My most important rules are to eat slow and not eat until I'm stuffed. And resist the urge not graze all day long - I'm not talking about mini-meal every 3 or even 2 hours, I mean grazing all day long. Haven't done it since I started 4 1/2 months ago . Also, while I may be flexible enough to substitute a little yogurt, fruit and nuts for dinner when I'm just not very hungry for some reason, I will *not* just have a pint of ice cream or batch of cookies or bag of crackers for dinner. At this point, the urge is pretty easy to resist, but I could not say it is entirely gone.

My general rules/guidelines for me are pretty easy for me to follow.

1. Track and account for every single bite in Fitday.
2. Minimum 45 minutes a day dedicated to exercise.
3. Get the most out of my calories, in nutrition and volume.

This is a great post! I've also gradually placed a few family rules into effect, which helps tons.

Like eating in the car, I just don't, I never have. I'm sort of particular about my car and enjoying my food when I eat. My son isn't allowed to, therefore it's unreasonable for me to. We don't even drink in the car (as a matter of fact there are no cupholders in mine).

Same goes for other places, no eating in the living room, bedrooms, ect. Snacks are okay at my son's play/work table, but everything else is taken at the family table.

Fast food and restaurants are sometimes okay. We all need convenience now and then. But again, I don't want my son or husband eating that stuff often, it wouldn't be fair for me to do it.

My son and husband each pick out one treat when we grocery shop. This not only lessens temptations in the house but saves the grocery budget and helps my son to understand the difference between treats and real food. We all shop together to make 'healfy becisions' (healthy decisions) as my son calls it.

Sometimes placing 'light rules', nothing too restrictive on my guys, like good nutrition sense has helped me along. I need to be a good example.

When I was eating terribly and gaining weight I felt constant guilt over my son, what I was teaching him. By enforcing a few gentle family rules we've really benefited.

I agree with FB...this is a great post! My "rules" are as follows:

1. No pizza in the house
2. No chips in the house
3. Log everything that goes in the mouth to TDP
4. Learn to recognize the difference between hunger, fullness, and stuffed-ness

Numbers one and two are non-negotiable. I simply have no self-control and am not able to limit my serving size when it comes to these two things. I can eat a bag of chips for dinner...a family sized bag of doritos in one sitting. Same thing with pizza...I don't eat a few slices or heck, even half. I eat the whole thing, regardless as to the size of it. I've learned to recognize my triggers and banish them from my shopping cart!

Number 3 is relatively easy and the last one is a work-in-progress. For me, being stuffed WAS my definition of being "no longer hungry." This has been my toughest struggle, but I'm working my way through it.

Be CAREFUL! I find that when I start to make rules for myself I get discouraged when I break them - even if they are silly like no eating in the car. Then that discouragement is a slippery slope and I start thinking "well, I messed that up - might as well eat this _________ ", and that feeling of failure festers. I say cut yourself a break and look for ways to make it easy for yourself. Look for ways to allow yourself things - like keeping portioned healthy snacks available that you can have whenever you want. This dieting thing is hard enough, right??

I think if you're going to make rules for yourself (if you find that you must) then set them positively not negatively (rather than "I will not eat in the car," perhaps, "I will eat at a table"). That way, instead of feeling guilty when you don't follow your rule, you will feel pride when you do.

As I learned in behavioral psych, rewards tend to work better than punishments.

I have a rule about eating my food very slowly and really enjoying the taste and texture. When I weighed 272 I ate so fast. This rule helps me feel like I'm nourishing and refueling my body, not just dieting.

I did give up both fast food and eating in my car, but it wasn't really a rule, more of a lifestyle change that I needed.

I was just thinking that although I've avoided "rules," I've embraced many, many "suggestions." And I'm thinking, well what is the difference?"

I guess for me, rules mean that I'm "supposed" to feel bad, if I can't or don't follow through. And more often than not, "rules" are things that are necessary, but NOT fun, in fact the antithesis of fun (don't jump on the bed, don't get dirty, clean your room....) Where suggestions are things I use to improve things in my life - make them easier, more enjoyable....

Like eating more slowly. It's not a rule, because rules by definition are "no fun." Whereas, even if I eat something that is maybe not the best choice, I better get every drop of enjoyment out of it by eating it very, very slowly, and concentrating on how wonderful the flavor is. I recently noticed that the "worse" a food is for my food plan, the faster I tend to eat it, and I think it goes back to my early childhood (and throughout my whole life time) that if I "shouldn't have it," I had to eat it quickly and hide the evidence as quickly as possible. And even when there was no one to hide the evidence from, it was as if I needed to eat it fast before I changed my mind.

Whereas now, if I can remember to eat EVERYTHING very slowly, and really concentrate on the wonderful flavor and texture and aroma of the food, I feel like I'm eating so much more and getting so much more enjoyment out of my food, than when I wasn't taking control of what I was eating. Even for less than perfect choices, I at least have a chance at realizing that I DON'T want to gorge myself.

