This quote gnawed at me, but I was going to let it go. But since you’ve returned to the thread…
Your presumption about human physiology is belied by the struggles of millions of overweight people who must balance the need for food with their excess weight. When exactly does this mechanism, where hunger evaporates, kick in? Since I have 10-15 pounds of unnecessary fat, why am I ever hungry, either?
If only it were so simple. Just imagine how successful crash diets would be; instead of giving the illusion of fat loss, and leading to a rebound effect, the human body would be perfectly calibrated to eliminate only the unwanted portion of our mass.
In reality, I defy you to show me any diet that successfully burns fat without sacrificing muscle. The only way to burn fat without losing muscle is to do it through exercise.
Muscles are calorically “expensive”; you need more calories to maintain muscle mass than fat. So when calories are restricted over a long period of time, the body begins to sacrifice muscles as wasted mass. That’s why you can only trick the body via ketosis for so long - eventually, the body will break down its own tissues for energy.
Some ideas I use, though I’m not even overweight and don’t exercise in the traditional sense. My metabolism is great.
Never get fast food. Or almost never. We get it once every three months at most, and then usually KFC pot pies which are a lot better than chicken.
Make healthy meals, especially lots of veggies which can fill you up without many calories. I don’t do soup that often, but it sounds like a good idea.
I don’t eat dessert until a few hours after the meal, since it takes a while to feel full, and by the time I eat it I’m fuller than right after dinner. Often I skip it or make it minimal.
I don’t exercise but I do walk, but finding time is hard. I’ve started walking to nearby groceries when I just have a few things to pick up rather than driving. I bring a backpack, and of course it doesn’t work for heavy or frozen foods. I also walk to a faraway mailbox the few time I need to mail something. I’m lucky in that I have a lot of stores in good walking distance.
That’s pretty good. I can’t seem to get myself lower than 2 caffeines a day. But I’m happily no longer at 4. One thing that helps me is eating complex carbohydrates instead of simple ones. That means, I don’t have eggs and toast for breakfast but maybe eggs and broccoli. I steer clear of white potatoes for a second veggie that is more complex than potato, like I might have sauerkraut as one veggie and green beans as another.
If I do have potato, it will be mixed in with some form of greens such as spinich, kale, or turnip greens. This means I am cooking it myself and not buying premade. If I am in a situation where I must buy frozen, prepared meals. I make sure a number of the ones I purchase contain beans or that I add veggie to the meal. Riced cauliflower is a great add.
Best of luck to all of us trying to lose a few pounds and/or improve our diets!
Most posters are suggesting modest lifestyle changes. No formal diets. Gradually reducing food portions and avoiding snacks will eventually result in modest weight loss. It may take a couple years but the goal is sustainability. Diets don’t work long term because everyone eventually will return to their old eating habits.
Some exercise will help. Start with short walks. Trying using the stairs instead of the elevator. A lot depends on a persons health. Bad knees probably means using the elevator. Water aerobics are great for Seniors with arthritis.
I haven’t read all of the posts so not sure if this was already mentioned. My favorite time to snack was after supper while watching TV. A Diet Coke and a bag of potato chips and of course some chocolate after eating the salty chips. I wasn’t ever hungry at that time, it was just mindless eating. So about 10 years ago I decided it had to stop. Here’s my trick - as soon as I’m done eating supper which will include a little sweet treat for dessert, I brush and floss my teeth. I don’t want to have to do that again before bed so at that point I’m done eating for the day. I haven’t snacked in the evening since I started that routine.
I try to replace most of my sweet treats with fruit. But, I do not deny myself a piece of chocolate every day.
Also, just getting out and walking. I walk the dogs twice a day and usually end up walking an average of 5 miles/day. I listen to podcasts or audiobooks. The time flies if your mind is engaged.
I find I’m pretty good at following the rules I set for myself if they are reasonable. I like alcohol, but I’m deathly afraid of becoming an alcoholic. So my rules are 1) Only one drink a day 2) If I drank yesterday, no drink today 3) If I say, “Man, I could really use a drink right now” then no drink. These rules ensure I don’t drink to excess and don’t use alcohol to numb the pain. So far, that works pretty good for me.
Maybe you could institute something similar for soda. When do you enjoy the soda most? “I only drink one soda a day, after lunch” or “One soda with lunch, one while making dinner” or “only one a day, after exercise. No exercise, no soda.” or whatever works for you to maximize the pleasure you get from the treat, while reducing the total amount you drink.
Or replace it with something else delicious. One of my favorite summer drinks is:
Put two generic decaf tea bags in a quart of water in the fridge overnight
Remove the tea bags, and carbonate (using a sodastream or similar)
That is soo good, without the negative health effects of a soda (still bad for your teeth, but everything is a compromise). Your tastes may vary, so find the thing that works for you. Over time you may find that you enjoy something healthier more and soda less.
The main thing is not to try and do more than you can handle long term. One less soda a day forever is better than 3 less sodas a day for a week or a month.
I have discovered a method for eating much less, though it’s not for everybody.
Have a health scare*, which results in a bout of anxiety and depression, which so depresses appetite that you find yourself eating two small meals (or less) a day.
I lost 12 pounds over a couple of months with the Scare-The-Shit-Out-Of-Yourself Diet Plan.
*optimally, have the health scare turn out to be nothing serious.
