Seriouls have no self control with anything!
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Janice6543 wrote: »Today at work, I turned down free muffins and stopped after two slices of veggie pizza for lunch. A few months ago, I would have eaten the extra 1500 calories without thinking about it. Saying no gets easier everytime you do it.
Prelogging my entire day the night before helps me stay on track.
Prelogging definitely helps! If I have my whole day logged already I get lazy and won't eat something cuz I don't feel like logging it2 -
I haven’t cut anything out, just focused on CICO ... BUT my office always has a TON of snacks, pot lucks, etc. and we have some darn good cooks. So during the first year or so I mentally told myself that any office food had fallen on the floor or the cook had sneezed on it or they didn’t wash their hands, etc. so I’d want to avoid it! Lol - I didn’t tell the people who made things that so I wouldn’t offend them, but it was a mental trick that made it easier for me to say “no thanks.” Now I can indulge occasionally when it is something REALLY worth it (like homemade egg rolls!)4
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I def have a no work food rule and I just imagine all the people touching it, it sitting out all day, etc. Now, if my vendor brings in Voodo Donuts for the team, I’ll cut off a half & log it but that’s a rarity.
You can do it!2 -
What helped for me was to set daily calorie goals with the app and then log every bite I ate. Log it whether it's embarrassing or not and whether it puts you over your limit or not. Use a scale and log by weight. It kind of puts your eating habits right in your face. And then for me, the mindset that got built up wasn't so much willpower as selection. As in, I only have X amount of calories I can eat today. Is it really worthwhile to eat this crap in front of me when I can spend the calories on something much better instead? And by better, I meant both tastier and more nutritious. If I'm gonna have candy it's not gonna be crap like Twix or even 3 Musketeer. It's gonna be quality chocolate from a good chocolatier! And then I only have a few squares and put the rest away for later, because I need to save room for some good food.
Maybe it helps a little that my "downfall" temptation is toast. I love toast. I'll eat half a loaf of bread at a time if it's toasted. When I make sure to leave room in my diary for an evening snack, that snack will be toast. On a good day I can have 4 slices.
For the most part I settle into a daily routine where I eat more or less the same amount, and often the same foods, every day I'm at work and save variety for the weekends.5 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »So it's 9 am and you've had coffee with creamer, a 3 Musketeer bar, a donut and a fun size Twix, and you want to replace that with cauliflower and a string cheese? I'm not surprised that you're struggling! Give yourself a break and start small. I spent several months logging everything I ate without making a real effort to change anything, and it gave me some amazing insights into my eating habits. If you want to lose 40 pounds in two months, you're going to have to make major changes overnight. But if you want to lose 40 pounds in a year (which is around where I'm headed right now) you don't have to dramatically overhaul your diet. Just figure out your maintenance calories and start making changes that brings your calorie intake down to something comfortably below that number. It takes a lot of willpower to completely stop eating things that you love, but it takes surprisingly little willpower to eat a bit less of the things you love, while adding in things you like that are healthier or more filling.
Thank you! I've just recently started and some days I'm close to the calories I'm supposed to consume and others I'm like a few hundred over the limit, but I keep feeling depressed about it. And then I have the same problem the original poster has, I eat ice cream and cake etc at work. I'm staying truthful in my log though and I'm surprised to see where most of my calories come from. I guess I'm just gathering data and making small changes at this point.
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My motto- if it's not in the house, I won't eat it. Stay far, far away from temptation. If the people you live with eat junk/snack foods, have them hide it from you. I'm not kidding. I get MAD at my husband if he brings home junk. I tell him, if he wants it, just buy the single serving for himself and not enough to leave around. Keep all junk and snack foods out of your physical sight- studies show that if it's out of sight, our willpower increases. As soon as you see/smell it, it gets much harder to resist temptation. The other thing you can do is become educated about all the horrible ingredients they put into processed foods and become an avid label reader. Once you know what's lurking in those Oreos, you're gonna say "Yuck" instead of "Yum". The frosting on those store-bought cupcakes your co-worker brought in? Full of disgusting chemicals and fake ingredients, hydrogenated GMO soybean oils!This one works for me personally- usually just reading the label, finding out what kind of cancer causing crap is in it, and how many grams of fat and sugar are in each serving, is enough to deter me. You have to make yourself conscious of the process- what am I about to eat? Then analyze it- do you REALLY want to be eating hydrogenated soybean oil? Do you really want to eat that much fat/sugar in one sitting? 98% of the time, you'll decide it's just not worth it. The other 2% you might give in because you're having a bad day. It just helps to be conscious- "what does this do to my health?" If you don't think about what's in it or it's effects beyond that moment, it becomes too easy to give in. Think before you eat, stop and analyze.
