Best diet from experience for weight loss?

cerise_noir wrote: »

The best "diet" is not a diet. The best way of eating is one that you can stick to for the rest of your life. If you like sweets and snacks, include a portion of those on your daily calories if you wish. No need to cut out a bajillion foods or food groups to see results.

CICO always wins.

iifym....best "diet" out there, and lifting!

Lost 50 pounds two years ago and have kept it off since. Seems like everyone here is really spot on with their advice! I don't know where you're starting, but this is what worked for me (after many, many false starts/failures):

1) Make small changes gradually. Huge diet and exercise plans that are a big shift from your currect habits (even if those plans are in and of themselves "healthy") will likely lead to a crash and burn (speaking from experience...).
Think about where you are right now with food and exercise. This is your starting point. Do you love to cook and make most of your own meals, or do you eat out a lot and grab convenience food at home? If it's the former, great! Grab a meal planner (like Plan to Eat) and start tailoring your dishes to be less calorie-dense and eating smaller portions.
If you're the latter (I was), start by focusing on paring down your portion sizes based on calories, and slowly work towards cooking more of your own meals (meal planning sites like Plan to Eat are great for this, too!). I ate mostly Lean Cuisine for a while and that was a big help while I was working on adjusting to new, smaller portions of food (it was a big adjustment--my portions were out of control and I didn't even know it until I started tracking calories).

Now think about exercise. While exercise is vital for long-term health and kicking up your metabolism over time, it's not very effective for weight loss (if you keep your diet the same or similar)! I personally lost all my weight without exercise, but have since added regular running (doing half marathons now) and strength training. That was what worked best for me; I felt I could grasp the nutrition side of things by myself, but was intimidated by exercise. So I focused on fixing my relationship with food, then added exercise later. Gradual changes.

2) Never be hungry. Sounds counter intuitive, huh? Our will power is a finite resource. It's already hard enough to change eating patterns (curse you emotional eating!) without adding hunger to the mix! So make sure to eat throughout the day. I plan three meals and three snacks, each spaced about 2 hours apart.
Importantly, make sure you have food you look forward to eating. You're less likely to bail on your boring, "healthy" lunch in favor of fast food if you actually want what you've prepared for yourself. I always pair something more indulgent with a healthier option for snacks (e.g. a homemade blueberry muffie and sone baby spinach) and work to make interesting recipes I'm excited to eat at meals.

3) No food is off limits when eaten in moderation The problem with restrictive diet plans is that they tend to make one focus on the foods one can't have. Don't cut out food groups, still go out to eat and don't demonize specific foods (even if you're vegetarian/vegan. That's the exception to that last bit ). Just figure out ways to eat the sinfully delicious stuff in moderation. When you receive a portion sized for a lumberjack at your favorite restaurant, eat half now and take the rest home. On a holiday, go hog wild; just make sure to hop back on your healthier eating game plan afterwards.

4) Learn to forgive yourself and keep trying. One of my biggest epiphanies as I neared my goal weight was that what I had considered to be a "diet" actually needed to be a lifelong maintenance plan. I knew I couldn't go back to my blind eating habits and sedentary lifestyle from before.
When you think of your diet as a lifelong journey, the slip-ups seem less devastating, because you know tomorrow is a new day. The important part is to not adopt an "oh, to hell with it! I've already eaten this whole bag of chips, might as well eat the whole jar of cookie butter, too" attitude long-term. It's hard, but hating yourself is not conducive to keeping weight off. So when you mess up, ask yourself why it happened, reflect on what you might do differently in the future, and move on.

This was really long, but I hope it helps! Good luck in your efforts to lose weight and get healthy!

I've had the best results with: IIFYM, focus on weightlifting (heavy), and if I do cardio it's HIIT.