Before & After pics 80lb loss, + my diet plan

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that 320-330lbs was VERY unusual for me.

I was 230 in high-school and 220 in the Army. At one point, for a few years I was around 200.

So 300+ was an EXTREMELY unnatural weight for me to be.

Raven:

Honestly, no.

Once you become re-sensitized to the salt fat and sugar, food starts to taste so much better.

We genuinely savored and enjoyed every evening meal. You can do so much with the few ingredients I listed, of course most of us have no idea how to cook. (we still don't)

There is a whole world of food out that we still have to explore and just within those few groups of food, there are things and combinations we have never tried. We still don't know how to use herbs and spices properly. (though we are getting better)

Fast food in general was the hardest thing to give up. When you eat like we ate, you have to prepare your own meals. No restaurant is going to give you half a broiled chicken-breast on a plate of millet with corn and black beans lol. For Crystal, I know she had a hard time with sweets, but the thing I craved the most and wanted the most was fast food.

Being people that are on the go, we really had to fight our cravings out on the road. Staying at home and eating at home is easy.. but a trip somewhere triggers all sorts of "eating emotions".

For example, years ago I smoked cigarettes. Whenever I would get into my car, the first thing I would do was light up. When I was quitting (3+years now non-smoker) One of the hardest things to overcome was that urge to light up when I got in the car.

Fast food is the same way. When we get in the car to go somewhere, that triggers that habit of wanting to get a "treat" though the drive through. You just have to plan ahead or have some "outs" - one of our "outs" was the Kroger salad bar. When we needed to eat out we would hit the salad bar. We knew the hours and location of all of them on our frequently traveled routes.

I know that food looks very "blecky" to everyone, but honestly, once you re-train your body to eat like that, it is much easier. We are so used to super fat, ultra salty high sugar foods, that the idea of *not* eating those scares the crap out of us.

I think I should mention that it was never intended to be a diet plan - that is just the food we naturally gravitated to. I am just documenting what we ate. We never really made a list of foods we could or couldn't have.

We did "fail" usually once a week or so. But we always gravitated back to those foods.

This sort of "diet" I listed is completely unattainable if you try to jump into it. We GRADUALLY started eating like this. There is no person I know that could just start eating like this (myself included). It's something that yo have to ease into.

Yeallift is absolutely right. Don't limit yourself to those foods, you will cry into your pillow every night if you try to. I should have been more specific about *how* we did it.

For example, A basic meal for us might have been, half a chicken breast each (broiled) plain millet, black-beans and corn. We might have started of with one chicken breast each, some millet, black beans and corn and half of an Amy's Cheese enchilada each. Then after time stopped eating the enchilada.

We basically used a technique of "watering down" our foods with bland foods and then slowly cut out the "rich" foods.

And even doing that, ultimately, when faced with massive temptation, I went off the food and never went back - HOWEVER - we did learn a lot about our bodies, our calories, foods and changed our eating habits when we ate like that, and that knowledge has helped me keep off the weight for over 2 years now.

Good luck to you all!