I have been, rather lazily I suppose, trying to tweak my diet in such as way as to lose weight; and with little to show for it.

I'm not sure that there is much if any processed food still in my diet (maybe just the English muffin in the morning?). I stopped buying/drinking soda pop decades ago (a low-hanging fruit indeed — I lost almost 10 pounds within a month of making that dietary change alone).

And since I have tried little things like switching to peanut butter that contains only peanuts (no salt, no sugar, not palm oil — sure, I have to stir it when I open it for the first time). I've moved to whole grain bread. Other small changes like that I can't remember right now.

I still have a BMI that's too high.

The only time I have significantly lost weight was when I was prepping for intestinal surgery nearly a decade ago. I was at the time worried that eating too much would literally kill me (I was worried about bursting my intestine) that I ate very small portions for each meal.

I'm not sure why I can't change my habits such that I continue to eat those small portions (now that the fear is gone).

The first problem with people unable to lose weight is simply not counting calories and trying to "switch to healthier food and eyeball it". You have to have a kitchen scale and measure portions. Track every meal in an app. It's annoying at first, but once you get in the habit, it's just part of preparing the meal. When you do that, you will be able to tell which meals in your diet are high calorie (which, some are surprisingly calorie dense contrary to what a lot of people think), and find replacements or downsize the portions accordingly.

The second problem is people simply not being honest with their calorie tracking. You may only eat 3 meals but then when you're hungry you will eat a handful of raisins, peanuts, or something else, a lot of people will think to themselves "well, it's just a handful, so it can't be that many calories" - but repeated habit of eating those adds up, and most people don't account for that in their calorie tracking app. Similar to adding a small bit of, say, butter to your pan before making scrambled eggs. You may think, "it's only about 10 grams of butter, it's not much so why bother tracking it", but that 10 grams of butter is 75 calories, over the course of a month of preparing scrambled eggs every morning for breakfast, that's 2250 kcal, after 3 months, that's an entire KILO of bodyweight fat that you either gained or could have lost - small things add up.

Sometimes (but less frequently) it's also hormonal issues, you may want to go to a clinic to do a bloodtest (specifically thyroid hormones and diabetes markers).

Also, low intensity cardio (slow pace incline treadmill/stairmaster) can go a long way in aiding weight loss.

How bodies related to food varies _wildly_. For example, my body has difficulty processing certain foods, so I lost a ton of weight switching from "healthy" fruits and veggies and plant-based protein to mostly pre-processed carbs and fatty meat. (Low FODMAP, for folks who are curious: be ready to learn chemistry to figure out what is safe to eat.)

That diet isn't going to have the same effect for most people, but in my case it significantly lowered my inflammation and general discomfort, which led me to lose 90lbs with no actual effort on my part.

I knew one dude who was always hungry and it turned out he just desperately needed B12. Now he snacks on B12 gummies and feels much better. Debugging our bodies is more complicated than debugging a software program, but no programmer would say "Just run the program less!" if someone complained a program was eating up all the CPU.

The one thing that is always good for humans, whether we lose weight or not, is some physical activity. Whatever we can enjoy enough to do regularly, without injury, is a great choice.

I wish the medical profession would stop focusing on diet, when it doesn't understand it and calorie restrictive diets are one of two lifestyle components we know actually do contribute to obesity.

Have you tried introducing a food scale? Not with the intent of changing your portions or anything like that - just out of idle curiosity to confirm how much you're eating?

I found that I was eating over double the amount of nut butter that I was estimating once I started weighing it. After a couple of months I was able to go back to eyeballing it while remaining accurate.

A lot of wisdom suggests being +/- 300 calories from your TDEE to cut/bulk. Three tablespoons of peanut butter is ~285 calories. So it's entirely possible that something as small as an estimation error is responsible for whether you're gaining or maintaining. Same goes for eyeballing cooking oils, seeds & nuts, and, to a lesser extent, processed carbs.

You're trying to eat clean instead of lean/volumous. Why care about palm oil or salt in peanut butter if it's still like straight fat that you're passing on your bread every day? The actual diet move would be to switch that to some fruit and low fat yogurt. Same thing with whole grain bread, you just got some more fiber and vitamins but the calories are mostly all there still, especially if it's sandwich bread.

Clean/natural/unprocessed is an independent variable from fattening. There is correlation in that processed foods are sometimes highly palatable, but there is no causation. To illustrate, you could top your toast with either honey or Mrs Butterworth's Sugar Free syrup. Honey will add like 10x more calories, but is unprocessed, while the syrup is as processed as there can be

I think it's great to try to eliminate foods that you believe aren't healthy (in any quantity) from your diet, but if you replace those foods with a quantity of other foods that keep your caloric intake more or less the same, you're not going to lose weight.

