Hi aurorie. For a long time I didn't and I went from about 8 1/2 stone to 165 lbs in November - I think that's nearly 12 but I had lost a few lbs before dh left and was back on the diet.
Having said that I was always about a size 16 and before I had dc I went down to a 12 without lifestyle changes so I have some success at maintaining.
I think the thing is that we are all our weight for different reasons and we 'just' have to work out that reason and tailor our life accordingly. So I used to compulsively eat everything on my plate and in the cupboard, I would eat crisps and chocolate when I wasn't hungry, have lots of snacks, drink lots, and eat whatever food I liked. There was an element of eating when I was bored and comfort eating caused, I think, by my parents calling me fat when I was a child. Being defiant I used to eat more to show them I didn't care! Oh, also the 1970s habit of 'eat everything on your plate, there are starving children in Africa'.
Ironically I watch my family and they're all overweight and unhappy with their bodies after spending years of calling me fat. Karma.
So because it took me a couple of years to lose weight my tastes changed. I stopped having crap in the house. I also learnt about what it means to be hungry. There is a distinction between being slightly empty and actually hungry and ravenous and I probably used to just eat when I was empty. Now I wait til I'm hungry and I rarely crave unhealthy stuff.
I think that we have been programmed to eat 3 meals a day at certain times and sometimes I'm not hungry so I don't eat even though a voice in my head says 'it's 2.30 you should've eaten by now'. Luckily I'm a sahm so I eat when I like but if I worked in an office or shop I know it would be impossible to eat when I like.
Also I learnt that we need smaller portion sizes than we think so I eat tiny portions and they do fill me up. I also throw food away that I haven't eaten (this was originally really hard to do, we've all been programmed to not throw food away). And I know that processed carbs do not fill me up in the long term so can be a waste of good calories.
Final thing I learnt that some sauces and extras can be more calorific than the thing you're eating. So you can have steak with pepper sauce and the sauce has more calories than the steak! At pizza express you can have a pizza for 500 calories but the bruschetta starter is 375 which seems huge for a starter. Poppadoms, curries with creamy sauces, prawn crackers are all high in calories.
Also I love flavours like lemon, chilli, ginger, basil, parsley, garlic, mustard and add loads to my cooking.
I also discovered you can freeze chip shop chips so I'll buy a portion and let myself eat a dozen and then freeze them.
I still have an element of compulsion in that if I'm at a buffet where there is lots of savoury stuff I will devour it like a pig but that doesn't happen that often. I have sometimes seen the awful mumsnet threads about a 'greedy' coworker who eats too much and think that could've been written about me ten years ago. I hate those judgemental bastards who write those threads.