I Want to Lose Weight
It has been a long journey. I want to lose around 70 lbs.
I started out just trying to do calorie counting. But it was impossible with my diet. I was eating fast food once a day and that took up so much of the allowed calories that I could basically only have that one meal a day and was starving the rest of the day. This inevitably lead to me eating more. So that failed.
So then I just tried cutting out fast food and eating what at the time I viewed as "healthy" basically very low fat. I would eat perfectly all day nice and healthy meals, but night time would come and I would have unbelievably strong cravings for fast food that I could not fight. I'd get it and then go over my calorie count again. Nothing I did could get myself to stop these late night fast food runs, no promise of reward or threat of punishment nothing. So that failed.
I tried intermittent fasting. I would be absolutely starving and miserable during my fasting window and then I would binge eat at the end of it. Even without eating fast food, I was just eating so much regular food that I was still gaining weight. Another failure.
I tried those meal plans where you are provided with meals. But I didn't like the meals.....so that failed.
I went through many slumps where I felt I would never be able to lose weight. Everything changed for me when I started analyzing my eating patterns and habits and learning more about nutrition.
I learned situations in which I wanted to eat. I wanted to eat when I was tired, or when I was stressed or upset. So I came up with a plan of what to do instead of eat when that happened and stuck to it. I learned that really the only bad foods are processed foods, junk food. I learned that when your body doesn't get enough of a certain nutrient you crave it. In this case I was starving my body of fat. This deprivation of fat during the day was what caused my strong cravings for it at night that led to me getting fast food. I learned that when you completely ban yourself from a type of food, your cravings for it become stronger and it leads to a vicious cycle of eating and guilt. I learned that when you skip meals, you make yourself more likely to binge later.
So I created a new diet for myself. It consisted of cooking all my meals. I made sure I was getting a proper amount of fat by moving to butter from margarine and moving from lean meats to regular meats and sure enough my cravings for fast food at night went away. Only whole grains, no processed sugars. My meals are very regular, 3 meals a day every 3-4 hours. I am usually not hungry for lunch but I make myself eat it anyways because if I don't I do eat a lot more at night. I can have one small cheat snack a day to prevent full on food bans. Other than that I don't have any snacks. I can have one cheat meal a week so that I can still eat out on occasion. With this diet I managed to lose 4 lbs in one week. All without starving myself, without obsessive counting of calories and stressing over that, and still being able to eat foods I liked.
Unfortunately school got really crazy and I couldn't keep up with cooking all my meals and I fell off my diet and gained all the weight I lost back. I learned that 3 meals a day to cook is too difficult for me, so for one meal a day I allow myself a healthy, low calorie microwave meal. I found cooking just 2 meals a day rather than 3 was far more manageable for me. So with that adjustment I am starting my diet again and I am sticking to it well so far! I am serious about losing weight and getting healthy!
I started out just trying to do calorie counting. But it was impossible with my diet. I was eating fast food once a day and that took up so much of the allowed calories that I could basically only have that one meal a day and was starving the rest of the day. This inevitably lead to me eating more. So that failed.
So then I just tried cutting out fast food and eating what at the time I viewed as "healthy" basically very low fat. I would eat perfectly all day nice and healthy meals, but night time would come and I would have unbelievably strong cravings for fast food that I could not fight. I'd get it and then go over my calorie count again. Nothing I did could get myself to stop these late night fast food runs, no promise of reward or threat of punishment nothing. So that failed.
I tried intermittent fasting. I would be absolutely starving and miserable during my fasting window and then I would binge eat at the end of it. Even without eating fast food, I was just eating so much regular food that I was still gaining weight. Another failure.
I tried those meal plans where you are provided with meals. But I didn't like the meals.....so that failed.
I went through many slumps where I felt I would never be able to lose weight. Everything changed for me when I started analyzing my eating patterns and habits and learning more about nutrition.
I learned situations in which I wanted to eat. I wanted to eat when I was tired, or when I was stressed or upset. So I came up with a plan of what to do instead of eat when that happened and stuck to it. I learned that really the only bad foods are processed foods, junk food. I learned that when your body doesn't get enough of a certain nutrient you crave it. In this case I was starving my body of fat. This deprivation of fat during the day was what caused my strong cravings for it at night that led to me getting fast food. I learned that when you completely ban yourself from a type of food, your cravings for it become stronger and it leads to a vicious cycle of eating and guilt. I learned that when you skip meals, you make yourself more likely to binge later.
So I created a new diet for myself. It consisted of cooking all my meals. I made sure I was getting a proper amount of fat by moving to butter from margarine and moving from lean meats to regular meats and sure enough my cravings for fast food at night went away. Only whole grains, no processed sugars. My meals are very regular, 3 meals a day every 3-4 hours. I am usually not hungry for lunch but I make myself eat it anyways because if I don't I do eat a lot more at night. I can have one small cheat snack a day to prevent full on food bans. Other than that I don't have any snacks. I can have one cheat meal a week so that I can still eat out on occasion. With this diet I managed to lose 4 lbs in one week. All without starving myself, without obsessive counting of calories and stressing over that, and still being able to eat foods I liked.
Unfortunately school got really crazy and I couldn't keep up with cooking all my meals and I fell off my diet and gained all the weight I lost back. I learned that 3 meals a day to cook is too difficult for me, so for one meal a day I allow myself a healthy, low calorie microwave meal. I found cooking just 2 meals a day rather than 3 was far more manageable for me. So with that adjustment I am starting my diet again and I am sticking to it well so far! I am serious about losing weight and getting healthy!
