This is a great thread!

1. I don't keep anything at all in the house that is not on plan. DH and I are both on the same plan. He eats off plan sometimes, but he only does it during the work day or when we eat out, so he doesn't bring anything into the house that isn't on plan. If it's not here, I can't eat it!

2. It is ok to eat out, just choose carefully and be smart. If the restaurant has a menu online, I look before we go, if not, I just choose on plan foods. We cook most of our foods at home, but enjoy eating out about once a week.

3. When I don't "feel" like exercising, I just put on my work out clothes & shoes, then I just start. I usually end up doing my whole hour, sometimes more.

4. Occasionally I use the free version of FitDay to track my calories. I usually do this for a week or two. I like the visuals of the charts.

Pickles.

I am so confused when it comes to pickles. I love them as a snack and by calorie count they are obviously great. Now I know about the high sodium levels and increased water retention, but is there any other harm they cause while dieting?

Someone help?

One thing that has worked wonders for me is when ordering a salad, instead of pouring the dressing on, just dip your fork in the dressing and then spear your salad. It is AMAZING how little you need to still get the taste. I have been trying this for a month now, and each time at the end of the meal, I still have almost all of the dressing left.
As a matter of fact, I went out to eat the other day and ordered a salad, and the dressing was already mixed in the salad. It disgusted me how much dressing I used to eat. I couldn't even finish the salad.

Lots of Chicken and Water.

I go to the gym the exact SAME TIME the SAME DAYS each week.. so when the time rolls around I automatically get dressed and go.

I Do not buy diet soda because if I did I would never drink water.

I was just finishing up lunch and had a yogurt for "dessert"...but first I had to find my baby spoon... As totally weird as it is, when I eat yogurt, or a small serving of something similar, I use a baby spoon so that I eat it slower.

Does anyone have any tips/tricks they do to keep on plan?

PS: Oh I always use a salad plate for my meals too....an old WW trick from way back, that still works for me.

Oh crud, I misspelled tricks in my OP....LOL

I do this too. It makes me have smaller portions on my plate instead of one huge plate.

Sometimes I freeze my yogurt cups, they taste great and it certainly takes a lot longer to eat it this way than straight out of the fridge. Frozen yogurt on the cheap right in your own freezer!

Title fixed!

A warm drink after a meal -- like chai tea with a splash of skim milk and SF vanilla syrup -- satisfies my sweet tooth AND that "still want to eat something" feeling.

Thanks!

Lori - I do the baby spoon thing as well. People at work often think I'm a little nuts, but since I have 2 young children I guess they just think I ran out of silverware.

I'll have to think about other things....

I LIKE the baby spoon idea! And I too *partially* freeze my yogurt. I don't like it frozen solid though. Partially frozen it takes much longer to eat and I really enjoy it that way.

But I don't do the salad plate thing. In fact, I eat my salad out of a really big serving bowl. I eat an enormous portion of salad at one time. Same thing with my veggies. No small plate for me.

When I'm hungry, or just plain "munched", I always take a drink of water first. Slows me down, fills me up and I get in some more water (which I've been struggling with lately.)

Hmmm, I'm drawing a blank here. I know there's others. Maybe they'll come to me later.

OMG..ditto on the baby spoons...I used to use the rubber coated ones that children had as babies..I recently ungraded to beautiful tiny spoons I found at IKEA. I also have baby forks I bought a while back in Germany. I adore these with desserts!

We use our salad plates for our main dishes. Our dishes are HUGE. The salad plate actually fits a regular portion and the dinner plate fits probably 3+ servings!

I use mixing bowls to eat salads.

I use baby spoons for certain foods and prefer tea spoons to table spoons.

I eyeball meat servings by comparing them to my palm.


...I'll think of more...

from personal experience..take with a pinch of the proverbial, but to me:

drink water in general
drink water before eating
do nothing else whilst eating but focus on the food
exercise a lot
become disorganised so you don't have any food in the house anyway (accidentally discovered this one lately, a plan to save £££ gone too far lol)
fiber!
apples
don't demonize/ban anything completely/forever/anything like that
eat plenty of variety...it gets dull eating same thing all the time, could lead to recreational eating because you just want something different
get plenty of sleep to avoid "must eat for extra energy" food
being happy. Not so weird I guess, since if you're happy you want to do the best by yourself.

= not eating too much