Using the iOS app WeightBot I’ve tracked my weight every day (with some gaps) since 2008. I started out overweight, and you can see in about May of 2009 I decided to do something about it. I made an effort to control my portion sizes (mostly by saying “no fries” when ordering burgers at UGrill). It worked, a little:

I hovered around the “overweight” line for a few months before shooting back up over the summer of 2010. Oops. I also stopped recording my weight quite so consistently for the rest of the year.

And then… WeightWatchers!

Done! I reached my goal in about four months, and then stayed there for the past two years. I took these screenshots from WeightBot after I reached my initial goal, but then 2012 and 2013 look about the same.

The secret? There isn’t one, really. WeightWatchers just asks you to keep track of what you’re eating and not have too much of it. For us, the trick was making healthier choices all day. We buy 1% milk instead of 2% now. We substituted turkey hot dogs for beef. If we go out for a big meal, we balance that with lighter meals earlier in the day, or additional exercise.

Not every substitution was a success. Sugar-free maple syrup is terrible; I’d rather have the full-calorie kind and then go for a run. Most of the time, though, we were just as happy with the lighter alternative. And by constantly making healthier choices, it’s a habit now. Even a full week in Vegas, eating whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it, we each gained only about 1.5 pounds.

It doesn’t feel very impressive to pickup a bag of low-fat shredded cheese, but it sure looks impressive on a graph!