How do you build eating discipline?

[Questionable]

I'm trying really hard to lose my gut but I can't stop eating bad foods.

The bottom line is that I just love eating too much. For some people food is something they have to do, but I just love eating. I love the taste of food, I love how it makes me feel, I love cooking up a pizza and eating it while I watch TV. It's more than a stomach ache for me, it's an activity. And I just don't know how to get rid of that. It's been that way my whole life. I've tried not to admit this because it makes me sound like a horrible person but it's time I've come to terms with it.

Every time I start trying I end up bargaining with myself. I'll be in the kitchen and tell myself, "Well, I had grain cereal for breakfast, so eating a greasy burger with chips can't be too bad, can it?" and then it all just goes to shit.

Me and my girlfriend decided a good way to start would be to make about 8-9pm my cut-off hour for eating anything, and then slowly making other minor changes, like water instead of soda and that kind of thing. A gradual transformation of my eating habits. But I just know that even if I manage this for one day sooner or later I'll end up bargaining with myself and eating donuts at 1am.

Comrades, how do I get over this?

[Quail]

You could try to find an alternative "reward" activity, so instead of rewarding yourself for eating well with unhealthy food, reward yourself with something else. It could be something like, "If I eat well this week I'll buy that shirt/CD/whatever that I've been wanting." You could buy yourself a treat with the money you save by not buying junk food. It could also be something like, "I ate well today so I'll let myself play a video game for an hour."

Another thing is, healthy food can be really delicious too. I don't know how much you already cook, but the process of making food from scratch can be creative and enjoyable, and you know exactly what's in the food you make so you can be sure it's healthy, nutritious, low fat/calorie, etc.

You should also avoid depriving yourself completely. It's fine every once in a while to eat something unhealthy and in fact if you deprive yourself too much you'll start to crave unhealthy food because your body will think it's starving and then you're likely to binge-eat.

[black magick hustla]

i just stock my fridge with healthy food as as a strategy. i try to eat as much protein dense food as possible to not be hungry. i don't have bread because i found it really easy to overeat it. i have a lot of chicken, greek yoghurt, fruits, cottage cheese, whole grain cereal, oats, etc. i dont think to giving yourself an eating cut off is a good idea imho, just eat so that you are always on a caloric deficit, and there are websites to calculate how much calories your body burns per day. the trick is to eat filling things, and things like starchy, sugary stuff is not very filling. i dont think diets where you avoid craves are very effective, its about building the base of your eating with good food.

[Ele'ill]

Try not to get to the point where you're overly hungry, eat small meals throughout the day. If you like a certain food that isn't all that healthy, make sure the rest of your diet is, and make sure that you get enough exercise. You can still go through the process of preparing a meal and have it be healthy so I don't think that part of what you love is going to go away.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

You wanna start by making a list of things to cut out, such as soda, butter, anything deep fried, takeaways, chips, biscuits, crisps etc.

These are the things you just shouldn't eat, whatever your goal. But if your goal is fat loss, then I suggesta few things:

5-6 small meals each day
Switch from white rice, white pasta and white bread to the brown varieties.
Don't eat rice, pasta or bread after 6pm, unless you're exercising.
Give yourself 2 cheat meals per week to start. On the same day. But only if you eat well the rest of th week. So if mon-fri you stick to your diet then sure, go out for dinner on saturday and have a nice sunday lunch. But don't then eat your cheat meals if you eat crap mon-fri, that's just cheating!

Also, you wanna look at types of food to eat. As a rule, have 2 or 3 alternatives for each meal. I go for the following kind of food breakdown:

meal 1 - breakfast: omelette/granola/weetabix/porridge
meal 2 - snack: protein shake/fruit and yoghurt/soup
meal 3 - lunch: stir fry/grilled chicken breast/fish/pasta etc.
meal 4 - snack: same as before
meal 5 - dinner: similar to lunch
meal 6 - post-dinner: piece of fruit/green tea

Works pretty well, allow myself 1-2 cheat meals per week, but I try to turn food into a sociable thing. I reckon that a good sign of compulsion (from personal experience) is wanting to have your food in secret. I used to order pizzas, take em to my room and enjoy them by myself. 'enjoy'.

Now, I like my cheat meal to be like, if it's a takeaway then like a small/med margharita pizza with mates, or go out for a nice meal with my girlfriend where food isn't the only focus.

There's loads of good advice on here and on the web - get googling for 'healthy eating', NOT 'lose fat fast'. Fads are invariably shit and unhealthy and don't work in the long run.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Also, the logic that 'I ate well this morning so eating crap this evening can't hurt'. It will, and you know it.

