Need help with adapting to a healthy diet

try grilling some chicken and some veggies for dinner instead of fast food. fast food just has too many calories. congrats on dropping the soda, I did the same thing when I started this 20 days ago. you can do this. lettuce wraps are good. I eat those for lunch. lettuce, cucumbers, avocado, turkey and I add tomatoes but since you don't lie, do it without them. it it tastes great and is low calorie.

I found this post very helpful. especially the taking smaller steps part. Planning ahead has helped me stay out of fast food restaurants and away from convenience store foods.

1.weight loss plateau general
Medical reasons aside, a plateau will come as a result of eating at maintenance, no way around it.
Improper calculations of food intake are the cause, you cannot out exercise a bad diet, bad meaning you are using less energy than you take in, or the same.
For the sake of the topic at hand, the plateau will be for WEIGHT although the goal is fat loss.
If you are in a constant deficit, your weight will not always come off if you did everything correctly due to various factors, including, but not limited to: cortisol, sodium intake, carbohydrate intake, water intake, and the weight of undigested food in your body. If the scale does not change in a week, its ok. Even two weeks is fine, after three weeks there should definitely be a change in WEIGHT, or at least should, at this point its time to reevaluate what you are eating.

You do not need to increase activity, you can simply eat less instead of spending hours doing cardio in an attempt to make up for lack of control over caloric intake.
From personal experience, i ate the exact same things every single day and never had an issue with weight coming off because: i was accurate with calorie counting, i knew what i needed to eat calorie-wise to reach weight/fat loss.
If you did X amount of work, and ate Y amount of food, and weight did not change, X=Y, you want X>Y. Work and food in this instance is a calorie, or a unit of energy, simply once again using more energy than you take in to create a caloric deficit.

Calorie calculators will only take you so far, so lets put things in perspective, real life math.
As an example if you need 2200 calories with your "activity level", the amount of work, to lose 1 pound per week. This correlates to a deficit total of 500 per day because the general rule of thumb is a pound of fat is roughly 3500 calories. 500x7 days=3500 calories. Since you will never know how many calories you use exercising, we can factor that activity adding to maintenance.
To lose more weight/fat per week, we need to create an additional deficit, if your goal is 1.5 pounds per week, you need to generate another 250 calories per day on average, the culmination of that original 500 calorie deficit+250 per day is 5250 over the span of a week, or 1.5 lbs per week.

If weight is not coming off, you are eating too much. Like mentioned, do not make adjustments after one week, even doing everything correctly your WEIGHT can increase, masked by the factors mentioned, while fat IS coming off. What we are concerned about is the number, the weight. After three weeks there needs to be some sort of adjustment, its not a rule, but a suggestion since something SHOULD be changing.

You can make short changes to a diet to make big changes. Every 100 calories you reduce, you will lose 0.2 lbs faster a week BECAUSE 100x7 days= 700 calories, or 1/5 of a pound. You do not have to make drastic changes, you can simply skim away portions of what you are eating to achieve a lower overall caloric intake, this only works if you STICK to your calorie deficit.

Make sense? From the small change you can see, we skimmed 215 calories without changing much. This will net 0.4 lbs faster per week. You would generally pull calories from carbs because you need to meet those requirements, as carbs are not essential, nor required. You need to make the adjustments so you still hit those requirements. Monitoring weight under the same conditions, will probably yield a more accurate trend in data for recalculating caloric adjustments or requirements. It needs to be over a period of time, or weeks, not days.

Don't know your maintenance?
At some point you have to start somewhere, regardless of what a calculator tells you. You would eat a target caloric intake, and then based on your results, add or take away food to decrease or expedite weight loss. Instead of over thinking, at some point you have to get away from the computer screen and start some trial and error, everyone has to.

A simple calorie deficit will take you all the way down to single digit body fat and to competition levels, there is no question about it. The stubborn fat, in reality, is the stubbornness of a person not willing to be patient enough for the fat to come off, or willing to deal with the hunger and sacrifice necessary to achieve being lean. You may be hungry, that is a reality. You may have to eat less than you want to, or can cope with, its not easy. Hold yourself accountable and be honest with what you are actually eating, a little self control and accountability goes a long way and will greatly speed things along if you do things....correctly.

In conclusion: MOVE MORE, EAT LESS!

I've been taking things very slowly, just changing a few things here and there. I switched sugar for stevia in my coffee and started eating breakfast (usually bacon and eggs or a fruit smoothie). For lunch I'm eating whole grain bread now instead of white (which is huge for me) and having an apple with my sandwich instead of chips - super filling. For dinner I usually have around 800 cals left, it's a lot easier than I ever thought it would be. Friend me if you like and check out my diary - it's a little boring since I'm a super picky eater. Just ignore the alcohol! :drinker:

Sometime we binge because we feel overly restricted, and when we feel like we aren't allowed certain things, we crave them. If fast food is one of your weaknesses, and you are used to having it regularly, set a goal to reduce the frequency. Tell yourself that you can have your favorite fast food meal after a week of resisting. (but you will still log it, and try to compensate for the extra calories with healthy eating the rest of the day, and exercise ) Almost everything we like to eat is ok, in moderation, so make a plan to cut down without putting anything in the "I can never have this again" category. Eventually, you may want to cut down even more, to maybe once a month, but any change is the right direction is good. You don't have to change everything at once.

(I'm not suggesting you use the meal as a reward for being good, that's not the point. It's more about being in control of when and how often you indulge)