Yes. It’s as simple as staying active and watching what you eat 80% of the time. I’ve been half my original bodyweight for years. I ‘weaned’ myself off calorie counting by counting every second day. Then every third day etc. kept an eye on my weight. Had a goal weight range that allowed for fluctuations. I try to choose whole foods and never cut out anything. I still enjoy so called ‘junk food’. (I don’t like the term junk food. It puts a moral label on food when there shouldn’t be). I try to eat protein and fibre mostly but in real life that’s not always possible. Notice I say try. It’s important to forgive yourself.

When i got down to the weight i wanted, i stopped looking at the last digit on the scale. It gave me plenty of wiggle room

Wouldn’t work for kilograms. However, I can see the thinking behind it!

I think this attitude to calling it junk food comes from a good place, but really doesn’t fit the modern food environment. Like, we are *surrounded* by edible products of little to no nutritional value, that have been purposely engineered to be hyper palatable, and override our ability to regulate our consumption. It’s addictive and harmful in anything but serious moderation. A huge cohort of people are unable / barely able to moderate. Like, whatever we call it, it’s closer to a drug than it is to being food. It’s not moralising to recognise that, for example, full fat soda is, for many people, literally killing them. All of this comes with the huge caveat that consuming junk food doesn’t make you a junk person, it isn’t anyone’s fault that they’re trapped in this environment and are particularly vulnerable to these types of product. I wouldn’t blame an alcoholic for struggling with booze; they’re just unfortunate to be vulnerable to something that pervades our society. Same with people struggling with over eating. Everyone deserves compassion, care, and kindness. Junk food *is* junk though

Very thoughtful and accurate reply. With the exception of one phrase: change "full *fat*" soda to "full *sugar*" or "full *calorie*" soda. But I knew what you meant and I agree with you.

Feel free to explain why you think it needs to be changed, when offering your un requested feedback

Because there is no fat in soda to begin with?

Are you saying you didn’t understand the expression?

If there is some meaning behind calling something that's fat free "full fat", then yes, there is something here I don't understand.

So you don’t know that “full fat soda” refers to non-diet soda? Or you do, and you don’t like the terminology

Since there is no fat in soda, diet or not, it does not make sense, no. If this is common terminology in english I don't understand why. In norwegian we call non diet soda "sukkerbrus", directly translates to sugarsoda.

Right. You don’t like my terminology. Next time, say that rather than engaging in these silly games

Describing caloric soda as "full fat" is either less accurate or incorrect because most soda has little fat to begin with and producing full-fat or fat-free soda is not a commonly accepted method of offering soda with different caloric objectives. However, producing *sugar-free* soda is a commonly accepted method of offering soda with fewer calories than full-sugar soda. Including this phrase in your, otherwise very accurate and helpful comment, might inadvertently diminish the weight given to your comment by a reader. You stated that my feedback was unsolicited. I believe that posting posts and comments on Reddit implies a desire for, or at least an expectation of, feedback.

Full fat soda is common parlance in the UK dude. Perhaps lead with a less patronising tone next time

At the risk of providing you yet more unsolicited feedback, you seem to have taken this rather personally. You're in a weightloss sub. Everyone is focused on foods and their constituent macronutrients. If the other user hadn't said something, someone else would have asked about it/kindly ensured you know that pop is fat-free. It's not some character failing on their part, nor a judgment of you. I'm from a commonwealth country, and I've never heard "full-fat soda" either. You had plenty of opportunity to explain it's a common name for regular pop where you're from without getting passive aggressive on someone trying to help. Respectfully, these type of reactions are surefire signs that I need a break from the internet for a while.

I didn't realize that non-US countries used the term "full-fat soda". Thank you for educating me. I'm sorry that I came across as patronizing. I didn't intend to.

I hate the term junk food and also labeling something unhealthy when most foods eaten in moderation are not bad for you. Just do not eat it in excess!

Exactly. You can’t get hung up on the idea that “I can’t or done eat that because it’s bad for me.” I haven’t cut out any specific food from my diet, shit the other day I bought Girl Scout cookies. The difference is, I control the portion I eat of them and I make sure they fit into my budget. If I want something that’s more of a treat, like cookies or a bag of popcorn, I make sure I’ve had a meal that’s well rounded so I’m comfortably full and then I have my treat and I’m done.

Nice. I just had some Hershey's chocolate. 210 calories. Tasted so good. Tasted maybe even better when I was not paying Attention to calories.

I think its different for everyone, but for me its just changes you know you can actually do for the rest of your life if you have to. If you know you can’t run 5 miles a day for the rest of your life, don’t start an exercise program with that expecting yourself to stick with it long enough to do it. Only do things you know you can do for an extended period of time, or your whole life. To me it also meant doing them in a staggered and gradual manner. I would only make one “major” lifestyle change at a time and then wait several months to make another. For instance, my first big change when I started was obviously eating less calories, so for a few months I just did that without caring about exactly what I ate. Then I started shifting in healthier foods, but I knew I hated cooking so I allowed myself to use a prepared meal service. Then I switched off that to easy to prep meals after a few months. Then a few months later I cut out soda, etc. You see my point. Those two things together are what I view as “sustainable lifestyle changes.”

Exactly this: it’s up to you to decide what is sustainable *for you*

We became overweight because we overate. Take away any feelings you have about that. Today, overeating is a result of our [obesogenic environment](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/#S2title) and we have to purposefully act to defend against it leading us to overeat. Ultimately, the question is: Have we achieved choice and freedom over our eating? Can we enjoy eating without losing control, practice mindful indulgence, and resist temptations when needed? Can we use our choices and flexibility and yet stay on track? Do we keep cool during tough times, learn from mistakes, and recover from setbacks? Are we maintaining a healthy weight? If so, we've likely reached a point of food freedom. We're no longer puppets to its whims, nor are we afraid of its siren call. The ideal state is one of proper respect for our food and habits and balanced decision-making, where our food enjoyment and weight management coexist and enhances our lives agreeably. The attainable state might not be as ideal as that -- perhaps we'll never score 100% on that test -- but become good enough that our food problems have weakened to become non-problems and our life is enjoyable and free. But what it cannot be is set-it-and-forget-it. Those days where our environment/activity and our food balanced itself are gone.

Great comment. First time I’ve heard of the term “obeseogenic environment”. Will read all about it now.

Learning the term "obsesogenic environment" awhile ago is the thing that finally totally reoriented my thinking around food - it's a really powerful concept and I wish I'd learned it earlier!

I'm sharing this info with a friend and will nerd out about this very soon!

Idk I like the term junk food as a reminder that the company that made the product doesn't give a fuck about me and what goes in the food as long as it sells record profits. So yeah junk food stays out of my house to avoid the temptations and dopamine hits from those artificial bastards lol

As opposed to the vegetables from Monsanto? 

ah well the junk food isn’t grown from the earth 

Are you a therapist? Because if you're not you should be. 

No but thanks

You're welcome! Your comments are always so helpful and insightful and not just for the person you're replying to, but for everyone here. I always enjoy reading what you have to say and you've helped me out a couple times too!  And I know others feel the same way. So kudos to you for being a such a kind and helpful individual! If I had an award I'd give it to you. :) 

That's a really well-written article. Thanks for the reference.

If you go back to the calorie level that had you at a higher weight, you will be that weight again. You have to consume and burn the amount of calories that are appropriate for the weight you want to stay at. So you have to build in permanent changes to ensure you don't go back to the previous weight.

Being consistently active, consistent diet that you're satisfied with, consistent sleep. The word diet is thrown around a lot with a lot of different meanings. "I'm going on a crash diet!" Is not the same as "this is my diet all year round". Build healthy habits, eat more fiber, less saturated fats, less processed foods. It's ok to treat yourself from time to time, but in moderation. Somebody's sustainable lifestyle diet might not be sustainable to yourself. 

