Eating is the most primitive of all behaviors. The internal systems of both the body and the personality are very strongly reinforcing for “food search behaviors” and changing them requires very strong measures. So, I recommend entirely eliminating the current pattern of eating.
The schedule creates a framework that can be modified, at a later date, by conscious decision. During the first phase, a rigid schedule weakens the influence of your current stimulus and response patterns. That pattern has gotten you into the condition you are in. It serves you best to extinguish the entire pattern, and substitute a calculated replacement regimen, which can be altered when the original behaviors are no longer so entrenched.
Even if the new pattern doesn’t result in weight moderation at first, eventually, it can be adjusted. But the existing pattern of social stimulus/eating has to be extinguished. You have to remove eating from your responses to stimuli. So, you eat only when you intellectually know that you should eat. You eat only what you have planned, whether that is a reduction diet amount, or just a behavior modifying compromise. First you change your behavior, then you change your intake.
This won’t get you into a bikini this summer, but it can bring your weight down over the decades of the rest of your life, and increase the number of those decades as well. (Note: diet alone is not enough. You have to take control of the entire metabolic cycle. Food, sleep, exercise, and emotional well being. All are important.
Tris
