I think whether you avoid or limit certain foods or not, and whether or not you use "substitution foods," it's important to avoid "deprivation."


I used to think that I was depriving myself if I avoided high-calorie, high-carb foods like cheesecake and crusty italian bread.

When I discovered that I was allergic to wheat, sensitive to grains, and that high-carb foods not only triggered what I called "rabid hunger" making me hungrier than having eaten nothing, they also caused flares of my health issue symptoms. For example if I eat wheat, I get a red, flaky, burning, itchy rash on my face and hands. If I continue to eat wheat and don't treat the rash with steroids, the rash goes from annoying to horrendous - the skin swelling, oozing yellow fluid which crusts (like impetigo), and burning and itching so badly I want to claw my face off. Sort of changes my perspective on being "deprived" of bread.

I had to decide what kind of deprivation I most wanted to avoid. Did I want to deprive myself of the joy of sweet and carby treats, or did I want to deprive myself of good health.

Not everyone has to make that choice. For me it was essential not to look at avoiding carby foods as deprivation, so I focused on ways to pamper myself within the diet that I feel physically best on.

I can have cheesecake if I want it, but the wheat and sugar in it, is going to make me sick. So giving up cheesecake, isn't really deprivation, it's good sense. Especially since I can make a cheesecake-substitution that comes pretty close to the real thing (to my current tastebuds anyway).

I mix sugar free jello pudding mix into greek yogurt. It satisfies my cheesecake craving, and tastes incredibly decadent to me.. No doubt it would taste like crap if I took a bite of it after "real cheesecake" but since I'm not eating them side by side, I don't feel deprived. I just feel as though I'm eating something incredibly decadent.

My husband brought home cream of coconut instead of coconut milk. Unlike coconut milk, cream of coconut is very high-carb, and calorie 130 calories for 1 ounce. I've been using it like liquid gold, drizzling a very small amount (about 50 calories worth) over low-fat greek yogurt, and crumbling in one small macaroon cookie (also about 50 calories). WOW is it 200 calories of pure decadence.


I now shop for fruit like I did higher-calorie gourmet treats. I splurge on the best whenever I can. I get just as much pleasure out of a honeycrisp apple as I did higher-calorie, higher-carb treats. And after avoiding some high-calorie foods, they now don't taste as good as they did when they were everyday components of my diet. Snack chips are a good example for me. I used to love them, now they feel really greasy in my mouth, like Captain Crunch cereal. I loved it as a kid, but as an adult I realize I never noticed the "grease slick" it leaves on the roof of my mouth.




I'm starting to ramble, but my main point is that it doesn't matter whether you choose smaller portions of higher-calorie foods, or larger portions of lower-calorie foods. It doesn't even matter if you set some foods completely off-limits (whether they're off-limits because you don't portion-control well, or because you have an allergic reaction to them). Regardless of your choices, you have to choose a way of eating or a mindset in which you don't feel deprived.

I don't think your menu is giving you adequate nutrition. If you want to lose weight and be healthy, you have to be willing to change the way that you are currently eating because that is what made you fat in the first place.

Personally, I go through a lot of back and forth. I can't deny that some of the foods I eat on a regular basis probably qualify to most people as "diet foods", but that comes with a big note, which I'll get to below.

I won't eat "diet food" simply because it's "diet food". Something that is fat free or reduced fat or lower calorie or lower carb actually has to taste good enough for me to want to eat it regularly. If I only eat it because it's "diet food", but hate the taste or even only tolerate the taste then that defeats the purpose... I might as well not eat it at all!

There are some products that I actually prefer reduced fat or fat free. Most dairy products I actually prefer as reduced fat (like my 2% cottage cheese). But I do NOT like fat free cheeses (save feta - but I love the tart taste of FF feta). I've been drinking skim milk since I was 5, so when I do have milk that's a higher percentage it tastes like heavy cream to me. Yet, there are some hard/brick cheeses that are so absolutely heavenly that only the full fat normal versions will do.

Over the course of many years what has happened is that I end up finding foods that taste good, but also that aren't going to rob me of all my daily calories (or Points). That doesn't necessarily mean that they're all "diet foods". Most aren't. A lot of them end up being smaller serving sizes.

Like with my breads, I get a couple brands that are just sliced a little thinner. Same type of bread, mostly. Just smaller.

