how to be consistent with a diet

mittensofdoom

There is no such thing as a diet. It takes a lot for many people to understand this, but when you can, you will understand that eating, like moving, sleeping and activity patterns are a part of life. How you choose to do these in your life is up to you, but changing your activity patterns for a temporary time (ie changing your food style and intake) does not work long term.
Get off the idea that you are on a "diet" and start changing your activity patterns long term.

Trust me, it WILL work.

Truth.

MFP is a lifelong commitment for me. I'm at the size I'm most comfortable at and now I plan to stay here but if I went back to eating the way I did before, I'd just gain back the weight.

mittensofdoom

It's great once you learn to say NO to those foods! It's so freeing!

I don't say no to any food. Am I more free than you?

Hahaha... I guess you gotta understand where I'm coming from for that to make sense.

I'm used to feeling trapped by food. If a co-worker brought something tasty in to work, I would have to eat it. I couldn't say no. I felt some kind of... obligation? It was so frustrating because I knew that my body would not appreciate it and I would feel all gross and bloated after, and I would definitely go over my calories for the day, and it would make me depressed and I wouldn't want to work out that evening. It was just a cycle of negativity.

And I knew that if I could just have a teeny tiny taste of those things, or could just realize that I don't need or even want those sweets, then I could just keep going about my day like planned with all of the lovely, tasty, healthy foods I already have and not let the presence of sweets at the workplace mess me all up.

I think this is coming out weird. Maybe an example will help. One day I went to work all ready with all my lovely foods. Yogurt, cereal, banana, some dark chocolate, all that good stuff. And someone had bought donuts. DONUTS. They were in my cube ALL DAY. And I couldn't say no!!! I ended up eating 2 and a half donuts that day! UGH. I was so mad at myself, I just didn't know how to say no or just moderate my eating. SO FRUSTRATING. In summary: I felt trapped.

It took me a long time to finally realize that I don't NEED to eat those foods. I could just say "Nope, I'm good." And let that be that. It seems like such a simple concept, but it was a huge thing for me. I guess that's weird? I dunno. It sounds kinda silly writing it down, but I guess that's how it goes sometimes. Anyways now I feel like I have a much healthier relationship with food. I don't restrict myself to ONLY HEALTHY FOODS ALL THE TIME cuz that would be silly, but I know how to say no to unnecessary foods too.

I save myself the painful decision by telling people I work with that I'm vegan. Crap food always has dairy.

vivo

In my opinion how to be consistent is to be a creature of habit. My problem was that when I was trying to be careful with my eating I tended to think too much, and ended up eating bits and pieces of different food all over. Stick to the foods that are easy for you to reach and the ones you can eat on a day to day basis. For example for dinner I tend to stick to microwave meals I stick to steamed fish with lemon and parsley and take that with steamed brocolli

Beforehand I made different options of dinner, which personally didn't work for me because I never took into account how the different dinners would alter my calories for the day etc. Also, I ended up not cooking the meals cos I thought of too much food I thought I needed to eat well 0.0

Try to stick to a few, stick to what you know, be a creature of habit

xx

AeolianHarp

I don't restrict myself to ONLY HEALTHY FOODS ALL THE TIME cuz that would be silly, but I know how to say no to unnecessary foods too.

Good job. I had misconstrued your meaning. I'm not particularly adamant about labelling my food healthy or not, though, but congratulations on iron will! Not many people have that.