I’m currently a lump of chocolate and cheese, but once the new year hits, I’m determined to make 2026 the year I finally get back to a healthy weight (I’ve lost about 20 pounds, with about 80-100 to go). I’m pretty good about exercising regularly, but, as they say, abs are made in the kitchen. Those who have successfully lost weight, is there anything you particularly recommend for maintaining a calorie deficit to lose the weight, and then avoiding gaining it back later on?
Long-term, sustained weight loss is about lifestyle change. Don’t set a goal and implement dietary and/or exercise changes you have to force yourself to stick to; instead, you have to find a lower-calorie diet and exercise routine that you actually like. Some “dealing with hunger” may be necessary in the beginning if you’re used to frequent eating or large portions, but your body/brain should acclimate to your new diet in a few weeks. If you can, the best eating schedule is actually one with no meals, but around six healthy snacks throughout the day. This is because the frequent eating keeps your metabolism up throughout the day, which burns calories faster. You want to aim for no more than 2,000 calories a day if you’re counting them. I would also recommend taking a multivitamin (most people should be taking one anyway).
Throw out/donate junk food. Don’t buy more. Ask yourself if your actually hungry before getting a snack. Often times I’m just bored or procrastinating. But ive found the most success with HARD REASONABLE RULES.
Example : 2023 was the year of zero alcohol. I did it for a year and gave myself permission to drink again after the year’s end. I didn’t. Stopped caring about drinking after a few months without it. I can count the number of drinks on one hand I’ve had since then.
Example 2: 2024 was the no Candy and no ice cream year. Candy was defined as “anything you could find in a Halloween bag”
Ive found a lot of success with HARD reasonable clearly defined rules.
Eat until you’re not hungry, not when you’re full. That may require eating more slowly. It will be an adjustment for sure.
That’s definitely a challenge for me. I grew up with a bunch of siblings, so if you didn’t eat fast, you’d be stuck with leftovers. Inhaling my food is an unfortunate habit I’ve held onto.
A weird way I learned to eat more normal portions was to buy frozen meals. Sure they are super processed but when looking at the ingredients it looks like completely normal homemade food so it can’t be that bad. We ate that for a couple of weeks before we got tired of it. But that was enough to learn
Try using a smaller plate which forces you to take a smaller amount initially and consciously makes you aware of going back for more.
You can get out in front of it by estimating how much food will get you to satisfied but not full and only place that much in front of you.
And wait about 10 minutes before going back for seconds. For some reason when I still feel hungry after eating, if I wait a bit before seconds, I don’t feel hungry anymore.
It gives your body time to start digesting, and once digesting it is like “I got to work on this food, don’t need any more just yet.” If you eat fast enough that the digestion doesn’t kick in then you still feel as hungry as you did initially and you have to fill your stomach before that feeling kicks in.
Source: vague recollection of some nutritional information from years ago
For me the big problem is that as a kid I would eat something for breakfast and then one big meal a day after playing outside constantly, so my eating pattern is wolfing down food until I feel like I could burst. That doesn’t work well when life changed to have three scheduled meals a day, but it did take a decade or two and a desk job to really catch up with me. Still a struggle not to over eat, especially with people around me encouraging me to eat more.
Still a struggle not to over eat, especially with people around me encouraging me to eat more.
I can relate, and also not wanting to seem rude and turn down overly processed food/sugar laden cookies/pies, etc. I love sweets, I just don’t want them in excess, or hfcs/beet sugar, or really much cane sugar, especially white, and other things that are my own peculiarities.
Also yes, it seems I remember something about digestion kicking in, now that you mention it, thanks!
This is important! These small habit changes all add up.
- Daily long walks.
- Eat less.
- Eat better. I quit stuffing myself with industrially processed food, best decision ever. Even better than quitting smoking (which I did some 20 years ago). BTW, eating better helps a lot in eating less.
I would like to stress the eating better part. In the past, I’ve made the mistake of looking only at calories. I never chose the whole grain option because it had more calories. Weight loss was hard and I was constantly hungry. Now I stopped eating at the canteen for lunch and started cooking my own stuff instead with lots of whole grain pasta, whole grain rice, potatoes, lots and lots of vegetables, legumes and plant based protein like tofu and tempeh. For a sweet snack I eat fruit. Lost 9kg in 5 months and it didn’t even feel really hard, honestly. Cooking takes a lot of time though, but it’s so much easier than being hungry all the time.
What do you like to eat that’s less processed? I’d like to do that, processed food unfortunately requires just so much less prep.
