@moveupscaledown thank you for your comments!
I'll start with "cheat days". I suppose I do have them, but I really hate calling them that. It may seem like a small thing, but changing my mental dialogue about food has really helped me stick to my goals and, ultimately, avoid cravings.
I take deficit breaks for special occasions and holidays - important anniversaries, birthdays, major holidays, special trips, etc. If it's a single party and/or one day, I generally just don't worry about counting calories. I eat what I want without stuffing myself - I still want to be social, enjoy the event and move around, not flop on the couch in a food coma. It's not cheating because I am not doing anything wrong, I'm just living my life. Re-framing my thought process this way helped me avoid feeling guilty, which in the past was a big trigger for binging. For trips, I generally practice intermittent fasting to help stay within my calorie limits. This strategy has not derailed my weight loss.
Cravings killed my weight loss efforts in the past. So, this time around I took a different approach. I have a huge sweet tooth. Always did. Instead of fighting myself on this, I indulge it daily. I set aside about 300 calories per day just for sweets. I eat chocolate daily, for example. I also often have ice cream, cookies and candy.
I've found some substitutions that work very well for me. For example, for ice cream, I found that some Halo Top flavors are just as good as "real" ice cream to me. It lets me have a very generous portion without feeling like I'm missing out. I found a protein bar that tastes awesome (Nature Valley Peanut Butter) - I feel like I'm eating candy, but also getting a slightly better nutrient profile than traditional candy bars. Peanut powder has been a wonderful substitute for peanut butter now that I found the brands I like (I mix two different types and add a pinch of salt - always satisfies my peanut butter cravings for much less calories). Of course, there are some things I do not even care to find substitutes for, like chocolate. I eat the real deal, but I'm perfectly OK having a few squares. Mostly because I get to have it every day.
So, to sum up, for me, indulging my cravings instead of fighting them has helped curb them. I don't "crave" sweets anymore. Sometimes there are days when I chose to spend my 300 calories on something else. This doesn't trigger a chocolate craving because I've been having plenty of it and will continue to have it again in the following days.
Basically, no food is off limits. If I can't find a perfectly satisfying low calorie option as a substitute, I budget my calories to include the actual food I want. Maybe that means having a smaller lunch that day, or skipping it entirely, to accommodate it, but that's OK with me.
Also, I no longer think of food as something I can or cannot have. I can have anything at all, I just choose to not have some things. To me, "cannot have" implies I don't have control, but "choosing" not to have something is empowering and doesn't make me feel that staying within lower calories for weight loss is a punishment or a chore (something I've struggled with in the past).
Finally, it has really helped me to have fitness-related goals, not just weight goals. It's so much easier to turn down cookies my friend keeps offering when I know that I am training to get faster at running. Sure, I can have the cookie, but I'd rather spend my calories on a nice bowl of blueberries and cottage cheese because these foods will fuel my body better than the fatty cookie. I have options and choices, not restrictions. Realizing this has been very liberating in many ways.
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