Stupid question!

[tobee]

Sorry about this daft question but if you had to give only 1 piece of advice to anyone embarking on a diet/healthy eating would you say that it would be keep it up!

Don't diet!

Dieting makes you think that you are stopping yourself from having something nice, have something nice, just a little bit of it. Don't deprive yourself.

Get yourself a good cook book and make cooking fun again, Jamie Oliver Superfoods is mega easy and so tasty.

"If you don't buy it, you can't eat it."

I used to buy lots of junk food in the big shop then eat it ridiculously quickly and often buy more when out and about.
When I started losing weight and generally being healthier I would start to go up the crisp/biscuit aisles and mentally kick myself and say 'You don't need this,' 'Put the chocolate down, fatty!'
Then when I was at home I didn't have it in the first place to snack from.
I soon learned some healthier snack foods that I could eat and not feel like I was martyring myself.
(Chocolate rice cakes, lovely sweet fresh fruit, frozen grapes, frogurt - this all sounds quite rank but it's a little change that softens the blow of a sudden change to 'no nice food.')
Good luck OP

Three P's
Preparation - fail to prepare, prepare to fail
Plate size
Portion size - using a smaller plate will lead to smaller portions

Good advice above. I have lost and gained weight a few times since the age of about 14 (a long time ago!) and what I know I need to be able to do is:

1. find a reason or many reasons why I'm doing it and how much I want it and tell myself that as I reach for the junk
2. be able to have a bad day eating total crap and just calmly get back on the wagon to sort it out the next day
3. finding a way of cutting back that works for me. I'm currently doing slimming world and really struggle to stick to the limit for syns. I have accepted I will have days I eat too many but overall I'm eating better and if I have a big treat I balance that with a bit of MFP and calorie counting so there's always a check in place to stop me going nuts!

Thank you for the advice. That's interesting. Dd and I are going to have a summer of healthy living as a kick start to living like that forever!!

Summer is a great time as there is so much nicer, juicier fruit around, I'd happily eat a juicy mango than a nasty melty bar of chocolate kind of
I wish you well, once you change your habits and develop a new way of thinking about food it's easy, well I found it easy, it's just breaking your habits and kick starting it.

Learn to love melon and prawns!

Buy a Fitbit or use MFP

Don't try to be perfect, make better choices, not always the best choice but not the worst.

I agree on planning : planning my meals, and preferably preparing a bit on the weekend (making chilli, roasting some veggies) helps me eat better all week. If I have planned out what I am going to have that day then I have a rough idea of what I need to stick to to lose the weight!

It's a bit trite but one of the motivational pics doing the rounds on FB at the minute is something like 'you don't slash the other 3 tyres on your car just because you have a puncture in one'.
It resonates with me because I do have s tendency to eat one thing I shouldn't and then write off the rest of the day. You of course might be a better adjusted adult than me.

My Fitness Pal.

I just don't understand my fitness pal. But I know it helps loads of people.

I like MFP because it sets you a calorie goal, it has a huge database of food and a barcode scanner, so you can easily enter food into it to track your eating, and it gives a breakdown of your nutritional content.

I spent the first two weeks just logging what I ate without making any changes. I saw that I was eating about 2300-2500 calories per day. That showed me just how many calories were in the snacks I was having. Then I was able to adjust my diet to sensible foods.

Oo yeah when I lost my weight MFP massively helped me.
It was just good to see what I was actually taking in, in comparison with what I needed. eg if by lunchtime you've already had 1500 cals then you really need to have a light dinner!
It just made my appreciation of 'healthy eating' dawn a little bit quicker.
Nearly all store bought foods are on there and once you get the hang of it you can give yourself a rough estimate or use a similar cal item.
I definitely recommend it.

But I just find it a massive fag! At the least. I think I'm just stupid.

Btw don't need to learn to love melon and prawns!!

It is at first, but if you eat some things quite regularly, it becomes a ten second job to log your meals.

I don't really but that's my problem!!!

Cook from scratch as often as possible.