Just stood on the scales and nearly threw up.

[blackberrypickinginaugust]

15 stone 7.

15 and a half stone. I'm not even 5'3.

Like many overweight people I've been on the diet circuit.

Gastric band
slimming world
weight watchers
myfitnesspal

The only thing that ever worked is a VLCD so as from now I am back on it. I just can't believe how massive I am.

Be very careful before embarking on a high-fat low-carb diet long-term. You will lose weight, but it can have quite serious side-effects. This is a good article about it.

The low carb boot camps on here are excellent, esp for a newbie as everyone is very helpful about answering questions. You should be getting most of your carbs from green veg.

I wouldn't cut out carbs all together ... I'd never cut anything out all together. Try to plan meals and don't have snacks unless it's fruit and not too much. Just eat a decent portion, made up of a third protein, a third or less carbs (potato or rice) and lots of vegetables (not lots of peas or sweetcorn though) ... give yourself a week or so, drink plenty of water and see how you go. I managed weightwatchers for ages but this time they're cutting down massively on carbs and I found it hard so stopped. Actual diets are hard to stick to, so try to not think of dieting but eating sensibly says me who put 2 stone back on but my best friend passed and I went silly

Low carb works for me in the sense of weight loss, but it's been a total disaster for my MH both times I've tried it. They don't tell you that low carb can potentially exacerbate depression if you have a history of it.

I try to remember that I'm just fat. I'm not a paedophile, or a murderer or estate agent, I'm not hurting anybody. Advice on what to do in practical terms is no use to us serial dieters (does anyone seriously think we DON'T KNOW about calories?), but emotional support is massively important. Can you find a friend IRL to support you, maybe someone who wants to lose a few pounds themselves?

I thought I was hovering at 14 stone which is awful still.

I know how to lose weight and I'll do 'my' diet. Just a bit horrified by how much i have gained.

Blackberry you aren't really successfully losing weight though if you are putting it back on again, sorry I don't mean to sound harsh but it is such a temporary status isn't it?

Exercise has to come into this somewhere although I appreciate it is only 30% of the answer, it is mostly the food intake. Well done though for posting and looking for help

I'm 13.7 stone. I've just started slim and save which I did last year. I lost two stone on it but went back to awful habits. To be honest I just want the weight off quickly will then follow the refeed and really think about food. Harcombe is good or maybe paleo. I realise my weakness is crisps, bread etc. I put the weight on due to eating stupidly and lack of a moderation switch.

Now is the time to focus. I've vowed once I've lost it I'll be more careful not to let my weight spiral but with two children with disabilities I've sought comfort in food.

Good luck x

I agree with the posters above. No need to cut out ANYthing altogether. (Although I would stand by what I said that you should cut out more fatty and sugary food for about a month, to get a kick-start.)

Eating little and often is the key, and reducing portion sizes. And exercising more is essential. Too many people eat twice as much as they need to, and sit down all day, with the biggest walk they have being to the car, and then they are stunned that they end up 5 stone overweight.

Not aimed at any one person by the way.

My friend (who was 14 stone,) cut down her portion sizes by HALF, and got to 10 stone within about 11-12 months, and she has stayed between 10 and 10 and a half for 3 years. She now eats half what she did for the previous 7-10 years. Guess what? She's not dead. And she is healthier and fitter than ever. Proving that she was eating way too much, and she is now eating the correct amount.

She walks 5-8 miles a week (as a hobby,) and goes swimming once a week too. This has helped her burn fat and stay toned.

Good luck OP. You have acknowledged your weight issue, so you have won half the battle already.

I too have tried EVERY diet out there.

I am currently doing Cambridge Weight Plan and loving it. I've lost 18lbs in 5 weeks and I am out of the obese category on the BMI chart. For me I got to a point where taking food completely out of the equation and focusing on changing my mindset about food and alcohol was a must.

I think the most important thing about the CWP is that you MUST follow all the steps. While your doing any VLCD your metabolism takes a holiday so when you're introducing food back in to your diet it needs to be done slowly with the right types of food. In order to maintain your weight loss you must then count calories and introduce excersise; those people who put all their weight back on after doing a VLCD usually slip back in to their old eating habits if you eat like a 20 stone person you're going to be a 20 stone person.

