Eat less, weigh less?

Generally, you want to find a goal that will put you in a deficit while giving you enough food to meet your nutritional needs, keep up your energy, prevent excessive hunger, and prevent unnecessary muscle loss. So no, you don't want to go as low as possible.

What does "didn't see much movement" mean specifically? How long were you on 1,390? Did you not lose anything or did you lose slower than you expected?

1,390 should result in weight loss for the vast majority of people so if you aren't losing weight on that we're probably looking at not giving it sufficient time or not accurately estimating how much you're actually eating.

empressjasmin wrote: »

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janejellyroll wrote: »

Generally, you want to find a goal that will put you in a deficit while giving you enough food to meet your nutritional needs, keep up your energy, prevent excessive hunger, and prevent unnecessary muscle loss. So no, you don't want to go as low as possible.

What does "didn't see much movement" mean specifically? How long were you on 1,390? Did you not lose anything or did you lose slower than you expected?

1,390 should result in weight loss for the vast majority of people so if you aren't losing weight on that we're probably looking at not giving it sufficient time or not accurately estimating how much you're actually eating.

It was’t super long that I had been on 1390. Maybe 3 weeks. But I’d also say that there may have been 2 to 3 cheat days which could’ve thrown off things a bit.

Yeah, something many people experience when they try to go too low is that they then have days when they go way over (because they're feeling very hungry or deprived) and then this cancels out the deficit they're creating on the low days. This makes it seem like the low calorie goal isn't working, but the issue is really that the daily average is too high to see much progress.

Choosing a higher goal that you can consistently hit will create more progress because your daily average can be lower than it will be by alternating very low and very high days.

You're averaging around 1 cheat day per week.

School of tough love: You can easily obliterate an entire week's worth of dieting with a cheat day. Maybe you aren't doing that, but I did ... for years. It was not unusual AT ALL for me to binge my entire week's deficit in an hour or two on my cheat day.

The cheat days have to go. Or, you can maybe try a cheat "meal" if you absolutely must have a time-out. At least limit the damage to one sit-down meal, if you need it. But if you're anything like me (and that is a big assumption that could be entirely off base), dump the off-plan stuff and reconfigure your plan so that you can live within its parameters almost every single day. Not necessarily 30 days per month, but like 28-29, making cheating/off days a true rarity. Things you can do to make this possible:

• RAISE RAISE RAISE those calories!!!!!! A 265 lb person is a person who freakin' LOVES food. And is used to eating plenty of it. 1390 is not going to work, nope. Those online calculators that say 1600-1700 contain the wisdom of the ages. Pick a number like 1650 and nail it every single day. That's plenty of food (I in fact ate 1650 the first 5 months of my diet and was always OK with it, and I'm a guy and I was 320 lbs when I started - so you can do it).
• Make a list of the foods you love the most. For the moment, forget all the "healthy eating" stuff. Just figure out what you love to eat. Pizza? Write it down. Chocolate cake, that's good too. Fried shrimp and mozzarella sticks, yep, that's fine. Now be sure to work SOME of that into your diet. Every week, and if possible, every day. Just in limited portions so you don't exceed your caloric target. Make it a very rare day when you don't have something you love and crave.
  
  Do those two things and you will not feel anywhere as much of a need for cheat days, and maybe none at all. Once cheat days are in the rear view mirror, your weight loss will proceed just as you want it to.
  
  And seriously, be done with 1390. That's like prisoner of war camp rations for someone who's 265 lbs. No wonder you're taking cheat days.

I'd also suggest that when you get that list finished, start looking at those items and seeing if you can tweak them to get the calorie count down if you are making it yourself. For instance - making homemade pizza? Can you thin the crust a little more? Put a little less cheese? maybe a little less pepperoni? If making the chocolate cake, even if you are using a mix, you can replace the oil in the recipe with low fat sour cream or low fat greek yogurt. Can you get the portions just a little smaller than you usually do? Those are just a few of the tweaks I've learned. Or if I'm making an omelette, I might use 2 egg whites and 1 large egg, or leaving out the oil in pancakes (and the sugar - you don't really need to add sugar to waffles or pancakes as you usually put a sweet topping, whether it be syrup or fruit, on them anyway).

I agree with all the advice here.

I lost almost 50lb by simply eating less of the same food. So I have chocolate EVERY DAY because I love chocolate. But I don't have a whole bar, I have a couple of squares.

I also stop eating my meal when I feel satisfied. So not full, but not hungry anymore, though to be fair It takes a bit to figure that out.

So don't limit what you eat, simply limit how much you eat. Unless it's something you are happy removing.

And I agree about the portions, if you bake, make small pieces. You will always have one piece, so have one small piece.

Finally if you are going to use MFP, make sure you weigh everything. Absolutely everything. No cups, spoons etc. Use scales. It's the only way to get close to accurate.

Good luck!

I was a chocoholic, to the tune of two pound bags of chocolate or more a day, plus the accompanying cookies, cakes, Little Debbies and what have you.

As oddball as this sounds, what worked for me was putting 8 grams of powdered ghirardelli powdered sweet chocolate mix in my banana/almond milk/cottage cheese/vanilla/almond butter/molasses smoothie every morning. The ingredients have changed over the months, but not those 8 grams.

For whatever reason, it was enough to stave off my chocolate craving, even though it only lent a tiny bit of chocolatey flavor to my smoothie. Eventually the craving went away.

It’s been 19 months now and I still only rarely don’t have my little hit of chocolate powder.

A while back I also started whipping sugar free jello chocolate pudding mix into low fat Greek yogurt for a nice chocolate dessert. If I’m very near my calories, I will reward myself with a few grams of Dutch “hagel” on top, which is like our birthday cake sprinkles but made of real, delicious chocolate. A little goes a long way.

Make a point of eating fruit and other things that aren’t chocolate or processed sugars. Eventually your palate will change to the point that a fruit is a lot more appealing than a candy bar. Strawberries smell as seductive to me now as chocolate used to. And oranges? Oh, man!!!!!

On the rare occasion I do have a large (by my new standards) piece of chocolate these days, it’s usually to fill out a calorie gap, and I try to savor every tiny gram sized nibble to draw the experience out, lol. But I’ve got chocolate in various forms and places around the house I just forget about. It no longer has that hold over me.

Getting to that point was just magical for me.