Been meaning to write this up for a while and finally have time during my lunchbreak. After my DS was born last August I waited a couple of weeks before getting on the scales. I'm sure I'd lost a bit of weight after the birth, but even so it was brutal. I set a goal of 21lbs weight loss and got to work using MFP. It took me about nine months, which is actually pretty slow but there were some blips. I think it was harder because I had to go back to work in November and I think it's harder to diet when you're working. In June I reached my goal weight and I have maintained it now for two months. (I know that's not that long in reality but still, I have maintained).
My tips are:
Weigh and measure everything: I still weigh everything I eat as far as possible. I really mean weigh everything - with calorie-dense foods you can be way out on your totals if you are just guesstimating how much you're eating. It is weird at first but now it's second nature. Digital scales are essential to get this to work. DH was also using MFP in a more casual way but wasn't measuring everything and he only saw significant weightloss once he started measuring.
*Weighing everything includes measuring condiments, sauces, etc. Easiest way to do this is to weigh e.g. the ketchup bottle, then put ketchup on your chips, then weigh the bottle again to find out how much you ate. I do this for all sauce-type-things and also for butter.
- In theory you can eat anything as long as it's within your calorie limit, but in practice I found I felt fuller with more fat and protein and fewer carbs. If you're trying to do 1200 a day I found I couldn't really "afford" wine or sweets and still get enough volume of food to feel full.
*Take the odd day off. It's not going to make that much difference and for me it helped me keep going to have an occasional break. So I ate as much as I wanted at Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday and occasional events in between
- When setting up your profile, be honest about your lifestyle. Unless you are walking half an hour a day most days a week, you don't meet the description of "lightly active", you are, like me "sedentary".
*Use the barcode scanner wherever possible because I find that helps you get the most correct information about the nutritional value of the food. Recipes change or sometimes information someone's already entered into the database isn't actually correct
-
Read up on how weight loss happens in the body, plateaus etc. Don't be discouraged by several weeks with no movement even though you know you're not cheating
-
Consider (if you have enough calories to be able to do this) saving some calories for the weekend so you can eat more then. I do this now. I am supposed to have 1720 per day but I save 70-120 each day during the week and eat the extra at the weekend.
-
If you make e.g. homemade cake or bread, the easiest way to work out how many calories a slice has (where you are unlikely to be able to slice it perfectly evenly into slices that are all the same to the gram) is to weigh the whole loaf once you've finished it and enter the recipe into MFP with the number of portions as the number of ounces. So e.g. 30 oz loaf has 30 portions. Then as you cut off a slice you weigh the slice and if e.g. the slice weighs 1.5 oz you would add 1.5 portions to your diary.
Hope this helps!