Granted, I'm only picking up bits from this thread, but what it reminds me of are those books I used to read by the bucketload, the ones that would construct a boot camp for you. Endless discipline and eternal vigilance was the way to keep that figure!

It's not that I'm lacking in either: as a fat teen, I would bike for miles and miles. As a twenty-something, I would skip a lot of meals. As a thirty-something, I worked out 1 1/2 hours every day and kept myself to 25 grams of fat.

None of these things kept working. And without that kind of positive feedback, these schemes can't be kept up.