You can't really lay the blame at the "diets" for not working - nothing has been successful if you've put it back on again, no one "regime" is better than another, they all work as long as you stick to them

For me this is my 4th serious attempt at losing weight (am doing SW) and this time round it's just all clicked and fallen into place. I've obviously not been truly ready previously to do it.

Good luck OP

I have had success with SparkPeople on line. It is a bit like myfitness pal with a food tracker and exercise tracker. There are supportive articles and information, workouts.. etc. Really there is no quick fix. If it took 5 years to put the weight on you can't lose it in 5 months. Really you need to change your eating habits / lifestyle completely.

I lost 2 stone 3 years ago but it has slipped back on since I injured my back last October. I find my skin is bad, my digestion poor, I feel low in energy... I have finally decided to go back to watching what I am eating and making good choices. I know the first 2 weeks will be tough but that it will lead to me feeling so much better.

Drink more water, eat more fruit / veg, choose healthy protein / carb and put all the crisps, cake, biscuits, wine, beer, take-away in the bin!

From that article on LCHF:

There are many potential side effects of a ketogenic diet including hypoglycaemia, hyperketosis, metabolic acidosis, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, poor growth, renal stone formation, cardiac abnormalities and gastrointestinal issues such as reflux, constipation and vomiting

This is a fundemental misunderstanding of how ketogenic diets are optimised. It's not NO carb, it's LOW carb, the carbs you do consume just have to come from highly nutrient dense sources, so green veggies and some low car fruit like berries. You're not aiming to get into ketoacidosis, you're aiming for a state of nutritional ketosis which is perfectly safe and sustainable long term.

He's right that a lot of companies are jumping on the diet and changing it to something more dangerous, but in it's purest form an LCHF diet is plenty of good quality protien, good quality, healthy fats and nutrient dense veggies with no processed food or added sugar. It's a perfectly healthy way to eat and live, I've been on it for 6 months now and my lipid profile had actually improved.

Weight gain and loss tends to be cyclical anyway. Mine has been really badly.out of control since christmas really. So hoping this Christmas will be different.

On New Years Day 2016 I was 13 stone 8lbs, at 5 ft 4 inches with most of my weight on my stomach (and I was aware this was dangerous).
4 months later I was just under 12 stone.
The three easiest (well not that easy if I'm honest), cut out all alcohol, changed my dinner plates to ones a third smaller than usual) and ensured my meals were 1/4 meat/carb and two thirds veg/salad.
I'm still around the 12 stone mark now but still need to lose 1.5 stone to have a "normal' bmi for my height.
My biggest tip......little steps.
Do one little thing every day and it won't seem such a huge thing.

Another low carber here, I couldn't recommend it highly enough.
I had pretty bad IBS before I started, depression and migraines. I feel so much better and have lost over 6st since Jan.
I do however believe that most diets will work if you stick to them but for me LCHF is sustainable because I don't t feel like I'm depriving myself. My eating habits have changed for life, well it very still feels that way 7 months in!

Blackberry you aren't really successfully losing weight though if you are putting it back on again, sorry I don't mean to sound harsh but it is such a temporary status isn't it?

Good point. Sorry OP, you say you 'know how to diet' yet you're 15 and a half stone.

People are just trying to help and advise. Is that not why you posted here. And not everything is going to be something you want to hear.

HipHop why are you being snarky to the OP? What's with the "is that not why you posted here"??

The best thing I read was the first thing to concentrate on is to stop gaining... once you are stabilised at that you then just need to reduce your portions a tiny bit /cut out something high calorie bit to start losing.
The bigger you are the more calories you need to live - do the same amount of exercise etc. So you have to keep reducing the amount of calories you take in as you lose weight - so gradually reducing the portion sizes/swapping high calorie things for lower.
If you add in a bit more activity that will speed the process up (I realised I lost a stone just by walking the long way round on the school run - made a 5 min walk into a 10 min walk - so an extra 20 mins per day, 100 mins per week - sadly DD makes her own way to school now and I piled it, plus more, weight back on)
Weigh yourself once a week or so and just make sure your weight isn't going up...if it does check again the next day it wasn't water retention etc.
If you have a blow out day (birthday dinner or something) make sure you eat less the next few days. Don't just look at how many calories a day -look at how many over all over time.
Exercise doesn't burn that many calories so don't rely totally on that to make a difference. (I went to the gym for an extra 30 mins so I can have this 'cream cake and big bag of crisp' mentality )

