To think I’m someone who will never lose weight?

Absolutely this! The problem with a lot of other diets is if you deviate from them you (apparantly!) completely mess up whatever it is the fad is meant to be 'resetting', and so blow it for the day. The beauty of calorie counting is that you can compensate for 'mistakes'. If you know the calories in your ice cream is 300, drop them from your evening meal, or if that doesnt leave enough food, take a 100 extra calories a day off for the next three days, and you've paid it back, and all good. Once you get into this way of thinking you tend to ask yourself whether the treats are worth the cut backs and often decide they're not.

I know someone who had her husband hide all the chocolates in the garage.

Mounjaro has been life changing for me. I recommend you look into it and if you are suitable and can afford it do it.

I'm on mounjaro and agree with PP that it isn't an organic change in mindset but a biological response caused by the mounjaro. I'm under no illusions that I can manage eating like a thin person without it. I'm wired differently and no amount of learning new habits is going to compensate for my menopausal insulin resistance. It's worked for me brilliantly and I want to stay on it forever. I know that may not be what you are looking for but if you are, be aware that it's not a miraculous restoration of factory settings that allow you to come off it and think like a thin person. It corrects some of the biological causes of obesity, which I now realise are a key driving force behind why some of us eat too much. It's not just about will power and mind set at all in my opinion.

If you post more details about a typical day of eating, your height, current weight and goal weight you will get more accurate advice in terms of making sure you're setting yourself up for success there. If you are eating too little then of course you're going to cave and binge but from the information we've got we can't tell if that's the case or not.

On the lack of willpower, the only way is to avoid triggers until you're far enough in that you've started to see results, then it becomes easier. Or ask a friend or family member to hold you accountable to the standards you set for yourself.

Don't have penguins and croissants in the house and don't buy ice creams. Throw out all snacks and sugary stuff and just eat healthily. You will loose weight.

I was going to say similar. It's so easy to sabotage yourself when you fall off the wagon. You had an ice cream, instead of giving yourself a hard time about it the best thing to do is to get straight back on path and have the healthy dinner you had planned plus water etc. Be kind to yourself, it's really hard to change habits and kicking yourself when your down won't help.

It’s because you are doing huge changes that’s are generally short term fixes.

Just change one thing. Eat a better breakfast. For example. That’s got lots of protein but also some carbs and fat.

My first step was to increase my fibre. Didn’t care about the rest. Didn’t cut anything out. But I found having a breakfast that had plenty of protein and fibre really helped my snacking later in the day.

I kept making small improvements. Those small improvements led to big improvements. And doing something you can stick at consistently is the trick. Hardly eating some days often leads to over eating either the same day or days later. I am 2 stone down and have a long way to go. But I now calorie count but try and eat plenty of protein and fibre. Don’t worry about anything else. I went from feeling absolutely shit and knackered all the time with bad habits and over a few months I have got to a place where I meal prep for office days and have really good habits that feel really easy

OP can I ask what weight or size are you? A heavy woman has different needs to someone who needs to lose a recently acquired 10lbs.

@HardMaths was it just wheat or did you limit other grains too? I tried eliminating wheat and substituting other grains and it didn't help too much, however the days I had no grain at all I had less craving. It's unbelievable how it kicks in, I am genuinely hungrier after a meal than before if I have grains but I'm not sure how to live without. I made my own oat bread for months, I think it was a waste of time.

Could have written this myself op x

Get on Wegovy / mounjaro if you can afford it. I lost over 3 stone pretty easily on it and am maintaining without it now. It gave me the space I needed to get into a really healthy routine. I found that so hard to do when I was constantly starving and miserable.

I also really like the non diet approach. When I'd finished reaching my ideal weight which was a killer at the end, I started weight training and that's when I really understood how it works - we actually often need to eat more not less in order to get rid of junk food. We are just searching for calories with junk food.

It took me 8 years to stop smoking.

In regards to diet, the way I did a reset was to start with continuing everything I was doing but eliminating one thing that I ate to excess, which was icecream.