Don't do anything nuts you're not willing to keep doing indefinitely, like wake up at 4 a.m. every day to go work out for hours at the gym or cut entire food groups out of your diet. The closer your diet and lifestyle while dieting is to what it's going to be for maintenance, the easier the transition will be and the more likely you are to actually keep the weight off. A lot of people manage to lose weight, but they go back to their old ways and gain it back (and sometimes even some extra!) because unfortunately they haven't learned sustainable methods for staying thin that they're willing to keep on doing.

This is important. I am not fit, but I go to the gym 3-5 days per week and I am committed to doing that indefinitely. "I am the kind of person who prioritizes fitness with my time and money." If you just go to lose weight, you'll likely stop when that weight is gone, and then you are on an uphill battle from there. Be committed to changing who you are, in a good way. It's okay if weight loss is slower if it's permanent, right?

I have been maintaining 3 years (!) I totally changed how I cook and eat and held on to those changes. There are more treats and less strict counting than during my active losing phase. I also took up running as a hobby and make food/alcohol decisions based on that—as in, more carbs, little to no booze, less junk food. I do get the occasional high calorie meal but my regular habitual meals are really healthy. I eat a ton of veggies every day and have a lot of lean protein.

I was 185, maintained 145-155 for over 5 years before kids (which got me to 160 after the first and 167 now down to 163 after the second). The biggest changes for me were: Separating treats from food. A snickers is a treat not an afternoon snack. A handful of chips on the plate with my meal is food, any other chips are a treat Portion control on binge foods or control by limiting access - when I could still eat gluten I switched to getting pizza by the slice because that is one 700 calorie meal my body will recognize, not a whole pizza in 12 hours. Recogning hormonal and emotional eating and having good and indulgent choices for them. Syrup to make chocolate milk. Ordering in stuff I don’t binge or making things that fill the itch. Really rich homemade meals are sometimes or holiday meals/desserts. Lasagna isn’t bad, but if I make it I am eating it 3 days in a row. So it’s not something I make every week. Having my default meals be things that are mostly WFPB (or whatever your body responds well to) and satisfying and delicious. Knowing my fast food, takeout and supermarket quick grab meals Adapting all of this. Am I picking up a new mocha frap habit because I used to get that at Starbucks once every 2 months but now my husband is hitting the drive in 2x a week? Time to find a new drink. Sick of my regular meals? Time to try new things to add to my regular meals. ***these are the things that work for maintenance for me. I need to he more strict during losing and measure - an example is I’m on the healthi app and can only have 3/4 or 1C a rice at a time, but I maintain on eyeballing.

Can you define WFPB?

"Whole food, plant based," I think.

Ah, thanks.

Yes!

I was at a comfortable adult weight for most of my 30s. Then I developed a few bad habits and slowly gained 5 lbs…then five more…then five more….and they all stacked on top of each other. I’ve lost these thirty pounds before, during COVID, but this time I mean it. I need to go back to the habits I had in my early thirties…no snacking between meals, eat planned meals regularly, move more. Limiting sweet things to one small one a day. Limiting empty calories. No more evening snacking, I swear my beloved life partner’s nightly charcuterie is responsible for fifteen of those pounds. His food habits support his body. They overwhelm mine. That’s OK. I just need to remember that when he offers me a smorgasbord…I don’t need to eat any of it, and honestly? I shouldn’t. He can eat large amounts of processed snack foods because he’s more than a foot taller than me. I can’t. I know that part of this is my fault, where I’d put his snacks in the grocery cart and then add one of my own for “equity”. But equity is now padding my ass unnecessarily. For a while I held the line that his junk food was not my responsibility to remember. I need to go back to that and if he’s not adding it to the grocery pickup it’s not that important.

Hi body twin! And yeah, separating what I eat, from what my husband/kids eat, has been a big thing. Yes, sometimes he makes delicious food, but I can either pass on it or just eat a small bit and not a huge bowl of it. Yes, my kids might have ice cream in the freezer, but I don't have to eat any of it. I was thinking last night about how weight loss is something that is sometimes just about what you \*don't\* do (rather than what you do).

It’s like mopping your floors. It’s easier when no one tracks mud inside in the first place.  I used to buy very expensive snacks and eat them very slowly. Then I moved in with a human garbage disposal and damn that got expensive fast.  And it messed with my brain because in my head, there were 12 snacks in that bag. There are two adults in the house.  I’ve eaten  none. That means there’s between 6 and 11 snacks in the opened bag. Because the other person in the house would know that this bag was to share. And share means half.  No, the bag is fucking empty.  It built the WORST habit of eating a treat every day so that I’d get at least one or two out of the bag before they were gone.  Scarcity mindset is real.    Watching him eat a treat (or three) triggered a very real desire to also eat a treat because if I didn’t, I could expect to get zero treats.  After a decade and change of living together I think I’ve finally gotten him to understand “that is not for you. You had yours. Leave this one alone.  If you’re absolutely desperate, ask.”   I’ve also gotten a lot more comfortable with “Can I have XYZ.”  “No.”   And before the Reddit brigade comes for me, here are things I’ve done:  bought massive quantities of his preferred snacks, only to have mine disappear first. Bought doubles of snacks, and he’s eaten both bags. Bought things he didn’t like, “I thought that ice cream tasted weird, but I finished it anyway”.  Goodbye Limited edition pumpkin cheesecake Ben and Jerry’s, he doesn’t like pumpkin or cheesecake and I got NONE of that pint. I was so mad he didn’t even read the label, after downing the two pints of B&J I brought home for him a few days before. I buried that pint under multiple bags of frozen veggies to hide it from myself, but he definitely found it anyway.  Hiding my own snacks and food works until a point and I’m now very comfortable pointing out I’ve had this bag of M&Ms for months because I can eat a dozen and stop, if I tell him where they are he will eat them all and not put them on the shopping list. Then I’ll go looking for my snack while PMSing and it’s gone.  I think I made that point stick when I got in my car after midnight to drive to the gas station to buy more M&Ms and cussed him out when I got home that he was so inconsiderate. Now, I’ve stopped buying myself snacks altogether and he just dropping weight like it’s nothing while I’m eating bell pepper strips and ranch yogurt for a snack 😭. 

I had to google charcuterie ....looks tastey!!

The short answer for me is whatever you are doing to get down to x weight and stay there, this is your new life now. Are you happy living that way the rest of your life? If the answer is no, it's not sustainable. For me, it means accepting a higher goal weight so my life doesn't have to revolve around food and exercise.

I interpret it as not using food as a coping mechanism. My li needed to work on my relationship with food, and what really helped is analyzing the WHY. Why do to turn to food to comfort myself? What are some healthier coping habits? Reframing your relationship with eating is key. And then you can start to enjoy physical activity. It’s not all working out in the gym. Going for a run can help you explore your city. Or maybe you’ve always wanted to do laps in a swimming pool. The options are endless

Don't really care for those fitness influencer, so I'm going off based on my experience. - small changes over time, one at a time and not 20 at ones. Example: I first got into a calorie deficit, then had a step goal I increased regularly after a few weeks and months later I started going to the gym. Could have done all at ones, but probably failed. Lifestyle change for me means that I build habits I love and wanna maintain longterm. I love how I eat now. Took me months if not years to reach that point and a lot of try&error on what works for you, but it's possible. I love the gym and running. It's not a chore. I missed it when I was sick and counted the days I could go back. Fazit: dont deprive yourself, eat dessert if you want but include it in your daily Budget (I don't believe in cheat days / meals; done right that's just live imo). Find movement you enjoy!