Count calories - if you wanna lose weight then eat in a calorie deficit of 500 cals per day - so you wanna be eating around 2000kcals per day (I normally employ a 10% margin of error). Don't avoid the harsh reality of this - whilst you wanna be healthy and eat healthy food, the bottom line is that if you eat in a calorie deficit you will lose weight, if you eat a calorie surplus (i.e. over 2500 cals per day) you WILL NOT lose weight, you will gain weight/stay fat.

Best of luck, PM me if you want anymore advice.

Also another thing set yourself a target. I normally set myself a weight target for like 4, 6 or 8 weeks from now. Gives you something small and manageable to work towards.

[Questionable]

You wanna start by making a list of things to cut out, such as soda, butter, anything deep fried, takeaways, chips, biscuits, crisps etc.

These are the things you just shouldn't eat, whatever your goal. But if your goal is fat loss, then I suggesta few things:

5-6 small meals each day
Switch from white rice, white pasta and white bread to the brown varieties.
Don't eat rice, pasta or bread after 6pm, unless you're exercising.
Give yourself 2 cheat meals per week to start. On the same day. But only if you eat well the rest of th week. So if mon-fri you stick to your diet then sure, go out for dinner on saturday and have a nice sunday lunch. But don't then eat your cheat meals if you eat crap mon-fri, that's just cheating!

Also, you wanna look at types of food to eat. As a rule, have 2 or 3 alternatives for each meal. I go for the following kind of food breakdown:

meal 1 - breakfast: omelette/granola/weetabix/porridge
meal 2 - snack: protein shake/fruit and yoghurt/soup
meal 3 - lunch: stir fry/grilled chicken breast/fish/pasta etc.
meal 4 - snack: same as before
meal 5 - dinner: similar to lunch
meal 6 - post-dinner: piece of fruit/green tea

Works pretty well, allow myself 1-2 cheat meals per week, but I try to turn food into a sociable thing. I reckon that a good sign of compulsion (from personal experience) is wanting to have your food in secret. I used to order pizzas, take em to my room and enjoy them by myself. 'enjoy'.

Now, I like my cheat meal to be like, if it's a takeaway then like a small/med margharita pizza with mates, or go out for a nice meal with my girlfriend where food isn't the only focus.

There's loads of good advice on here and on the web - get googling for 'healthy eating', NOT 'lose fat fast'. Fads are invariably shit and unhealthy and don't work in the long run.

I like this outline and I'm definitely going to start using it as well as the advice others have given me, but one quick question; are baked chips something I want to avoid? My father has been on Weight Watcher's for years and he always eats baked chips rather than the regular ones with his sandwiches.

[citizen of industry]

For me, and this is based on going for long periods without food, I divide eating into two categories. 1) Feeding and 2) Feasting. Most meals (breakfast before work in 5 minutes, lunch during work I can't enjoy, dinner I slam down before putting the kid to bed) is feeding. I usually do it standing and the only purpose is putting calories into my body. The taste and quality of the food isn't important. The other kind is feasting, on days off when I gorge myself at a restaraunt or cook whatever I want and eat tons. I love eating, so when feeding, like during a lunch break, the amount and taste of what I'm eating isn't important. During feasting, taste and amount are the only concerns. Unhealthy snack foods don't fit into the picture, and even though I like desserts after feasting I'm too full to eat them. I also got into the pattern (but not anymore) of feeding twice a day at 12 hour intervals or less, so grumbly stomach doesn't bother me.

[leftistman]

Brush, floss your teeth, and use mouthwash at the cutoff hour so that food tastes gross.

[campesino]

buy healthy food that requires preparation, Don't buy food that is ready-to-eat out of the package or with a little bit of microwave time.
examples: canned soup, chips, slices of ham, hot dogs, cereal, ramen soup.

you should buy:
canned or fresh vegetables, grains in bulk(get oatmeal in a canister rather than pre-flavored oatmeal packets, the same for cream of wheat). Meat that isn't cooked, eggs.

For breakfast if you don't have time to cook just heat up some cream of wheat or oatmeal in a bowl with some water in the microwave, and have that for a breakfast, preferably with some fried eggs or toast. yes the porridge is a tasteless bland mess, but your taste buds will get accustomed to unflavored food.

don't drink soda, milk and juice. All your liquids should be water.

When you go out with friends or loved ones or family dinners it is ok to go off you diet, but your diet should be in effect for 5 out of 7 days of the week.

look up recipes so when you do have time to dedicate to cooking your meals will be more than just heated or fried vegetables and porridge.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I like this outline and I'm definitely going to start using it as well as the advice others have given me, but one quick question; are baked chips something I want to avoid? My father has been on Weight Watcher's for years and he always eats baked chips rather than the regular ones with his sandwiches.

