For those of you who have lost weight, did you find the last 20-25 pounds to be the hardest to lose?

I’ve been stuck between 137 and 133 for a year. I will admit right now that I’ve not made a huge effort, but I have been trying. I will get to 132 and bam! back comes a couple of pounds.

I track my calories, I’m getting back to exercise (both aerobic and weight bearing), I participate in a support group, I have healthy eating habits (with a lapse or two here and there, nothing extreme). In short, I know the right things to do.

The only thing I can come up with is that I’m not consistent enough with exercise. At this point, while I want the scale to go down, I really want the numbers on the tape measure to go down too. Do I need to focus more on building the muscle underneath the fat? I know I can’t spot reduce and that the fat only goes away with aerobic exercise. My thought is to build/sculpt the muscle under the fat along with aerobic movement to burn the fat.

Has anybody else gone through this? What got you past this point?