Then went like this (just typibg out what worked for me in retrospect).

Find a healthy alternative like greek yoghurt and Berries with nuts. The point of this phase isn't to lose weight, its to wean you off sugar.

Continue to allow some kind of treat in a small format, daily square of dark choc etc.

Replace other unhealthy things, if it's crisps choose healthy crackers or breadsticks instead. Something you don't like enough to binge on. The point again is to wean yourself off processed foods.

Crowd in veggies and healthier foods.

Then introduce calorie counting. Just do a small 100-200 calorie deficit.

You can probably keep going for 8-12 weeks of steady weight loss like this. Then you are on a roll!

Then to continue to lose weight after this cut calories further and exercise more. Only do this if you actually still have weight to lose. That's when something like fasting 5/2 or F800 might help. These are not sustainable ways of eating but they are based on the Mediterranean diet which is a good exit plan anyway.

Also track everything. Don't beat yourself up, it's a process and I think August is probably a hard month to start dieting, this time of year generally is hard as I think the body is hard wired to think this is harvest season.

If you have to have the Penguins in the house, for the kids or whatever, can your husband or one of the older kids hide them? I'm trying to lose weight by calorie counting atm, and my husband puts the biscuits out of sight and reach on the top shelf of the cupboard. I know they're there but can't be arsed to get the stepladder to get them!

I was a chronic yo yo dieter until I read the book, ‘How To Eat Your Cake & Wear Your Skinny Jeans Too’. It explains why diets don’t work for the majority of people, I had so many light bulb moments whilst reading it. You basically have to tell yourself that you will never go on a diet again, and really believe it. Then once your body is out of that scarcity mindset from constant diet attempts, you listen to your body. Eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full. It sounds too good to be true but I’ve lost 2 stone and kept it off. I don’t even think about food now, and don’t have any cravings.

I’m not misrepresenting my own reality on my high horse.

I spent lots of money on slim fast products to lose the weight but as I couldn’t stick to it even one day it’s been a waste.

And this, right here, is your problem. Sticking to fad diets and crap when you could eat delicious and nutritious food. Also, exercise is super important and I truly believe that anyone can find a form of exercise to enjoy.

Try mounjaro you won't be able to overeat 😂
Also the cost alone would 100 % make me think about everything I stuck in my mouth 🤷‍♀️

I will do when I want to. Come off your high horse then?

No mention of exercise OP?

Try waking for 20 mins a day and build it up - use the car less, walk the kids to school/shop/park

Every step helps.

Read my posts. I don’t care at all and am of the view that mounjaro seems like a revolutionary tool for weightloss and treating our obesity epidemic. But I think it’s disingenuous to suggest that the “change in mindset” has occurred organically and is not a direct result of the poster using mounjaro. Her post is written like OP can just have this mindset shift like she has done. Which isn’t a true representation of her circs.

Why do you care whether she's on Mounjaro or not, @SunQueen24 ? It's working for her, she's getting slimmer and healthier, why take such a lecturing tone?

Waiting to get bashed here from the mumsnet police….
i think some people just aren’t quite wired correctly when it comes to food. I eat despite knowing I should be full (I rarely am). I binge. It’s not just that I want it, it’s compulsive and consistent. Food dominates my thoughts. The only way I seem to loose weight naturally is through an extreme crash diet. I once lost quite a bit on slimming world once but was breast feeding at the time. Put it all back on afterwards.
the only thing that’s really helped is semiglutide. I don’t think that anyone that hasn’t had a significant binge problem can fully understand. Once I was on that drug, the food was no longer compulsive. I could eat, feel full, stop and not need anything else. Food no longer dominated my thoughts.
I stopped because I lost the weight, because of the cost and because I’m worried about long term health implications of pumping chemicals into your body (I’d weighed this up against being obese when I first started and felt the fatness was more likely to kill me than the chemicals). I’ve put a bit back on and am considering taking it again.
Sorry that’s probably not want you want to hear.

Come off the mounjaro then?