Avoiding My Favorite Restaurants

I will never avoid restaurants, life's too short to be a hermit, imo. I will, however, employ various tactics to make the meal fit. I've got contingency plans to make up to a 1500 calorie "unplanned" meal fit my week, every week.

In my opinion, it is so important to NOT deprive yourself! In order for you to stick with it, you need to accept that this is long term and there should be balance. Think realistically, there is NO WAY you can avoid your favorite foods for the rest of your life, nor would you want to! Planning for those situations/splurges can help. If I know that I'm eating out for dinner, I will look up the menu beforehand to make sure I'm making an educated choice. Also, I like to save my splurges for Saturday nights. And then its back to business per usual the following day.

Plan, plan PLAN!

I agree with much of what's above (eat lightly the rest of the day, bank calories in advance, get extra exercise, box half the meal, plan in advance, etc.).

This is just another perspective: It's just a real-life story problem. Do the math. Decide whether the impact is worth it. Use that decision to guide future behavior.

Here's what I mean:

You ate around 3290 calories that day, including the dinner out. Since I don't know your actual data, let's say your daily calorie goal (for weight loss) is 2000, and that your regular daily deficit is 500 calories (1/2 pound a week loss rate), so your maintenance calories would be 2500 in this scenario. (You can plug in your real values).

So, you ate 790 calories more than your maintenance calories (3290 - 2500). That eliminated any weight loss for that day (because you ate at/beyond maintenance). If your deficit is 500, you wiped out another additional day and a half of progress toward your ultimate weight loss goal (790/500 = 1.58 days, rounded to 1.5, 'cause heck, we're estimating).

So, if the "big eat" was Friday, and you get right back on your healthy habits Saturday morning & stay there, by sometime Sunday you're even-up. You've delayed your ultimate goal weight by a day and a half.

Obviously, you can't afford to do this multiple times a week. If you do it occasionally/rarely, is the delay worth it? Only you can say. The only risk factor, IMO, is that we can sometimes want our current self to be happy more than we want our future self to be happy - gotta be careful about that part.

ernestrodgers82 wrote: »

You have the numbers really close. My allowance is 2,100 calories/ day and maintenance is 2,600. Everything you said was spot on!

HaHaHA! The specific number was a wild guess, but I'm glad the process played out in the normal way. I find the math view of it quite de-stressing. I hope you will, too!

Thanks for coming back to say what happened: Made my day!

I had to way cut down on how often I eat food outside of home because it does add up sooo fast. Rather than say I an never have it, I save it for truly special occasions. My anniversary, weddings and showers, a friend is in town, etc. I did have to stop going out for every single person's birthday. And by that I mean, I'll still come hang out and have maybe a drink or share an app, but if I ordered a meal at every single event my SO's family invites me to, I'd never be on track.