Oh and chocolate IS healthy??? Since when???? And even if it WERE healthy, if you're overeating it and it's causing you weight gain AND anxiety, where the heck is the health benefits?

I know it's chocolate - I mean it's CHOCOLATE... but believe it or not, after a few weeks, you won't miss it. It's got you hooked. You've got to break the hold it's got on you. As hard as it is to imagine, you really won't. And I'll second the 25 calorie hot chocolate. I have one or two every day.

And I'd be a total wreck with all those drugs, I mean snacks in my home too. What. The. Heck. Are. You. Thinking???

You wanna help out the kids? Fine. Give em' the money. They'll take it without you actually having to take the drugs, I mean the snacks, into your home.

I don't know, I always speak of how important it is to set oneself up for success. SEems to me you are setting yourself up for failure. Or at least unneeded torture.

Sweet potatoes, by the way, need nothing on them. Wrap them in foil, bake in the oven till tender. Why do they need butter, I don't get it???

And if you wanna put in a few days of 1000 (or 1200 for that matter) calories, you had best make sure each and every calorie is a filling, nutritious one. OTher wise it will be virtually impossible to stick with and impossible to enjoy - hence why you can't stick with it.

Take a deep breath here, take the plunge, rid your house of the drugs, I mean the junk. You won't regret it. You'll wonder why you were so hesitant. Anticipation is always worse than the actual event. You'll see. Do it!

Robin, I always love the tough love. ;) At first the hair on the back of my neck bristles...then I always take a step back and am always better for it. :D

I do not want to ban chocolate forever...but I can ban it until I reach goal, or at least maintenance. And knowing me, I'll want to continue the ban. You know me and my timeline commitments. :rolleyes: It's just easier to say, "Ok, I'll ban it until _____"

In addition, I need to plan better for veggies. I have weird issues with veggies, more OCD than anything, I think. I love them roasted, but that takes 20-30 minutes and when I'm searching for sweets I've generally passed the point where I can make myself wait...seriously. I've thought about having roasted veggies to reheat, but reheated veggies FEEL like they have no nutrients. Again, it's gotta be OCD. Cooked veggies in general do not feel right. In my mind they're supposed to be raw. But the raw veggies I eat are not filling to me: carrots, celery, broccoli. I can't have raw spinach or that would be an excellent solution! Peas, corn and green beans don't feel like veggies. :dizzy: Writing it out, I see that my thinking is bizarre.

I think it stems from the way my mom cooked vegetables. She didn't like them, but she was a good mom and made them for us anyway. All vegetables (broccoli, green beans, corn, peas...that was it) were boiled in a full pot of water for a full half hour. All nutrients were cooked out! And I knew it! Now I do not do that. I cook them so that they retain their nutrients. But it doesn't matter. If they're cooked, my brain is wired to think I took the nutrients out.

Eliana, I did something similar to what you're describing. I banned chocolate (and many other things!) during the time I was losing. Now that I'm maintaining I have one serving twice a week of either candy or ice cream. I'm happy with the one serving and it doesn't trigger me to want more. It's a trial and error thing; you'll find what works for you.

Eliana, have you tried sugar snap peas. They sell them in small snack size bags. I'm going to munch on some now. :)

This is when it's nice to have a church or club or workplace you go to. My husband got an itch in his bonnet to make cupcakes last week... when he KNOWS one of my trigger foods is unfrosted cake. Fortunately he made them on Saturday (two batches, no less! -- one yellow and one chocolate), and I was very happy to take them to church the next morning so people could enjoy them with their coffee (and so *I* didn't have to deal with them anymore).

With candy in the house (which DD and DH get weekly), I don't let it sit out. We have a "cookie jar" that's been repurposed as a "candy jar". So long as it's in there, I don't have to look at it. G's treats for her school lunch go in another cupboard. Out of sight, out of mind.

Sometimes, getting it out of the house completely is an option. Other times, the rest of the family will balk if you take away their treats, too, so a compromise is in order. If you can do it, putting stuff away out of sight can be very helpful. It is for me!

And for those things that I absolutely cannot have in the house, I just make them suck it up and go without. No Oreos allowed. You want 'em, you go buy 'em and eat 'em elsewhere. I compromise on ice cream, on chips, and on candy. I will not compromise on Oreos or Bugles.

I forgot to add the suggestion of trying raw cauliflower. I love it; eat it almost every day and find it very filling.

Good luck!

i don't boil any veggies, unless its in a soup.
if the veggies aren't filling. try new ones.
beans are the cheapest and most filling thing in the store. if you have to, count those as veggies.

Just as a suggestion, next time, just write a check directly to the organization you're trying to support.

When I was doing Girl Scouts forevers ago, that was the absolute best option anyways. We made about a $1 per box that was sold. When someone made just a donation, we didn't have to report it; therefore, we got to keep the whole amount. So, if you say "I don't want the cookies, but here is $10 to help support your troop" you're actually making a larger donation AND avoiding having all that junk in the house.

