Diet Tips that Never Worked For Me

Lots of the same ones mentioned already -

- When you're hungry, just drink water! (this makes me "full" for about 15 minutes, if I'm lucky, then I just have to pee. I will say that drinking more water seems to take the edge off strong cravings for certain foods though.)

- You must work out in the morning on an empty stomach. (I'm not a morning person and getting up and ready for work by 8 am is enough of a struggle. Working out at night fits my natural rhythms better so I've decided to just work with my body instead of against it. Also, working out hungry means I get dizzy and can't go as hard or fast. I need something on my stomach first).

- You must not ever skip breakfast and it should be the biggest meal of the day. (I tried this - again - when I first started here. Turns out, no matter how much I eat at breakfast, I will still feel half-starved by the evening. I do need breakfast, I wake up hungry, but I don't need a big one. Eating more of my calories at night has not affected my weight loss).

- You must eliminate food 'X' entirely from your diet. (All this does is make me crave and obsess over food 'X').

- You must only eat "clean" and get rid of processed foods entirely. (I believe this is important for maximum health and it's a goal of mine to eat as clean as I can, but it hasn't been necessary for me to lose weight).

- Carbs are evil, never eat carbs. (I love them in all their forms and I feel better when I eat them. I've had no problems and no weight loss stalls eating them. I try to keep my macros balanced and carbs around 250 g or less).

- For exercise, all you need to do is be 'more active', like, park further away, take the stairs, etc (All this stuff helps, of course. The more active the better. But for a real calorie-burn, this stuff doesn't cut it for me. And if fitness, not just weight loss, is the goal, a good workout program is essential. Plus, a good workout program lets me eat more and get away with it, and I like that).

"Eat anything you want in moderation."

This may be great advice for some people - perhaps even most people - but it doesn't work for me. I don't know if it's because of a lifetime of ED, or because I'm allergic to about 80% of things on the planet, but my system is really super-sensitised to certain foods. I eat things like potato chips and milk chocolate once and then try not to eat them for a while, and it sets up cravings, complete with tremors, palpitations, insomnia - the whole spectrum. A lot of people don't understand this, because that's not how their bodies work. My mom is constantly saying, "why can't you just have a bit? I don't understand..." And it's true - if you don't understand, then you probably never will. It's not about self-control. I can force the self-control, but I'm miserable and feel really ill for a week or more. So as far as things like chips are concerned, my choices are a) eat them as often as I want, feel fine physically, but reconcile myself to being fat and unhealthy; b) eat them in moderation and be on an endless cycle of spiking and troughing body chemicals; or c) not eat them and feel a little wistful sometimes but basically fine.

I choose C most of the time. I have been eating those things over Christmas, with eyes wide open to the knowledge that I'll have an awful week in January when I stop eating them. (And no, for me gradually tapering off doesn't help, it only prolongs the pain.)

I'd never tell anyone not to eat foods they like unless they were suffering badly from even slight exposure, and even then I'd probably mind my own business. Bodies are different, and I know plenty of people do just fine with everything in moderation. But for me it's bad advice, especially when it's so frequently pushed - hard - by people who mean well.

"Maybe you should try overeaters anonymous."

This from my brother, who sees me eat one Christmas meal, one Thanksgiving meal, one birthday meal, and a couple more meals (like 4th of July, or my niece's birthday) a year. It would be an unusual year if he saw me eat more than half a dozen times. Yet I'm overweight, so I must be addicted to food and eat junk all the time, right? Um, no. Overeating is not my problem. Periodic starvation since I was five, interspersed with periods of attempting to eat normal amounts of food, are my problem. My brother's basically a nice person, or at least so says everyone else in his life, but he seems to have a blind spot where I'm concerned, and not just when it comes to food and exercise. These days I've taken to saying politely, "I'm sorry, my therapist doesn't like me to talk about food," just to get him to STFU. (A lie. My therapist likes me to talk about whatever I feel capable of talking about.)

And not exactly a tip, but:

"You just have to exercise off / burn off more calories than you put in."

