ETA- I'm 5'4 and went from 208 -> 125(ish) and have maintained for about 1.5 yrs, for context! Sorry this is a novel, but I guess I realized I'd never formally celebrated my maintenance with this great community and wanted to share my story in case it helps someone (as well as sharing my excitement about my longest-sought NSV)!
I've been overweight or obese since childhood and, like many people in that situation, I have had many attempts at losing the weight both healthy and unhealthy. I've been in a healthy weight range before but never really set myself up for success in maintaining before. I knew about the NWCR for a long time and would occasionally visit the website looking for studies on what worked or just browsing the success stories, wildly envying the people who had somehow done the "impossible" and maintained significant weight loss.
In late 2017, I weighed in at just over 200 lbs for the first time in my life, a line I swore I'd never cross. At 5'4 this put me significantly into the obese range. I was almost 30, binge ate frequently, was terribly out of shape, had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and was completely miserable, but I also bought into a lot of myths about how lasting weight loss without WLS was impossible and how 95% of people gain the weight back and more (oh, that mythical, false number). I'd pretty much surrendered to being fat until the thing that broke me- I walked ONE block to the grocery to get lunch at work and had to stop for 5 minutes to catch my breath. I remember telling my husband that night that I'd try one more time to lose weight and then if (in my mind, when) that failed I was going to start looking into WLS.
I dutifully took my "before" pictures, decided on intermittent fasting somewhat arbitrarily as the method cause I didn't care for breakfast, and started. At first I stuck to it just to prove that it was right that no one could really lose weight, but then something clicked about the method and it really started working for me. I passed my previous "happy place" weight of 170 (which was my first goal!). I stepped up my activity level and passed my "absolutely cannot get under this" weight of 155. And finally I woke up one day, weighed myself, and was no longer overweight.
Even though I wasn't finished losing, I submitted an application to the National Weight Control Registry in Dec of 2018 after I got under 145 lbs (BMI 24.9). I figured I'd hold onto the app until I made it a year, as motivation, since I'd always wished I could be one of the successful losers who kept the weight off at least a year, and had also recently read the Copenhagen study that found a year of maintenance was something of a magic number to up the odds of successful lifetime maintenance. I hit my goal weight of 125 in April of 2019!
I waited, and waited, and waited for my application. I maintained in part because I wasn't going to gain it back before I got the damn application to the NWCR, lol. Covid-19 happened and I gained back 15 lbs, then lost it again by getting more strict when I realized my weight was creeping back up, a first for me.
I know this is boring, but my key to success was keeping up the same general habits as I did while losing as well as keeping a vigilant eye on my weight by weighing myself every day. I still eat on an IF schedule, maybe a little more lax some days. I keep a general running calorie count in my head but don't use a calorie counting app or anything- that being said, I didn't use one when I was losing weight for the most part either for various reasons, so I had practice managing my weight without counting precisely rather than dropping it when I hit my goal. Something that also was different this time was increasing my physical activity. Previously I hated exercise, but I took up hobbies that involve exercise like skating, or fit in other exercise like walks or using my little stepper for short 10-15 min bursts. Instead of spending a long single period working out like I felt obligated to do in previous attempts, I can just get my heart rate up when I have a few mins, and that's helped me not dread exercise but embrace it. It's cliche here but finally finding a method of weight loss that I don't feel the need to drop after hitting my goal (aka sustainable!) has been the "secret."
I finally got my application to the NWCR in August (almost two years!), filled it out, sent it in along with my before and after photo, and on Saturday received notice that I'd been accepted to the registry. It doesn't mean much, basically just that I've earned the right to be an occasional study subject in the future. But damn man, after looking at the successful losers in the NWCR for literal decades thinking, "those lucky people, that'll never be me," it feels SO good to be "one of those people."
That's a novel I didn't exactly intend, but I guess the moral is, I'm not special or different, I'm not especially disciplined or a health nut or super-duper lucky to win some kind of genetic lottery. I don't think there's anything special or different (weight-loss wise anyway :) ) about anyone who lost weight and/or maintains a healthy weight that gives us the ability to do that when some other people can't. We're just people who stuck to something that worked for the long haul. Thanks guys for reading, I hope everyone is having a healthy and wonderful day!
TL;DR: Lost 80ish lbs, joined a sciency club of successful weight loss maintainers, feels damn good.
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