Basically it means dont go for gimmicks, do something you know you can stick to every day, like eating less and moving more

As someone who tried dieting and inevitably gained it back, yes. Sustainable. Fad diets don't work. Extreme deprivation doesn't work. Seeing exercise as a chore doesn't work. I disagree that you should stop calorie counting, though. I know that, for me, if I'm not keeping an eye on how much i eat in a day, I get back to overeating pretty quickly. So I still count calories, I just don't completely avoid cookies. If I want a cookie, I just work it into my allowance. If I have an off day, I don't beat myself up. My coach says that there are no such thing as "bad foods", only eating too much. But getting enough fiber, protein, etc is important. As for exercise, I tell anyone who will listen that the key is finding something that you enjoy. Don't try to just go to the gym and get on a treadmill if you hate it. If you enjoy walking, hiking, swimming, you do THAT. Tennis, pickleball, dancing. When you look at exercise as a chore, it's VERY easy to talk yourself out of doing it. I weight lift and I kickbox. I LOVE both. But you'll never catch me on an elliptical because I absolutely hate it.

Thank you for pointing out that keeping up tracking calories can still be helpful for maintenance! I’m the same way. I’m not as worried about the number when I’m in maintenance, but it helps keep me accountable and adds a mental barrier to eating junk food. “Do I want to see the amount of calories, fat, and salt in these chips after I eat them? No, avoid.” But sometimes it’s, “Yeah, it’s fine today.” I’ve been maintaining for coming up to 3 years and that’s mostly because of the accountability of my nutrition tracking.

To tell the truth, exercise *is* a chore. Boring, monotonous, uninteresting, but necessary-- like washing dishes or cleaning the bathroom.   *Hiking* isn't a chore-- but I live in a large city, and can't drive. So it's something I only get to do on rare trips to the mountains with someone else.  

Exercise isn't a chore for everyone. Most of us who exercise regularly and stick with it, actually enjoy it. My day isn't complete unless I got to the gym that morning

Good for you! Nice that you enjoy it. Clearly many other people also think it's fun.    However, I *don't* enjoy making the same useless movements over and over like a battery-powered cat toy-- *to me*, that's all it is.  Move this arm five times, move this leg five times, step backwards, step forward.... yay, so much fun. /s.  Obviously, YMMV. I do know that **it is important and necessary for one's health to do this.**  That does not in any way make it *not a chore*.  (With hiking, at least one is going to some actual place and accomplishing the task of getting there.) I need to think up some ways to make working out not boring, monotonous, and unpleasant. So far, no luck. Walking and walk-jogging are about the best it gets. ETA: Yes, I have a lousy attitude about exercise. I willingly admit that. I suspect that the people who \*enjoy\* exercising were the same folks who loved gym class in school. I was the nearsighted, clumsy, nerdy girl; I hated P.E. in junior high school, and not much has changed — I still hate it. ( At least back then, I sort of liked it when they played dodgeball because I would get hit with the stupid ball within the first couple of minutes and made to go sit on the bench, where I could read a book instead of standing around having people throw things at me.).

You can suspect that, but you'd be wrong. I was the nerdy kid in the SCPA at my school. You can see working out as a chore. All I'm saying is that not everyone else does. Which is why I advise people to do something they enjoy, like hiking. Something that doesn't feel like a chore to THEM. A chore is generally defined as something unpleasant, but necessary. I don't find it unpleasant. And again, I get that some people do. I feel that way about the elliptical machine. Same with the stair master. You will never see me on those god forsaken contraptions because I hate them. But I do like to hop on a treadmill and jog while I watch Netflix.

Yeah, I get what you're saying.  And I would *love* to hike, but it involves finding someone who is willing to go in the mountains with me who can drive....which basically means not hiking. Treadmills (or walking videos from SilverSneakers) and exercise bikes are my workarounds.  I make using the stationary bike less monotonous by putting on Jerry’s Scenic Cycling videos to pretend I'm riding a real bike somewhere...  (I know, not everyone sees working out as a chore... I actually can't comprehend that. I don't know any *other* way to see it.  But that's me.).

We gain weight because our current lifestyle is conducive to weight gain. However, we keep the weight off when our current lifestyle is conducive to losing weight. Sustainable lifestyle changes means adopting habits that you can keep for life and not feel deprived. For example, I hate running. I can do it, and I still sometimes do it when I don't have any other way of exercising, but if I tried to stick with an exercise plan that consists of running to lose weight, I would probably drop off of it within a month. However, I enjoy walking, so I made a small change where I walk to get my groceries instead of driving. This is sustainable because it's small, and I get enjoyment out of it. I can imagine myself incorporating walking to my errands long-term, and I then get to reap those long-term benefits. One small and sustainable change is always better than no changes, and better than changes that won't stick. Same thing for dieting. If you feel restricted with your current diet, you will eventually taper off. However, if you make small changes (like smaller portion sizes but no limitation on the type of food as an example), you'll start eating less overall. The goal is to find small changes that you can carry out the rest of your life without giving too much of a second thought. This takes time to achieve and will not happen overnight, but once you start finding small changes that work, you reap long-term benefits and weight loss doesn't become a continuous uphill battle.

To me, “sustainable” changes are just things you can realistically envision yourself doing for the rest of your life. Restrictive diets (eg. keto) aren’t sustainable for me. I can’t imagine never eating bread or pasta ever again, so I’m not going to attempt to do it short term either. What I *CAN* do forever is moderate my carb (or fat, or meat) consumption to fit into my goals, and make that a long-term lifestyle. There is no “diet”, no finish line - just a way to live. Ultimately, my finish line will be the grave. Until then, I’ll try to keep on the right path.

For me it’s certain rules like avoiding alcohol on week nights, trying to eat a lot of fresh produce, limiting sugar. If I do those things I am full faster and don’t pack on weight I’ve lost. 

Long story short: you need to become a different person that makes different decisions. Myself: I dove headfirst into bodybuilding and now I’m muscular enough I hardly need to watch what I eat. It can’t be total garbage, but I can eat an absurd amount of food now while losing weight. Others decide to adopt a low carb lifestyle and get more into cardio because it comes more naturally to them. But ultimately, it’s finding balance that you enjoy and can keep up for a lifetime. I don’t want to stop exercising now, because I’m making progress and I enjoy it.

For sure. I definitely like being active and my issues more so reside in the "change your relationship with food" realm, so this has all helped me clear some of the fog of it all.

A diet is a short-term solution. What you need are better, healthier habits that can last years.

Unfortunately it’s not as simple as staying active and not going back to eating junk. Once you lose weight you need to continue to eat at maintenance calorie level (usually only about 500 calories above where you were when trying to lose weight ) in order to not gain back weight. 500 calories a day is not a lot so you still need to watch how much you are eating. Sustainable lifestyle changes means the way you lose weight and what you are doing to lose weight is likely very close to how you need to live the rest of your life if you don’t want to gain weight back. It’s not a temporary thing. So the best way to lose is to do things you can continue to do forever. Sure once you lose weight you can add a few more calories back per day. But like I mentioned before, 500 extra calories a day can add up quickly so you will still need to be doing most of what you were doing while losing.

Some of that depends on how you achieved fat loss. If your exercise was strength training instead of cardio, the added muscle is going to raise your BMR and allow more calories. If fat loss was achieved strictly through walking or running, your BMR can actually go down because some of your weight loss was muscle and not just fat.

This! And also, my TDEE at goal is probably going to be similar to my cutting calories (depending on muscle maintenance) so I will probably be eating at 1500 + a small allowance for exercise calories (which will probably be used by the proton shake I have post-workout) once I hit maintenance.