> ... I ate very small portions for each meal.

That's what does it. Decreasing the calories you eat.

> I'm not sure why I can't change my habits such that I continue to eat those small portions (now that the fear is gone).

Because, like all of us, you're only human, and human psychology, plus how our stomachs and brains signal each other, is complex and sometimes makes it really hard for us to achieve our goals. It sucks, but that's how it is. This is why the semaglutide weight loss drugs are proving so effective: they short-circuit some of that and help you just not want to eat as much food.

If drugs aren't for you, try counting calories, and use an app to help with it and help keep you honest. I experimented with it back in 2017 or so, and it actually did cause me to be more mindful about how much I ate, and made me think twice if I'd already hit my calorie budget for the day but wanted more food. I was pleasantly surprised to find I actually did lose weight. I didn't stick with it (don't remember why), but it did work for me for a time.

As much as it sucks. Tracking calories is very helpful. Commit to 1-2 months of tracking and you can train yourself to better eyeball what you're eating. It's very hard to just 'eat healthy' to lose weight if you don't have a baseline of calorie content of food.

Like I straight up just don't eat nut butters anymore because they are a massive calorie bomb, and I find the loose nuts more satiating. When you track for a while you start building an instinct for optimizing the satiety/calorie ratio of your meals.

Have you tried intermittent fasting? There's a lot of controversy around the impacts of fasting, but there's one simple fact involved: it's harder to exceed your calorie needs for a day in 1 or 2 meals than in 3 or more because at some point you are just too full to eat more. If you're focused on getting lots of veggies in your limited meals, the number of calories that "fit in your stomach" will also go down.

Assuming you don't have some metabolic disorders, you'll get used to being hungry for part of the day.

This time last year I was in Kampala for roughly 4 months. I used to cook at home and I avoided any process food. Zero to little carb. I was walking a lot though and quite regularly (the weather there is just so good). Now, one year later I moved to Dubai and I think I gained around 10kg.

The only difference being the amount of processed food and the lack of my daily walking routines. But granted, I gained 10kg while im on one meal a day.

A good diet only helps so much. Of course with enough self control, a caloric deficit will make you lose weight, but you need to make yourself perpetually hungry. Eating clean without measuring and limiting portions is not enough for people whose appetite is naturally higher.

Ozempic was the only thing that actually solved my hunger. I would eat healthy, do exercise, but without ozempic my appetite was unstoppable and would think of food 24/7.

BTW you can still improve your diet. PB and bread are bad for weight loss. Go with high protein, low carb. But even that was not enough for me.

Try a diet plan where you prep your own meals and intake a specific amount of calories. I've used Clean Simple Eats in the past. Diet only works. Diet+exercise works better, and adds all of the benefits of exercise.

So I will first emphasize, try to avoid a "diet" and feeling the need to eliminate anything.

Unless you just really struggle with impulse control and you need those guard rails, for me the only way that I managed to loose about 45 lbs was by looking at things this way.

I did not cut a single thing out of my diet, what I did was make smart choices/swaps at home that still satisfied cravings most of the time so when I want to go to the store and get a candy bar I will go to the store and get a candy bar and not feel bad about it.

Easy one was not keeping soda in the house anymore, I have switched almost entirely to water outside of milk in my coffee. When I am out I may sometimes grab a soda but meh.

I make homemade peanut butter. I buy dry roasted unsalted peanuts, add in a small amount of salt and its great.

Trying a bunch of different apples and finding the sweetest apples I could find, and then eating that with peanut butter for some added protein.

Strawberries with chocolate humas.

I started making my own chicken stock which had more flavor and less sodium.

Making my own heartier soups that tasted great.

Also... Seasoning. More than just salt and pepper. Some really good (non American generally) seasoning will go a long way and is basically a zero calory way to really good food.

Other random small changes that are very situational for you. Look at your snacking habbits, that is where most of my issues came in.

Where I could I would choose things that would also increase my protein intake. I didn't go crazy. I never counted calories or anything and the weight just came off. Sure I could have lost a bit more had I done that, but I am at the point now that is the 10 more lbs going to make that big of a difference in the grand scheme of things as I work towards gaining more muscle anyways.

I realize this may not work for everyone, but I am not on any sort of "diet" in any traditional sense of the word. What I am doing now is perfectly sustainable for the rest of my life because I can still live my life and largely eat what I want within reason. I had taco bell today and don't feel bad about it in the slightest.

I should add that during most of this weight loss I did not change my workout habbits. I was focusing on my nutrition first. I do live in a city and I walk everywhere, but that did not change in this time.

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