Why is this so hard?

Self discipline can be tough. I remember doing Whole 30 and wanting to mug my daughter for her pizza haha. Seriously though I had cravings for things I could not eat while doing Whole 30. I also would not break the diet and usually overcame those urges. Now I don't get any cravings any longer. I hope it all works out for you in the end though.

A key for me when I started out over 3 years ago was to understand the difference between appetite (desire of food) and hunger (actual need of food) signals. As a professional scientist I have a leg up on monitoring data, but as this requires an analysis of my own behavior - a great deal of confirmation bias is unavoidable. I journaled my actions in MFP, weighing everything, but also monitoring my feelings when I felt the urge to eat and went through a checklist to determine if this was hunger or just appetite. If appetite I would get up and distract myself - take a walk around, get some water/tea, and then get back to whatever I was doing.

I developed a habit of drinking 16 oz of water ~30 mins prior to every meal. I also learned to eat small meals at breakfast and lunch as I work out in the afternoon. Then I have plenty of budgetary flexibility in the evening when I'm winding down with my family.

Like balancing a checkbook I learned to eat within a budget. After about 18 months this became normal behavior and I learned to sacrifice my desires in the present if I'm ever going to realize any goals in the future.

I wish I could present something new, but previous posts are awesome and are nailing it.

In the validation department: this stuff IS hard. Not for all of us, but it's a bear and a half for me. I've gone from 275 in college to 178 for my wedding and, five years and two kids later, I'm at 230. Maybe not the best person to give advice... but I do have tricks for staying satiated and overcoming cravings!

-Eat half or three quarters of your meal (or what you WANT to eat); wait 20 minutes and watch yourself feel full. It takes time for food to hit your satiety zone of magical goodness.

-Eat two servings of fruit and/or veggies, AND drink two pint glasses of water, BEFORE every darn meal. See how much you can eat after all of that nutritious filler.

-Will power is a muscle and you have to exercise it; if you've been exercising restraint and control one day, and then bingeing the next, you aren't exercising this muscle; everything gets easier after three days of practice (which goes for not smoking and such, at least in my experience);

-Find some form of exercise that you enjoy, and go slow with it at first. If you hate exercise, you won't do it. Any exercise is better than no exercise, so don't get down on yourself for just going on walks at first. We had to train ourselves to walk, to walk-jog, to walk-run, and then to run and work on form and stuff. It went the same for lifting. At first, I was lifting 5 lb dumbbells in my living room and looking goofy as hell. Two years later, I was confident enough to ask regular lifters at my gym to critique my squat form and other advice.

-The best single piece of advice I've ever received about reaching any goal, so long as you don't use it to screw around and not make progress: it's a marathon, not a sprint. Don't sweat the day to day stuff, even behaviors that you might consider to be a defeat; you're looking to win the war, not every battle.

-Various other metaphors.

hesn92 wrote: »

...This has helped me feel content in my life in general. Instead of being jealous of people who have nice things that I don’t have, I think of people who are less fortunate and it makes me grateful and realize I have it pretty good.

Gratitude is the key to happiness. It's the best gift you can give yourself.

I usually have pizza slices in my freezer. I order a pizza and eat one piece, and wrap the rest up individually in foil. I also sometimes make a pizza on a pita. But when I just really have to have the real thing, I know it's there. I also know how many calories and carbs it is, and have to make that choice. I will take a piece out and heat it in the oven. I could microwave it faster, but I don't. I make myself use the oven and wait for it. Knowing it's there if I REALLY want it, seem to help me mentally.

If you make healthy food a habit eventually you will crave it too Nothing like your mouth watering at the thought of tuna HA! But you can have a treat meal every now and then

VintageFeline wrote: »

It's the curse of the calorie aware. It does get easier to a degree. I do wish that 1. I didn't live alone but only for the half hour it takes to eat take away. Harder to overeat it when sharing and 2. that pizza by the slice were a thing here. Or more of a thing, it's rare you find anywhere that does it.

I do sometimes get individual pizzas from the supermarket, either in the fridge or sometimes there's kids ones in the freezer. I then add my own toppings. Helps scratch the itch.

Hmmm, I'd say the whole living alone thing is really "the grass is greener" syndrome. Its much much much easier to lose weight if you have reasonable self control while living alone, in fact I'd say exponentially easier.

In theory you can "share" maybe, in reality they: want something else/don't want to share/want to try two things/want to eat a dish with more calories you haven't budgeted/want to add drinks/want to add desert/want to add another meal option/want to eat later or earlier so you need something before or after/dont want a reduced portion or share in the first place/etc etc etc.

I've done both, and its so much harder to control calories while with someone vs alone. Yes yes, self control, not their business, blah blah, its still MORE difficult with others around than without. You have to take into consideration their wants, desires, timings, social, etc etc etc of another person, that there is already double trouble. I could, and have dropped 10lbs in a week while living alone, maintained losses month to month with relative ease etc...with people you care about its exponentially harder and one pound a week is pretty tough to maintain, it was easier to do -4lbs/wk rates alone.

Now I'm sure you'll disagree since you think the above and won't accept it, but I had to respond and give credit to all the people dealing with even MORE people than I live with and have more problems controlling intake than I, living with one currently. Adding kids or more family just adds to the difficulty. Its just not comparable to living alone and having control of everything! Its easy to not consider this while alone and think its easy for those who arent, in fact I was guilty back then too...

I feel ya, pizza doesn't really work for me anymore since I became diabetic. A tiny amount of thin crust pizza seems worse than no pizza, and more crust spikes my blood glucose levels. Variations on fake pizza crust are all gross to me. So I am in the business of resisting pizza!

What works best for me is focusing on other foods I really like and enjoy and can eat that suit my needs better. Sometimes it takes a lot more effort - used to be I could literally order a pizza without getting out of bed, and I barely had to get dressed to answer the door. Planning, shopping, cooking a delicious meal is much harder. But the end result is a delicious meal which almost makes up for pizza.

So, my advice is to make sure whatever you have planned is so delicious that you look forward to eating it all day and pizza never enters your mind.