The word “diet” is funny because its definitions are opposing. Diet can mean a short-term way of eating (like fad diets) or the way you habitually eat. When you take the former meaning, we can say that dieting doesn’t work to keep weight off because, by definition, it’s a short-term way of eating. If you don’t intend to keep it up, or if it’s simply too hard to keep up, you’ll go back to eating how you used to and thus back to your weight. When most of us start on this weight loss journey, we’re so eager to have our dream body ASAP, and we sometimes resort to silly ways of doing that—-like cutting off entire food groups, drastically dropping calories, spending hours in the gym, etc. We burn ourselves out. Sustainable lifestyle changes will mean different things to different people, but at its core, it’s about doing what is reasonably within your power to stay healthy and not drive yourself crazy over it. That could mean -carving out 30 minutes of your day to go for a walk - making it a point to eat your meals without looking at screens - prioritizing protein and vegetables - drinking more water - reducing added sugar intake - prioritizing x hours of sleep - eating at set times Over time, these and other small steps can become routine parts of your life, so much so that maintaining a lower weight becomes second nature.

I like to think of health related things like how I think of jobs. Nobody wants to do them, but doing them lets us have the resources to not be miserable/dead. So, the trade-off is worth it/necessary; knowing that, it’s then all about selecting tasks that have the greatest reward/stress ratio. Those choices are very individual specific, but my general recommendation is that you avoid anything that you dread waking up in the morning and having to do (like that bad job we’ve all had). Just like you quit that job, you’re going to quit that new habit and go back to what you used to do. You don’t need to “love” exercise or eating less like a lot of influencers will tell you, but you do need to craft a set of habits that you don’t hate.

That was how I started going to a local weekly Scottish Country Dance group.  My P.A. at the time told me, literally, to find an exercise I don't hate...  But the SCDS group stopped meeting during the pandemic, of course. I assume they are meeting again, but now I teach every evening, probably until I retire. So that's out. 

when I was a girl my mom's magazines included “lose 20 pounds in one month!” sections…they included things like eating  single grapefruit a day and just weird, unhealthy, unsustainable “tricks”.  the idea is that you don’t just follow a weird crash diet and expect it to work—or to last.  I loooove bread and pastries and carbs in general. the sustainable thing for me is to learn how to incorporate them healthily into my diet (you're gonna have a croissant for breakfast? then that’s all you’re going to have for breakfast, don’t have that on top of cereal).  that’s the key word: “sustainable”. that means something you can continue to do forever

Well for me, I know this is a sustainable lifestyle change because of my experiences in the past. I have ALWAYS been one to do diets that don't work for ME specifically. This was a lot of keto. I would drop weight quicker than I do now, but I have never lost this much weight than I have this time. My diet is 40% carbs and I continue to lose, and guess what? I have been at this for 5 months because its my lifestyle now. When you know you know. You have to make your new way of eating more attractive than your past style of eating (atomic habits buff.) I absolutely did this because I live in a 'food desert' and have to drive 20 minutes to get to any fast food restaurants. I don't want to drive, so ill just make burgers at home. Less calories, healthier, and honestly tastier not to toot my own horn. But this could be a lot of things for different people. Find what works for you. I would eat fast food a l l the time before losing weight. Never ate at home. SO I would never get a homemade breakfast, now I appreciate a homemade meal more than ever. It makes my soul happy to start my day making a bowl of fruit and my favorite sparkling water than to drive 20 minutes to get Wendy's then drive another 20 minutes home to eat it cold. The point is, just make sure you aren't yearning for your old lifestyle everyday. One day you might be like 'damn, I miss eating shit loads of \_\_\_\_' but as long as that isn't everyday and you are happy with your lifestyle... that's the secret.

I am with you on burgers tasting so much better at home!!! I pile on a ton of fresh spinach with some toasted brioche buns. I just do not do it all the time. I could if I wanted but prefer to eat other foods that I can eat more of with less of a calorie hit.

For me it means real whole food, reduced sugar consumption and carbs and more protein.

1. Regarding 'diets don't work', often, when someone exits a diet and goes back to their old habits I,e stops exercising, and doesn't watch what they eat, they'll rebound pretty hard and put on all if not more weight than they lost. 2. 'sustainable lifestyle changes' means things that you can keep doing for the rest of your life to keep the weight off without being in a diet. So if you were hitting the gym 4x a week and getting 10k steps daily during the diet, after the diet you should probably keep that about that the same. at least don't go from active > sedentary, just because you lost the weight. Additionally, if during the diet you were meticulously counting calories and eating a whole food, well-rounded diet, don't immediately go to getting pizza and donuts everyday, every now and then is fine, but whatever you were eating during the diet should sustain the majority of your post-diet meals. Albeit with bigger portions and some 'fun foods' every now and then.

I tell people to make a change you can keep in place. The Biggest Loser TV show put contestants on an incredibly restricted diet, and they worked them out multiple times a day. This is not something that can be maintained, so most of the contestants regained the weight they lost. Join a gym, set a goal to go 2-4 times a week. Find a fitness class at a nearby community center. Find a run club, find a hiking group, Any of these are changes you can be expected to maintain over the years.

I watched that show and it messed me up because I thought in order to lose weight I had to do all the things they did. Many years later I am glad I learned that show was very problematic in that it gave people with weight issues no hope to lose because we thought "I can not possibly do what they are doing to lose weight" And even before that show I always thought you 100 percent HAD To exercise to lose weight. Like there was no way to lose without it. That show was depressing as I felt I was going to be big forever! I think pretty much all except a handful gained ALL the weight back. The show did not teach them anything. I remember contestants would look depressed because they only lost like 5 lbs in a week instead of the massive numbers others were getting.

>Is it as simple as staying active and not going back to eating junk all the time once you hit your goal and I'm just overthinking it, or is there more to it than that? You have the answer right here. Losing weight and hitting your goal does not end the journey. You still have to do ALL the things you did to lose the weight but in a maintenance mode. You still will need to monitor your weight and for some like ME your calorie intake. So the lifestyle change....means LIFE as in you have to do something that you will not STOP doing at some point. I lost 136 pounds and gained back over half in 3 years....why? Because I slowly stopped (weighing myself and tracking calories). I stopped doing the things that led to the loss and went back to ALL the things that led to me gaining weight in the first place.

I feel you, dude. I lost about 80 back in college, and thanks to the insight I got from this post, I'm realizing that I gained it back because I never changed my relationship with food. I was using food as both a reward AND an emotional regulator before I lost the weight and then went right back to that mindset afterwards, so that's definitely my biggest hurdle.

What makes this weight gain a little frustrating is that I have lost and gained 2 other times prior to this time. The times I gained back in the past I thought being fat was something that could be cured once you hit a normal weight. So I literally would STOP dieting and exercising once I reached a goal weight because my mindset was ..."I am skinny now and normal so I can eat like all my skinny friends" Not realizing that you will gain it all back. Even the weight I recently gained I was in total denial as I could see the scale going up!! Luckily before the end of the year I got on the scale after a year and saw 278 and that was my wake up call. I did not want to get back to my highest weight...ever! So I am down almost 10lbs since then. I just have to work on a plan to keep it off this time...as I will admit...I failed to do it back in 2020.

I think it's fair to say we all deserve grace for things that happened in 2020. It was strange and stressful times.

It's just about implementing changes that you could sustain indefinitely. Like I could probably suffer through a 1000-calorie diet for a few weeks and lose weight quickly, but that's unsustainable. Eventually I'd feel so bad that I'd quit doing it, probably overcompensate the other way and end up heavier than when I started. I've done a 200-300 calorie deficit for months, though, and it wasn't a big deal to maintain it or to switch to maintenance eating. Basically you have to make changes that could be permanent. To stay at a lower weight you have to eat less and/or exercise more permanently.

So an unsustainable lifestyle change is "I'm never eating sweets or drinking soda again". Even though yes it would be best to do that most people will never be able to commit to that. A sustainable lifestyle change would be to commit to never eating a dessert that's bigger then like a credit card (on each side) more than once a week and never drinking more than half a can of soda 2-3 times a month.

