I haven't exactly 'kept it off' yet but I have lost 3 stone this year, and am trying to stay strong.
When I weighed myself at the start of my 'diet' I was 13.2, but I had been 'detoxing' for 2 weeks (ie, not eating my usual piles of crap, and exercising every day) so I think I must have lost a good 3 pounds in that period, therefore I reckon I was exactly 13.5 at my heaviest. I'm now 10.7 and although I haven't been 'dieting' for a month now I have been allowing myself a lot of treats due to being on holiday, so I'm cracking down a bit on myself this coming month as I have another stone to lose to be at my healthiest.
My approach was to to cut down from excessive to reasonable, and increase my exercise. As time went on I made more and more food swaps to lower calorie options. It went something like this:
2 weeks of 'detoxing' - being mindful that a glass of juice or smoothie was part of a meal, not just a way of quenching thirst/keeping to 2 slices of bread at a meal, and just one or two biscuits afterwards/having 'normal' portions of butter or cheese instead or drowning my food in them/trying to do 2 lots of exercise a day (nothing strenuous, usually dog walking).
Then came the 'diet'(ie, counting calories). However I allowed myself up to 1500 cals so it wasn't too much of a shock to the system. I focused on upping my vegetable intake. I normally eat '5 a day' but I tried to make it 7 or 8, which actually wasn't hard at all. Lockdown struck at this point so I started doing Joe Wicks, as well as my daily dog walk.
After a few weeks, maybe a month, I tightened my calorie allowance to 1400. Still in lockdown so not going to work, I stuck with Joe Wicks and a dog walk, and walked round my field behind my house too most days, or had a swim.
A few weeks later I was trying to eat 1250, but if I was hungry didn't mind going up to 1350. Kept to 2 or 3 lots of exercise a day. At this point I'd pretty much cut out cheese and butter, and had made a lot of food swaps. For example instead of ordinary yoghurt I'd have a 'Light and free' one, or instead of a 120 calorie biscuit I'd have a 'fibre one' chocolate cake bar for 90 calories. I was mindful that I could eat twice as many strawberries as grapes for the same calories, and a folded flatbread felt like a pitta, but for 100 cals instead of 250, while light mayo was half of the full fat stuff. Half a tub of reduced fat caramelised onion houmous is half the cals of the same volume of Moroccan houmous! Little things like that really add up!
From mid July I got a temporary live in nanny job and my official exercise tailed right off, down to pretty much I walk a day - however I was generally more active, up and down the stairs all day, whereas at home I normally slob out in between exercise. I stopped counting calories, but kept with the sensible portions and food swaps. Despite the odd treat meal or icecream with the family I continued to lose 1-2 pounds a week.
This month I've stopped counting calories at all. I went on holiday with my parents and ate more waffles with syrup, and had more double-scoop icecreams than I care to admit to. BUT it was a walking holiday so I haven't skidded too wildly off course. As I say, I'm down to 10.7. My aim is to lose 7 pounds over October. I'm going to try 1400 cals a week and see what happens.