Ask Lemmy

A big thing is don't buy junk food. Its much easier to not buy that bag of chips then to resist eating them at 2am...

Don't focus on what you can take out. Focus on what you can add. So like if you live instant ramen. Make a half pack and add bok choy and a soy egg or something. Kylie Sakaida on YouTube (actual dietician, dunno all her credentials) focuses a lot on this and gives examples. Changed my life and lost maybe 30 lbs just by following that train of thought.

For me meal prepping is big too. Make a bunch of something on Sunday when I have time and divvy it up throughout the week. My wife can't eat the same stuff as much so I freeze some now and pull something out from a previous week. If you plan it out right you start building variety of your favorite stuff in the freezer for easy meals you just throw in oven.

I really recomend checking out a weight loss clinic, the one i went with was not a chain and didnt accept insurance, its run by an obesity M.D. doctor, and their spouse a professional dietician. There they prescribed me a flexible diet that has me going to the grocery store and cooking in the kitchen and an excersize plan that has me going regularly to the gym (in the beginning with a personal trainer) and weekly tirzeptide injections and some specific supplements after taking blood work.

I've lost over 100 lbs, sustainably at about 2lbs/week, and i feel better than I ever have.

It costs me about 500$/month for the service - cheaper exists - but the support from the professionals along with the guided plan has worked wonders, now that im approaching my goal the conversation has evolved into safely tapering off tirzeptide, how to avoid rebound weight gain (like i have in the past weight loss journeys), technical talk about how ghreline and leptin work and can override will power and how to avoid and deal with that scenario, etc

The pros know how to focus and train you for genuine lifestyle change as well as the turbulence between changes, not just weight loss

I can't really recommend anything specific to weight loss, but as someone who hates spending more than 30 minutes cooking (and then cleaning up), I would recommend dishes that can be prepared in a single pot, such as stews, soups, or similar. These dishes can also be stored well for several days.

This is also a good alternative to processed foods in terms of time.

What have been working for me until the cold weather and the scale ran out of batteries is to weight every meal and count all the calories I consume. I eat whatever I want as long it fits inside the 2300kcal daily budget, the weight loss was slow but steady since summer. I could get faster results by exercising more and/or setting a tighter budget but I'm happy enough with the current rate.

This week I bought new batteries, so I'm good to go again.

The last time I decided to lose weight, I basically cut out all sweet things after meals and avoided regular snacking. It took a while to get used to not having those things (he said, with enormous understatement) but nowhere near as long as it did to lose the weight, so the good habits did lock in for a while, and the weight did eventually come off.

I allowed myself low calorie drinks whenever. The more water in them, the better. Tea with sweetener not sugar is my usual poison, but I switch it up with squash depending on mood and time of day.

A change in medication and slow fall back into old habits has got the BMI back over 25 again, so I intend to employ the same tactics again in the new year. Once all the Christmas snacks I've been bought are gone, anyway. *cough*

If I wasn't snacking and still needed to lose weight, I'd probably try reducing my portion sizes. One less potato. Smaller chops. One less sausage. etc. but I can't vouch for that because I've never needed to go that far.

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.

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.

Depression and poverty are really good for losing weight. I've lost 10 lbs in the last few months.

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.

I'm on a flexitarian diet. Not intentionally, my tastes just change up periodically. So I eat a lot less meat and a lot more salad with evoo/vinegar and Italian seasonings for dressing. My bread intake is way down. Getting enough bioavailable B12 and protein without a supplement is challenging. I've been meaning to get nooch but every time I'm in a store that carries it, I forget, so I end up eating eggs, cheese and having whole milk and yogurt. And with unseasonably warm weather, I'm walking again, so the deficit is a lot easier.

The great thing about salad and fruits is they fill you up, the downside is it doesn't stick as long.

You could try intermittent fasting.

GLP-1

nicotine, caffeine, gum, not buying candy

First step is to meal prep. Make sure you always have healthy food and reasonable portions. A “deep freeze” freezer can help with this.

Also make sure you have healthy, low-calories options for snacking as you adjust to the new diet. Hard-boiled eggs are the best go-to under the sun.

You can also add psyllium fiber to your meals to keep you full and help your gut biome. Metamucil is the moat famous brand, but there are others.

Preventing yourself from feeling hungry is critical. So plan, make smart choices, and learn how to avoid hunger wisely.

Smaller plates genuinely helped me reduce portion sizes.

I'm not one to talk because I also need to lose like 50lbs, but I'm starting to think that weight gain/loss happens when I put the food on my plate.

Sometimes I just serve myself too much food, especially if it's something that I really like. So I think using a smaller diameter plate and making sure that self-control is on point at serving time is underrated.

Also, another thing I've been trying that at least feels good is parking farther from where I want to go. Here in the US I'm driving all the time, but I have found that I feel can get more walking in just by parking on the other side of the parking lot, or even in a different parking lot entirely, and getting some extra steps in.

Finally I need to learn to eat a little slower! 🤣

Eat less and count calories. If you're getting < 1000 calories a day, you'll almost certainly lose weight. And when I did it, it was a keto diet, but I couldn't say whether keto is a dumb fad thing or legit, just that that's what I was doing when I lost weight. Mostly because protein calories kept me feeling fuller longer. But that feeling of hunger is also the feeling of a calorie deficit.

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.

Intermittent fasting is the way - read Dr Fung’s book

I wish you the best of luck!

Haven't been fat but have been hugely pregnant and had to lose weight and even though people say you can't outrun a diet, exercise has been the only thing that's really made a difference for me. The more I exercise the less I weigh, the "out" part of calories in, calories out makes the bigger difference for my body.

I did a keto diet for a bit back in the summer. It worked very well for me and I lost 10kg in about 7 weeks. The diet made me feel full for a long time so I was also on one meal a day and not snacking. It's not something I think I could keep up long term, the variety in what you can eat isn't enough for me, although since coming off the diet, I haven't put any of the weight back on so my metabolism must have changed somehow as a result.

Not saying it's for everyone, but I was surprised how well it worked for me.

Keep track, plan meals, don't bring home junk from the store, and be honest with yourself about what is junk.

You could make lots of jello. Easy, tastes good, fills you, and there’s nearly no calories. I personally just drink water when I crave snacks.

Noom. It's not impossible to achieve your weight loss journey by making changes like eating better and exercising more, but it's a lot easier with a cheerleading coach in your pocket giving you daily ways to break it down and make it more manageable. Lmk if you're looking for a referral code, friend, and whatever route you take I wish you the best and hope you can achieve your goal! ❤️