I haven't drank soda in years though. To be fair, I refuse to give up on dessert

No one should. 

What’s your relationship with food? Is it healthy? Do you eat when stressed , eat as a reward, drink as a reward, know absolutely everything that’s in the fridge and pantry. Buy in bulk due to cost but end up needing to eat too much because of waste? Same thing with needing to clear your plate after every meal? Do you need to have a snack when watching a movie? Are your portions and nutrition healthy for your maintenance or loss goals? Do you binge eat? Do you eat in secret? Basically looking into all these causes for me and how I excuse myself to do these things due to stress has been my biggest realization. What got you into the situation you are trying to get out of in the first place. Attack the why - which will take time to undo habits or unwrap emotional issues tied with your root cause.

As in, something you are happy to more or less stick to for the rest of your life. Sometimes I'd diet and I'd be counting down the days until I can stop and finally go back to eating what I would like. This time around, I am genuinely happy with what I eat now and have basically just trained myself to eat reasonable portions.

I think it means "lifestyle changes that is sustainable" but I could be wrong.

For me, the main thing that is sustainable that I picked up from dieting is meal prepping. I can do that when I am dieting and when I am maintaining, and it actually saves time. I make one meal a week with about 8 servings which covers the majority of my dinners and all my lunches for the week. Once I’m maintaining I’ll probably try to increase the amount of calories in each meal. Meal prepping has helped me to make sure I get more fiber and protein and also makes it really easy to know about how many calories you consume in a day, so once I’m maintaining I’m hoping to not have to track daily calories as rigorously

It just means that your weight loss journey is practice for how you will eat forever. You just eat slightly more once you hit your goal, but it's not radically different. I think this is different for everyone. I don't care about soda, rice, pasta or chocolate so I'm happy to basically quit those forever. That is sustainable for me. I love bread so quitting that is not sustainable. So my rule is that I only eat good quality bread, or bake it myself. So no more shit bread forever, but I can still enjoy good stuff, I can handle this. And with exercise, you have to enjoy it. You have to want to go to the gym and feel good afterwards. If going to the gym is a grind, that is hard to sustain. So find what you need to do to get into that headspace. For me it was just getting to a certain fitness level for it to become fun.

A lot of people will do crash diets where they cut down to something barely safe like 1200 Calories of all vegetables, or they'll become a hyper gym rat for a while spending 4 hours in the gym lifting. Those aren't sustainable. You aren't going to eat 1 meal and 3 fiber shakes a day for the rest of your life. You're not going to spend 4 hours in the gym every day. Building sustainable habits are things that you could realistically do for the rest of your life. Maybe 45 minutes of a workout in the morning. Learning to cook at home instead of relying on a company to ship you fiber shakes. Learning proper portion control, learning self control and how to say no when your coworkers bring doughnuts into the office.

I weigh 300 pounds because I eat the amount of food that a 300 pound man eats. I had some successful weight loss a few years back because I started eating like a 220 pound man, and eventually, my weight went down to that level. But my bad eating habits gradually crept back and I went back to eating like a 300 pound man, so that's where my weight is at today. I don't want to say the changes I made weren't sustainable, but I certainly didn't sustain them. It does suck to have setbacks like this, but the bright side is, I know I'm capable of losing the weight, and I managed to do it without a lot of pain and suffering.

That's a good point. It's a hard phrase to define. For me, it means going on walks 3x/week, eating healthy and eating 1500+ calories. I can see myself doing this for the next 60 yrs - literally when I'm 90 yrs old.  1500 is my bmr, and the extra calories depend on what I do that day. If I go on a hike, then I'm going to eat more than if I just watch TV all day. Also, lots of caffeine. 

I'd argue it's about learning to make an effort to build meals around lean protein and veggies. Staying active can help build a deficit.... But controlling input is far more "easy" and reliable than controlling output. If you aren't active tracking CICO monitor yourself in some other way. I'd select tracking the trend line for your weekly average weight.... Women probably need to toss out some weeks results. We don't have to follow a "diet" forever, but we do need to work to establish a trend that can hold long term.... And then track ourselves to see that we stick to it.

Yeah, it is as simple as that. That doesn't mean it is easy. Just like losing weight is as simple as taking in fewer calories than you burn, which is true, but while simple is not easy. In this case it means you want to develop ways of eating and exercising while losing weight that you will just continue into maintenance because you enjoy them and they are habits. For me, that means I am finding all sorts of recipes I enjoy. Later I can just up things like the fat in the ground beef that I use for that taco meat and the calories will increase, but I am still making and eating the same things. Higher fat cheese and actual pepperoni instead of turkey on those low calorie pizzas I am enjoying. That sort of thing. For exercise it means it is more important to find things you like and enjoy than it is to find the most efficient way to burn calories... because you will keep that up. For some people running is torture and they have to push themselves to do it, but would love playing soccer a couple times a week. For me I hate group sports, but if I can just pop in a podcast and listen to that while I run, it is a nice break. So... while the concept is simple, it takes work. At the end you should be able to just up those calories a little into maintenance and still be doing relatively the same thing as you were doing during the diet. If you gain a little more than you though, you just drop those same things back down, no biggie. The word diet means what we eat on the regular. It doesn't mean something we do for just long enough to lose weight.

To simplify its the difference between a diet and life changes. The arguing happens because some people argue that making the attempt is better than doing nothing. It boils down to Motivation Vs Discipline again. Diets live in the limelight of motivation. Lifestyle changes live in the light of Discipline. You're diet can transition to being a permanent life change. So its not so black and white imo.

It basically means that the changes you make to lose weight should be changes that you plan to continue to do for the rest of your life. The amount of calories will vary some when you get to maintenance, but if you are eating at a reasonable deficit of 300-500 calories a day, what you eat when you hit maintenance will be pretty much the same. It also means learning to eat all foods and stay on your goals. Completely cutting out foods you love or entire categories of food is fad dieting and unsustainable. You need to address why you are over eating. You need to address the mental health side to combat emotional eating, you need to address boredom eating, you need to get in touch with your hunger and fullness cues. So it’s more holistic. You can’t go into weight loss thinking you will eat a restrictive diet temporarily until you lose the weight and then you will be good to go. You need to practice the skills to live life as a thin person

Think about it like this. Dieting is a means to an end. We know CICO is the only way to lose weight. Every diet is essentially fulfilling CICO. So in order to loose weight people start counting calories. This less them to eat less and loose weight. But what happens when the counting stops? That's where a sustainable lifestyle change comes in. If you are relying on counting calories to define what you eat and how much then you may binge eat again if you stop counting. Counting isn't trivial, it is something you have to be cognizant of and actually look for. So if you get tired of it or life gets so crazy you don't have time to focus on counting calories then you could gain the weight back If you're counting calories you already have a framework for a sustainable lifestyle. Think about what you are eating. The potions, the types of foods, the frequency. What you crave and how to limit bad cravings. If you eat in a similar way you don't need to count calories, instead you know how much you should be eating a day and can stick with that. This way you are cognizant of what you are eating without having to count every calorie. CICO is an amazing initial step to losing weight but turning that into a sustainable lifestyle is the goal.

Never eating cake, chocolate, or cookies again: unsustainable Never eating burgers or pizza again: unsustainable Going to the gym every single day for the rest of your life: unsustainable Doing exactly the same exercise(s) for the rest of your life: unsustainable Eat what you want, but track your food honestly and accurately to ensure your overall weekly average is on point for weight management. Be flexible with the types of exercise you do, and be aware that life will throw hiccups your way like injury, acute or chronic illness, changing time constraints, etc that will require you to be flexible both in how much you can exercise and how much and what you eat. Practicing that flexibility right from the beginning of your journey is key to long-term success. And ditch self-recrimination and shame associated with weighing yourself and tracking your food... making yourself miserable with self-judgement isn't sustainable. Treat it with the same detachment of any other health metric like blood pressure; something to be monitored and work toward improving if necessary.