I do try to avoid anything packaged specifically for snacking. I find that when I go to grab those types of packs that what ends up happening is I eat mindlessly, and wondering where the pack went. I'd much rather count out a couple of normal crackers... slice up some delicious Dubliner cheese... and put some grapes in a bowl. That's a snack I WILL pay attention to, and those are all real foods.

I have always thought of light yogurt as a treat...it is so delicious, and I love that I get to treat myself daily! I have always used skim milk, and we stopped having 2% in the house when our daughters turned 4.

I tried fat free french vanilla creamer and discovered I actually had to use more than the regular french vanilla...making the calorie count higher, so I switched back.

I feel like I eat normal foods. I do not have special meals for me and another meal for my kids, so I want it to be healthy for all of us.
I spent a lot of the day out of the house so my food choices were limited to what I could grab and go, but todays menu was...

Breakfast
multiple coffees with french vanilla cream 150
granolla bar 140
banana 100

Lunch
whole wheat pasta with meat and tomato sauce 350
more coffee and french vanilla creamer 50

Snack
sweet n salty granolla bar 210
grapes 80

Dinner
2 cheese sticks 160
green peppers 25
tomato 50
apple 100

Smores 140

Vanilla low fat yogurt 80

I think I'm a mix. I eat whole grains, lots of veggies, light dressing, light olive oil mayo, and my dessert type things are typically Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, frozen yogurt, or no sugar added ice cream.

On the other hand, while I make a lot of recipes from skinnytaste.com for dinner, I also have things like cheeseburgers on the grill (tomorrow night) with chips and onion dip, pizza, lasagna...

Like a pp, I try to have basically the same thing for breakfast (granola bars) and lunch (sandwich with baby carrots and Greek yogurt dip) and choose from the same general pool of snacks during the day (light cheese sticks, low fat yogurts or Greek yogurt, whole grain Wheat Thins, snap peas...).

ETA: I really want to eat in a way that is sustainable for life... I like crap food too much to completely cut it out of my diet, so I aim for mostly healthy stuff with crap in moderation. ;) Some days are better than others, but I really don't ever want anything to be completely off limits or I won't be able to stop thinking about that food..l

We eat pretty healthy (whole grains, little meat, lots of fruit and veg) and I make most everything from scratch. That's the normal for my household.

I don't buy diet foods. I try to avoid overly processed foods with unpronounceable ingredients... so that cuts out pretty much everything with the word diet on it.

I buy full-fat dairy. Neither DH or myself actually drink milk. I just use milk in recipes. Yogurt is plain and full fat, if I can find it. Otherwise I buy 2%. I hate the fact that most yogurt is fat free. Yuck!

Salad dressings I make myself. If I need a really low cal salad dressing, I'll use salsa. Fat-free dressing are not tasty, so why bother?

So, yes, I eat normal. I eat my normal. ;) I just work it into my daily calorie allotment.

The only "diet" foods I buy are fat free milk and yogurt. I'm on such low calories a day and am a volume eater, so if I can save 50-80 cals to "splurge" on a bigger salad, I will do it!

I've recently realized that finding "substitutes" for indulgences (such as low fat ice cream, fat free Jell-O, Diet Coke and sugar substitutes) is only putting a bandaid on the real problem. I've decided to cut out all that junk on a daily basis completely.

I've realized the whole "I don't want to feel deprived" thing is a bad mentality for me. Removing crap from my diet isn't depriving me. It's making way for more of what I should be eating.

I eat all of the same foods, chicken nuggets and chips, chicken kebabs, ice cream, chocolate, bread and butter - I just count It all and make sure I'm not going mad, I'm still losing a pound a week with no exercise so its all good with me! I just make sure if the options there that I have something healthy, but weill never restrict myself because that's when it becomes a painful diet!

I am eating normally and watching my calories. I'm tired of depriving myself over the years but there are things that I will not allow in my current diet because I feel that they are not good for me nutritionally.

I eat real food myself. I really can't stand artificially thickened "fat-free" products like mayonnaise, salad dressing, sour cream, and whatnot.

I'd rather just eat a small amount of the real thing, or none of it at all. I don't need mayonnaise and salad dressing in my life so badly, when I can season things with hot sauce, mustard, vinegar, spices, etc. that actually taste good and aren't factory-processed gelatinous glop. Same thing for ersatz desserts like diet ice cream, diet cookies, or whatever other sorts of treats there are out there. For me, it's better to not eat dessert at all most days - or eat something like fruit if I want sweetness - than it is to fill my fridge and cabinets with junk food that happens to have its fat replaced by gelatin and its sugar replaced by artificial sweeteners. Those things don't even sound appetizing to me!

