I’ve gone through this “diet” three times (see graphs). The first time I went from 83kg to 75.5kg over about 3 months. The second time, from 80kg to 71kg over 4 months. My latest iteration of this diet has me down from 75kg to 68.5kg in about 2 months. Note how each time the starting weight is over the last ending weight? And this is the problem, right there. It is not hard to find an eating regime that will help you…
Yep. The simple method I've found to deal with this is to keep on weighing myself every day. I can eat all sorts of crap, as long as I keep weighing myself. There's a lengthy period of time which I haven't typed in the data for where I just weighed myself every day. I still managed to keep the weight off when I did that. The minute I stopped weighing myself, though, the weight piled back on. A daily ritual of steppin…
Then I moved to China a few years ago, and late last year heard about the Chinese proverb: "Eat heaps for breakfast, eat enough for lunch, and eat little for dinner". This was news to me because all my life I thought I had to eat dinner every day. So I started following that rule, still eating the same food I always did, including heaps of eggs for breakfast. I also started keeping absolutely no food in my apartment, apart for milk for coffee, and instead ate out for every meal. In China there's always many restaurants a short walk from one's home.
Winter arrived, with the cold, some snow, and occasional rain, and I started skipping dinners because I was too lazy to go out, and dinners were now just snacks. After a few weeks, I noticed I weren't ever hungry in the evening. Even when I ate lunch when the restaurants opened at 11:00am, then nothing else for the rest of the day, I still weren't hungry, as long as I had a big breakfast. After a few months, I noticed I didn't have much fat where there'd been some for at least a decade, so I weighed myself: only 80kg. I've since come down to 75kg (BMI 27), but have sat at that weight for 2 months. I now weigh myself every day because (for some reason :-) I always remember to.
One other thing: I stopped eating white rice with my meals. The restaurants I frequent around here probably think I'm a foreign oddity who pays for two dishes instead of just one with free bowls of rice. I still eat noodles or potatoes every day though.
All this weight loss happened without trying very hard: eating the same fatty food I always did, virtually never eating after lunch, not exercising except for a few long walks every week, and not eating rice with my meals. Just a few simple rules. One thing I've accepted is: If I want to stay at this weight, I'll never be eating after lunch time again, and I can live with that.