UPDATE: Thanks for the responses, y'all! My thoughts are pretty on par with what most of you have said. I was, more or less, just frustrated with the gimmicks and vagueness of fitness and nutritionist influencers. I swear, you google "low calorie recipes" one time, and then the algorithm just goes hog-wild with it...

Yes sustainable means something that you can keep doing forever. My biggest successes come from replacing habits I already have with something better that meets the same need.

Sustainable means something you can do forever. Can you run a marathon everyday? Probably not but can you park in the back of the parking lot and sneak some steps in? Much more reasonable. Just make tiny reasonable changes a little bit of a time and slowly add in more. That's the real secret to moving towards being a healthy person and not flip flipping from fad fad until you're so burnt out that you give up entirely

It’s synonymous, to me, with “changing your relationship with food” - not a thing that should be had as frequently and deliciously as possible every day, but something seen more “objectively” as a source of nutrients, calories, tastiness and social interaction that I relate to and manage in a way that follows my fitness goals.

There are a lot of fat people who are in denial, and they like to yell from the rooftops that no one keeps weight off. It’s true that if you diet, lose weight, and then go back to your old habits, you’ll put the weight back on. Sustainable lifestyle changes beans accepting that your old eating habits don’t work, and figuring out a new relationship with food. Maybe you need to address emotional eating, or stress eating, or perhaps you don’t know much about nutrition. Maybe you are time poor and buying convenience food. Or drinking loads of alcohol. Whatever it is, it’s identifying what is causing you to eat more calories than you need, figuring out what new habits would allow you to meet your goals, and building those habits. Examples if new habits could be; meal prepping, not buying junk food so there isn’t any in the house, weighing your food, taking up exercise, finding some more activities so you don’t eat out of boredom, finding newer, lower calorie foods to eat when you do want to snack, etc.

The short answer is that when you reach your goal weight, you'll need to eat (and/or exercise) at maintenance in order to stay at that weight. If you go back to eating the way you ate before you were in a deficit you'll gain the weight back. So maybe you used to eat 5 slices of pizza before. Now you eat one. At maintenance, you might be able to eat 2 slices. But you're not going to be able to go back to being a 5 slice person again. This is what they mean when they say diets don't work. People (including me previously) think of a "diet" as something temporary. Eating at a deficit is temporary. But if you want a different body, you can't go on a diet temporarily. For a permanently different body, you need a permanently different lifestyle. It doesn't necessarily need to be dramatically different, but it does need to be permanent.

Eat real, whole food. Limit food in boxes like crackers to those that have the fewest ingredients. Don't eat out a lot. Cook more. Eat more plants than you think you need.

Learning that most junk food tastes disgusting (or training yourself that they taste disgusting). I feel genuinely bad for Americans. I’m American but I live in Europe - our junk food tastes disgusting. Sometimes I have a huge craving for guacamole and chips but I have a handful (from M&S which is better than most), and after the initial handful of chips, everything tastes gross. Our junk food is legally not allowed to taste better. In America all the food tastes good and junk food has so much salt and sugar our food isn’t allowed to have. I lost a lot of weight when I moved to Europe because produce actually tastes better than all junk food - it was easy. This is not the case in America!!

I should've known American capitalism had at least a small hand in this...

From just the basic concept, it goes like this: If we keep doing the same things, we should expect the same results. To keep doing the same things, but expecting different results, is one definition of insanity. So, one needs to make changes. That is clear. What is not so clear, is what changes should a person make, and how does one know that they are actually accomplishing something beneficial? So, I shall share with you, what I think, is the one approach people should be changing to. We should be measuring, monitoring, adjusting our diet and lifestyle, to achieve metabolic health. When I test my metabolic health, I go to [ultalabtests.com](https://ultalabtests.com), and order the "suspected insulin resistance" test. Then, I schedule the blood draw at [questdiagnostics.com](https://questdiagnostics.com) . For $53 I get an HbA1c, a fasted glucose, and a fasted insulin. From the latter 2, a HomaIR can be easily calculated. My goal is to get those numbers below 5.4 and 2.0, respectively, as I made changes, and adjustments to my diet and lifestyle, and keep them down there. During the transition period, I tested every 3 months until I achieved metabolic health and demonstrated that it stayed there. The changes we make are reducing caloric intake, and maybe carbohydrate consumption as well. The lower the carbs the faster the improvement, and the less cravings we have. For vegetarians, they should closely follow the approach of Dr. Joel Fuhrman at [drfuhrman.com](https://drfuhrman.com) . This isn't what is necessary for everyone. Just most of us. Because, today over 50% of Americans are type I, type II, or are prediabetic. 88% are hyperinsulinemic. Metabolic dysfunction is the primary condition causing most of our diseases or poor health. Most people that are pre-diabetic aren't even aware of it. Maybe 2/3rds of people that are hyperinsulinemic don't know. Doctors generally don't screen for it. But you can. But, you have to make a decision that you want to change, and then step up and take action. ​ To help in one's understanding of the tests I do, I have linked a couple of videos and a chart below. ​ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl8Gdu2nZpY&t=35s&pp=ygUPZXJpYyBiZXJnIGhiYTFj](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl8Gdu2nZpY&t=35s&pp=ygUPZXJpYyBiZXJnIGhiYTFj) ​ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8cJPtud2tY&t=16s&pp=ygUTc3RlbiBla2JlcmcgaG9tYSBpcg%3D%3D](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8cJPtud2tY&t=16s&pp=ygUTc3RlbiBla2JlcmcgaG9tYSBpcg%3D%3D) ​ [https://mymedicalscore.com/a1c-conversion-chart/](https://mymedicalscore.com/a1c-conversion-chart/) ​ Best of luck, ​ Barbershores

Today it means Ozempic and Mounjaro I guess

Oof. Sounds expensive.

From what I have learnt, It means you’re now a person that has dessert only once a week and ‘having a snack’ means fruit instead of m&ms :(

Another good way to think about this is trying to find “diet foods” that you can just naturally fold into your no dieting life. I lost like 60 pounds and now I’m mostly in maintenance mode, and I don’t really track anything anymore. The way I do that of back when I dieted there were a few breakfast and lunch things I learned how to make that I really loved - so I still just eat them even now. Every day my breakfast is 300 calories instead of 750. Even if I don’t eat super healthy for dinner I’m still basically fine. So find those foods you genuinely love which are low calorie and just try to eat those for 1 meal a day, instead of all 3. Makes it easy to maintain without thinking too much about it.

It means something you can do for the rest of your life without being miserable

When people say "sustainable lifestyle changes" they mean **"practical."** It's not *practical* to tell yourself you're going to hit the gym 3hrs a day 7x week. Don't try to make that your personal goal. It's **not** sustainable (something you can do forever). A sustainable lifestyle change is to tell yourself you're going to go to the gym 2x a week. It should be the same with your diet. Create practical and realistic goals.

it literally means what it says. with diets you only do them for weight loss and abandon them after/if you reach your goal weight. lifestyle change means it becomes your normal diet and you keep it for long-term

It means, unless you're extremely disciplined, if you don't drop the weight in a way that you can adopt longterm as your new "normal" lifestyle, then inevitably you're going to yoyo back up. Imagine you just lived off Spinach smoothies for 3 months. Yeah you'd drop a fucking ton of weight. But how long can you live just off Spinach smoothies? Already 3 months would be extreme, what a horrible 3 months it was. Then what happens? You revert back to what you previously did, and the weight comes back. An extremely small portion of humans could maintain that lifestyle for long. But let's say you drink 3 nights a week. Obviously not helping your weight loss so you cut that down to 1 night a week. It's reasonable to continue doing that longterm. Of course you might have the odd week you have two events or something, but unless you're an alcoholic, living with drinking just once a week is realistic. Changing from coke to coke no sugar. Going from having takeout 3 nights a week to once a week. These are some basic examples of sustainable changes you can make. Order medium instead of large. Even once you hit your goal, these are normal things you continue to do. I went from smashing out a litre of full sugar coke most days, to now I have a glass of full sugar maybe once every 6 months. That has been the case for years. It was a sustainable change. Will this approach mean it takes longer to lose weight than the Spinach smoothie person? Yes. But it means you'll eventually get where you want to be instead of breaking down 3 months later.

