of it.

Your response is very helpful. In thinking about it, one of the big things for me is that a lifestyle change would be about more than just weight loss. I can lose weight. I've done it before, I can do it again. But there are other things. I am physically weak. I get winded climbing a single flight of stairs. That sucks. I don't have energy. That's why when I look at this I know I don't want to just do what I did last time, eat very low calories and lose the weight. I mean, yes, I want to lose the weight, and I'm fine with a lower calorie diet, but I want more than that. I admire what you are doing...but I find the thought of doing something similar to be intimidating. I've never really learned to cook. I pretty much live off of microwave food, and while I don't think it's a great way of doing things, I feel like getting away from it would be a giant change, and I'm not sure where to start. The same with exercise. I know I want to get going on it. I don't know how I want to start. So far, I'm really just counting calories...dieting.

This is my second go-around with weight loss.
I realize now that a lifestyle change is what I need. I need to know that I can have pretty much what I want food-wise, but that all things are in moderation. That I also cannot live on junk my whole life. I need those fruits/veggies. That burgers/fries a sometime foods. That I should eat breakfast in the morning, even if it's just granola,fruit & yogurt. That I can't have cake or pie each night before bed. That sweets & snacks CANNOT make up the majority of my diet. Which unfortunately I had let myself slip into.

Exercise is necessary. That even if I don't feel like it, I need to move my body more. It helps me feel better, sleep better & eventually look better.

Another reason why this has to be a lifestyle change is that heart disease, HBP & now cancer runs in my family. I did have myself fooled for quite some time that I'd not be touched by those things, because they didn't run in my mom's family (4 sisters) & I'm a woman...well, WRONG! Nobody in my dad's family (4 brothers) lived more than 70-74 years. It doesn't matter that in mom's family that they lived into their 80s & 90s! I have HALF my mom's genetic make up & HALF of my dad's!

Even with my mom's family having a longer life span than dad's, it was all just in my mind. Low & behold my mom's sister was diagnosed out of the blue with stage 4 breast cancer...we lost her this spring. She battled for over 2.5 years. I have to be healthy if I want to see a nice ripe old age.

Lastly, for my hubby. My hubby is a diabetic with HBP & I need to help him stay on a healthy path. I want to keep him around for a long time to come. We are in this marriage til death do us part & I really don't want it to be anytime soon. I'd like for us to be healthy enough to enjoy going places & doing fun things for as long as possible. I wouldn't mind celebrating my 60th birthday at Disneyland or something!!!

kaplods, that's a lot to think about. I don't really know what changes I'd be willing to continue indefinitely. I need to think about that. Thanks for the food for thought. It makes a lot of sense to me, though a big part of the point for me is weight loss, but there are other big things, too. I've tended to feel a sense of urgency toward losing weight fast and to try to let that drive me. But it's more of a sprint than a marathon, and I don't think that's what I'm looking for at this point in my life. I feel secure that I am loved as I am, and that makes it easier to focus on slow and steady.

Congrats on your progress, btw, both of you!

MrsTryingAgain, thanks. It's important to remember that there's more at stake than just weight loss. I think of my kids, who I think are potentially in danger of having similar struggles that could affect their health...My daughter loves sweets and diabetes runs in my family. What will a diet teach her? Not much. But a lifestyle change toward being healthier...that's a much bigger thing. And my bf has had blood pressure issues. He has made some changes, but he still eats a lot of unhealthy food. I admit that I hope if I can make some healthy changes some of it will rub off on him, too. And I want to be healthier myself. I am sick of being weak and tired.

Diet vs. Lifestyle Change - For me it is pretty much all the same thing.

I was overweight and I wanted to get myself as healthy as possible. This I did by following a specific diet, the Richard Simmons Foodmover plus exercise, and I lost 65 lbs. But my losing the 65 lbs., and keeping it off, I found that I had made a real change in my lifestyle. I was in my 70s when I did all this.

I don't think it matters what you call it - just do it, and good luke to you!

Mine has definitely been a lifestyle change, and while I count calories to make sure I stay on track, which I consider to be a diet, calorie counting has completely changed the way I see food. Before, I ate whatever I wanted when I wanted, which I still do, however, I also ate however MUCH I wanted, too, which was often way, way too much. Now I eat the suggested serving sizes of everything, and my portion sizes have dropped dramatically and I've learned what I can eat for less and still stay satisfied, which has been the most important lesson. I don't NEED a giant plate of spaghetti to be full. I don't NEED to eat an appetizer, plus a salad, plus a full-sized entree when I go out to eat. I don't NEED to not be able to move after a meal, lol. I need food to give me energy, and it's up to me to choose the foods that do that the best. That's a lifestyle change, and I can stick to it.

I eat everything in moderation, avoiding obvious "bad food" for the most part (I cheat here and there) and almost never drink calories. That in combo with a lot of cardio/strength exercise has gotten me where I want to go.

This is a great question and I know that the amount of information is overwhelming.

I think that while you're dieting (which to me means restricting calories by one method of another) one of your primary goals should be to try and find a WOE (Way Of Eating) that you can live with for the rest of your life. This is going to be a little different for just about everyone so you'll just have to go by trial and error a bit.

Having said that - my advice to anyone new would not be to worry about finding the perfect plan ... just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The good news is that you've found a great website. I don't know if it is the best one but it's the best one I know of because there are very many wonderful people here willing to help you.

