Mar. 8--MANKATO -- Weekly weigh-ins and occasional compliments from co-workers were enough encouragement to let Tiffany Kropetz know she's been making progress.
It was a recent embrace from her husband, though, that made it clear her weight loss goals were becoming a reality.
"He came home the other night and hugged me," she said. "He said, 'Until now, I didn't realize how much you've lost.'" Kropetz, 25, recently passed the half-way mark to her goal of losing 100 pounds. With 53 pounds shed since July, she's confident the remaining weight will be lost by the end of this year.
She credits a change in eating habits and regular exercise for her success.
Kropetz has been using the Weight Watchers system, which assigns points to food based on calories, fat and fiber. She can eat anything she wants as long as she doesn't go over her allotted points for each day. There are certain foods, such as many vegetables and salsa, that are "free" because they don't use any points.
"They've taught me how to cut fats, especially bad fats, out of my diet," Kropetz said. "They've also taught me what a real portion is. You don't realize how much you're overeating because the portion sizes you get in a restaurant are double or triple what you should be getting."
Exercise can earn extra points for a favorite dessert or a couple light beers on Saturday night. Winter weather has kept Kropetz from logging as much walking and gardening as she did during the summer and fall, however. That's part of the reason she expects the second 50 pounds to take twice as long to lose as the first 50.
Kropetz has the right attitude for someone who wants to lose weight and keep it off, said Donna Bengtson, a Mankato Weight Watchers leader.
"Making a lifestyle change is extremely important," Bengtson said.
"Losing weight is a shortterm goal. Staying healthy should be a lifetime goal."
The battle to lose weight and keep it off comes with more challenges than most people realize, said Sue Fredstrom, a professor in the Department of Family Consumer Science at Minnesota State University.
There are hormonal influences, which aren't completely understood, that can encourage eating too much.
What scientists do know is those hormones become more active in people who have lost a lot of weight through dieting. That might explain why people who lose weight, then go back to old habits, find themselves in worse shape than when they started their diets.
"When we lose weight, we don't lose those fat cells; we just shrink them," Fredstrom said. "Also, there are hormonal influences that want us at a certain weight. Some of those hormonal influences want us to be overweight."
So she agrees, no matter what program or weight loss method is used, a permanent change in eating habits and regular exercise are key factors to losing weight and keeping it off.
"We think, in the nutrition world, that is what it takes," she said. "It's a lifelong change in nutrition and exercise. People who lose weight and keep it off frequently report that is what they do."
Fredstrom cited statistics from the National Weight Control Registry, an organization that gathers information from people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least one year. Those statistics show that 98 percent of registry participants reported they changed their diet to lose weight, and 94 percent increased physical activity.
The type of exercise used most frequently was walking.
Kropetz said the changes she has made in her diet and exercise are changes she's willing to keep for the rest of her life. She said the payoffs include having more energy, sleeping better at night and feeling better when she wakes up in the morning.
"If you're ready to commit to it, it's the best thing you can do," Kropetz said.
"But you have to be ready."
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