I use sparkpeople and I love it. It's a free site that does not endorse fad diets, and you can track your meals and workouts and find support (they have teams and challenges) as well as accurate articles. I can't recommend it enough! They also have a phone app that makes tracking super convenient, and a recipe creator site if you're into cooking :)

Hello! I'm similar to you sort of. I gained 45 pounds from depression and am now starting to lose it. This is what I've been doing and it's been working so far, I'm down 5.6 pounds.

Also, I didn't read a lot of the comments on here, so if I say anything repetitive, ignore it ^^...

1. See that it's not a diet, but a life change. Diets will make you bounce back but life changes will last forever.

2. Count calories. But not in a way where food is the enemy, just in a way to make sure you know what you're taking into your body. It forces you to be honest with your habits, especially if you overeat. I use an app called Fooducate, which is a calorie and food counter that offers healthy tips, as well as a really welcoming community that will encourage you to get healthier.

When you get the app it will help you determine how many calories you need to eat in a day to lose weight by a certain date, but it will never be below 1300 calories, because that's not healthy. Daily you input what you eat and you input your weight and exercise as well. It really helps me when losing weight because I get to stay on top of myself ^^!

3. Workout! You don't have to do it a lot. But be sure not to be sedentary. I like to use this app that I think is called 30 day workout? It has different 30 day workout plans for what part of your body you want to target, as well as easy, medium, and hard plans. I do it and spend about 6-8 minutes a day working out lmao. But it helps! Hopefully...(I have not been using this app for long lmao)

4. Drink water!!! I don't really do this a lot but every weight loss advice things I've seen have said this. I don't like water so I try drinking sparkling or flavored waters to make it enjoyable, like a mock soda lol.

5. Take progress pictures to motivate you to keep going. Also, because our situation is similar, keep a folder of your old photos and look through it. Whenever I do that I'm like "dammit I'm gunna take back my body!!" lmao

But yeah...just do what feels right ^^ and stick with it. I'm trying my hardest to stick to mine and I know you can do that with yours!

I'm just the opposite, I need to gain weight...I found it helpful while I need to gain weight that I need to eat more carbs. That being said try to stay away from carbs and eat healthy all natural foods, like a baked chicken breast and green beans from your local farmers market. Try to grow your own food! like tomatoes and peppers and such! But it also depends on how fast your metabolism is, mine is extremely fast! The food I eat doesn't stick around! haha! Also try to limit the amount of food you buy while on the go or at a restaurant.

Got this from huffington post: As a rule of thumb, weight loss is generally 75 percent diet and 25 percent exercise. An analysis of more than 700 weight loss studies found that people see the biggest short-term results when they eat smart.

The restaurant bit reminded me of something I forgot to mention -a lot of people say to order appetizers for your meal because restaurant meals are at least 1k+ calories. So there's a helpful tip lol.

a way to stick with any diet tip:

Ask ourself when you are about to eat something that is not 100% good for you: - Do I really want it? Really? really? really?

If the answer is YES!!! then go for it, if the answer is yeah I like it. Don't.

Only go for it if you are like completely into it ;) it helps with me

I've heard of keto before, and I've had a couple of people recommend it. Is it particularly difficult to prepare food for it? Do you think there's enough overlap in that and other diets that I might still be able to cook one dinner instead of two if I'm feeding two people?

That's awesome. :) Thank you.

I think the stick to it part is the hardest, honestly. Especially because I work so much, it's easier to just come home and not worry about it and put a lot of effort/time into cooking something healthy. I am definitely going to download that workout app. That sounds awesome.

I've had my own garden before. Our tomatoes did kind of meh, but our herbs and watermelon did really well. I'm planning on planting another garden this spring. Hopefully it's going to be better this year. I know you definitely have to be careful with restaurant food, because they're usually incredibly high calorie. Like a Chipotle burrito is like an entire day worth of calories.

I like the idea that if something is meh, just don't eat it. I see a lot of people eating things that are bad for them that they don't even really like because the thing is there.

It's not difficult if you're the one preparing the food, but it can be difficult if you're going elsewhere (a party, for example) and other people are preparing it. If you're the one making it, say if you make...I dunno, uh...some kind of stew and you normally have it with pasta or mashed potato, you just give the other person pasta if that's what they like, and use low-carb veggies as a base for yourself (or konjac noodles which are a great alternative).

I find I have almost no trouble when it comes to preparing meals since it's always easy to ADD carbs in for other people, but things get really tricky when I go out. It's okay if you go to a barbeque because you can just eat the meat and some veggies and what have you, but you can't eat desserts other people make (if you decide to indulge) unless they're keto-friendly, and you have to careful of sauces/etc because a lot of sauces have a lot of sugar in them. Swapping out sugar for stevia/erythritol will also be pretty much one of the best things you can do if you still want to use a sweetener in coffee/etc.

