how long before you got your eating plan right?

keziak1
keziak1 Posts: 204 Member
edited November 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
After several weeks of doing well I have derailed lately in the evenings. Checking in with my body, I think I have been trying to get by on too little food during the day. By 9pm I have been very hungry and end up reaching for bad food choices. We don't have a lot of junk in the house but enough to eat wrong. I am going to try to eat more (healthy) foods during the day and see if that helps with the nighttime weakness. Did you have to experiment like this?

Replies

  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,151 Member
    You have nothing logged in your diary.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    Nope. I underate a little the first week while I adjusted, then it was fine, but I did have a pretty good notion of what's low calorie and filling.
  • cranium853
    cranium853 Posts: 139 Member
    Greetings. I'm back after wandering off for a year. I saw the behaviors that had helped me succeed decline and am picking up where I left off. Identifying the triggers- and for me that is emotional eating, low blood sugar, or boredom, never real hunger, is key. Doing something about it is next. I find that a protein hit will circumvent the nighttime eating or having good choices nearby will help. You can also park in the bathtub with a good book. I'm not dropping crumbs in my bath and eating chips with wet hands is gross. I have also decided that the next time I get angry with someone instead of eating carbs I am going to bit him (usually it's him) on the arm and chew. Get me some protein and work off the self-abuse by turning it elsewhere. Or go sit in the tub, one of those.
  • cebreisch
    cebreisch Posts: 1,340 Member
    First you have to be diligent on logging food in the diary. That's like trying to drive to Florida without a map. ("I'll get there if I just go south!" That's not necessarily true if you're driving from Idaho.)

    You have to know where you're starting. Then you can make reasonable adjustments to your day. I remember when I first started logging my foods, and seeing a bariatric dietician. I was going to McDonald's about every day for breakfast. She suggested just changing that out to something I could bring to work. I settled on yogurt. If I need something else, I'll have a protein/fiber bar.

    Since Monday, I've logged everything. That way, when I weigh in next week, if I need to review the information to see where I can make some changes because I gained, I can.

    Knowledge is power.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
    I think it can always go wrong

    I felt better after a couple of months of diligent logging though, got into more of a groove

    I still weigh and log (day 219 today) and it feels like second nature to balance out my calories across the week, eating when I'm not hungry is not in my repertoire at the moment...I know I will be hungry or fancy something later in the week and easily use up those calories

    But I don't have a diet plan...I have regular go to foods that I always have in / buy but I try to make everything work because this is my life ...I'm not into deprivation
  • lthames0810
    lthames0810 Posts: 722 Member
    Ugh, yes. I've floundered around for a year trying to fing a way to eat that didn't make me miserable. From logging my food, I found out that I already eat right for losing weight, exept for the evening breakdowns. If I could only solve that problem, I could pretty much eat freely and still lose weight.

    I tried saving calories for late night. I tried toughing it out. I tried getting a hobby that keeps my hands busy. Brushing my teeth right after the last thing I'm supposed to eat. They all worked for a while, then I'd blow it by having a binge in the middle of the night, and then the wheels would come completely off.

    I think I've finally stumbled upon a thing that is working (well, at least it's working for way longer than the others.) I tried out that 16:8 type of intermittent fasting. You confine your eating to an 8 hour window, and all the rest of the time you fast. I started it for health reasons separate from weight loss, and now I have it in my head that the fasting period is like an important medication that I dare not skip. For whatever reason, that is working incredibly well. I have not had one snack outside of the eating window since I started it.
  • keziak1
    keziak1 Posts: 204 Member
    lthames0810 wrote: »

    I think I've finally stumbled upon a thing that is working (well, at least it's working for way longer than the others.) I tried out that 16:8 type of intermittent fasting. You confine your eating to an 8 hour window, and all the rest of the time you fast. I started it for health reasons separate from weight loss, and now I have it in my head that the fasting period is like an important medication that I dare not skip. For whatever reason, that is working incredibly well. I have not had one snack outside of the eating window since I started it.

    I just ordered a book which is about the same strategy! This is actually what I've been doing to lose 20 lbs so far, but I think my mistake has been to eat very low calorie lunches and dinners and expect to fast from early evening to the next noon. It wasn't enough calories.


  • lthames0810
    lthames0810 Posts: 722 Member
    keziak1 wrote: »
    lthames0810 wrote: »

    I think I've finally stumbled upon a thing that is working (well, at least it's working for way longer than the others.) I tried out that 16:8 type of intermittent fasting. You confine your eating to an 8 hour window, and all the rest of the time you fast. I started it for health reasons separate from weight loss, and now I have it in my head that the fasting period is like an important medication that I dare not skip. For whatever reason, that is working incredibly well. I have not had one snack outside of the eating window since I started it.

    I just ordered a book which is about the same strategy! This is actually what I've been doing to lose 20 lbs so far, but I think my mistake has been to eat very low calorie lunches and dinners and expect to fast from early evening to the next noon. It wasn't enough calories.


    This isn't necessarily a weight loss method, although it's working out that way so far. When I first tried it out, I didn't even try to restrict calories, just to see if I could do it. I ate all my meals within the 8 hours and was uncomfortably full. Now I just basically skip breakfast and all other meals are normal. I don't know how this will work for me in maintenance but I won't worry about that yet.

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