Well, i'll let you answer that for yourself.

As I said above, most fads (and i'll include weightwatchers in this) are just that - fads, designed for instant results.

Stuff like weight-watchers and its offspring acheive good results because of the easy to use points system. However, they teach you NOTHING about foods' intrinsic health, why certain foods are healthy ( boiled sweet potato) and why some are not (chips). As a result, people on weightwatchers invariably only lose weight on that diet, and only keep it off on that diet - as soon as they come off it they put weight back on again because they have learnt nothing about food itself, they've simply followed a ready-to-diet kinda plan.

You need to understand your body, understand food if you want to diet and not get fat again. The internet is a valuable resource in this regard.

[Lenin's Cat]

Stuff like weight-watchers and its offspring achieve good results because of the easy to use points system. However, they teach you NOTHING about foods' intrinsic health, why certain foods are healthy ( boiled sweet potato) and why some are not (chips). As a result, people on weightwatchers invariably only lose weight on that diet, and only keep it off on that diet - as soon as they come off it they put weight back on again because they have learnt nothing about food itself, they've simply followed a ready-to-diet kinda plan.

You need to understand your body, understand food if you want to diet and not get fat again. The internet is a valuable resource in this regard.

Weight Watchers has changed their focus in the last couple of years and they now focus on healthy foods as opposed to "equal point" foods of lesser nutritional value.

Example: Fruits are now 0 points each, whereas they used to be mostly 1 point and bananas were 2. What they are trying to get you to do is fill up on fruit instead of junk food, which now has even higher points values than before. That's not to say you can't overdo fruit especially if you are overweight and insulin resistant, but fruit at least has nutrients and fiber to slow down absorption, so it's likely someone will get full sooner unlike with junk food which has NO nutrients or fiber and so it's easier to overeat.

WW also has a new focus on lean meats and proteins, vegetables and fruits. You could eat yourself silly on just these three food groups and still come in way under your assigned daily points values.

I should know - I lost 45# on WW and have kept it off for three years.

WW periodically changes their plan, probably for two reasons: one is to keep customers interested and coming back; but they also keep up with the latest nutrition science and they change their plan according to the latest research and studies.

And it finally sank in with them that you can't give the same points values to a brownie and a banana.

Any diet will "fail" if you go off it. If you don't decide to make PERMANENT changes in your eating, you will not succeed.

PointsPlus has been around for a couple of years so it wouldn't surprise me if WW has some changes to the plan at the beginning of 2013, but PointsPlus is even easier to follow than the original POINTS plan that I started with.

What I needed and what I got with WW was the structure - I went to meetings once a week to weigh in, and that alone kept me from cheating because even a cheat or two during the week could throw off your losses for the next weigh-in, so I stayed almost completely cheat-free the entire time I was losing. It took me about 5 months to lose the weight, and I also stayed pretty physically active during that time, which also helped me stay on track with the diet - they complement each other.

Some people can make small incremental changes and some can go cold turkey and change everything all at once. You have to figure out what works but my advice would be to stay away from trigger foods completely until you feel more in control of your eating AND you've reached a weight you are happier with -- if you know why you have a gut or need to lose 10, 20, 30 or more pounds, stop doing what you KNOW contributes to the weight gain and try something else!

Weight loss is a journey, no matter which path you choose. You didn't gain it overnight and it's not going away overnight. It takes patience, focus, a workable plan of action, behavioral modifications, and sometimes yes it takes sheer willpower, but it can be done. I've been there and done it.

Good luck! :)

[Beeth]

I've given up on this. I am not a fat guy, but I have a gut. I don't eat much either, so my food intake couldn't be the problem. It is annoying.

[F9]

for me its just this...discipline

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I've given up on this. I am not a fat guy, but I have a gut. I don't eat much either, so my food intake couldn't be the problem. It is annoying.

It probably (Well, it is) your food intake. Unless you're ill.

A lot of people just don't have much education on food, and don't realise how much/how little they're eating, and so don't understand and thus get demoralised and give up on whatever their goal is.

[Avanti]

eat

every other day

but that's not

a matter of discipline

i need the welfare money

to pay my

"medication"

[SergeNubret]

If your trying to lose a few lbs you need to go on a kcal decifit.
Type in you stats on the Harris-Benedickt formula and substract 300-500 kcal (based on how fast you want to lose weight)
Fat is about 3,500 kcal each lbs so just find a diet that will fit to your daily kcal. =)