Technically true. Yet what bugs me about this is that - and this may just be a fault with my high school and the medical system at my doctors surgery - none of my doctors or health teachers ever explained that "burn off" includes the calories you burn just staying alive. So I spent more than a decade trying to exercise off, in one gym session, a day's calorie intake. And failing to exercise off 1200 in one session. So dropping it (my intake) to 1000. And failing to exercise that off. So dropping it to 800. And not having the energy to keep going for an hour on the elliptical (which at my weight burns maybe 750-800 an hour). And then crying because if I couldn't exercise off 800 in a session, and I couldn't eat much less than 800, and I was supposed to burn more than I ate, how would I ever get the math to work?

Of course, now I know (a little bit) about BMR and TDEE (although I still have a lot to learn) I feel really, really stupid. I should have done more research as soon as I was old enough to pick up books and use the Internet, instead of blindly following what was taught to me by my (sick) mother and my (couldn't-care-less) teachers. The fact that I didn't find things out for myself until I'd done irreparable damage is my fault entirely. But I still want to rush back to my high school and interrogate the gym teachers to see if they're actually letting kids know that they don't need to do a 3-hour workout and starve themselves.

EDIT: Oh, and "If you want to be slim, never go over [eat more than] a thousand." I can't count the amount of times I hard this from my mom while growing up. Probably as many times as she heard it from her mother. She still believes it, no matter what scientific studies I give her. *shakes head* Amazing what we do to our children. (In my grandmother's case out of cruelty, in my mom's out of illness.)

My doctor once asked about my eating habits when I weighed 155lbs. I had lost 25 at that point and felt I looked good but wanted to maintain my losing trend. I told her that I ate when I was hungry and didn't when I wasn't. This was the strategy that had helped me to lose in the first place.
She told me that I should be eating regular meals and should try to drop the ten pounds to be in my ideal weight/height category. WORST. ADVISE. EVER! I stopped listening to my body (something I still fight to regain) and gained back the 25 lbs and an additional 5. Still fighting to regain self worth after that.

Eat breakfast - I just can't face food in the morning - if I force it, I feel a lot hungrier throughout the day

Go to the gym/exercise even if you don't feel like it, you'll be glad you did - nope, I will have a poor workout and feel shocking

Eat before exercising - anything more than a few sips of liquid in my stomach and I get really weak and sickly-feeling - I exercise best a couple of hours after getting up and before eating anything

You need an extra however many cals a day when skiing - only if you're expending a considerable amount of energy for a lot of the day - I find skiing less taxing than walking

Don't weigh everyday - weighing everyday works for me

Drink more water - I drink when I'm thirsty but probably only about a quarter of the daily recommended amount, and very rarely drink plain water - I've tried drinking more; I have to force myself, I find it unpleasant and I don't feel any benefit

'cheating'. I'm an all or nothing person. If I make a bad decision, it tends to spiral out of control.

also eating small meals super regularly. no. you never feel satisfied and the thought of food is always there, which isn't a good thing.

1200 is the magic number

Eat less and burn more!!! FAIL!!! I gained weight, and loss my hair. Now I Eat More To Weigh Less and guess what I DO WEIGH LESS!!!!

You are eating under your TDEE. Doesn't that mean that you are actually eating LESS to weigh less? Didn't you gain the weight in the first place because you actually ate MORE? I don't get it.

The "Eat more weigh less" trend is targetted to women eating around 1200 calories per day or less. It is not intended to communicate that you should eat more than when you were gaining or more than your TDEE, only that you should eat at a sustainable level. So the "more" means more than 1200 calories per day, not "more" than TDEE.

Someone beat me to it!

Drink more water, it will make you feel full! Or, if you think you're hungry, drink water first because there's a good chance you're actually just thirsty!

Nope... I can totally tell the difference between hunger and thirst. And, my stomach will continue to growl, even full of water.
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^^^THAT.

Cheat meals. I just can't do them anymore, I used to have 1 every weekend, which then would turn into a whole weekend of cheating, and stalling my loss. Now instead, I just fit what I want to have into my calories, or I don't have it, or find a better option that will still satisfy. Since I stopped cheat meals a month ago, I started losing again.

People who say, "Drink at least XXX amount of water per day," where XXX is about 5 times what any normal person could possibly drink. These are the same people who carry gallon jugs of water around everywhere, never stop drinking water, and scold you that if your urine isn't as clear as a mountain spring, you've dehydrated yourself and are knocking on death's door.

HA! Just about spit my water all over the keyboard. Lol!