I'm back on my diet (this time sticking to 1200 calories...before it was 1500), and I don't feel hungry, necessarily, but I want food. I walk by something that looks good, and I want to eat it, and I'm used to just eating it if I want it. Like today, I went to a Target that had a Starbucks in it, and I really wanted a vanilla latte, but it would have been that or my Morningstar sandwich for dinner. I chose the sandwich because I'm actually trying to do this right, but I did feel a bit sorry for myself .

Anyway, does this feeling go away? Or is it like alcoholics who can stay sober but never stop missing the drinks?

1200 is pretty hardcore unless you are totally sedentary.

I think it's like being an alcoholic who can stay off the sauce but misses it. HOWEVER I have to say that it is well worth it to stick to healthy habits because your body is happy when you fuel it with nutritious and balanced fresh stuff. You don't have to eat tofu salad for the rest of your life and NEVER HAVE CAKE AGAIN, but with practice your body becomes accustomed to eating healthily and actually rejects things like Starbucks lattes, super salty soups or fast food.

Well, when I doing things well, I actually feel a little deprived at the moment, and then proud, relieved and strong when I pass up something I didn't plan to eat.

But doing things well doesn't mean eating too little for your body. When people are larger, they need more fuel for their bodies. Eating 1200 calories is quite low for your weight. I started calorie counting at your current weight and lost regularly eating 2000 calories a day (going down in calories some as I lost). I lost 100 pounds in 55 weeks.

So, the deprivation you're feeling may also be related to not fueling your body enough.

It can be tricky to find the sweet spot, where you're losing weight at a nice, even clip, but giving yourself enough nutrients to make it through... and you can work in planned treats into that lifestyle. I get tall non-fat lattes at Starucks and they are just a bit over 100 calories.

I'm not sure I'll be able to stick to the 1200, but it seems like when I try to stick with 1500-1600 I'm actually hungrier. Doesn't make much sense, I know. I'll see how long I can keep this up, and if I start to feel legitimately hungry, maybe I'll bump it up. I'm just desperate to see some results!

I agree with the 1200 being too low. I've just done 30 days of it, as an experiment because I was getting bored. I was on, and have gone back to 1400.

I didn't feel deprived at all but that's because I'd already been dieting for 6 months, 96% of the time on plan, and my head has moved away from that kind of deprived resentment that I recognize very well!
However, I was Very Hungry a lot of the time, and it required effort and ingenuity and blddymindedness not to go over the limit.

For me, the yearning definitely went away as the pounds off began to accumulate. It doesn't stop me feeling hungry, occasionally, but it does stop me minding.

I've been at it really persistenly since May, and I already find my thought process changing a little bit. I know what you mean when you say you want it, because it's what you always would have done before without really even thinking about it. Now, usually, I don't think about some errant treat I see floating by, because it really is starting to be something I DON'T do anymore. Now instead of eating it without thinking about it, I don't eat it without thinking about it, only eat it if I AM thinking about it. I have caught myself a couple times almost just putting something in my mouth out of habit, but that is fewer and further between now.

All that said, the couple times I have actually gone off my plan and had some planned treat, it takes me a good couple days to get back in my new mindset. So if you are just starting back at it, you might have to squirm a little to get back that not-feeling-deprived thing. The deprived thing has definitely lessened its grip on me, though, the longer I'm at it. Not sure at all I could actually pull this off if it didn't.

For the record, I'd go back up to 1500 calories for now, really until you get your good habits really entrenched and start to get the not-deprived thing going on. Honestly, if you are white-knuckling it the entire way down, at some point you might snap (I know I would). Keep at it really consistently and I'm sure the deprived feeling will settle down.

Are you following any kind of nutrition plan? You are eating quite low calories as others have pointed out, and if you aren't packing a ton of nutrition into those calories, your body will feel deprived.

That said, a tall nonfat Vanilla latte only has 150 calories. http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks...177970&milk=61 If you don't have the flexibility for that in your day, and are choosing between that and your dinner, it doesn't sound like a sustainable plan.

Something like Weight Watchers that builds flexibility on top of a foundation of good nutrition might work for you (plus the milk in the latte helps meet your Good Health Guidelines for the day.)