Fresh veggies & fruits, a little quality meat (but not too much and not every day), no industrial bread (I live in Paris, we still have access to a few real artisanal bakeries where they make their own bread, but here too they’re getting replaced by industrial ones, so we’ve planned on learning to make our own bread soon), no industrial sweets/treats and no soda.
My spouse and I also learned to cook, instead of going out to a restaurant multiple times a week like we used. Saves us money and it’s a fine moment we spend together too ;)
As for the time it takes to cook fresh food: either we will make very simple meal, which takes minutes (plus we often have fun while cooking) or we will cook a meal that we will last us 2 or 3 days. So it’s really not that much of an issue. And since eating better helps us feeling a lot less tired too, well… we think it’s really worth it. The real effort is to be willing to change one’s own habits, at least if I can relate to my own experience.
It is garbage food-like industrial waste, mostly. Read the nutrition information and it’s mostly empty calories! And with a work schedule all over the map, it is challenging. But an air fryer and sweet/regular potatoes pack a lot of nutrients in with the denser calorie count and fiber!
Hi! Not the same person but I’m in the same process!
Firstly, take it in steps, don’t quit all processed food at once. I actually started with eating more veggies, both in the food and as a side salad.
Then read on the products, not all processed foods are equal, and it depends on what more you have in the meal. On meat products I often look at the meat percentages, it can vary A LOT. A sausage with + 80% meat is a lot better than 30%…
You can also look for E-numbers, concentrates, and other additives. How good or bad these are are still being discussed but I’m leaning towards bad, especially if it’s a lot.
For example a highly processed sausage with basmati rice and a decent amount of salad isn’t the same as said sausage with just mac and cheese.
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Some meals are easier to prep than others but more often than not I’ve found meals, especially the meat, to need time. Time to cook properly!
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Fry meat in a pan, let it simmer in water for half an hour or so ( I rarely keep time ), make a sauce in the pan.
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Or put a chunk of meat on a oven safe plate and trow it into the oven on 150-175°C for 1.5-3h or more depending on size and tenderness.
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Or make a soup, just make sure it boils long enough for the meat! :)
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These are all great suggestions, and I would just like to add: drink more water. If water gets boring, add some lemon / lime / fruit, have some herbal teas, or even some coffee (black). When I’m in ravenous eating mode and about to go for seconds, it’s helpful if I can catch myself and have a glass of water first. Then wait 5 - 10 minutes and see if I actually want more food.
Drinking calories is so bad.
I only drink Coconut Unsweetened Silk and tap water outside of a zero cal soda now and then.
Be weary of artificial sugar that can still trigger hunger by impacting your blood sugar levels due to insulin release. Your body can respond to the sudden influx of artificial sugar the same way it does to real sugar.
I still lightly sweeten my coffee most mornings, but that’s about it.
+1 to all you just said :)
We quit drinking soda (and I quit alcohol, too). Now it’s, water, pressed fresh fruits (but not too much), tea and infusions. Maybe once a year I will have a drink of wine (I’m French, I have an excuse ;)
As for teas, my advice there would be to not cheap out on tea. quality teas, aka full leaves, are a thing of their own. Also I would encourage to get at least two tea posts (one for stronger teas and the other one for the lighter ones)
regular excercise; doesnt have to be Hiit - e.g. daily walk (30-60mins) does wonders
Literally impossible to outrun overeating;
how much you eat is your size
how you work out is your definition
I make salad dressing from low fat cottage cheese. I use a strong immersion blender to make it the consistency of sour cream. Thin it with water and add ranch dip seasoning. Anytime I feel hungry. I just have a salad with protein ranch. Make staying full very easy. Also fake bacon bits are almost pure protein.
Smaller plates genuinely helped me reduce portion sizes.
You’re obviously getting a lot of specific nutritional advice regarding what to eat, avoid, and how to behave.
My biggest recommendation is to find support in creating a healthy relationship with food. No individual or category of food is “bad” but our behaviors and views can support or sabotage our progress.
I highly recommend the podcasts In Moderation and Showing Up Anyway with Coach Adam. Also social media - I know they have accounts across platforms but on YouTube look for The Plant Slant, ScottyKFitness, Adam Wright Fitness, and Hybrid Calisthenics.
Most people can force themselves into a box and create a habit for a period of time, but making long term changes stick needs healthy support and education.
This. All of this. Make this part of your lifestyle.
“All food is guilt free, because guilt is not an ingredient”
Avoiding nearly all sugars + mental conditioning to be ok with mild hunger
Ill drink water if I’m hungry or have a hard boiled egg and then just…deal with being hungry 🤷♀️ if I really need a snack I try to make it something very small and high fat/protein but ultimately there’s no avoiding having to mentally endure some hunger
I also switched to smaller bowls and plates because psychologically the mind is indeed somewhat fooled by finishing 1 plate of food, even if it’s a smaller plate
Estimate your total daily energy expenditure:
Eat in a caloric deficit. You will need to weigh your food and track calories, at least for a while.