You can also try having a set "cheat" meal day once per week so that you can allow yourself those indulgences guilt-free because you were 100% on point the rest of the week. I am maintaining a very lean weight now by eating super clean all week and indulging every Saturday. Buy all your indulgences in small containers or eat out so there will be none left over the next day, or just throw any leftovers away. This one day will not harm your weight loss if kept within reason. (don't binge excessively) Eat whatever you want on that day, just observe reasonable portion sizes.
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Feeling out of control can be so frustrating! I'm thinking a couple different things here. 1. Stop torturing yourself and saying how horrible you are. The guilt you feel just makes you go right back to eating, to make yourself feel better. 2. Instead of focusing on what foods you think are "healthy," for now just focus on eating fewer calories than you burn. For weight loss, it doesn't matter where those calories come from. Eat foods that you enjoy! I manage to eat ice cream most days of the week, for example.
One thing I decided early on was that I wasn't going to eat foods I didn't like just to lose weight. You'd be amazed how much easier it makes the entire process.0 -
When I first started out on my weight loss mission, one of my favourite snacks (because I will not everyone else will not survive the day if I am hangry) was homemade protein muffins, I've made all different flavours, they are tasty, filling and they are around 100-150 calories.
The basic mixture for a tray of 12 is 120g MyProtein Muffin Mix, 3 Tablespoons of Oil, a 125ml pot of low fat yoghurt and 100ml of semi-skimmed milk.
I have made so many variations:- Black Forest - with cocoa, dark chocolate chips and dried cherries (used berry flavoured yoghurt)
- Lemon & Chia - with lemon flavoured yoghurt, a splash of lemon juice and chia seeds
- Orange - with orange or peach yoghurt, used Orange Juice in place of the milk
- Blueberry - made with fresh blueberries and blueberry yoghurt
- Vanilla & Chocolate Chip - Just added choc chips
- Peanut Butter - just added PB
- Apple & Cinnamon - chopped apple and some dusted with some cinnamon infused sugar
I could happily choose one of those over a doughnut or some candy
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I'm very weak willed but I never touch office food. It's just a habit I never started. Say 'no thanks' until it's second nature. Don't look at the food. If someone hands it to you, say 'Thanks' and walk off with it and put it somewhere far away from yoru desk and out of sight. Hand it to the young men in the office hwo do sport five times a week. They'll love you for it.
As to general motivation (mine is/was terrible. I'm really working on it) I read books and watch videos by Kelly McGonigal who is a willpower scientist full of really practical tips on how to build your willpower. She has written books that non-scientists will understand.Have a look at them.2 -
I think a little self awareness will help. Fighting the same fight and getting the same result is a recipe for frustration.
Habit by Duhigg is really good. Figuring out what triggers you can help you not shoot off in the first place.
A tip I learned in my eating therapy class is to own my decisions. So if I take the family size Twix, say to myself “I choose to eat this”. The alternative is to blank out the experience and pretend an alien force took over that I was powerless to overcome. How can I fight aliens?0 -
If you saw your favorite candy sitting on a desk free for the taking but you knew it was laced with hemlock and it would undoubtedly kill you right away would you eat it? I bet you would find a lot of self-control all of a sudden.
What if you had the same setup every day, except that the candy wasn't poisoned, but it would still lead to death, just not as quickly as the poisoned candy? Would that help you find some self-control?
You say you swear you will have diabetes. Do you know what happens to uncontrolled diabetes? People get neuropathy which leads to pain and also to organ failure. Uncontrolled diabetes leads to amputations, and it leads to blindness, it leads to wounds that won't heal, incontinence, etc.
Could avoiding all of that help you find some self-control? I promise you your self-control and motivation is there, and you can find it if you really consider what is at stake.
You say you're able to picture yourself getting diabetes. Picture yourself living with all or any of the fun things that come from not controlling diabetes, which has a very good chance of becoming a reality if you don't control yourself around junk food.
There is a lot of type two diabetes in my family. Knowing what is at stake makes it a whole lot easier to find my self-control.2 -
CurvaciousKeda wrote: »MegaMooseEsq wrote: »So it's 9 am and you've had coffee with creamer, a 3 Musketeer bar, a donut and a fun size Twix, and you want to replace that with cauliflower and a string cheese? I'm not surprised that you're struggling! Give yourself a break and start small. I spent several months logging everything I ate without making a real effort to change anything, and it gave me some amazing insights into my eating habits. If you want to lose 40 pounds in two months, you're going to have to make major changes overnight. But if you want to lose 40 pounds in a year (which is around where I'm headed right now) you don't have to dramatically overhaul your diet. Just figure out your maintenance calories and start making changes that brings your calorie intake down to something comfortably below that number. It takes a lot of willpower to completely stop eating things that you love, but it takes surprisingly little willpower to eat a bit less of the things you love, while adding in things you like that are healthier or more filling.
