Diet that has been successful for me.

[Dave Gray]

I've been doing a bit of self-care for January, and I have been following some rules for my diet.  I respond to weight-loss pretty well and I have an iron will.  So, losing weight isn't the hard part for me.  But what is hard is that I feel starving and suffering a lot.  But this time around, it's been way easier.

What I always do is this:
Low/No simple carbs.  No breads or pastas.  But I allow myself carbs in yogurt, fruit, etc.
No calories via beverage.
No food of any kind after dinner.

But this time, I added something new:
I used to wake up and make myself eat a high protein breakfast.  Now I don't eat at all.  My first meal is at 3PM.  My 2nd and last meal is at 9PM.

Because I don't have any calories via beverage (like no milk with my morning coffee), it means that I am intermittent fasting.  I think that this is having 3 benefits: 1) I'm just eating one fewer meal a day, so there are fewer calories coming in, but the bigger thing is 2) Because my fast doesn't break, I don't get hungry.  I basically have to remind myself to eat at 3 and again at 9.  And 3) Because I'm eating dinner as late as I am, I'm not interested at all in snacking after dinner.  I can stay up late and I'm still working off of the calories for that dinner.

All in all, it's just a more pleasant feeling.  Same results...I'm losing the weight either way, but this way, I don't hate it at all.

[Spider-Dan]

I've always been a late dinner guy - sometimes I won't eat dinner until midnight - and consequently, I rarely eat before noon.  On work days, I usually don't eat lunch until after 2pm, with just a cup of black coffee (or occasionally a handful of raw almonds) as the only thing I have for the first 6 hours I'm awake.  I do chew a LOT of sugar-free gum, though; I have a major sweet tooth, and two decades ago in an effort to reduce my candy consumption (and my dentist bills), I started relying heavily on Trident.  I've averaged 6 pieces of gum a day for the last 20 years.

I always had a problem gaining weight until I hit 30, but around then my metabolism slowed down and I was able to combine increased protein intake with the gym and get into a medically "normal" BMI range.  Last year was the first time I crept into "overweight," and I responded by cutting out soda* and switching to sugar-free beverages and a LOT of air-popped popcorn, along with a big increase in cardio (to go along with my normal ~8k steps a day at work).  I lost 15 pounds in 3 months and got back to my target weight.  I stopped the extra cardio and allow myself an occasional soda, but I've been able to maintain my weight.

*sidebar: I've never been a huge soda drinker - I despise cola of all kinds - but during the pandemic, I found out that there were something like 60 different current flavors of Mountain Dew, which shocked me.  So I started a project to try to collect as many different Mountain Dew cans as I could.  I ordered 12-packs of flavors exclusive to out-of-market stores, brought a bunch into work for my coworkers and gave almost as many away, but I still drank quite a few of them.  The end result of this project, which I wrapped up last spring after Pepsico changed the logo and discontinued all but 4 flavors as part of a product rebranding, was this (along with 20 pounds of weight gain):