The key to losing weight is to maintain a caloric deficit. You can do this and have the occasional celebratory meal. You don’t have to eat like a monk. Some people use strategies like IF (intermittent fasting), but just being sensible and accessing good nutritional advice is helpful. Eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, and drinking enough water, has been shown to be very helpful. Your point about cooking is also true.
The science on caloric deficit seems pretty solid (unless you have other health complications eg thyroid issues). These days eg the UK’s National Health Service has a therapy[1] which is being rolled out to more and more people (morbidly obese people initially to control numbers) which puts them on an extremely restrictive diet to get them to lose weight.
And asking people, especially people who “feel” heavy and inactive, to exercise is a hard problem. Again, you’re not wrong, but ensuring that an inactive person watches TV on a treadmill is … challenging. Exercise is helpful, but it really increases quality of life, and in reality most obese people won’t do the exercise needed to make a significant dent in their calorie budget.
For most people (especially with 25..30 BMI — ie not quite at the extreme end of the spectrum), losing weight is mostly a psychological or motivational problem. This is the problem, because our ability to provide psychological or motivational therapy is limited.
> The key to losing weight is to maintain a caloric deficit. You can do this and have the occasional celebratory meal.
How to maintain a caloric deficit is highly personal. I made my own strategy after thinking carefully about what would work and what would not work. I aimed for a fairly controlled daily calorie intake with a 500 kcal daily deficiency, and then thought hard about how to achieve that within my limits.
Once I had a clear strategy and some meal plans, I put it into practice.
For me personally that meant two meals per day, early lunch and dinner, as it was easier for me to avoid excessive calories with just two meals compared to three. I also never like to eat right after I've woken up, so win win.
In order to not feel hungry eating just two meals per day, I focused on high protein, high fiber meals. Things like 95+% whole grain bread for lunch and replacing potatoes with vegetables for dinner. For salads I'd use romaine lettuce rather than more common iceberg lettuce due to its higher fiber content. Every bit helped.
For me it was essential to not stress too much though.
The way I thought about it was that if I messed up today, then the finishing line just moved another day or two further ahead. This lead to my personal mantra "it's not what you did today, but what you do each day that matters", which I stuck to.
I agree, it’s very personal, and that’s key to keeping one’s mind happy and motivated, otherwise one would be wolfing down ice cream before long.
I enjoyed reading your strategy. The thoughtfulness that it came out of is clearly important. Mine differed from yours (I have a substantial breakfast and very little dinner), but there are some common themes — eg vegetables for dinner and choosing more fibre.
The science on caloric deficit seems pretty solid (unless you have other health complications eg thyroid issues). These days eg the UK’s National Health Service has a therapy[1] which is being rolled out to more and more people (morbidly obese people initially to control numbers) which puts them on an extremely restrictive diet to get them to lose weight.
And asking people, especially people who “feel” heavy and inactive, to exercise is a hard problem. Again, you’re not wrong, but ensuring that an inactive person watches TV on a treadmill is … challenging. Exercise is helpful, but it really increases quality of life, and in reality most obese people won’t do the exercise needed to make a significant dent in their calorie budget.
For most people (especially with 25..30 BMI — ie not quite at the extreme end of the spectrum), losing weight is mostly a psychological or motivational problem. This is the problem, because our ability to provide psychological or motivational therapy is limited.
[1] https://www.england.nhs.uk/2022/01/nhs-soups-and-shakes-diet...