And look at the calorie content of things...it can be surprising.
I recently went for a pub type meal and had apple crumble and custard for pudding, a friend had fresh fruit and ice cream - looking at the menu we realised that my apple crumble had fewer calories than the fruit and ice cream (the ice cream being the culprit).
I have a crunchy granola type cereal - I measured out a portion - it was a tiny handful and it contain the same amount of calories as a big bag of onion rings (crisp) that I had in the cupboard.
Even some vegetables - I replaced some casserole on my plate with a pile of sweetcorn thinking that would reduce the calories ....the sweetcorn had more calories than the casserole!!!
Obviously the sweetcorn and fresh fruit and granola were healthier than the alternatives -but they weren't lower calorie.
A bit like a salad covered with dressing/mayonnaise compared to a sandwich - the sandwich is probably more filling and likely to be lower calorie...
Don't aim to get down to 8 stone - give yourself a more realistic target -so eg 12 stone in a years time. Maybe the top of your healthy, even slightly overweight but not obese And when you get there monitor your weight every month and if it starts going up cut back. You can still try and lose more weight but your main aim is not to go above that target.
Good luck!!!

I read <a class="break-all" href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/magazine/weight-watchers-oprah-losing-it-in-the-anti-dieting-age.html?referer=www.damninteresting.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this the other day, very interesting.

Is it trickier to lose weight if you're on the larger side of things then Unlucky?

You mention bigger people need more calories...I didn't know that. I thought that was bigger people who were of a healthy weight?

What's the point of asking her why she did not realise she was gaining weight? I put on 2 stone and did not realise how big I had gotten. Maybe on a subconscious level, but I was in denial. Some clothes were tighter, yes, but not to the extent that I definitely knew exactly how much I had gained. I started wearing a lot of stretchy clothes...

Good luck, OP.

I just had a google and this is a very interesting article about new research into why overweight people often put weight back on

www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html

I had an oh shit moment on the scales last November. I knew things were bad but I hadn't realised how bad they actually were a had been dealing with dying parents. I was then in the position where I needed surgery but was too heavy to be referred.

Realised that every 'diet' I had ever been on had failed as I had regained the weight and I had to do something different this time and make changes I can stick with for the rest of my life. I thought about it and realised at the end of the day all the various things out there come down to one thing, creating a difference between your food intake and the energy you burn so counting calories seemed as good a thing to do as any.

I also got a Fitbit to see what I was burning. I got a Flex 2 which didn't have a heart rate monitor and is more accurate than the Charge 2 which does. I eat healthily about 80% of the time and can manipulate my weight loss to lose 1 or 2lbs a week average over I eat depending what I want to do.

Also realised of this is to work long term I have to be able to deal with things like birthdays, Christmas, social occasions and holidays. Christmas I decided I wanted to lose still as had a surgery target to meet so ate what I wanted Christmas Day and Boxing Day but kept track of it and exercised to make sure I evened it out then lost 1.5lbs the rest of the week. Last week on holiday I ate at maintenance. Looked liked I had gained 2lbs but think it was just water as am now quarter of a pound lighter than I was pre holiday.

I'm 5 stone down so far with a couple more to go so it is too early to say I have cracked this long term but I feel more confident than I have before that I a, going to get to where I should be and keep it there. I've introduced exercise, slowly at first then stepping it up to include running (Couch to 5k, can now run 5k whereas in April it took every thing I had to do 60 seconds) at which point I've had to up calories as I was feeling really tired.

Portion sizes have changed drastically and I use the ones given on Nutracheck as a guide. Made the decision that we will have another dog when the time sadly comes that ours goes as I know I will have to keep walking daily and without a dog would be likely to lose motivation which I can't let happen. I've realised it's hard work and that's the same for a lot of people who are a healthy weight, they work at it.

Good luck with it OP. Lots of supportive threads on here to help.

Hiphop people can post whatever they want. But I know what works for me (and what doesn't!)

Read this article OP!

www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html

Very valuable for when you've lost the weight!