I really needed to read this post today. I have been feeling really down about how slow the weight loss has been lately, and a few weeks ago after re-evaluating my calories intake again, I realized I needed to cut some more calories. Which, btw, really ticks me off. You would think that as a reward for being smaller you could eat more, but as I get smaller I keep having to cut. It blows my mind that I am down to 1600 calories a day, I have no idea how some of you are doing it at 1000 to 1200 a day. By 2:00pm in the afternoon I am ravenous. I find my only way around it is to be super busy, so I now book all my meetings at work in the afternoon so I am not at my desk plundering through my drawers looking for a rice cake or a pretzel. I think I am going to check out calorie zig-zagging to see if that will help light a fire under the weight loss again. Either way though, even if it is slow, I refuse to give up. I was just so relieved to read it isn't just me!

Thanks for letting me vent, share, ramble!

You mentioned rice cakes and pretzels - if these are part of your diet - that could be a reason why you are ravenous. In order to not get hungry while adhering to a calorie budget you must really, really eat highly nutritious foods, because those nutritious foods are the ones that keep you full and satiated. Rice cakes and pretzels are empty calories which are not filling and you'll be starving in no time.

What does your menu look like? PErhaps we can help you to tweak it so you can get some more filling power from your calories. And don't forget snacks. If you're hungry at 2:00 - eat something. Something that's been planned, accounted for and filling.

And the reward for being smaller is that you are smaller ;). And with being smaller comes countless rewards and benefits. But yes, the smaller we are, the less calories we require to run. You may also want to try increasing your exercise.

Congratulations on your weight loss by the way. Phenomenal!!

It's SO much easier to increase exercise than it is to keep cutting calories.

For some yes, for others no. There is no one size fits all solution here.

Not every one can up their exercise so easily. There are time constraints.

There's also the combination of increasing exercise, decreasing calories.

Changing the quality of ones calories can also be helpful.

Interesting thread.

I've been struggling a lot with this concept lately. I'm not losing on 1200-1300 calories a day....and I DID experiment with 1000 calories per day during the month of July. I was staying by myself on a research fellowship and it was very hot. I switched to a vegetarian only plan and consistently stayed below 1200 for an entire month while running 2-3 miles about 5 days a week. During that month I think I lost 3 lbs.... but in "real life" while eating family meals, going to work, etc. etc. I could not sustain 1000 calories...

So, I veer back and forth. Sometimes I think that I have a sustainable healthy eating plan that I feel like I could manage easily for the rest of my life, and probably if I eat this way forever, I'll slowly shed the last 30 lbs I'd like to lose and that I should get out of the "mission to lose weight" mode now.

Other times I feel like I don't want to settle for where I am now and I think of all kinds of drastic solutions-- like liquid diets or very low calorie diets...

I am different from a lot of people here in that I can keep "bad stuff" in my house without any trouble. Right now, I have cookie dough in my fridge, candy lying on the coffee table right in front of me, and ice cream in my fridge.

I never touch the stuff-- it's on my mental "no" list and that's that.

Where I run into trouble is the stuff that can fit into my plan but that I might want to overeat-- recently, I've had some trouble with almonds. We have always kept them in the house and I've always stayed away from them, but then I started eating measured portions sometimes... mistake. Two weeks ago, I took a closed bag and put it away in the cupboard, out of sight out of mind, but then, yesterday I opened the cupboard to make a cup of tea and ended up eating a serving of almonds.

I don't know if that really answers your question Eliana. I don't have a problem with chocolate, but I do have foods I have trouble drawing the line with-- weird stuff like lentils that I simply cannot moderate....

If you really want to eat chocolate, maybe you should just incorporate it into your calories. It's only if you are eating too much that it becomes a problem.

I agree with the recommendation to have a planned, healthy snack for mid-afternoon. When I have a snack, I'm fine. If I don't, I'm on the hunt for chocolate. Some other ideas, half a green, red, yellow or orange bell pepper cut in strips (with hummus). Celery (with nut butter). Cherry tomatoes. 10 mixed nuts. 2% Cottage cheese. Low fat string cheese. Radishes.

I think the 1200 range is more for short folks. ;) I really do. Or maybe not just for short folks but for folks for whom that seems to be what the body runs on. I have experienced what it feels like to not have enough fuel. Once I was on a 26 mile bike ride and another time a 5 mile hike when I became sick, dizzy and near to passing out. That was scary. It meant I didn't have enough fuel. Contrast that with the energy I have every day on 1000-1200 calories and I know I must be ok. How I feel is more important to me than some caloric number.

I've thought about zig-zagging too. I kind of already do, without meaning to. :rofl: I also find that I eat the least on days I am the most busy.