What food/fitness/health "hack" has made a big difference for you?

Swimming. It enables me to have a great workout, something I can't do on land.

Making a New years resoulution to fix my diet, I choose MFP app and I am now 1 pound shy of 30 pounds lost this year.

Going out for a walk in midafternoon when I start to feel tired and peckish. It wakes me up and distracts me from being hungry

(Also, Abel & Cole’s ‘One Pot Wonder’ recipe box. For about £17 it makes me six high-veg low-cal dinners, most of which I can freeze for days when I’m busy or tired or lazy; as well as providing several days’ worth of fruit to snack on. The recipes can be a bit variable in quality, but there are a few that have been good enough for me to keep and make again)

I put on my gym clothes on and lace up my shoes whether I feel like it or not. Once I'm at my class, about 20 minutes in I'm happy I went!

zyxst wrote: »

Tare feature on a food scale.

Thanks MFP for not allowing me to edit my post when I'm well within the editing time window.

Sleep!!! Or rather, instead of sitting watching tv in the evening and risking a snack blowout, I’ll go to bed. I will mess around on my phone until I go to sleep, but being in pyjamas, under a thick duvet, removes me from the temptation to undo my hard work for the day.

Boiling eggs and having fruits and veggies readily available to snack on, freezing fresh bananas and strawberries (cheaper than buying frozen), prioritizing lifting weights over cardio when I’m short on time or bored, getting right back on the horse after falling off and not kill myself with cardio, telling myself to trust the process, literally throwing out my body weight scale, diet and working out consistently will always win, using half Greek yogurt and half Alfredo for Alfredo sauce, adding protein powder to French toast, adding veggies to eggs, using Greek yogurt as a substitute for sour cream and creamy dressings, add chia seeds to whatever I think tastes good for fiber, apple sauce as an oil/butter substitute when baking, milk instead of coffee creamer, eat pizza or ice cream and anything in between when I really really want it, and most importantly being nicer to myself.

Habits/routine. Limiting meals out. In the past (long before MFP) I would often grab takeout through the week for convenience or "fun" and for years now I've planned x number of meals with my husband and it's an unwritten rule in our house that we're going to cook at home Sunday through Friday. Of course, there's still some flexibility for special occasions & travel. But I'd say 95% of the time we cook a healthier lunch and dinner during the week and save meals out for Saturdays only. Same with breakfast. We have a handful of go-to meals that are relatively healthy and it's not an option to me anymore to go to McDonald's drive thru on my way to work. I'll be having Greek yogurt, a small omelet, or whatever else, and coffee at home.

Another benefit of this is saving money!

Meal prep. Since weight loss mostly happens in the kitchen, I spend a lot of time there making sure I'm ready for the week.

I'm not trying to say meal prep is a bad thing (far from it) but I do think it varies by person/household. I would be much more likely to say "forget this" and just go out to dinner if I was on day #3 of a prepped-ahead-of-time meal that I just had to heat up. It would have long lost its novelty. I see the lovely prepped meals on Pinterest and all I can think is how much I would hate eating the same thing every night or even every day for lunch.

I'm sure not every person does it that way (same items every day of the week) but I definitely wouldn't like that.