Hoping this will be helpful to others. Here's a quick list of practical things that helped me lose 25lbs (36, M, from 215 to 190 and shooting for 180) over ~3 months after more than a few false starts over the past few years:
- Without changing *anything* (no exercise, no change in diet) I started documenting my consumption in a calorie tracker for the first time (I use the free "Lose It!" iOS app) just to get a sense for how much I was overdoing it. I knew I was eating/drinking too much because I was gaining weight, but I was surprised to see I was exceeding the recommended calories by sometimes as much as 2,000 calories a day. For me this was a great motivator and helped me shift my attitude from "I over do it sometimes" to "Holy crap this is drastic, I need to systemically change this."
- Don't buy snacks when grocery shopping. If you buy it, you'll eat it.
- I would start to feel snacky around 9-9:30PM after cutting back my calories to a recommended 1,650 per day. Rather than fight with myself, I just started going to bed whenever those cravings hit.
- I don't like working out in front of others so I signed up with Daily Burn and found a program I liked (LTF). I do one workout from that program every day (with skips every once in a while) from home. My schedule is pretty compressed with my work responsibilities, so having something I can do from home when I have 30-45 minutes free is perfect.
- Workout videos and the like are great for aspirational goals, but it can get depressing watching videos of people ranging from fit to professional body builders effortlessly executing tough workouts. Communities like r/loseit are great for providing balance. Workout programs remind you of where you want to get to, and like-minded user communities remind you that everyone struggles in the process.
- Don't trust your eyes, do trust the math. One of the main reasons I dropped out of weight loss efforts previously was because I wasn't visually happy with my progress over time. This time, with the data in the calorie counter app, I could trust that it was nearly mathematically impossible for me not to lose weight regardless of what I was perceiving day-over-day.
- For me personally, the combination of working out + dieting was essential psychologically. Just dieting is pure deprivation. I'm not getting anything out of it other than very gradual weight loss (which I had to learn to be patient with). However, adding exercise gave me more rapid visual results (visible bicep/tricep definition, etc.) *and* felt like I was gaining something (strength) instead of simply depriving myself.
Some of these seem like common sense I know, but the combination of them is what helped me finally stick with it. Good luck all! If it was easy, everyone would do it. They aren't - but you are.
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