Those of us with a lot of weight to lose can sometimes feel desperate to get things moving... it seems like it'll NEVER come off, no matter what. Then, you lose 50 pounds and are STILL "morbidly obese" so it doesn't feel like you can ever get to a normal weight.

I was just wondering what tactics we've all used, or would be WILLING to use to try to get out from under the weight?

How did they work for you, if they DID work?

For every 10 lbs I lose, I give myself a reward. After the first ten, I got a pedicure. For the next ten, a new outfit. Then a new hairdo. The latest reward was tanning sessions. I have 2 more lbs to lose until my next reward. The next reward will be for 50 lbs. I'm thinking about getting new lingerie for it. What I have left, is so loose it is falling off of me. These are probably shallow ways to stay on a diet, but they work for me. I feel rewarded instead of punished for dieting.

Whatever works! When using the carrot-on-a-stick approach, more carrot and less stick seems to be a more positive way to go.

I've tried a lot of unhealthy things in the past, like the all-grapefruit diet, Dexatrim, flat-out starving myself... they did the trick short-term, but I can't see a one-food plan leading to anything but disaster, personally.

It's just hard when you want it off NOW, and I guess I'm looking for encouragement to stick with it without resorting to more extreme measures to get rid of the weight.

I voted for eat a mix of low carb with a variety of fruit and veg.

I have tried a number of things, including going extreme high fat for weeks, which led to initial weight loss but as soon as I got so sick of all the fat (was actually regurgitating it in the end YUCK) my weight came back and then some.
Prior to LC I tried every 'diet' on the planet, extreme low fat, shakes, meal replacement bars, slimming tablets...the list in endless, but once I tried LC I pretty much never looked back.

I was in a horrid stall for about 7 months or so and I lost VERY little in that time. I was on atkins at the time, and I switched to SB. I haven't looked back. I no longer count carbs, and I eat lower fat (not no fat) and I feel my plan is much more suited to me.
I am losing consistently now.

I think its all about moderation and a good plan for you. If you love atkins (and there has been plenty of people who have got to goal and beyond on it) then that's fine by me, if it's CAD, SB...or any of the other low carb plans out there, as long as you can stick to it long term, making it a way of life rather than viewing it as a diet, then I don't see why anyone should opt for a 'quick fix' option. Personally I feel that things like the M&E thing and other plans like that are just DIETS and not long term eating plans.

I know people get fed up of waiting for the lbs to dissapear, but the simple fact is; there is no such thing as a quick fix, so I no longer expend the energy trying to find one!

If it takes me 2 more years to hit goal, then 2 more years it will take.

I don't think there is such a thing as "extreme." As long as it works and doesn't harm your health, it's A-OK. Some of the things in your poll are health harming. Some of them probably aren't. Some people have managed to drop a lot of weight relatively quickly and keep it off; some others have found an "extreme" diet too hard to follow and cracked, while still others have been able to lose a lot of weight quickly and then failed to keep it off. A whole lot of people get burned out on what they consider a grind when they try the patient approach, and end up imploding or dead in the water (something that isn't discussed often enough, IMO).

I often times find myself cringing when I hear the phrase "everyone's different," because it's used as a copout as often as not, but in this case, everyone is different. You're a smart gal, and probably know yourself and what will work for you. I think it comes down to these questions:

(1) Will you stick to an "extreme" plan long enough to get where you want to go?

(2) If you find yourself failing at the "extreme" plan, will you collapse and start binge eating, or are you the kind of person who can say, "Well, this isn't working, I gave it my best shot, and it's back to patience?" Can you handle a failure with grace?

(3) If you lose all the weight you want on a crash-type diet, how well do you think you will do at maintenance? Is low carb eating enough of a habit for you now that you'll slip back into it, when the carrot of losing weight is no longer in front of you?


