So what will it take? To lose the weight, keep it off, feel healthy, stay healthy, and turn the binges and temptations to a thing of the past?
YOUR OWN diet. The one that YOU create for yourself. Because you see, the reason why people keep falling off the wagon, no matter which regimen they choose, is because they're doing someone else's diet.
All of a sudden, you've been told to cut bread, cut gluten, cut dairy, cut meat, cut fruit, cut carbs, cut fat, count calories and macros for the rest of your life, eat 6 times a day, eat once a day, skip meals you don't feel like skipping, eat more meals than you have time for, meal prep and cook dishes you don't enjoy eating, and stay hangry if you ever want to see your abs. That's not a way to live.
And let's not forget the constant fear-mongering for practically ALL the foods AND WATER!!!!
Pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, chemicals, they're everywhere. We can't even 100% trust on organic produce. It doesn't matter what diet you're diving into. The more you educate yourself, the more you'll find that everything we ingest, from the swordfish, to the carrots, to the water we drink and air we breathe, you'll always find something wrong with it.
So what are you gonna do? Stop eating indefinitely? Stop drinking water? Stop breathing? Life is so worth living, and things do not need to get so darn complicated. Your entire world does NOT need to revolve around what and how much you need to eat. Then there's not enough time for anything else, is there?
So yes, create your own diet, but there are some rules, obviously, and this phase will take some good amount of work on your part, but once you've got it all setup, that's it. You will be living your life enjoying what you're eating, without constantly crunching numbers, eating foods you hate and feeling hungry all the time. It's a stress-free LIFESTYLE, not a diet, and it's based solely on YOUR body, not a generalized diet made for the masses.
Did you know I haven't touched cake in nearly a decade? That I don't remember the taste of ice-cream? That I don't miss them AT ALL? That despite my hormones (menopause) keeping me hungry, and despite cooking all day for my children, that I'm perfectly confident that I will probably never say "I fell off the wagon, and gained 10kg of fat"? Did you know that I've been eating the exact same breakfast almost every single damn day for 3 years straight, and still not bored of it? The huge number of times I've said no to my cravings, and the rare times where I did have some pizza here and there, I haven't felt guilty about it nor has it derailed me from my goals?
The last time I've gained weight or felt yucky was purely a change in my hormones (a few months after I had my hysterectomy), not a change in my diet. A few more tweaks and supplementation to fix the issue and I'm back on track, already lost that hormonal weight, and feeling great!
I will be going through the whole process of how I've created my own way of eating on separate posts (yes, plural!), and it's gonna take some of the good stuff from regimens you probably already know, but there's a huge difference from endless calorie counting, or avoiding an entire food group, and it's NOT as subtle as intuitive or mindful eating either. There's a LOT more specifics to it, I've had to practically become my own doctor and nutritionist and there was a lot of trial and error involved. (have you ever cooked a whole week's worth of food that neither you nor your family liked it, and you ended up throwing it all away?)
Make no mistake, it will take lots of work to get it done, and probably will take you a few weeks (or even months) to figure everything out, but like I said, once you do, you will not have to worry about it anymore. Everything will become clear, you will have a good focus on what to eat, when to eat, how much, you will enjoy every bite, and you won't have to worry about the aftermath. For ONCE, it will be sustainable.
Also bear in mind that this is NOT meant for a specific timeframe. It's not meant to lose weight fast, it's not meant to prepare you for a bodybuilding contest, it's not meant to prepare you for a triathlon. This is for living a normal, healthy long life, where food becomes your fuel and medicine, rather than your drug, in a stress-free manner.