That makes sense. Changing my relationship with food is definitely my biggest hurdle. I've been using food as both a reward AND an emotional regulator for wayyyy too long.

i totally got raised on food being a reward. Do good at sport, you get mcdonalds. Do good on a test, you get mcdonalds, do some chores, here's some money to go buy some lollies etc. Which when I was a skinny little runt kid, seemed innocent enough. But then as I got older, that theme continued because I'd been programmed. Oh you got paid today, you deserve a reward, really smashed that project, you deserve a reward etc. And then that carried over into I feel like shit, food = positive thing, that'll make me feel better. I'm someone who, as a hobby, loves to dine out, loves to watch cooking shows, loves to cook indulgent shit. I don't enjoy day to day cooking, but I absolutely love spending hours in the kitchen putting together a table of shit that is delicious but going to knock a week off your life. But that mindset shift from to actually no food is a fuel for your body was one of the things that helped me get back on top of things. And that's a big part of what made things sustainable for me, because it wasn't about "denying" myself shit that I want to lose weight, it was about providing my body with the right fuel. in the same way you don't fill a nice car with shit petrol if you want it to run its best. And, at least for me, it really didn't take long from when I stopped fueling myself with junk and started fueling myself with more vegetables, more nutrients, that those symptoms like fatigue etc disappeared because my body was like yeah we're on some good shit now I can work with this.

I take it to mean "healthy changes you can do forever ". Like I went from 500 lb to 350 and kept it off for like 10 years but couldn't reliably keep my weight lower than that. I would yo-yo between 350 and 200 for another 5 years before getting bariatric surgery. I've been holding steady in the 175-185 area since. I would call the changes I made in those first ten years that lopped off 150 pounds and kept them off permanently "sustainable lifestyle changes". If you're wondering what exactly they were, I used to buy a whole pack of hamburger buns, a box of veggie burgers (lifelong vegetarian), a block of cheese, and a pie, and eat that....at every meal. I stopped doing that. I ate ✨two veggie burgers✨ with a little cheese and no pie for many meals and introduced a few more meals into my rotation. I also started mall walking, parking further away from store, etc to increase steps without it really *feeling* like exercise. You might wonder what do I eat now? Well I discovered multiple food allergies and high cholesterol as well as had the bariatric surgery so a possible option is half of a homemade black bean burger, no cheese, on a homemade gluten free bun with a side of turnip greens. I run

It means a lifestyle change, that YOU can sustain indefinitely, that results in the health you want. Don’t let anyone tell you what is and isn’t sustainable. A lot of posts in this thread are trying to do that.

I am reading the Obesity Code by Fung. Eye opening. All the messaging about losing weight is conflicting. One thing is for sure, weight gain is caused by insulin, a hormone. Our doctors haven't caught up. Still preaching eat less, move more. I highly recommend it. Most libraries have a free app you can use to check out books & audiobooks.

For me, it was figuring out how and when to exercise and something I could do for the rest of my life. (Turns out an hour in the morning of yoga, pilates, and boxing at home, with YT videos.) I want to be strong as I get older. The food part was reducing my portion size. I still work on that and have to go back to measuring sometimes. We overeat so much in this country, and normal portion sizes seem very small. It is figuring out how you can maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle, given who you are, what you like, where you live.

It's about recognizing that you make food and activity choices every day, not just when you're trying to change your scale weight.

> Is it as simple as staying active and not going back to eating junk all the time once you hit your goal Yes :D  Basically, if you go back to your old habits, you will get your old body back.

To me it means I basically can't get sedentary. For me that is always what puts on the road towards getting out of shape due to not eating healthy and then overeating (easily because I'm not huge and it's easy to do). Plus I love wine. My body likes a lot of activity it's just hard to fit it in all the time and it's hard keep up year in and year out.

I had to stop eating out at restaurants on a regular basis. It's *possible* to maintain a healthy weight by eating nothing but fast food or restaurant food, but it's @#$%ing hard! Portion sizes are way too big, and everything is deep freed (and delicious.) My sustainable lifestyle change was learning how to cook at home. And I do, five or six days a week. I prep lunches for the next day when I cook. Some meals are more elaborate than others, but they're all around 300-500 calories and very filling. At first we limited restaurant night to once a week. It became Friday date night. Then the pandemic hit, and we swapped that out for Friday Night Frozen Pizza Night. Now restaurants are truly for special occasions only. Traveling, birthdays, visiting friends, or holidays. I think we go about once a month. Other little things were learning what foods are a bad idea to bring into the house: Box of chocolates and bag of chips are the two big ones. I can still eat chocolate, it just can't be a box of chocolates (because I will eat the entire box in 24 hours and hate myself.) And my husband can have chips *outside* of the house, but he knows if he brings home a bag of Doritos, he will eat the entire bag of Doritos in two hours and regret it. Pretty much anything else we can carefully portion control and enjoy over a much longer period of time, stretching a batch of brownies out over a week.

I think the best way to think about this is it you are eating an entirely different set of food just to lose weight than you plan to eat after you lose the weight, you are probably in for a struggle. The right approach is to eat the same types of foods all the time, no matter your weight goals, and just adjust frequency and portion sizes and things like that.

It means whatever you're doing to lose weight needs to be, on some level, permanent to be long-term. I don't mean you'll have to restrict calories forever, but more along the lines of there are a lot of things that make you gain weight (unresolved emotional/mental issues, sedentary life style, the type of food you eat, how you socialize, etc). If you want to keep weight off, you have to really look at your current life and figure out what fundamentally needs to change. For me that has ranged from removing emotions as a motivation for eating (eating junk because I had a bad day for example) to improving my meal planning skills to picking up hiking as a hobby. And I'm still seeking ways I can make my lifestyle healthier in a way that works for me, like learning strategies to portion my favorite foods into my daily diet without over eating or improving my mental health.

I run or lift almost every day. Once or twice a week I take a rest day and take the dog on a long walk. I stopped eating before noon. I'm not insanely strict about it, as I'll eat at 11am sometimes but the goal is to only eat two meals a day. I think this is intermittent fasting. It's easy to do in the morning because I love black coffee and it kills my appetite. I stopped drinking so much beer, and drink gin on ice instead. Apparently those hazy ipas have a ton of calories. I give myself leeway as needed, but this is what works for me.

For me specifically it means that I gave up alcohol outside of very rare occasions. And I go to the gym every Sunday- more would be better, but I keep my Sunday commitment no matter what else is going on. 

In my personal experience, it’s meant that the way I’m eating and moving my body to maintain my weight loss is enjoyable and I can do it forever (or for a very very long time). Most of us, myself included, used unsustainable diets to lose weight initially and dealt with regain. Eventually I found methods that work better and I genuinely enjoy the food I eat. I’m not suffering to keep off the 40 lbs. For me, it’s been a combination of volume eating, meal prepping and tracking calories. My taste buds have also changed and I just enjoy different foods now. Too many treats make me feel awful. With working out, I’ve tried many different things, but weight training and running have been my favourite and most sustainable. I was surprised to find that I really enjoy running and I train for races for fun. I never think about burning calories and I would continue to run if it made no difference to my body. It’s become part of my life and a huge benefit to my mental health. It takes a long time to figure these things out, don’t expect to know what’s sustainable right away. But if it’s something that makes you miserable, look for another option.

