Someone asked me how I stay motivated and keep going. I think it’s a good question, especially a couple of weeks ago when my weight has been stubbornly refusing to go down. And the answer is partially that I just don’t know. Why is weight loss working for me this time when it’s failed so many times before?

I’m one tiny pound away from 100, and I have no real idea what’s making me succeed this time. Maybe it’s the ego boost when people notice? I don’t think so; I got plenty of compliments a few years ago when I lost 42 pounds on Weight Watchers, and I quit that just as surely as the rest. So what’s different this time?

Really, I think that I’ve finally found a plan that works for me. And it’s precisely because it’s NOT easy. It’s simple, and I try to make things as convenient as possible for myself, but my motto has become “simple, not easy”. I’ve been working my ass off for the last few weeks and what do you know? It worked! From Wednesday of last week to Wednesday of this week, I lost 10.4 pounds. There are other factors at play here, of course. I was eating an insane amount of sodium (damn you, delicious lunch meat!), and I was only losing about a pound a week when by my calorie differential, I should have been losing four to four and a half. So in a way, I was just catching up.

I really fought through this plateau, though. I’ve been working out like mad, at least five times a week, and I’ve been working HARD. I found a full-body weight routine that I do three times a week – on machines, unfortunately, but not relying on a spotter allows me to pound out a workout, keep my heart rate high and work up one hell of a sweat. I follow up lifting with at least 30 minutes of cardio. My knee is a piece of sh*t, so I haven’t run in months now, but I ramp up the incline on the treadmill and away I go. Non-lifting days are cardio for at least an hour. I’m doing Spinning now, which is an awesome workout, if a little rough on the backside. I miss my outdoor walks, but with the weather being absolutely atrocious, I’m stuck on the inside.

So back to what’s working…this is the first time that I’ve really taken it upon myself to lose weight, and not placed my faith in some system. I tried Atkins. It was the best thing ever for about two weeks, then bread started calling my name. I tried Weight Watchers, as previously mentioned. I spent as much time trying to game the system as I did anything else. I’ve tried a hundred things, and the only thread I’ve seen throughout is that they all market themselves as an easy way to lose weight, or at least an easy one. This is not a knock on Weight Watchers. Weight Watchers does amazing things for the people that use it, and more importantly, have the personality for it.

People spend so much time trying to figure out what diet (and I use the term diet as “eating lifestyle”, not “temporary method for losing weight”) works best for them, but no one seems to focus on what’s best for their personality.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a long-term success rate of somewhere around 5%. Weight Watchers probably has a success rate in the same ballpark. These numbers aren’t indictments of either organization, just that neither is right for everyone, or even most people. You just have to find what works for you.

Now, as to why my particular way works for me, I’m going back to things not being easy. I think I finally figured out that I would only lose weight if I put in the work. Eating burgers and bacon and not eating bread wasn’t going to magically make me thin. Eating a certain number of points wasn’t going to make me slim down (especially when I was gaming the system). What will make me lose weight is eating right, KNOWING what I eat, and working out, and more importantly, doing them even when I don’t want to. The only person that’s going to be able to make this happen is me, so I need to not only avoid temptation, but be able to live with it right up in my grill. It’s like the libertarian diet.

Of course, it also needs to be a diet that I can live with. You know, forever, or at least until I die. So there are some things that just aren’t going to work for me. Like “clean eating.” There are plenty of people I know that avoid eating anything processed, would never consider fast food, and think that natural food is all the bees’ knees. If it works for them, great, but you know what’s delicious? Egg McMuffins. I’m going to make an attempt to get ingredients to make my own, like whole wheat English muffins and nitrate-free Canadian bacon, and maybe I can cut out the Egg McMuffins. But boxed couscous mix cooks up deliciously too. And I like Cool Whip, and Jack in the Box tacos, and (horror of horrors) Hamburger Helper. I haven’t had most of those for months, but I eat Egg McMuffins all the damn time. And especially once I get to my maintenance weight and have more calories to play with each day, I’ll probably add those other chemical cesspools (debatable) back into my diet too.

And that’s just fine with me. I’ve received some grief about it, and I respect people who want to convince others to eat better, more real things. But I can either live at a healthy weight that I can maintain with the occasional carcinogen thrown in (again, debatable), or I can try to be perfect and end up saying “F*ck it, I want a tub of frosting,” and go back to the fatass that I used to be. Success comes in a lot of packages, and mine might just sometimes come in a cardboard box on the pasta aisle.