An experiment
 

I havent been feeling the happiest lately cause of my apparent stall on the scale. So the last week I've just ate what I wanted but I would put down what I ate and the weight/measurements etc and add it up at the end of the day, so i wasn't watching what I was eating throughout the day, but just keeping an end of the day tally of the damage. But after a week of this , of just eating when I was hungry and what I want , the average calories I eat on a day of 'whatever and however much i want' is roughly 1200. sometimes as low as 1000 and my highest was 1500 (one day of that). But almost everyday was 1200ish exactly. So now I'm like how did I ever become so fat in the first place as I obviously do not have that big of an appetite. Fastfood. Thats all I can figure. I dont eat fastfood or junk food anymore so what I do eat just isn't enough calories for me to blow it on my diet. I even used whatever portions I wanted and would have used in the past. So junkfood and fastfood is all I can figure. Maybe thats the reason others have gotten so big when in reality they don't have large appetites?

The thing about fast food that keeps the scale up is because it tends to be high in sodium and calories. If you really are only consuming 1000-1500 calories and are overweight, then perhaps you need to have your thyroid checked? Of course fast food is also devoid of proper nutrients but if you keep calories low, then there should be weight loss, regardless of which foods you eat. I wish you the best of luck in figuring it out.

I do eat a sausage biscuit from a small, local fast food place nearly every morning. It doesn't seem to affect me. But, if I eat a kid's hamburger from the same place, the rest of the day is a battle between my will to eat within my calorie budget and my sugar and carb cravings. Even though the burger itself is only 340 calories, it can easily blow my entire day.

I find it very easy to stay within my calorie budget of 1700 a day, as long as I stay away from trigger foods. For me, this means no carbs at breakfast, no fast food burgers or fries and no soda. All set me up for a day of obsessing about candy bars and more fast food. Point being, your appetite is low now, but it might not have been in the past before you began this journey and became more aware.

Your post confuses me. When I ate fastfood I was consuming more calories than I do now without, hence why i am overweight now is because of my past fastfood eating...you don't stop eating fastfood and automatically become thin :P My point was when I did eat fastfood I did not count the calories in those foods thus while eating what I want in a diet that included fastfood I was vastly heavier than I am now and now eating what I want on a diet that does not have fastfood my calories are low enough that If I had always avoided fast food I would not have been fat in the first place. Obviously fastfood isn't the only cause so lets replace fastfood with 'high calorie dense' foods. For example the volume of food I can eat if I do not eat high calorie dense foods is a lot more than if I did eat high calorie dense foods. It seems the volume of food I eat has remained the same but what has changed is the calories because what I eat now is not calorie dense. Am I explaining myself better???

Have you seen any of the "Volumetrics" type eating plans... that sounds a lot like what you're describing...

I agree, CherryQuinn. While I was a chubby child during puberty, I don't have a huge appetite and I didn't really get heavy until trying fast food (thank my ex husband for that introduction WHILE I was pregnant, lol).

If some of us were just more nutritious with our choices, we may find that we don't have much of a hunger/appetite problem at all, and that we are much more intuitive than we thought.

ETA: I naturally follow more of a volumetrics eating style as Tripswitch mentioned.

HERE IS A LINK explaining how I do it.

Yes it would seem I'm just naturally on volumetrics lol. The type of food I eat is not calorie dense and in order to eat like 2000 calories of it id have to just have a bowl of food in front of me all day lol. I ate around the clock yesterday , I ate so much I disgusted myself , trust me when I say it was a lot of food. Made myself sick it was so much, and when I added it all up-1585 calories.

I really feel like eating that way is the key to success. I, like you, automatically do it. When I'm cooking I first look to my produce.

This morning, for example, I made an egg white scramble that had three kinds of pepper, mushrooms, spinach, and scallion. It was a huge bowl and it ended up being about 150 calories WITH full fat cheese and a piece of turkey bacon.

It's automatic because I've been doing it since I learned to cook 17+ years ago. I know that my five year old sees it and I think - HOPE - that she will also do the same. It's just the way we eat, no "diet" necessary.

Very interesting!

I can't blame fast food, I've never really liked it. But I do know how I got fat, so no mystery there lol

In addition to the fast food, your appetite may have been larger when you were larger. You've been quite successful and have lost a lot of weight, so your body and brain have likely adjusted to the smaller quantities of food. You're used to eating less both mentally and physically now, when you weren't in the past.

CherryQuinn, I apologize for misunderstanding your post. You're absolutely right....eating lower calorie (healthier) foods in larger volumes will be a lot more satisfying than smaller amounts of high density (junk) food. No need to have your thyroid checked! ;) I've been up since 4am and am chronically sleep deprived, so that's my excuse. ;) Congrats on your loss and healthier life style.

The composition of fast food has a deleterious affect on your satiety and hormones, it's quite well documented. The combination of sweet/fatty/salty is a killer for many of us, both in terms of our cravings and the actual chemical impact on the body. Some folks have bodies more sensitive to this than others - there are some people for whom a calorie is just a calorie, and some who experience havoc from a restaurant burger that they never encounter from a home cooked one.

Both results are valid :)

I too wonder if this is the case.

its possible but either way whether its not eating calorie dense foods so even if i eat like a pig i dont gain weight or i just naturally now have a smaller appetite and thus probably wont gain weight back..i wont gain weight back so its an experiment with a good outcome id say :)

This is so true for me, just a few bites of that stuff and I am craving stuff all day. There is something in that kind of food that just sets me off-kilter. Also unfortunately I have used that kind of eating to deal with stress so it plays with my mind in other ways too. There are so many pieces to the weight loss puzzle, and it is different for everyone.