Fat-free yogurt is a different animal - at least a quality brand of fat-free yogurt is just real yogurt made out of skim milk. (Some of the popular brands of fat-free yogurt are filled with gelatin and artificial sweeteners - I don't find those appetizing at all.)

Now, when I say I eat real food, that doesn't mean I eat all real foods, or that I eat them with abandon. Obviously I make very careful choices and exercise portion control. But I have managed to lose 100+ pounds without relying on any sort of "diet food" product. And for me, I really couldn't have done it any other way.

I guess that some of the diet food doesn't taste different to me b/c I'm been eating since I was 11... when I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. I don't taste a difference in the light olive oil mayo and regular mayo. I don't taste a difference in ff or light dressings vs full fat (with exceptions for some nasty brands I won't try again). I don't taste a difference in ff sour cream vs regular. I prefer skim milk b/c that's what I grew up using. Same with diet soda.

I think everyone's idea of "normal" food is different, and my normal diet is someone else's idea of mad deprivation. I don't eat so-called diet foods; I don't eat processed foods anyway, which for me includes things like ready-made salad dressing. I'm being stricter about wholegrains than I used to be, which was really just a matter of making the effort to find varieties that I liked. It's a pity steel-cut oats aren't available in the UK, incidentally.

The one thing I can think of which I wouldn't consider part of my usual diet is protein powder. I've been advised to increase my protein intake, but most protein sources (bear in mind here that I'm vegan, although this seems to be true universally) are high in fat. And I need to keep the fat levels low because of the gallstones. So I'm adding a tablespoon of soy protein isolate to my breakfast porridge, and on the days when I don't have porridge, I've discovered that I can hide it nicely in coffee substitute (those ones made of assorted roasted grains, chicory and the like). I'm not mad on the flavour of the soy protein isolate, I'm planning to try a rice one when I've used up the current packet and see if it's more versatile.

I've also invented a recipe for chocolate peanut butter balls which includes some protein powder too. I make up a nice big batch, make the balls tiny, and they are great little snacks for when my blood sugar dips.

My eating is more structured these days. Dinner tends to be the more "normal" meal, as I'm quite likely to be eating with my partner. For breakfast, I ate a variety of things before, and now I'm more likely to stick to porridge as I do better on it. For lunch, the plan tends to be soup and/or salad, or a stuffed pepper with a small salad. It's all the type of food I'd eat normally, I'm just planning it better, making up batches of meals divided into portions and so forth.

Well I don't eat any 'diet' foods but I eat lots of veggies and fruits, whole grains and legumes. I watch my fat intake but still eat things like avocados and nuts.

I get a big kick out of your posts. You always throw out a blunt one or two sentences of judgment, normally with no back-up to your opinions. It's hilarious because regardless of how unhelpful it is, you keep at it--Priceless! :lol::lol:

Actually, historically, I have always gotten burned out when I tried to do formal, gym-type workouts. Even when I have forced myself to do them, I hated every minute of it (except for the first few months when the weight was coming off fast; after that, I didn't want to do it anymore). About 5-6 years ago when I was thin (before I regained all my weight and stayed fat for 5 years), I can clearly remember getting up at 4:45 a.m. to get ready to go to the gym, and thinking to myself as I dragged myself out of bed, "I cannot possibly do this for the rest of my life! Does it really have to be this hard?" For years I didn't listen even when I my husband would tell me that weight loss was mainly about diet and ask me, "How did women in the 1930's - 1950's stay thin when most didn't formally work out?"

That's why this time around, I decided that I would have to do only activity that I enjoy and/or that would do double-duty with another activity. I had my husband construct a partial "desk" for my treadmill, and I walk anywhere from 3 - 6 miles, 6 days a week on that while I do other work on my computer (or even while I browse). Google "tread desk" and you'll get some hits for this, if you're interested. Also, this summer, I rediscovered riding my bike, which I actually like to do. I didn't rejoin my gym, but over the past few weeks, I have decided to take one fitness class per week there that I like; my gym allows me to pay per class, so if I ever don't feel like going, I don't have to. Also, when I don't have any computer work to do on my tread-desk and the weather isn't conducive to cycling, I can always find at least 1 - 2 hours of housework that need to me done, and that really is a workout! Doing all of this has almost completely eliminated the "dread" factor of exercising for me. I can see myself doing this for the rest of my life.