Losing Weight and Keeping it off.

[88keys]

As far as your above post, you should stop drinking those sodas, teas, etc. Straight water my man. Does it suck? yes. But you WILL get used to it.

I drink a gallon or more of straight water per day as it is. I really don't mind water at all. But I do need some flavor in my drink when I eat. When I drink water, I don't want it to taste like what I just ate. Who like Beef stew flavored water?
I don't drink much diet soda as it is. One 20 oz bottle in the morning and that mainly to help me wake up. Starting Monday I'm going to replace that with lightly sweetened Iced Tea in the morning. I might try coffee again which might be better because if it's good coffee, I don't need alot of sugar to enjoy it. The problem is that coffee has a way of disturbing my stomach. That might have improved since I've lost so much weight, but IDK.

Either way, I want to keep my morning drink under 50 calories total.

As far as my afternoon and evening drink, I want something flavored, but no caffeine, under 50 calories, and no artificial sweeteners.

I've been looking into those fruit infusion pitchers, but it seems like you would need to make large quantities at a time and I'm worried that half of it will go bad before I can drink it all.

If you do have cravings for something a tad bit sweet, try out dark chocolate covered almonds. I buy a bag per week, which is 9 servings. 1 serving is 1/4 of a cup which is about 20 almonds. Each serving is about 190 cals and still contains protein.

I've also found as far as the junkfood stuff goes that if you don't even let yourself be surrounded by it, you physically can't have it. I have no candy, no ice cream, etc in my home what so ever. I make all my lunches and dinner, and I rarely dine out. When I do, I will get salmon or chicken with veggies. No pasta unless its whole wheat, or this new type I found that is made from brown rice.

Dieting is all mental IMO. Once you convince and train your brain to not seek and desire bad foods, you will stop wanting them. It really is a mind over matter issue.

Sorry if any of the things I mentioned were discussed previously or off topic.

The main thing for me at the moment is to treat my problem like a drug addiction. I feel like the longer I stay away from sweets (cookies, cakes, pies, candy etc), the better off I am. I don't honestly know how many people have actually done anything this extreme nor do I know how successful they have been in the long term, but I felt like it was the only way. My other eating habits are honestly not that bad. The worst of my eating habits are in the morning but that's mainly because I try to keep my breakfasts between 600-700 calories. I find that makes a huge difference in how the rest of the day goes vs. eating a small breakfast or skipping it all together.

Atkins has been successful for you in the past. Why did you not try it again?

While Atkins was successful and works extremely well, I also find it to be the most difficult diet to stick to. It also involves abstaining from sweets in pretty much the same way I do now because sweets have lots of carbs.

The focus this time is just finding something that I can do for the rest of my life. It's not about losing weight the fastest (although it has been pretty fast), and it's not about trying to be a fitness guru or anything. It's about being healthy and staying that way.

I know that it's impossible to eliminate fat and sugar from your diet because your body does need it to survive. However I'm pretty sure that most of our sugar and fat consumption comes from junk food or soft drinks in some form (even for people who aren't overweight) and so eliminating the sugar and fats that come from that is obvious solution.