The main thing about keto is making sure you do your macros and sticking to them. That means using a calculator to figure out how much protein/fat/etc you should be consuming for your current body weight. It's really useful. If you're interested in doing keto I can run you through some stuff. Honestly, it was a lifesaver for me. I've been obese ever since I was 14, and I'm now 31, and I went from 127 kilos down to 86 (and I'm still losing).

I think I would rather give up on sweeteners in coffee if my alternative is stevia, lol. I think that has to be the worst tasting artificial sweetner I've ever had. I think you're probably right that adding carbs in for other people is easier than trying to figure out food in a restaurant or something. Is keto kind of similar to adkins? I can't remember what all adkins does other than taking carbs out of the diet, but I have a couple of adkins cookbooks from when I thought about trying that.

Try erythritol, then. Most stevia I've seen where I live (Australia) is usually blended with erythritol, and I think erythritol by itself doesn't have that bitter aftertaste stevia does. I'm not positive, but you can give it a try. Here's the GI for all sweeteners: http://www.sugar-and-sweetener-guide.com/glycemic-index-for-sweeteners.html

Of course, some you should avoid, like Ace K, aspartame, maltitol and isomalt. Isomalt is pretty much the devil, so if you ever see it listed in the ingredients for anything RUN. Unless you want to be sitting on the toilet all night lol

Keto is similar to atkins, yes, but I think atkins is higher fat than keto is. I think atkins is med protein/high fat, and keto is med fat/high protein. With keto you just eat fat to satiation, you don't need to meet your macro goal on it, but you must meet your protein goal.

Regarding restaurants, I find I'm usually okay if I go to a generic restaurant where I can order some kind of meat with veggies/whatever on the side, but I can't go to chinese restaurants because those are just carbs galore. I can eat at burger places if I take off the bun.

Ah, ok, got it. So protein is the most important part. I know that not getting enough protein is why people are normally hungry all the time. I'll have to look into actually doing keto if it's that effective. You haven't had any weird complications or anything have you?

Yes, protein is always important, especially so you don't experience any muscle loss. (Not just for keto, but pretty much with any diet).

I haven't experienced any complications at all. If anything, my bloodwork has improved dramatically, I reversed my fatty liver, I don't get "brain fog" anymore, and my hair and skin has improved. I overall feel a lot more healthy.

In saying that, though, I have read that some women have had issues if they have thyroid problems? I'm not sure on that, though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/

That's the best source you'll find on keto. There's an in-depth FAQ in the sidebar that you should read if you're considering trying it out. It's a big read, but anyone considering it should read through it.

EDIT: Haha, looks like I needed a re-read myself. Okay, keto IS high fat, but only if you don't already have a lot of fat on you. If you do then it's lower fat since your body will take energy from your own fat supply.

Just a warning, you will likely feel like shit the first week or two - especially if you don't keep up on your electrolytes. I take a magnesium supplement, and I use Lite-Salt or a bit of Cream of Tartar for potassium, and a bit of salt/or chicken broth for sodium. You know if you need electrolytes because you might feel a bit dizzy or get heart palpitations. This explains why electrolytes are important on Keto: https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/320ote/why_do_you_suddenly_need_electrolytes_now_that/

This is the calculator I use for my macros: http://keto-calculator.ankerl.com/

This is a good site for recipes and stuff: http://www.ruled.me/best-low-carb-vegetables-ketogenic-diet/#

I personally wouldn't worry about thyroid things, I just had bloodwork done to check all of that for a yearly screening and stuff. Electrolytes are probably harder to keep up with, but using supplements for things should be easy enough. thanks for your help!

No problem. Once you have all the stuff for your electrolytes it just becomes habit to take it, really. I don't even think twice anymore.

It's honestly probably best to consult a nutritionist or two and work out a plan. I know people who've lost sudden weight by dropping all sugar intake/carb intake, and others who use a plan of gym/fewer carbs and restricted diets/increased proteins. Long term the second "diet" works better because your body can adjust, I know when I went onto keto that I felt awful and my sleeping actually worsened (and I already have insomnia!), but know people who've successfully lost weight on it. Definitely recommend chatting to a doctor or nutritionist above all else though :)

The thing that worked for me was literally deciding one day that I was gonna aim for 1000 calories a day. The only thing that motivated me was near-immediate results, and seeing yourself lose weight fast is a good motivator, despite feeling p. awful in the beginning. It will get to a point where it slows, which is inevitable unless you eat even less, but at that point you will hopefully be at a lower fat mass. It can be maintained as long as you don't go back to eating as you did previously.

What helped in the beginning was using myfitnesspal and doing research to understand how many calories were contained in what portion of food. Eventually you are able to estimate how many calories are in what you eat based on what you know, without having to calculate exact weights etc.

You can eat how you prefer - more proteins/carbohydrates/fats, whatever - the calories contained are the most important factor. Research tends to show that people lose weight on keto and low-fat the same way, just different methods of getting there.