How many of you find this to be true.

I can eat just 1200 of crap and watch the pounds to go up, but a clean diet of 1500 even 1600 can made me lose weight. So sad that i can keep my clean diet for more than 4 days , before the weekend.

What do you think?

This was true for me. Even as a maintainer I notice I can increase my calories a bit if I keep them very clean.

How is your little girl doing by the way? I hope she has recovered well from her surgery.

It's hard to really say, i refuse to eat poor choice foods now, everything is clean and fresh.

I do try to keep calories moderate as well, though i suspect i will be able to indulge a wee bit more when i hit my goal weight and am happy.

generally, for me this is more about that i would rather have MORE food. it usually also tastes better too. but mentally, i just feel better. too much junk and i just have no energy or i'm just absolutely not satisfied. i'd always rather have a lot of a healthy food than a tiny amount of unhealthy food. even if they were the same calories. and even if the healthy food was more calories, it just gives so much more energy than junk food or fast food.

that being said. sometimes, i just make it work with whatever we have on hand. uber healthy or not.

I wish this was true for me so I'd permanently stick to better eating habits. I tend to eat higher quality food just to get more food and better nutrition, but my weight loss truly doesn't care. Will lose the same amount with all junk food.

For me it's carbs- no matter what. It seems like I can take in all kinds of calories with meat, dairy, veggies and fruit... but as soon as I eat a cracker I can a pound.

I lose the same either way.

However, I don't feel the same either way. When I eat predominantly nutrient-rich low-calorie stuff, I feel less sluggish, more motivated, and more on an even keel. I also get to eat bigger meals and feel less hungry between them if I get the bulk of my calories from foods that aren't as calorie-dense.

But on the few days that I've just not had it in me to eat my usual way and instead just grabbed what looked good at the time--still within my calorie budget--it hasn't made a bit of difference on the scale. Or rather, if it has, it's been so far afterward that I couldn't pinpoint the cause.

The sodium content alone in crap food has my weight spike like crazy!

This is me as well.

I only have about 2 months of experience with this, but I haven't really noticed any difference in my weight loss so far based on what I'm eating if all else is equal. For example: my very worst week nutrition wise was when I travelled for a conference. Though I stayed within my calories, drank my water and worked out 4/5 days I was away, I wasn't able to cook for myself and on two days literally half of my calories came from wine . Yet when I returned home I was down a full 5 lbs. Bizarre.

I do feel better and more energetic when I eat cleanly, and I'd love to have the discipline to do it all day every day. I don't right now though, at least not yet, and I still rely on some pre-packed convenience items. Overall though, most of my choices are healthy ones and I'm losing weight.

Totally true for me. It doesn't matter if I eat 300 calories a day... if they're junk I'll gain weight. My diet has to be clean and starch free or it's weight gain and bloat city.

It's pretty much cals in cals out for me for fat loss, although, of course, wrong carbs can temporarily increase my water content.
I do try to eat cleanly though, although like carye, I sometimes wish I Had to do so to lose weight, maybe it would concentrate my mind a bit more. (nah, in week-long binge mode, I just don't care what's good for me).

So I need a middle choice in the poll: don't Need to eat cleanly for weight loss but choose/try to anyway.

For me, clean diet is the ideal but not the most necessary component of weight loss. If I eat at a higher calorie range of even the cleanest foods, I simply won't lose weight. If I keep my calories under 1,400, no matter what I'm eating, my loss will be steady and consistent.

It's really hard to separate the two.

The ultimate goal for me is to eat fewer calories than I burn - so that's a question of "how much". But, the "what" is very important in determining how sustainable and comfortable. So my choices have migrated over the 19 months or so I've been at this, away from the more calorie-dense choices.

For example, I like eating lots and lots of food - I find it pleasurable. And so, where at first I was including (measured) portions of things like rice or pasta in my meals, as time went on I realized tucking into an enormous helping of roasted cauliflower was more satisfying. I never banned rice or pasta from my diet but as a practical matter I rarely choose them now.

I have to agree with that and vote for the calories matter more not what the food is.. weight watchers is based on that and i also always think of the guy who did the twinkie diet and lost 27 lbs eating just twinkies, simlpy because he was eating low calorie.