Habits can make losing weight easier or more difficult

[Glenda]

Trying to go against a habit can be terrifying.  If you go to a country where they drive on what to you is the wrong side of the road,  ten miles an hour may be how fast you want to drive.  LOL.  But what we eat can be a bunch  habits that you might be able to change.  It might be the easiest way for you to lose weight too, if you can just substitute a few new habits for habits you have now  But it is work to find something you truly like to eat just as much but has fewer calories.  Can you think about it?  Maybe make a list of things you regularly eat....habitually, figure the number of calories in each of those "favorites", and then try to make a new habit or change it slightly  Maybe you like oatmeal and rice cakes with salted butter on them.  If you eat 3 buttered rice cakes maybe the new habit could be at least  switching to 2.  If your habit is  eating  fried eggs, bacon and toast,  maybe making a habit of oatmeal would b less calories.    Hungry Girl has a free news letter email that has some eating things you could consider for a new lower calorie habit maybe.   We don't want to change any of our habits.  But we want to be slim so it might be worthwhile to make the habit thing help us.???   

[Baltoscott]

Good post @Glenda.

One food-related habit I tried to incorporate when I was losing weight a few years ago was to have an eating schedule.  One meal a day is a popular, but extreme to me, version of an eating plan. Three meals a day is what a lot of us grew up with (breakfast, lunch, dinner/supper).  But ‘snacks’ always seem to creep in. And then there are the calories you drink (soda/booze of course, but also milk, kefir, juice, fancy coffees, etc.).  So my weight loss (which turned into weight maintenance) schedule was mostly 4x/day. I eat pretty early and late in the day, with lunch around noon, and a snack around 4pm.  Most of my liquid calories happen during those 4 meals.  It doesn’t happen all the time, but I try to limit my booze to 3 or 4 days a week and one or two servings on drinking days.  This all became habitual during my major last weight loss phase in 2017 and I’ve kept it up every since, and have kept the weight off too.

[Baltoscott]

@Glenda if you have any monthly workout habits feel free to join group I set up each month with self-set monthly goals over of the Get Moving Forum.

[Glenda]

Thank you Scott for the invitation.  But I'm not much of an exerciser. I just walk on my treadmill while reading the newspaper. & or a book.  I know I should do something for strength and I think about it, but that is as far as I get.  I do quite a bit of yard work caring for my husbands bamboo  so I do use muscle some.  .............................................. .......Instructions for transplanting an esperanza said to maintain the plant's orientation to North.  I wonder if it bothers a potted ivy plant  in your house if you put a different side toward the window.  Anyone have an opinion? 

[Glenda]

I've started a new diet....so far after one day I'm doing it perfectly.  No candy and no nuts,  I'm absolutely positive those 2 things are what has caused me to gain 5 pounds lately.    It doesn't make any difference if something is ''HEALTHY"  If if is high calorie it will cause a weight  gain and that isn'[t healthy.  The almonds is an old bad habit and the candy is a Halloween thing.  Left overs.  I've put the candy so high in the pantry a ladder is required to reach it.   If you analyze the stuff you eat over and over, it is easy to see what you need to reconsider if you want to lose a fee pounds.  You don't really need to follow someone else diet.  Do you think?

[Baltoscott · Accepted solution]

@Glenda — you make good points. As usual.  Still, I can’t think of the almonds as a ‘bad’ habit.  True, they are calorie dense and you have to be mindful of that, but (unlike candy) they are also nutrient dense and, for a lot of people, they can be a satisfying curb on hunger.