What small changes have helped you lose weight?

I meditate on my relationship with food. There are never big changes that come from this practice, but small understandings that appear over time that change foundational behaviors.

I stopped eating low quality chocolate and accept only higher quality treats. I now can't stand milk chocolate as it is too sweet for me and can only accept dark chocolate that is 60% or higher. I still eat chocolate, but it really helped to start looking for higher quality versions of it as it became more and more noticeable that the low quality versions tasted terrible anyway. This happened incrementally.

I applied the same method with drinks. I gravitated away from milk entirely because it was upsetting my stomach constantly and I didn't notice it for a long time. I use coconut milk for my smoothies. I never really liked soda in the first place, but learned how I like to take water instead. I fill it with lots of ice because I love cold drinks.

I learned that being authoritarian on myself was far less productive than learning how to negotiate with myself. Telling myself that I can't have some food or that I have to limit it only eventually brought up rebellious behavior. There is often a reason why I want foods that I'm "not supposed to have" and instead of telling myself what to do, I ask myself why. Sometimes it's because I want a certain flavor and I will offer alternatives, and this is how I learned that I can curb pizza cravings with olives, and I used to hate olives too. In the case where I really genuinely want pizza, I ask myself if I can wait a day or two to see if the craving goes away. If a craving is really, really sticking, then it means my psyche is feeling too strained and I let it have a pizza. But more often than not, the craving goes away and I also gain experience in resistance. The skill in resistance increases over time.

Speaking of hating olives, I also learned how to introduce myself to new foods. Instead of forcing myself to eat it, I let my brain get introduced to it. In the case of olives, my friend gave me a small cup of them and I let myself smell them and understand how the flavor might be processed. I just sat with the olives until my brain was ready to try one after not forcing myself, but instead patiently letting it get accustomed to the undesired food. When I ate one it was a much different experience than when I forced myself to eat them before and they are now a favorite snack. I later accomplished accepting fresh tomatoes, coconut, and more with the same method.

I also learned that it is always easier to introduce more recipes and more food to try before I try to remove anything considered bad so that I have more options to rely on. I learned that I like finger foods and easy to prepare items, so I keep small cucumbers and cherry tomatoes around to snack on.

I've come to the point of realization there are just certain foods I cannot keep in the house anymore. I'm not a 'limit myself to a serving' kind of gal. I used to buy ice cream or cookies by the package and eat the whole thing. Now I indulge in a pint of ice cream every weekend and fulfill my cravings for other healthier stuff in other ways. I also have increased my veggie intake by volumes and it fills me up. I stay away from cereals, pastas, breads, potatoes(and Cookies!)....all because I know me and they're all things I could easily binge on.

Basically, I'm a grazer so find healthier versions of my texture-cravings and try to build any snack/meal around veggies first, then protein, then add things to make them please me. Such as crunchy croutons on my humungous salads, or sugar-free syrup in my 0% fat plain yogurt.

On-line/click and collect grocery shopping.

Man.

I did it starting early in 2020 (of course) but when I got back to the grocery store I quickly realized that being there was a PROBLEM for me. I don't have great impulse control and the grocery store is one long trip down impulse control lane, with a lot of temptations and 'interesting' stuff.

Online looking at pictures of food and utilizing the list of things I bought last time for ease saves me bringing a lot of things home that I don't really want and will eat just because they're novel and/or look good in the store.

I still get treats but they're the things I want enough to seek out, not things that are just SITTING THERE.

Absolute #1 thing I did was begin weighing and logging.

That led me to realize how many calories a day I was consuming. And that my occasional evening walk wasn’t burning off the family size package of Oreo Doublestuffs I’d consumed earlier, as I innocently - and stupidly- thought.

Planning meals and sticking to my shopping list. It makes life so much easier than meal planning while pushing the cart. If I make an impulse buy these days, it’s usually for a deal on fruit. $1.69 cherries yesterday? Yes, please!!!!!

Pre-logging meals by the day(a) helps me control calories and use my leftovers more efficiently. It’s also helpful to change plans in the fly, knowing “OK if I have a big lunch now, I’m going to have to tweak dinner and dessert by exactly this much”.

I no longer keep packaged snacks or sweets in the house, other than small hard candies (dislike hard candy, easy not to binge on them), or a couple of small size individually wrapped chocolate bars in the freezer. I forget all about food when it’s in the freezer because I simply think of it as “meat storage “.

I used to wash down all my chocolates and cookies with a half gallon of milk a day. I use less than half a cup of milk a day to froth for hot drinks. I switched to homemade almond milk, and then to Silk plain cashew milk (richer texture and taste, 25 cal per cup).

Swapped fruit and cottage cheese, topped with fruit balsamic vinegars for candies and cookies.

Can make a mean smoothie that tastes like a milkshake for about 200 calories, and fills a 32 ounce insulated mug. Very filling. And hydrating, since that’s a major issue for me.

Forgave myself the guilt and began treating myself by buying bags of prepared, washed mixed greens. I eat a bag a day. Soooo easy. Rip it open and top with chopped veggies and pre-cooked meat I have in the fridge. I’ve discovered many leftovers go great over a giant bowl of greens- carnitas, taco filling, tikka, grilled vegetables, even leftover couscous or bulgur.

Use balsamic or calorie free salad dressings.

Hot drinks are a great snack substitute.

I walk everywhere. Rode my bike to the doctor yesterday and will ride it to the grocery store this afternoon to get the broccoli I forgot yesterday. (My bird is complaining vociferously that we’re out.)

I do many of the strategies I found in this thread:
https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

Probably best tip of all is reading these boards religiously and asking questions.

I volunteer at a front desk position once a week. It’s usually quiet and a bit boring. I’m bad for boredom eating so I used to tuck a fresh pound bag of M&Ms in my tote and would usually finish them off. That’s 2240 calories.

Now, I pack a bag of crisp vegetables and a container of zero calorie ranch dressing.

Today’s haul is nearly 20 ounces of veggies, for a total of 93 calories.

That’s a savings of 2147 calories, which is almost as much as my entire daily allotment.

Think through your day. Be aware. What habits have you developed that you can tweak? How does occasional events or infrequent behavior affect you? Log everything that crosses your lips til you get a handle.

Someone has a nice graphic on another thread indicating that awareness is 50% of winning.