And whether it starts out as a rule or a suggestion, if you do it enough, it starts to become a habit. I just thought of even better term than suggestion. From now on, I'm going to think of such behaviors as

Prospective Habits or Habits-in-training

FB, I love the "healfy becisions"!

I have a few rules. No eating off the kids' plates. A cup of veggies with dinner. Protein everytime I eat.

I am not perfect, and I sometimes choose to not follow these rules. When I go of my plan, my rule is: get back on immediately. I do not "punish" myself or undereat or overexercise to make up for missteps. So that's another rule, I guess!

It's hard to say sometimes! I guess another way I think about "rules" is just as choices. I can choose to eat slowly, for example, for various good reasons. And I can choose to eat fast. There are reasons for that too.

They might have to do with temporary external circumstances. Maybe I just have to be in a hurry. That might at first seem to be a good excuse (assuming it's not a habitual excuse), but really, I'm still making a choice. I'm deciding that getting somewhere on time is more important than eating slowly. By being aware of that, I'm less likely to let that one time make me feel guilty and give up.

Or I might choose to eat fast because I'm tired of the work it takes to make new choices into habits, and I had a bad day, and I just miss stuffing my face. Sounds like a terrible reason. But it's not half as bad if I make the choice consciously, knowing how it will make me feel better and how it will make me feel worse - as opposed to just doing it out of mindless habit, and even consciously refusing to stop and think about the reasons. I think after making that choice consciously, I'm in a better place to afterwards stand back and look at how it turned out, both good and bad, and let that influence my next choice.

That kind of choice can be dangerous, to be sure. It's awfully hard to be in a place where that kind of choice doesn't derail you, but it's not necessarily impossible. I don't think it moves you in the right direction, but compared to the choices you used to make, it might move you in the wrong direction more slowly . And sometimes your only realistic choice is between moving in the wrong direction more slowly or taking a nosedive. We walk before we run.

But it's by having the "rule" (or whatever term may be better, and rule probably isn't the best word) in the first place, that you have the guidance and awareness to even approach a situation as a choice instead of mindlessly repeating history instead of changing it.

And it's by acknowledging the benefits of a "bad" choice that you can stop viewing it (and worse, your very self) as a black and white failure, and instead see it as a learning experience. And if you don't acknowledge that you did in fact make a choice, you take away your power to change.

I really like the not eating in the car rule, since I tend to munch on random things while in the car (mainly salted sunflower seeds, bad, I know). I used to ALWAYS smoke while driving, so I think I've replaced smoking with more eating... so now that it's been almost 6 months since I quit, I think it's time to get rid of the bad habits when I quit the bad habit of smoking. Unfortunately we don't have a table in our apartment and have to eat in the living room if we want to sit while eating, any ideas about a rule to substitute with the TV one?

It was a strange example really, because we don't have a table either (though we do use tv trays, and hubby is always bugging me to TAKE a tv tray instead of balancing my plate on my lap - maybe he's got a point).

For me, it's about eating slowly and tasting my food. We do tend to eat watching tv, and I kept trying to say to hubby that we should turn the tv off while we eat, but that never seemed to work. So my focus is on paying more attention to the food than the tv, because when I focus on the show, it seems my plate is empty and I haven't really tasted what I ate.

The only hard-and-fast rule I have is "no sugar." Everything else is a guideline. But like some others, if I can get "no sugar" right, then the rest of my diet naturally falls into place.

While I have some rules and guidelines I follow, as above, I also try really hard not to allow myself to get overwhelmed. I'm not making choices for the rest of my life. I'm making choices for the next planned snack, and the next meal, and by extension the next day. Maybe I'll think about a few options for the next week. But I will not think about next week, or next month, or next year. My choices are right now. If I think about next week, I get overwhelmed and wonder if I can do it. But right now, I can do.

It's just the next meal. Protein, veg, and brown (whole grain carb). Maybe some fruit. That's all I worry about right now.

And when enough "next meals" have gone by, I find that I have much healthier habits overall, without having too many rules or guidelines.

Wow, a good thing to remember.

My rules are
to record everything I eat
to say 'no' when offered something between meals (it becomes an automatic response if I train myself that the answer is always 'no'; if I give myself options as to when I Might take what's on offer, then I always will)
to cook myself a small portion of X first, with the promise that I'll go back and cook more if I'm still truly hungry
to stay at a sensible calorie number and not be tempted to go too low (so sometimes I have to have a deliberate extra, because if I do the small portion thing above, I very rarely go back for more and can feel full on very little
and
(new rule for this time)
record weight gains as well as losses - I need to learn not to fear fluctuations, and also to understand why they happen