The very fact that you say you are "back on your diet" as though it is some temporary thing that you'll go off of someday when you are better is of further concern. In order to make the changes necessary to get to a healthy weight from 300 pounds, you need to change the way you approach food and eating for the rest of your life (as we all do.) This is not a sprint, where you just need to cut back for a bit to lose 5 pounds, this is a marathon. You need to build a sustainable plan that will get you through the long haul.

Maybe a visit to a nutritionist and then starting a plan with some support like weight watchers would help you on your journey.

Good luck!

A lot of really good thoughts from the posters here!

My thoughts about "deprivation" - first of all, I try VERY hard to distinguish between real, physical hunger, and psychological cravings. It's not easy. I call myself a recovering emotional eater, which means I can't always tell the difference. When I first started this, my initial solution was to only eat at designated meal/snack times. If it wasn't one of those times, then I didn't get to eat. When it was one of those times, I ate filling, nutritious, previously planned food. That technique has been very helpful to me as I've separated hunger from desire.

Now that I'm further in this journey, I've reintroduced treats and "fun" foods. Key for me - they are planned and counted and tracked. I try not to eat in reaction to anything (stress, good mood, bad day, celebration), I try to be proactive. I think about my day/week/month in advance and plan when my high calorie days - still part of my plan - are going to be. I think through what food migh be involved and how I will or won't incoporate that food into my daily life.

This is a really long way to say - I still get to eat what I want. I don't get to eat it every day, but it's not off limits or forbidden. Sometimes it doesn't "feel fair" that others can eat chocolate bars, or pizza, or hamburgers and fries every day and I can't, but that's life.

So I can't eat junk every day. You know what I do get to do every day? Wear my new size 6 jeans.

Which is my second thought about deprivation, one that has been expressed around here many times and others say it better, but I'll take a shot. Either way I go, I'm going to be be depriving myself of something: it could be junk food, or it could be good health. Honestly, I'm not going to be able to have both. I have it in my power to choose! And I choose health and fitness and being in control of my food.

Hope this helps! Good luck - I do know how you feel.

It actually makes sense to me, though I can't tell you scientifically why. I think it has to do with your body becoming more efficient on the lower calories...good for survival, bad for weight loss. Maybe (truly grasping at straws here) but maybe your body thinks you are experiencing a famine and wouldn't it be cruel if your body added hunger to that famine? But when you increase the calories the body thinks now it's time to fill up and store it away.

To combat the hunger and cravings, the best thing to do is stop eating the things you crave, namely white processed things. Eliminating sugar and overly processed foods is an extremely effective way to stop the cravings.

To answer your question, "Does that deprived feeling ever go away?"...

My honest answer is NO..not until you stop depriving yourself! However, that is not a license to go hog wild either. Plan a meal every week of some food that you really really enjoy, but is not on-plan. Eat it, enjoy it...savour it! It will be good for your mind and body. Just MY lil ol suggestion BTW, I just dropped 4.4 lbs after my lil non-deprivation meal

I really, really miss free eating. I truly enjoyed eating not just what I wanted, but as much as I wanted whenever I wanted. It'd be a lie to say I never miss that, or that I don't kinda hate it that I can't do that anymore.

That said, I like being a size 10/12 about 100 times better. I like looking at pictures of myself and not standing out as the fat one in the picture. I like swapping clothes with friends. I like wearing short skirts. I like having sex on top. I like being taken more seriously professionally. i like feeling my hipbones. I like seeing my reflection.

I'm aware of the new, "normal" me every minute of every day. It's like I am moving through life in a glowing cloud of pride and happiness. The shame and guilt and disgust that used to be the background hum of my life are gone--a hum I was so used to that I didn't know it was there until it left.

So yes, I miss my old eating habits and at times I wish I could go back to thoughtless, limitless eating. But I also know, 100%, that this is better, and that's a **** of a consolation prize.

