Been doing perfect for nearly a month on plan. Then Friday we went on our vacation and my DH suggested taco bell. I ate three tacos which is one too many. The next day we took our child to chuck e cheese and I ate 6 pieces of pizza(each slice is about half the size of normal) and had only planned to eat two but I was so so hungry. I've had that gnawing hunger pain for a month and I was tired of it. So we got pizza at our hotel the next day and went to red robin the day after that and I was totally careless even ordering a milkshake. I've gained 4lbs in 4 days and it took me 30 to lose 10 . I am so happy when thinking of where to go, what will taste good and love eating it. Where did my motivation go?? It's like I'm angry at dieting and rebeling. I hate lettuce and peppers and tons of things everyone fills up on on their meal plans so instead I eat my tiny kids ready meal or mini pizza and chug water but I'm so hungry all the time. I'm a picky eater and won't eat: carrots, celery, mushroom, onion, cucumber, wheat bread, eggs, lettuce, peppers, sauces/seasonings, oatmeal, cereal, chicken, fish, etc. I could go on forever. I try soups and salads and I end up not eating at all then because it's so off putting. I could never join meal programs like Jenny Craig cuz I only ever like one or two things.

I feel hopeless.

Don't derail now!

Tacos and pizza and fast foods like that are high in sodium -- that 4 lbs is easily water weight.

Get back on track, drink lots of water, and start exploring different foods/cooking methods to see if you can expand your range.

GL!
A.

I find bad foods like that are addicting. If you start, it's really hard to stop. That being said, you're in control of your food choices, and anything else you say is just an excuse. Food doesn't make you happy. Food releases endorphins and that's about it.

Being in control of your eating and eating clean makes you truly happy.

Make the choice to eat clean for three days. You can do it for three days and after those three days, it'll be much easier to say no to unhealthy food. Once you start eating clean and exploring different tastes, you'll find that you'll like them more. I've found that I love a lot of veggies that I never thought I'd like. You need to start eating them, and your taste buds will change.

Good luck and don't give up! Three days!

Honestly?

I think you're doing it all for the wrong reasons. Losing weight is great (obvioulsy ) but at the same time, what you REALLY should be doing this for is to get healthy. To eat healthy. To BE healthy.

There's plenty of things that I couldn't stand that I now eat because a) I needed the extra nutrients to be healthy and live better and longer b) I needed things that would fill me up because those tiny portions of "yummy food", as you said, do NOT fill you up, c) I've actually come to LIKE them a LOT more now that my body has gotten over itself and realized its not a child thats only going to get what it wants, when it wants it.

I.E. - I kicked the bad food addiction.

I mean, sure, the heroin user wants their smack but is it good for them?

Heck to the no.

If you want to try healthier eating, I'd do that and maybe see if your tastes change, or if there are healthy things you can incorporate.

If not, I would strongly suggest portion control. You can eat anything, just not as much of it. My mother has done very well on this.

I calorie count as well as try to eat healthy. But sometimes I just want a burger, so I count it in my daily calories and eat it. But then I'm not getting enough calories to gain weight, which keeps me losing weight. But you can do this without calorie counting, too.

Good luck!

Channel that rebellion into something constructive like seeking out good stuff to eat that isn't the endless salad bar that you might be perceiving a diet/way of eating to be. There're a lot of foods I don't like either (mushrooms, peppers, celery, tuna, salmon, shrimp, "ribby" lettuces, cucumbers, flavorless chicken, I could go on and on). So I don't eat them. I'm losing weight, not punishing myself.

But I don't look much at what I can't have on my plan. Instead, I focus almost all my efforts on what I CAN have, what I should add to my meals, what I can sample to stretch my cooking repertoire and palate a little. When I was a little girl, I was a picky eater who ate nothing but corn, mashed potatoes, french fries, and fried chicken skin (surprisingly, I was a skinny kid). I'm not a kid any more, I am a grown-*** woman and I wanted to eat like a grown-up so I experimented until I found a set of grown-up foods I liked.

I eat pizza, but now instead of eating crappy fast-food pre-fab disgusto-pizza, I eat Wolfgang-Puck-worthy foo-foo pizza that I cook myself like I'm freakin' Iron Chef Italian.

