A few people manage to lose a lot of weight and keep it off. Many are on file at the National Weight Loss Registry. When you look at how these people lost weight and maintain the loss, it involves quite a lot of exercise and pretty drastic food restriction (about 1200 to 1400 calories a day pretty much forever). I would love for those who say it’s a simple deal to try it for a couple of weeks, let alone for years.
Most people can change their weight to a small degree but often have trouble maintaining that loss. They find that they have to continually decrease their caloric intake, and still sometimes they start re-gaining weight because their bodies become quite thrifty about burning calories.
There is an old book on setpoint called The Dieter’s Dilemma: Eating Less and Weighing More by William Bennett and Joel Gurin.
I also count my calories 5 days a week. It is sort of like balancing a check book. If one doesn't keep track they don't know how much they have. Well people work hard to lose weight why not find out the nuts and bolts of how many calories they really need to lose, maintain, or gain weight. People just guess. But okay if one just lives on great proteins, veggies, and fruits sparingly as well as a few wholesome grains on occasion.
I feel free. I just live wholesomely and enjoy life and feeling excellent.