Whenever I get sick with anything that makes me lose my appetite for a while, I try to take advantage of it by not just eating out of habit until my appetite returns, and then modify my eating to keep off that weight. It’s like a mini crash diet, and I find it does give me a little head start. It’s easier to keep that weight off, than lose it normally.
I lost 80 pounds a few years ago (and gained 20 back, but I’m working on it). I did it by cutting out as many grams of carbohydrates as possible/practical.
I’ve never been a big soda drinker, preferring coffee and tea. I was drinking my coffee black until my wife moved in; then I started using cream and sugar. I went back to black coffee. I’d take milk and sugar in my hot tea. No more of that. I only like unsweetened iced tea, so no change there. I do have a big can of Monster Zero Ultra once (or rarely, twice) a week. I also drink a lot of water.
Portion sizes were reduced. Did I want more? Yes. But if I waited 20 minutes, I wasn’t still hungry. I’ll serve myself half of what I used to, and usually take home half (or almost half) of my restaurant meals.
I’ve cut out rice almost completely. It seemed as if anytime I ate rice, I’d be two pounds heavier the next day. So rice is very rare, usually limited to nigiri. I rinse as much starch out of my potatoes as I can. Potatoes are usually hashbrowns or home fries once a week (or less), and the occasional mashed potatoes or baked potato with dinner. Again, the portions are smaller than I used to eat.
I eat Sarah Lee Delightful whole grain bread almost exclusively when I have a sandwich, keto buns when I have a burger, and Carb Balance tortillas when I eat burritos.
I avoid fruits because of the carbohydrate content (I know I should eat fruits), and starchy vegetables. My go-to vegetables are broccoli, asparagus, and brussels sprouts. I’ll have a 12-ounce glass of V8 once or twice a week.
I have a single serving of dark chocolate or sugar-free dark chocolate for an after-dinner snack. The snack also includes nuts (usually cashews) or a gob of peanut butter. No going back for seconds.
I eat a lot of fish and meat and cheeses.
My exercise is walking. I started out walking 1.85 miles, down the beach and back home the back way. Then I started doing three laps around the neighbourhood and park (⅔ mile per lap, two miles total), then four laps, then five laps. Nowadays I walk down the beach and back up the beach, including a steep 1/10-mile hill at the start and the end, for a distance of 3.1 miles. I try to maintain an average pace of at least three miles per hour. It doesn’t matter how far you go or how fast you go when you start out. The important thing is to put one foot in front of the other, and keep doing it every day (or as many days per week as possible).
I had similarly spectacular results to @Johnny_L.A when I used a similar program.
Put less on the plate, eat slowly, and quit early. 20 mnutes later you’ll fell full even if you didn’t when you push back from the table.
Don’t eat when bored. Drink water or whatever zero calorie beverage you want that’s not sweet-tasting.
Getting over the need for sweet is key. Just like being used to belt-buster portions, being used to sweet with everything took your body a long time to learn. It’ll take a shorter time to unlearn, especially since now your conscious smart mind is driving the change.
I’m not sure if this has been said, but the best way to control the eating of junk food is to not have it in the house in the first place. When you get those food cravings at night, you can’t be tempted to eat junk if it isn’t in the house.
Aside from that, the best way to stop eating so much is to… stop eating so much. I know that sounds glib, but I’ve seen too many complicated diet plans and strategies that almost alwayss fail and just give you lots of ways to fool yourself or ‘cheat’. In the end, you simply have to cut out the excess junk food, sugar, and huge portions or whatever your problem is. Not tomorrow, not after you get that diet book, not after you get the right advice on the SDMB, etc. Right now.
One thing I did that was easy was to eat only half of my supper at suppertime. I’d save the rest for later, and eat it as a snack if I was still hungry. The same calories, but the glycemic load is lower and you don’t eat it all PLUS snacks.
Sometimes after I eat half and wait, I realize that was all the food I really needed. It takes quite a while for the feeling of satiety to kick in.
Maybe you just need to demonstrate to yourself that you DO/CAN actually control yourself.
I know someone who found something to snack on that, if eaten in large quantity, will give you a mild case of the trots. It might have been watermelon, I think. No one likes having the poops even if mildly. After a couple of episodes they found they kind of naturally stopped eating BEFORE hitting that threshold.
Be sure to observe fully that you CAN have the willpower, quite clearly. Try applying it to other things you’re eating, be very intentional about it. Remind yourself you can and did control this. That’s what my friend did apparently.
Going back to the watermelon, whenever he’d start to lose ground again. It wasn’t so much a weight loss tactic as an object lesson to stop saying to himself ‘I can’t control myself!’
I only know this story because I’ve heard him tell it a few times, folks were always asking how he did it. In the end it was, as always, diet and exercise, of course.
But disavowing himself of the notion he had no ‘control’, was the first and biggest hurdle to hear him tell it.
Just an observation. I recently implemented a rule that I can’t have soda until after I’ve drunk my complete daily water requirement. I drank all my water, had a chance to get a soda, and was… uninterested. Later my husband brought me a soda (I didn’t ask for) when he came home and for the first time ever in my life, I flat-out didn’t drink it. It wasn’t a matter of “I shouldn’t do this” it was a matter of “I don’t want this.” Could be the very reality of being properly hydrated reduces those cravings.
These last two are the real key. A successful change in eating habits gets you to the place where you’re not depriving yourself. Instead you simply don’t want the garbage you used to want.