Thank you! I've just recently started and some days I'm close to the calories I'm supposed to consume and others I'm like a few hundred over the limit, but I keep feeling depressed about it. And then I have the same problem the original poster has, I eat ice cream and cake etc at work. I'm staying truthful in my log though and I'm surprised to see where most of my calories come from. I guess I'm just gathering data and making small changes at this point.
I think this is a great way to start. NOT the feeling bad about it, of course, but gathering information and understanding where the calories come from. Try to hit your goal, but when you don't try to understand what happened -- think of it as a learning process, not something to feel bad about!2 -
My motto- if it's not in the house, I won't eat it. Stay far, far away from temptation.... Keep all junk and snack foods out of your physical sight- studies show that if it's out of sight, our willpower increases.
Both OP and others in the thread have mentioned workplace treats, so this is not always realistic. For me, learning to deal with the food on offer that I could not "hide from" or avoid was important. I never personally had an issue with food in the house, since even before I focused on losing most of the food in my house was meal-related, not high cal snacky stuff.The other thing you can do is become educated about all the horrible ingredients they put into processed foods and become an avid label reader.
So base it on a lie? Plus, a good bit of the treats in my office are bakery or homemade stuff, not foods with labels. The problem with the average cookie is not "horrible ingredients" (butter, flour, sugar, vanilla, etc.) but calories and that it might result in easily overeating.
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You need to close the temptation gap while you are still learning how to say no to all the office snacks. What I mean by this is if the option is between donuts and yogurt, it is really going to be a difficult choice. When I first started and was learning it was ok to not eat all the office sweets, I set my goal at maintenance and made sure my lunches/snacks were just as damn good, but fit into my calorie allowance. Eventually, it got easy to not eat the office food and I decreased my calories from maintenance.1
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lemurcat12 wrote: »My motto- if it's not in the house, I won't eat it. Stay far, far away from temptation.... Keep all junk and snack foods out of your physical sight- studies show that if it's out of sight, our willpower increases.
Both OP and others in the thread have mentioned workplace treats, so this is not always realistic. For me, learning to deal with the food on offer that I could not "hide from" or avoid was important. I never personally had an issue with food in the house, since even before I focused on losing most of the food in my house was meal-related, not high cal snacky stuff.The other thing you can do is become educated about all the horrible ingredients they put into processed foods and become an avid label reader.
So base it on a lie? Plus, a good bit of the treats in my office are bakery or homemade stuff, not foods with labels. The problem with the average cookie is not "horrible ingredients" (butter, flour, sugar, vanilla, etc.) but calories and that it might result in easily overeating.
Don’t forget about the cancer-causing cupcakes!!2 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »My motto- if it's not in the house, I won't eat it. Stay far, far away from temptation.... Keep all junk and snack foods out of your physical sight- studies show that if it's out of sight, our willpower increases.
Both OP and others in the thread have mentioned workplace treats, so this is not always realistic. For me, learning to deal with the food on offer that I could not "hide from" or avoid was important. I never personally had an issue with food in the house, since even before I focused on losing most of the food in my house was meal-related, not high cal snacky stuff.The other thing you can do is become educated about all the horrible ingredients they put into processed foods and become an avid label reader.
So base it on a lie? Plus, a good bit of the treats in my office are bakery or homemade stuff, not foods with labels. The problem with the average cookie is not "horrible ingredients" (butter, flour, sugar, vanilla, etc.) but calories and that it might result in easily overeating.
Don’t forget about the cancer-causing cupcakes!!
Mmmmm... cancer cupcakes... They're probably pink, right?0 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »lemurcat12 wrote: »My motto- if it's not in the house, I won't eat it. Stay far, far away from temptation.... Keep all junk and snack foods out of your physical sight- studies show that if it's out of sight, our willpower increases.
Both OP and others in the thread have mentioned workplace treats, so this is not always realistic. For me, learning to deal with the food on offer that I could not "hide from" or avoid was important. I never personally had an issue with food in the house, since even before I focused on losing most of the food in my house was meal-related, not high cal snacky stuff.The other thing you can do is become educated about all the horrible ingredients they put into processed foods and become an avid label reader.
So base it on a lie? Plus, a good bit of the treats in my office are bakery or homemade stuff, not foods with labels. The problem with the average cookie is not "horrible ingredients" (butter, flour, sugar, vanilla, etc.) but calories and that it might result in easily overeating.
Don’t forget about the cancer-causing cupcakes!!
Mmmmm... cancer cupcakes... They're probably pink, right?
I'd think they would be glow-in-the-dark green.
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Red velvet, just sayin', gets it's colour from a whole lot of red food dye......0
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There's a single carrot-cake cupcake that has been sitting out in my office since Monday morning. Someone must know something...1
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