Is it best to eat as much as you can?

The trick is to eat food that you will continue to eat once you hit maintenance. Calories in verses calories out. As you have learnt, being too restrictive really does not work well.

It ,ight also help to have a talk with your doctor about your relationship with food as this may hold you back.

Good luck.

teags84mfp wrote: »

Hello all

My question is, is the trick for permanent weight loss really as simple to eat just 500 cals under my TEED, eat whatever i want, without fear of carbs, feel full and lose weight at a slower rate? And my cals will drop as I lose weight, but not so far so that when i reach maintenance I am barely able to eat anything without putting on weight, is that correct?

The trick for permanent weight loss is eating for the goal of permanent weight loss. Simply eating 500 calories under your maintenance may not be enough. It can surely help if you are not constantly hungry and are enjoying your food, but there are other issues that need to be tackled.

Think about the things that usually make you overeat, and try out strategies to handle them until you find something that works best. (Example: if I usually overeat when tired, what can I replace that habit with and what can I do about it?)

Learn about food situations and have a strategy ready to handle them (for example: what behavior would cause me the least amount of stress if I get offered a cookie? To take the cookie? To refuse it? To save it for later if I don't have the calories? To eat it and save calories on something else? Just eat it and call it a day if it doesn't happen often?..etc)

Learn what thought patterns around food are harmful or useful to your diet (for example: is labeling food as good and bad making you want it more and more stressed around it, or is limiting your choice making it easier and less stressful for you?)

Tackle any emotional or habitual behaviors that sabotage your diet (for example: do you tend to eat more when upset or eat mindlessly when reading a book?)

Learn how to navigate social eating and try out strategies to make it as pleasurable and stress-free as possible within the bounds of your diet.

Learn what foods help you with hunger and what foods bring you joy, and try to achieve a balanced approach that includes both.

Cultivate a mindset of "consistency over perfection", because you won't be perfect all the time and you don't need to be. All you need to do is stay within your calories more often than not.

....etc.

You don't have to think about all of these things all at once because it can be overwhelming and counterproductive. As a start, just learning how to log your food accurately is enough. With time, slowly and gradually learn more about yourself and introduce new strategies that you feel would serve you even 10 years from now. Everything I do now with my diet always has one goal: does this make dieting easier for me? do I imagine myself doing this for years to come? If not, what can I do about it to make it more sustainable?

With this mindset I have lost 55 kg so far. It has taken me years, and there were occasions where I gained some back because it's a learning process, but as long as my weight is moving down more often than it's moving up and I keep learning more about things that work for me I will always be better off each year than the previous year.