My thinking when I see people talking about stuff like this always comes back to one thing: you are getting bored/burned out/impatient/whatever on a vanilla low carb plan. But that's what you're going to have to do for the rest of your life, no matter how quickly or slowly you lose the weight you want. Is getting rid of the fat going to make it any easier for you to continue on this path? Because the path is still there, no matter how quickly you move along certain parts of it. It goes on forever.

I have tried a variety of things, even going so far as to join the Marine Corps to help keep weight off (now that's extreme)! However, the only thing that ever really worked for me was LC and I am happy with it. Is it as fast as I would like, no, but is weight loss ever as fast as you would like? Probably not.

The funny thing is when I was going into the Marine Corps, I had to lose about forty pounds to even make the weight regulation cut. I upped exercise and ate less, didn't work. So, I got this "diet" plan that was fundamentally just chicken breasts and broccoli for every meal. Oh, it was horrible. Not interesting at all. What I didn't know at the time was that it was LC. Until this recent weight loss, it was the only diet that ever worked. Now I know why.

Oy!! I picked four items on your list Barb!! Hope I didn't break the poll!!

I've got 40 yrs of dieting to draw from. I've taken diet meds, rx, done liqiuid fasts, low cal/low fat, WW-5x, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, optifast...OA, FAA, Bovine formula before sleep....and the list goes on.

I've managed to lose weight on all of the above but have never sustained it. I've drawn on all of my experiences for this, my last shot at this demon.

One key thing for me was getting it about flour in general. I use flour like a drug. Although whole grain flour products are allowed on my plan, I stayed away from any flour while I was still losing and I think that this is a big factor in how I got to goal. The only flour I allowed myself was a serving(2 ozs) of Dreamfields once every 2 weeks. It kept me from feeling deprived of my favorite food and helped me stay "in it".

I think that we each need to tweak our plans so that we can live with it long term, without compromising the plan itself. I played around with different foods while I was still losing and know now, what works for me.

The thing that I love about SB has been the ease of it once I found the meal plan chart. That chart really has enabled me to really make this work for me.

Thanks for all the input, guys. As you can tell, I'm really trying to figure out what makes everyone ELSE tick to help me figure out where I would draw the line. I've been walking uphill in loose sand lately trying to find a way to get to where I need to be.

I do know I have a tendency to try to beat myself into submission, food-wise AND emotionally. In fact, my doctor has started me on Wellbutrin in hopes of helping me through the depression that keeps getting in the way of what I need to accomplish in life. (As most of you know, I'm raising a son with a disability completely by myself, trying to sell my house to move us closer to doctors after nearly losing him last December, and fighting the school to keep him safe until I can get him OUT... and a bunch of other stuff.) He said to relax about my weight temporarily, then we'll work on it after we get my other problems straight.

There was a time I actually felt desperate enough to try one of the "fasts" that seem to be all the rage these days, but aside from the maintenance issues kwikdriver mentioned... where DO you go if you've limited to one food and it quits working or fails to work at all?? What's left to cut OUT?

My son has started accumulating a bit of extra weight, to the point of it getting in the way of what HE needs to do. As desperate as a feel to fix us both RIGHT NOW, I'm backing up a notch and just working on cutting out the junk and replacing it with healthy choices. He's really enthusiastic (until he realizes Doritos and fake cheese dip are not a part of the plan ) and understands that although he's wonderful just as he is, he and Mom need to watch out for the junk food trying to steal our health.

/ramble

I should have added that this is something I thought about myself recently, although I'm not struggling. But I'm in sprinting distance (compared to where I started ) of where I'd like to be, and I spent a couple of days thinking about severely cutting calories and "getting it over with," but after thinking about things along the lines of my post above, I decided not to, mainly because of point (2). I don't think I'd collapse (but then, nobody wants to think that of themselves ) but I saw no reason to rock the boat as long as things are going well for me. If I was struggling, maybe I'd have come to a different decision, who knows.

I've been looking over a lot of different plans lately, but what it comes down to for me is kind of a damned if I do, damned if I don't thing.

If I cut carbs and/or calories too low, transferring my son (almost as tall as me and in a large-size in mens) in and out of his chair is a lot harder. I can't take a chance on dropping him.