One word about calories: I used to do exactly the same thing at exactly your height and weight, and I found it was quite sustainable until suddenly it wasn't and I'd snap, and then I'd dread going back on plan so badly that I never would. If 1200 turns out to be unsustainable for you, can I encourage you to try a higher calorie plan? It's shocking how much a person can eat and lose weight as long as they are accurately counting (no estimating and no "off plan" days that don't get counted). I bet you'd lose at 2000 calories a day. Maybe not quite as fast, but think how easy 2000 calories a day would be. That's a number you could stick to (especially as an average) for 1000 straight days. For me, I found the higher calorie plan to be the only thing that worked after 20 years on strict lower calorie plans.

For me, the answer is that the deprived feeling didn't disappear, but it has significantly decreased over time.

I've been counting calories (between 1100 and 1600 a day) since the end of August, and initially, the pull of food was HUGE! I wanted McDonalds. I wanted pizza. I wanted Starbucks. I wanted Mac and Cheese. I wanted lots of toast with tons of butter. I wanted Flaming Hot Cheetos and a big glass of milk. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted. When I wasn't feeling deprived of my favorites, I was feeling the urge to binge for that sense of overwhelming fullness/numbness that would always accompany a binge. It felt like punishment, keeping myself from eating things I "loved."

However, in the last few weeks, I've noticed that that feeling of deprivation has lessened, and that I crave large amounts of veggies if I haven't had them in the last few meals. I do still occasionally feel that I'm depriving myself of some of my past favorite foods, but I also feel like I'm making better choices for my health and happiness...so that helps Also, a couple months back, I read The End of Overeating, and it truly resonated. Eating the processed foods really just makes you crave more of the overprocessed crap. As I've switched to foods that are largely fruit, veggies, protein, and whole grains (whole wheat bread and crackers, oatmeal, popcorn being my main grains), the feeling that I'm missing out by not eating my old favorites has diminished. Not that I'm saying that urge has disappeared...it's just gotten a bit easier to deal with

I can only answer for myself. In the beginning I felt very "deprived" for about 2 weeks. Then, it began to pass. About 2-3 months in, I switched from Lean Cuisines to calorie counting lots of whole foods. I ate very clean. I can honestly tell you that I didn't feel deprived at all. I learned the foods that satiated me, decided on places I could really cut back and just did. As my weight went down I became more and more motivated. I guess at some point I realized being fit and having my health was far more satisfying than the food ever was. In other words, the food quit working for me. I couldn't get my "jollies" off of it anymore. I am not saying there are no times I struggle now. But I do want to provide you some hope.

Quite honestly, certain aspects of it hasn't gone away for me.

I eat between 1100-1700cal/day and have been maintaining for a little over 6 months now. I eat clean whole foods for the most part. Complex carbs, lean proteins, bulky fiber, some healthy fat. My belly is comfortably satisfied most of the time, even full after a meal. I LIKE the foods that I'm eating, I don't feel like I'm sacrificing flavor or good foods. Don't feel like I'm eating "diet food." I calorie count, and nothing is off limits to me if it fits in my daily calorie limit. If I want a chocolate bar, I'll eat a chocolate bar...but what do I have to give up in order to fit it in? More often than not, it's not worth it to eat the treat and be hungry later, but it is always an option.

So no, I'm not hungry, I'm not deprived. I love how I feel when I eat on plan, and I love being thin.

Buuuut, my inner three year old still throws tantrums because I can't just eat for the sake of enjoying eating. I do miss that, and I think part of me always will. I miss the carefree eating of whatever looks or sounds yummy at the moment without worrying about the scale or the calories. Not bingeing, just carefree eating. I do honestly miss that, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't. But, I know that when I ate like that, I was overweight and unhappy. I have to remind myself that when I eat in that carefree manner, I overeat and eat junky foods...that leads to feeling like crud and gaining weight. Neither of which I want.

I miss it sometimes, but I'm so much happier and feel so much better without it.

I second what mkendrick said.

I don't prefer junk food over whole foods now. It really does make a difference when you're eating a real fresh vegetables and an amazingly marinated chicken breast rather than a crappy hamburger you picked up at McDonald's.

But for me too, that 3 year old exists that hates the fact that I can't eat whatever I want and have no consequences. But those periods of inner tantrums get further and further apart.

And I do miss fresh vegetables and healthy foods when I am not getting them.

It does get better but you may have that inner 3 year old throwing tantrums every once in a while.