There are some things I'm pretty smart about, like exercise. But when it comes to DIET, I'm not. I used to be able to eat anything I wanted and it's only been recently where I've found that no matter how much I exercise and no matter how healthy (in concept) my food choices are, I'm not losing weight. Obviously I'm eating too much. My doctor said at my visit yesterday that she believes I'm eating too many carbs, specifically, and told me to cut my carbs in half.
My question is: what tactics have you used to address your diet? My personality type is more the type to completely remove an offending item from my diet than to try and work it in in moderation. For example, I drink no alcohol, no soda, no coffee, I eat no dairy products (because I'm allergic).
My primary sources of carbs are, in order as best I can figure:
Pasta
Fruit
brown rice
Potatoes (with skin)
Beans
Quinoa
Amaranth
If you were to look at that list, what would be your recommendation? What I'm considering is just cutting pasta completely out of my diet, and at meals where I would normally eat pasta trade it out for some green vegetable. Fruit is another likely culprit although I love fruit too much to simply get rid of it...that would be one food I would try to figure out how to do in moderation.
I am not the type of person that can do a no carb diet. Atkins and diets like that simply don't appeal to me because I don't like meat that much. Currently I eat vegan about 45% of the time. The South Beach approach doesn't seem too bad, but what I'd like to do is figure out how to do something like that without constantly having to adhere to a book or a recipe.
Any ideas?