I had dinner with a friend who is in med school last night. He has a "big exam" today on metabolism, so we talked a lot about weight loss and maintenance.

As everyone probably knows, 95% of people who lose weight gain it back within 5 years. My friend's class had looked at studies of the 5% who keep it off. What the studies found was that those people had three things in common (and it didn't matter what plan they followed to lose weight):

1. Continuing to be mindful of what they eat
2. Exercise, and
3. Eating breakfast everyday

So after I spent quite a long time listening to all he had learned, he admitted that it boils down to "eat less and exercise more"! And eat breakfast...

I guess I knew this! I was hoping for some mysterious revelation, but nope. Then again, it's good to be reminded that if we keep doing what we are doing, the weight should stay off. Somehow I always think that diet and exercise are gonna randomly stop working for me someday for no reason - which is probably not true!

thanks for the reminder. So many people just think they can go back to their old way of eating, but it just doesn't work that way... I guess I'll never be able to eat a whole big bag of m&m's at one sitting again, eh?

That's why I enter my foods/exercise into My Plan every day and continuously stay apart of a "challenge" on this board, so I stay mindful of everything I eat and do. I'm a very anal person that needs a lot of structure in order to suceed. I know what happens when I lose that...

>>1. Continuing to be mindful of what they eat

That's a big one, isn't it? I think a lot of people, deep down, are anxious to get the weight off so they can "go off this diet." It takes a long time to grasp the fact that you have to say goodbye to your old set of habits.

These are two VERY different things. I'm very mindful of what I eat but I don't necessarily eat less.

I feel this is soooooo important and really what has been the staple of my own weight loss and maintenance.

How does your friend feel about LCing??

I agree with lc laur...thank you for the reminder...it never hurts to be reminded of how to achieve success !

Yep, you hit the nail on the head there! As soon as I slip back into old habits, the weight creeps back on. Imagine that I am still coming to terms with this being a WOL. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself and want to eat what others are eating. But then I have to catch myself and see that I wouldn't be where I am now if I did eat like that. Do I want to be 20 lbs heavier again? B/c then I can eat like that. And I would also be much less healthy and have all those terrible mood swings I used to get again. So, yep, we have to keep being diligent, and my hope is that it will get easier the more time I do this.

I always eat three times a day and nothing in between meals. I also keep active. This habit never changed in all the years since I dropped my weight in 1999. Each person has to find their own way in maintaining weight and feeling comfortable doing it.

I agree
For me I was just so sick of being obese that I wanted to be thin as soon as possible, which is why I rushed things along by manipulating calories. It's not that I wanted off the diet, I just wanted off the FAT. My life was really hard because of it. Some people can handle being fat, they are thick skinned, extroverted and "funny" and have a lot of personality... I don't and couldn't. I'm shy and sensitive in real life, so being fat and dealing with people's disapproval was extra hard.

I think the key to avoiding the "ugh I want to get off this diet" mindset is that you have to try really hard to make the foods you eat delightful and also familiar. Feeling bored and missing familiar comforts are big reasons people want to quit. One difficulty I faced was missing my chinese take out (my old bad habit). Stir fried cauliflower helped me get through my chinese rice pangs. I remember when I discovered the mock cauliflower recipe I felt as if this whole thing had just gotten a thousand times easier. Just the other day I made a cabbage stirfry (oh yum ) with marinated pork, eggplant, and asparagus stirfry on the side... and I felt so lucky to have found low carb. What a treat it is I am able to eat my favorite foods, foods that can be very similar to my old favorites, and effortlessly be thin and satisfied?

A lot of people, unfortunately, just don't have the time or patience or willingness to learn new ways and make them work in place of old ones. So what they wind up doing is getting really stern and strict with themselves, which may work for a while but eventually unless they learn to make their new "way of life" enjoyable to maintain, they won't stick with it.

You also have to learn how to manipulate the old bad habits (in my case, pasta) to moderation. I vowed not to give up pasta and stay thin. I restrict it to once a week. I eat a variety of foods, I've just learned how not to overdue it. My reward is being able to wear anthing and still have energy to do athletic things.

i just got it this time while lcing on atkins that you have to continue this for life. i could not understand why i lost so much wt the last time and then ballooned up and over where i was before. i was horrified. now "I GOT IT". and i'm sticking to it. and it's working!!

I lost weight then put it back on (about 25 -30 pounds over 5 years) -- following most of the "rules" -- finally realized that, for me, it seems to boil down to "eating less" as well as staying low-carb (always eat breakfast, not a consideration).

When I read how some lucky people can eat 2000 calories/day and maintain their weight loss, I get a bit envious -- for me, I think it's going to be forever around 1000 calories/day -- but the funny thing is, I seem to deal quite well with reduced calories, not hungry, etc. -- so I guess my body knows what it's doing!

I do know that i never, ever want to regain the extra weight again! I like being slender!

I'd just like to say that (in my opinion) "eat less and exercise more" is too simplistic. And like most simplistic statements, it's usually not true.

Before I started LCing (more than 6 years ago), I gained 25 pounds by eating a small bowl of Shredded Wheat and half a banana with skim milk for breakfast, a bagel with tuna and non-fat mayo and half an apple for lunch, and pasta with a scant bit of butter and steamed veggies for dinner. That's not much to eat. Also, I was doing a very strenuous 60-minute step aerobic routine no less than 5 times a week.

In my case, eating less and exercising more caused me to gain 25 pounds in a very short amount of time.

Now I eat a lot more than that (certainly a lot more calories), and exercise less. And now I'm 40 pounds lighter than I was then.

Qmass-You are under what my goal weight is and I am trying to be patient and follow Atkins by the book. I keep reading so much advice to stray from the book. I try to only listen to those who have actually lost the weight and are keeping it off. My question is-did you follow Atkins by the book and are there any tips that can offer from your success?

Ok..let me get this straight...scientific evidence suggests that to maintain weight loss a person needs to:
1. eat breakfast
2. exercise
3. watch what they eat.

OK, why didnt they just ask the long term maintainers here...??!!!
And somebody paid a whole lotta money to discover that...heck we could have told them that for half the price.

Uunchubby,

I really don't stray from the book at all! My weight loss slowed to a pound a month, and then even less, towards the end, but I stuck with it and it continued to come off.

Now that I am in maintenance, I still haven't "cheated," but I do go through periods where I will eat a 1/2 cup serving of Breyers LC ice cream every night, or a bowl of LC cereal before bed every night, even though I am not hungry. But I actually find that I have an easier time sticking with the routine, and less stress, when I DON'T do this!

All I do for exercise is walk, 3 miles a day, 5 days a week. I drink a lot of water and no alcohol.

I am really uncertain what I should do about fats and calories at this point. I never count calories, but I try to be somewhat aware of them. It's annoying, because low carb and low calorie tend to be opposites! Mostly I try not to eat red meat more than once a week, and I've cut out the very high calorie things (like Atkins recipe for delicious mascarpone parfait dessert, which has close to 500 calories!) I will never give up cheddar cheese though...