I'm a comfort food pig.Please help me

I never did the yoyo thing until now. My metabolism slowed when I hot 40 but my eating & drinking habits didn't. I dropped weight in anticipation of my 50 birthday & met my goal but the weight came back, when I failed to regulate all the calories I drink. I may have to recognize that the weight I am now is my new normal but I hate it so I'm working to change it. It's so bad that my wedding & engagement ring no longer fit because I have gained closed to 40 pounds in the 10 years I have been married. Yikes!

The reason MFP is doable is that it's flexible. If you know you want something, learn more about portion control & what you are willing to do or give up to get what you want. The first time around I let myself drink on weekends & didn't worry about the calories. Second I don't give up the tasty treats. I just came to realize that 1 serving of chips is about 12 chips not 1/2 a bag. You have to count them out onto a plate then put the bag away. I love chocolate. Instead of a candy bar I allow myself 1 lindor truffle every so often. Technically a "serving" is 3 & I console myself with hat knowledge when I slip & can't eat just one. My favorite substitute is a Fiber One brownie at only 90 calories with 5g of fiber & way less guilt. When I'm jonesing for a glass of wine I try to motivate myself to go for a walk through the neighbor which is not easy on a dark cold night. If I still want the wine I have it when I get back from the walk knowing I earned those extra calories.

My bad vice is soda. I will often drink regular Pepsi for breakfast. I don't like coffee & can't get the same caffeine jolt from tea. Believe it or not I can work that soda into my calories many days (or if I'm over it's by the 150 empty calories I wasted on the soda) but my nutrition tends to be a disaster those days. Again I console myself that 2-3 a week is still a vast improvement over the 4-5 per day I had been drinking.

All in all my tip is change the message you are giving yourself from no & never to "less."

Last time I got serious about this, I focused on protien & This go 'round I'm also learning more about fiber & finding ways to add in the healthy stuff even the stuff I don't love. For eaxmple, I made a big batch of kale & sausage soup last weekend. I HATE green leafy vegetables but chopped into bit sized peices & masked by the sausage I can eat it. My calcium soars & I feel full.

I sent you a friend request by my dairy reads more like an exercise in what not to do.

You may like this, it got me through a number of Chicago winters. You may be familiar with this if you’ve done Weight Watchers, they have something they call Zero Point Soup. Its zero in WW because they don’t count green veggies.
If you want, pretty sure you can find a recipe on the internet.

But no matter. Thanks to my wife for this, while not a recipe, here’s a description. Our daughter calls this cooked salad. We had a big soup pot. Mushrooms, onions, carrots, green peppers, if you like that stuff. Add veggie broth. Then add green beans, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, whatever you like.

I didn’t add potatoes or corn because they weren’t zero in WW, and they are higher calories. But basically a cup of any of those veggies in calorie counting is going to be about 35 calories. The way my wife made this stuff was it didn’t come out as soup, it was a big pot of vegetable stew.

Then I would do this, pre cook brown rice and a protein, usually grilled chicken breast. At dinner time I would get a cup of the veggie stew, measure a portion of brown rice, a portion of cubed chicken breast, mix it together and micro wave it. Top with some Parmesan cheese, and/or season it any way you want. If you were to mix a cup of veggies, 100 calories of rice, 100 calories of chicken and 1/2 tbls of cheese, I think 250 calories is a fair count. Its a lot of food. Its warm, its filling.

You can tinker with the numbers any way you want. Tinker with the seasoning. I didn’t just start with the chicken and rice mixed in the soup/stew because that stuff would end up at the bottom of the soup pot and I would lose control of the numbers.

Some other stuff you might try is protein pasta. You can add broccoli and grilled chicken breast to that. But be careful, the calories can add up in a hurry.

Another filling low cal dinner favorite for me is an egg white veggie omelet. I put salsa on mine. You can do a lot with that.

You into roasted Brussels Sprouts? I wasn’t a fan, but when they are roasted they turn into something entirely different. Its like alchemy.

Last thing, I got this thing about folks coming on here and calling themselves derogatory names. You aren’t going to badger yourself into submission. Just my opinion, I think there are good reasons why we want filling hot food in the winter. Try some new stuff. Experiment. What I eat now is completely different than when I started weight loss, but it didn’t happen overnight. You don’t deserve a kick just because you struggle with this a bit.