Weigh yourself and see if the weight is going in the right direction and not losing too fast either. Adjust calories as needed.
It’s way harder than just these steps but this is the foundation. Personally I found the food weighing and calorie counting massively stressful but I got a good sense of how much to eat from doing it from a few weeks. Now I check the scale and log weight and make sure it’s going the way I want it.
Also talk to a therapist. I needed one to get over certain mental barriers and to re-evaluate my relationship to food and my body image.
I personally use a calorie counting app, like Waistline, and when I start getting into that routine of eating less naturally without actively counting, I stop using the app.
When I fall off, I go back to it for a bit until I’m back in the rhythm.
I also exercise a few times a week and try to do at least one walk a day.
Wearables like Garmin also do great calculations of calories burned. If you don’t like the idea of your data being sold, which you shouldn’t, Garmins are often compatible with this FOSS app: https://f-droid.org/packages/nodomain.freeyourgadget.gadgetbridge
One key trick I did was be completely honest with my calorie counting app.
Lying to it only lied to myself.
After about a month, I started getting “lazy” by documenting it by not eating certain things. I knew adding cookies would add 200 calories, and I didn’t feel like opening up the app. So I didn’t eat it.
And My cheat days suddenly felt real. I ate a whole pizza and watched those calorie numbers go higher. When cheat day came around again, I “cheated” by picking healthier things.
For me it’s just sheer discipline and the occasional motivational drop in weight to a new low. I set myself a clear goal I want to reach and stick to that plan, knowing roughly by when I will reach it.
Discipline: I just forbid myself any kind of sweets (no chocolate, gummybears, chips, cookies, etc for 3 months now) and try to eat as little as I can stick with. This is most likely not the most healthy way to diet, but I can take a strict discipline for a little time better than having to be only a little strict for a much longer time. Most days I only eat something in the evening, ideally some salad or cottage cheese with veggies. Drinking lots of water and coffee helps. Sometimes a zero sugar energy drink which helps soothe the need for something sweet.
Motivation: I track my weight using the app Happy Scale, but any spreadsheet to average out numbers will work. Basically I get on the scale every morning before drinking or eating anything, and log my weight. It will still fluctuate daily, but tracking a rolling average helps to see it go down overall. And if for some days in a row it doesn’t, I just have to stick to the laws of physics which dictate that my body can’t create energy out of thin air, so it’s most likely just water being stored more some days than others.
For me it helped to focus on small changes. If I just cut my calorie intake in half, upped my exercise, and other large changes all at once, it would overload my brain and I’d back slide. I started making oatmeal in the morning. One cup of oats, one cup of frozen blueberries, and a little [too much] sugar. The next was understanding what hunger means. Your level of hunger indicates how soon you should eat. Not how much. Start making a conscious decision to only have one helping for a meal. Try drinking a lot of water before meals. Like straight chug water until you feel like you’ll burst. You can trick your stomach into feeling full quicker if water takes up some space as you start to eat.
Fruit and veggies will fill your stomach up making it harder to eat anything else while being lower in calories, I drench them in steak fat, idc, about the extra calories gained there, if I dont eag vegetables I eat a ton of snacks, if my stomach is uncomfortably full I dont think about eating. It’s just expensive (in my case I have limited fast food options, just restaurants) if you dont cook to get healthier options but you can save hella calories. Like keto bread instead of regular for hotdogs/hamburgers save me at least 100 calories a burger, coke zero instead of coke saves me like 600 calories a day drinking 4 cans (ik I should drink less soda but ive done much much worse to my body being fat and abusing drugs, this is fine in comparison so im sticking to it)
You could always intermittent fast, eat like 4-8 hours of your day and the no food until the next 4-8 hour period, worked for me but I gained most of my weight back when I stopped, I wouldnt want to do it forever so its not viable for me. I lost like 90 lbs gained 70 back. Now I’ve been losing 10 a year but not gaining it back just trying to minimize calories through ingredients and less snacking.
Tracking my food made a big impact for me. I started not by changing anything, but just writing everything I ate down. From there, it was pretty obvious to me where I could make changes, but I didnt change everything at once. If I were to list the changes I made, nobody would be surprised. They were exactly the kinds of recommendations others have made here. It’s just that it was so much easier for me to pick something specific to change and have a good idea of the kind of impact that change would make when I could see the numbers.