Same goes for Mexican fare and Indian food and classic French cooking and some American favorites and--well, you see where I'm going with this. I've decided to spoil myself and no longer settle--yes, settle--for the cheaply-made foods that made me fat in the first place. I can't cook everything, and yeah, the cheap stuff has a lot of charm (Taco Bell tastes good when you have the jones for it), but I can come up with a reasonable enough facsimile that I can drive by TB without having to "make a run for the border."

You really, really don't have to punish yourself by trying to choke down stuff you can't stand. You just need to look harder to find some foods you DO like that also fit with losing weight. Keep an open mind about trying new foods, give them a chance to grow on you, and look into cuisines that have a tradition of serving up flavorful meals with fewer calories.

There are days I couldn't shove a salad down my throat with a jackhammer, but that doesn't mean I swing by McDonald's instead; there's a LOT of space between cheerless grim greens and all-out fast-food feasts.

I am back on track as far as today goes with portion control and getting on the elliptical/weights like I should. I am going to keep choosing different foods or prep for them and hope it fills me up more. I'm not sure why I am so picky in general. I do feel ok with calorie counting and even the hunger but I think choking down things I hate is getting to me and also making me mad if I don't eat it and then waste the money.

But, I will do anything to get the weight off. It's the extra weight I hate dragging my body down more than having any interest in a super healthy lifestyle. It's sort of interesting because I do feel like I am doing it for the wrong reasons(but i don't necessarily care?) and hoping that along the way the benefits of weightloss will help me seek health in general. I suppose I've never had a healthy lifestyle as far as food. I would always eat whatever I wanted and then diet for however many days it took to lose whatever weight I gained or extra calories I took in and then do it all over again.

I have read some really good tips from you all here though. I appreciate the support. I'm sorry to be in such a weird mood about it, I just feel discouraged or angry I let my body get into this mess. I think if I ate nutrient rich foods instead of hardly anything with a multivitamin I wouldn't be so grumpy and have headaches and then long for the rush of eating a fattening meal and those endorphins. I'm also missing the social interaction of eating with friends or family just as a side note. I find it easier to stay on track when I don't go out to eat because it's too hard to control the exact calories even if I look it up ahead of time, you never know how correct those numbers are. So, I am just missing the old binging days and carelessness I guess. I think I easily get addicted and go right back into that lifestyle so I need to set myself up for success instead of failure.

Don't beat yourself up for eating food that's designed to make you want more of it. Fast food and snack food manufacturers spend billions on research and development to figure out just what makes a taco light up the pleasure centers of your brain. They light up my brain too, which is why it's easier to say no to the first bite than to eat "just a little" and then say no to the second bite. It's what makes going out to eat so tough too, especially in the beginning--it's so much easier to make on-plan choices when the off-plan (but tasty!) ones are right there on the table.

Some food is just too "more-ish" for me to eat while I'm losing weight, so I tell myself, "Taco Bell is in no danger of going out of business; they'll still be here once I've lost the weight. I'm going to pass on tacos right now. Maybe I'll get a couple once I'm smaller." And for me, "later" might mean "never," but if I just tell myself, "NO! I will NEVER eat another TB taco! Bad girl, Nola!" I feel trapped and resentful and angry that I can't just be one of those skinny chicks for whom a taco is JUST a taco and not the start of a deprivation/pleasure/guilt/self-hate spiral.

As soon as I drive past the place, their tacos are once again just tacos.

Preparation really helps, too. Can you build a list of restaurants you can go to and enjoy something lower-calorie, but tasty so you can still go out with friends/family? You shouldn't have to miss out on social activities. Frankly, if the calorie count is off by a little, it's worth it sometimes to have the experience of going out with the people you love. I just count an extra hundred calories or so above what the listed calories are--you know, just in case the chef's hand slips and I get an extra shaving of cheese--and enjoy.

Some days it does suck to recall going out, eating and drinking whatever, not noticing or caring about calorie counts or tracking or any of that. Eating still has to be fun, but it can no longer be totally unconscious; that really limits the choices we have if we want to lose. But the other choice is to continue to be unconscious and eating whatever comes to hand, gaining weight, and feeling worse both physically and emotionally.

I feel you on the "angry rebellion" phase of weight loss. While I do like most of the untouchable foods you hate, some days I really miss going to a restaurant, ordering a pasta entree in a heavy cream sauce, eating it guilt-free until I can't fit any more and then taking the rest home. It's natural to feel that way about food and to overromanticize "the old way."

I suppose it boils down to "would you rather eat whatever you want all the time and be fat, or would you rather learn to eat healthily and be thin?"