Lots of great advice here, but I'll just throw in my two cents:

I think kaplods hit the nail on the head. If you're not willing to commit to something you're doing indefinitely then you might want to rethink your strategy. I look at what I'm doing and ask myself 1) do I feel good? 2) do I feel satisfied, 3) am I making progress towards my goals and 4) can I seem myself still doing what I'm doing 5 years from now?

If the answer is no to any of the above something needs to be tweaked for me. It's still a balance I'm trying to strike and its frustrating at times (i mean, everyone's so gung-ho at the start of a new plan and wants to jump in with both feet but it's hard to maintain that level of enthusiasm all the time).

This is a good point, because sometimes it's hard to know what you're willing to do forever. I think I would have succeeded much better in the past, if I'd been more flexible.

I do remind myself constantly that I don't have to have the perfect plan, I just have to have a plan and be putting in work towards my goal.

Often in the past, when my choices weren't working for me, I'd often give up rather than come up with an alternate plan and commit to that.

A lot of this, I truly believe is weight loss "tradition." We follow in the footsteps of those who've gone before us. We do what we see others having done. And the most visible of role models for weight loss are role models for failure.

For example, dieting "tradition" is to regain before starting a "new" diet. Almost as much of a tradition as the pre-wedding bachelor party, is the diet tradition of bingeing before a new diet.

There are so many of these counterproductive "traditions" that if you follow the common path for weight loss, you won't lose much.

Most of us aren't even consciously aware of these traditions, we just follow the examples we've been set.

Weight loss is also considered a somewhat taboo subject (or at least an intensely private one), and there are also so many myths that are so firmly culturally ingrained that they almost have pseudo-religious overtones, and as a result it's often difficult to talk about the subject openly. And it's very difficult to "unlearn" what you can't talk about.

I'm facing a crossroads right now, in that I'm finding it difficult to do more than maintain my weight right now. My health issues are making exercise difficult and I'm finding it difficult to cut calories low enough to get the weight off.

I've started experimenting with a PSMF to get the weight off, and almost by definition a PSMF is not a sustainable forever WOE. I'm really torn over this, because on one hand I've been very committed to only making changes I can foresee comitting to forever, and getting the weight off by any means so that the weight loss itself may increase my strength and stamina for more activity.

I haven't had enough success with my PSMF to evaluate it's effectiveness for me. I'm finding that there is no "autopilot" on a PSMF. I haven't yet decided if the PSMF is more trouble than it's worth, and I think that's another key to finding a "lifestyle" is experimenting. Being willing to lose a battle or two or a hundred in order to win the war.

With weight loss, we're often taught to judge ourselves so harshly that when we stumble, we convince ourselves that the stumble dooms us to failure, and in self-fufillment fashion we throw ourselves over the cliff to "start fresh," at some point in the future.

The trick is picking ourselves up each and every time we stumble. I'm constantly reminding myself, "there is no starting over, just moving on."

So much of weight loss is "unlearning" habits we didn't even know we were taught (so we feel "stupid" and self-sabotaging, rather than what we really are - which is normal).

This is a really important question for me since I lost 110 pounds and maintained it for almost 2 years before rapidly gaining back about 2/3 of the weight over the course of a very difficult 5 months.

I have to be honest: I thought I had made a lifestyle change. I had grown very comfortable with my lifestyle, and I had done a lot of things that I thought were very healthy: I had developed an exercise habit, I had developed a few simple eating rules that kept my weight in check after I lost the weight, I was able to eat the occasional treat, decide ahead of time whether I wanted a meal out to include dessert, and I had even accepted that I wasn't able to maintain as low a weight as I liked without adhering to a strictness that I wasn't willing to maintain, so I had accepted a slightly higher weight than my goal weight as my maintenance weight.

But what happened was that I hit a point in my life when I had so much on my plate, a perfect storm of too many responsibilities and too much stress, and all of a sudden, I abandoned the new way and went back to the old way.

I mean, I'm fifty-one years old and embarked on my weight loss journey at age 48. I've had disordered eating patterns since I was in my teens. So, the lifestyle change was not as entrenched as my older patterns even after two years of successfully developing a new lifestyle.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I now realize that there probably is no such thing as a "permanent lifestyle change" for me, and that the lifestyle change is really not around eating and exercise habits, but around managing stress itself. Right now, I'm not stressed, and I have enough space in my head to focus, and so changing my behavior isn't that hard. But now, I'm more realistic and I realize that until I get to the bottom of the way I handle stress when the stress gets really overwhelming, I'm never going to achieve a genuine lifestyle change.

An excellent post and lots of great thoughts/ideas/suggestions- Thank you all!

A diet would be a way of eating/exercise plan with a finish line in sight - I'll eat low-carb UNTIL I HIT GOAL. I'll exercise UNTIL I FIT INTO THOSE PANTS. I won't have dessert UNTIL I'VE LOST X LBS.

A lifestyle change means your version of "normal" living with regards to food and exercise is different. Instead of eating a bowl of pasta for dinner, I crave protein and vegetables. If I haven't worked out in 2 days I feel restless and want to do so. Eating a giant pile of dessert happens a couple times a month, not almost daily. These things have come to feel natural and comfortable with practice, and deviating from the new habits for too long feels wrong.