If I have enough carbs to not crap out while lifting him, I have to cut the fat or I don't lose. Then I get to be snarly and hungry all day.

Gotta find that balance, Grasshopper. I just need patience...RIGHT NOW!

I voted for low carb with a variety of fruits and vegetables. I cannot eat only meat or meat and dairy because when I eat too much of that I get constipated. Also, when I eat something that is really fatty, I get a layer of fat on the roof of my mouth that really feels YUCKY! Besides I love to cook and how many ways can you grill a steak? Nothing like a nice big salad to accompany the steak. I can forego a baked potato, but not the salad. It's all a matter of right choices and balance with me.

I hear ya Judy. I personally have removed wheat flour of any kind from my diet permanantly. I used to think I had to have it simply because my canister set had one canister labled FLOUR. So I would always keep it filled whether I used it or not. After my kids grew up I wasn't interested in baking anymore. Besides with just me and my husband, a cookie recipe for 3 dozen or a cake that served 12 people just wasn't neccessary anymore and if I did make a cake, I would have to eat half of it and my husband (who weighs more than I do) would have to eat the other half. So as an empty nester it was pretty easy to quit using flour. Now if the waiter would just STOP putting a bread basket under my nose when my husband and I go out to eat, it wouldn't be so hard to lose weight.

I politely tell them to remove the bread basket from my table!! That is, of course, if my eating companions agree!! and they'd better!!

I eat low carb with a variety of fruits and veggies. I pointed out in the monster meat thread over at the war zone, though, that as a percentage of total calories, the veggies make almost no impact on me. They are there, but they offer so few calories in relation to the meat that they might as well not be. And this does not seem extreme to me.

It's a cliche, one of the true ones, that it's about lifestyle change. Low carb detractors will lecture you about things going back to the way they were once you stop low carbing, and that's true (it is for all diets), but what else are we left to do?

I'm now within 30 pounds of goal. I have lost about 20 pounds in the last 12 months. I am not losing anything consistently right now, but once in a while I'll see a pound drop off. I'm okay with that, and it does feel like "walking uphill in the sand" as Potatofree puts it. But I don't feel burdened. I'm not chasing a number so much as living a life in a saner way that has rewarded me immensely so far.

I had to get out of the "it's something I must endure, this diet" to the "I don't eat certain things" mindset. That's the way it is and always will be. It's a burden, but I'd suggest -- in fact from having a drug addicted sister who died a few years ago, I know -- that the burden of being fat isn't the only one, or even the worst one.

I know that it's a matter of scale; that the millionaire with no health issues and a beautiful family has issues that are as awful to him as mine are to me.

If you're morbidly obese you have this burden, but I have to kick my own ass once in a while and make sure I understand that the world don't care if it isn't fair. The world couldn't give a damn that I can't eat bread and fries and stay thin. The world has bigger concerns. This one is mine, and it's hardly the biggest burden anyone has ever been born with.

Don't get me wrong; I don't think we should never feel sorry for ourselves, I just think we should have some perspective on it. We have to perservere forever on a way of eating that can make us healthier and thinner. That can be tiring.

Things could be worse.

I've done everything except the extreme 'fat fast' diets and surgery. I'm sure that's only because back when I was trying everything in the world, I couldn't afford surgery, and I hadn't heard about extreme fasts.

In my late 20s, I gave up dieting, because after every diet I'd just wind up fatter, and I couldn't afford to get any bigger. Then I studied nutrition on my own for quite a while, and started incorporating low carb principles. Now I do low carb as a lifestyle, with a little flexibility built in, which I'm going to tighten up next week, now that some very stressful things are over, so see if I can start dropping weight again. I've lost almost nothing in the last year, after dropping 90 lbs in 6 mos.

There are definite limits to what I'm willing to do now. I'm not willing to go hungry. I'm not willing to eat things I hate. I'm not willing to be completely inflexible about my eating all the time forever. If that costs me 'thinness', well, so be it.