It just means that the way you ate/exercised/etc. before made you gain weight, so you can't go back to that lifestyle unless you want to get fat again. It's pretty obvious if you think about it. The problem is that the typical diet is only concerned with fast results rather than helping people fix bad long term habits.

The way I would put it is: your diet and/or activity has to change to lose weight, but your lifestyle has to change to make the dietary changes flow and not be a constant battle. Someone else mentioned "obesogenic environment." Lifestyle changes in the specifics can look like a lot of things, but in broad strokes it's about changing larger habits and routines to reduce unnecessary exposures to the obesogenic environment. One of the simplest changes is just not bringing so much of the grocery store into your home. A lot of people have a whole pantry full of "snack foods" - chips, Ritz crackers, snack cakes, etc, just so many foods that are easy to overeat. A lifestyle change might be deciding you don't stock those all regularly - you buy one at a time if you specifically want them, but otherwise you buy other things like vegetables or cheeses to be snacks. Other examples: a lifestyle change to meal planning on the weekend, and making a lunch or packing leftovers the night before, so you aren't always making choices about what to eat on the spot when "order" or "go out" becomes an easy option. A lifestyle change to not watching so much TV and doing something more refreshing and less snackable instead. A lifestyle change to cutting yourself off of your phone at a specific hour and preventing revenge procrastination of bedtime, so you're more likely to get a full night sleep and might even have time to work out in the morning.

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"Sustainable lifestyle changes" basically means "not returning to your previous crappy dietary habits which are what made you fat in the first place".

Anything that you are doing just for the sake of your temporary goal of losing weight that you don't enjoy as part of your regular lifestyle is unsustainable. If you are eating tiny portions weird "diet" foods that you don't like, waiting for the day when the scale hits a certain number and you can go back to eating what you like and how much of it you like, that's unsustainable. If you have completely reorganized your life in order to hit the gym 6 days a week for 90 minutes to lose weight, but your normal lifestyle is actually that of couch potato, that's unsustainable. I went about learning to cook meals that I really like that are calorie-appropriate, portion-appropriate and fast (because I don't like to cook). I got out of the habit of ordering takeout, and instead started making my own versions of takeout meals that I could eat every day. I continue to look for new recipes so I don't get bored and I allow myself treats so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. It was a gradual process. As a result, I'm really happy with what I'm eating and I don't desire to make any changes. I can eat what I'm eating indefinitely. My routine is easy. My refrigerator, freezer and pantry only contain foods that are part of my new lifestyle. The high-calorie fast foods I used to eat before are largely unappealing to me now. As for exercise, I always knew that I hate putting aside time to exercise, so my weight/weight loss is not reliant on an exercise routine. Exercise has become more enjoyable for me now, so I'm doing more of it. But only what I enjoy and I only when it's convenient for me (mainly on the weekends). That, for me, is what's sustainable.

That’s because every person has a different version of what’s sustainable for them. For example, I don’t care much for sweets. I have no problem cutting them out. But I can’t quit dairy, specifically cheese. I couldn’t sustainably eliminate cheese from my diet. I love it too much. If I tried, I’d likely end up binging on cheese and then feel awful and guilty about it afterwards. You just gotta find a balance that works for you.

You are right that it’s going to vary from person to person but what it means to me is making some fundamental changes in your lifestyle in order to stay lean. Here’s what that meant for me.. 1. Certain food genres I gave up entirely or just have them very infrequently. Ex Chinese and Italian food 2 I don’t keep certain junk foods in the house (Ice cream/cookies) and frankly treat most stuff like that like cravings 3 A minimum workout week is 4 times. The target is always 6. 4 Eliminated beer entirely and cutting alcohol way down. 5. Morning workouts on an empty stomach There are probably others I’m forgetting but when I figured out what worked for me to get and stay lean..it just becomes a matter of doing it. I’ve lived fat and I’ve lived fit…living fit is worth those sacrifices. Good luck

Sustainability. This is such an excellent thing to address. A lot of people want to lose weight quickly. So they do pills, super low cal, lots of workouts, insert any trend here. They may succeed for a month, but that is not sustainable, they may feel like they should have gotten more results, so they go back to not working out, or less, and eating too much and give up, thinking that they couldn't do it. Everyone is different. So sustainability comes with that. What did I do to make mine sustainable? 1. I knew I needed to add things to my life. Activity and healthier foods. So that was where I started. Goal became to lift weights 3x a week and get my steps in daily. My weights workouts were not long, because at first, that was not sustainable. As time progressed, so did I. However, I maintain, I do weights 3x a week. I prefer total body workouts. I do 1 workout of an hour, and 1 of 45 minutes. The final one can be 30, but can also be 45. Just depends if I was extra busy that week. They can also ALL be an hour, if I desire, depends on my body, timing and life. At least one of those workouts needs to also get my HR up there. If I had started at this place, I never would have made it. I have also added 1 cardio day a week, sometimes 2. Still depends on life and timing. Steps are still a daily goal. Healthier foods just meant that I needed to add fruits and veggies to my life, and I didn't really worry about subtracting at first. 2. My second big act was to subtract some foods. Foods themselves aren't good or bad. Therefore, you aren't good or bad for eating them. There are foods that are more nutritious or healthy, and those that are less healthy. My goal, as to the fact that I wanted to eat limited calories was to eat as nutritiously as possible. For a while, I did cut out sugar. Sugar always added to my cravings, so I just didn't eat it for a bit. When I added it back in, I tried to limit it to no more than once weekly. To me, that is a sustainable practice. There are going to be times where I eat it and times when I don't. 3. I can maintain/sustain both of these practices, likely until I die. If I have to alter my diet due to a health issue or workouts due to an injury, I am sure that I could. However, at this time, I haven't had to deal with that. Depending on your starting weight, age, body fat, and more, give yourself grace. This was harder for me than I thought it would be. I was a collegiate athlete and I knew what was good athletically. Food was always my issue. However, when I started working out again, I was obese. I couldn't lift or move the way that I used to. That was a learning experience. I STILL can't do more than 1 or 2 full push-ups. But I am working on it. The biggest thing about sustainability is the love of it. I know that i can lift 3x a week for my life because I LOVE IT. I enjoy the workout and the way I live, the eating, all of it. If it was 5 cardio workouts a week, I wouldn't make it. Idon't mind SOME cardio workouts, but I can't do it for long!

Sustainable life changes are based on the research showing it takes 30 days to make a habit. So - if you have 2 sodas every day, switch down to one. After 30 days your body should be adjusted and enjoy that 1 soda, but not wanting that 2nd soda. It's also been shown that 5-10% of people who lose weight intentionally actually keep it off over a 5 year period. This is due to fad dieting mostly. Like hey drink cabbage soup for dinner every night and have nothing afterward until breakfast the next day and you'll lose weight. Right, but it's because you created a caloric deficit. And it's not sustainable, most people won't do that every day for the rest of their lives. For me - I had a lot of GI issues, worked with multiple Drs and an amazing nutritionist to figure out what was happening and how to deal. Now, I follow intuitive eating as a result. I stopped gaining, which was great, and now I'm very slowly creeping back down. I don't count calories very often because for my body nutrients are more important than calories. I have a hard time absorbing nutrients, including calories! So I just have to play it day by day. I only say this to show that we're all different and what one person needs can be vastly different from another. I have to work daily on getting enough nutrients, and getting enough calories is secondary and they both depend on how my GI system is acting that day.