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Just an aside, but I’m on my first diet in ages that seems to be working. The sad principle behind it is “cut out high calorie foods that I overeat and/or am prone to binge on”. For me that means beer, bread, cheese, and a bunch of sweet stuff. So I’ve simply cut out alcohol, wheat, and dairy. I’m still eating eggs, b/c as a vegetarian they’re one of my best protein sources, and they’re pretty benign as far as food goes.
The upside to this diet is that it leaves a lot of carbs that I quite enjoy but just don’t binge on. Eg, potato, rice, and corn. I can get McDonald’s fries or guac and chips as a treat or make myself a baked potato or Thai curry with rice. But I can’t absent-mindedly have four slices of toast for breakfast, a giant brie baguette for lunch, pizza for dinner, and ice cream for dessert.
So far it’s going great; just a little joyless. Unfortunately I think this may be the price I have to pay — I overeat these foods because they taste amazing to me and do good things to my brain. By limiting myself to foods that are just “yeah, that tastes fine”, I won’t have to use willpower to limit portion sizes to anything like the same extent. (All of this is very much Stephan Guyenet inspired of course)
So my longer-term plan once I’m through the first ultra-strict 8 weeks or so is to permanently reorient my diet away from these foods but allow them as treats -once a week for the alcohol, once a week for banned foods, maybe special exemptions for stuff like holidays. I’m hoping in the longer run also that I might lose my cravings for these things a bit as my palate adjusts. Of course, it’s possible I’ll acquire new food vices, in which cases I might need to cycle them out.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk I guess, just wanted to share.
Oh man, that is the problem, isn't it? People assume fat people are, as one person above said, "sucking down baconators and Dr Pepper by the bucket" (I have no idea what a "baconator" even is). But it's often things like "I love cheese! I love bread! (not the Chorleywood Process stuff, proper bread), I love pasta and rice and potatoes and butter!"
I was in my twenties before I even got near commercial frozen pizza, never mind the fast food kind. I was eating 'proper' food before then, and still fat.
So you have to wave bye-bye to those in order to lose weight on a diet 😔
Ah, I see you do not live in a location that has a Wendy's fast food restraunt.
It's probably for the best. Better to suffer in ignorance and not know the glories you have deprived yourself of.
But, yes. Back when I was exhaustively cataloguing my weight loss on a week by week basis, eating bread at a holiday meal would mean the difference between not gaining any weight if I didn't, and gaining several pounds if I did.
Which is an absolute shame, given all the recipes I have for various types of bread. So it goes.
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Oh man, that moment when I discovered that the tortilla on a Chipotle burrito was 320 calories... Now, it's just bowls for me, and each one almost always makes two meals!
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That has been my experience, particularly with alcohol and ice cream. I don't crave them as much as I did when I would regularly over indulge. And these days, when I do indulge, it's to a much less degree. My body just won't tolerate the quantities I once found enjoyable to consume.
This matches my experience too, and I've heard similar accounts from many people. With sweets, it does seem like people's sensitivity for it is highly malleable, and so reducing or quitting sweets for even a short period of time tends to cause noticeable increase in sensitivity to it. Which means same amount of sweetness for fewer calories. If I abstain from sugar for a week, then a single cookie might be enough to satiate my sweet tooth where in the past I might have needed 3.
Generally, I think part of the difficulty of starting and maintaining dieting is the difficulty people have in imagining themselves to have different preferences in the future. Cutting down or out food quantity or quality (in terms of taste) can be painful at first, but it's the very act of cutting it down or out that modifies you to desire less in the first place, thus allowing you to enjoy that new reduced amount just as much. The transition is the tough part.
When I briefly went paleo, regular French bread tasted like candy when I came off of it. Granted, yeast flavored candy. But it was just that sweet.
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Thanks for sharing, and good luck! I'd love to hear about your favorite recipes with what's left for you to eat, maybe in the Wednesday or Friday thread.
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