Weight loss tips?

Needing some tips so I may start my weight loss journey. Food tips what to avoid and thing to swap other things for. What helped with your sweet cravings and how to avoid soda!! Soda is a big one for me and at times it feels like I cant stop. 

Im 250 ish pounds and for my height and age I should be anywhere from 120-145. Now im tryingnto set weight loss goals that are realistic. In 6 months I want to be down to atleast 180-200 if that's even possible.

I have 2 young children to live for and im an over thinker and an over eater. Growing up that was how my father told me bad news was he shoved good food in my face and waiting til I was eating to deliver the news. 

Hi there. Ive lost huge amounts of weight following the low carb lifestyle. It's not called a diet, coz you have to change the way you eat, for good. No portion control is a big bonus as I also overthink and food is comfort. Dm me and I can guide you.

As a disclaimer, i have never had to lose weight so this is not from personal experience, but an animal based diet, or even a strict carnivore diet has been shown to work wonders for weight loss, building muscle and overall having a healthy lifestyle. I have friends who have struggled with weight loss and they went on an animal based diet and reached their weight loss goal, and you dont really have to worry about portion sizes etc. I personally have been on an animal based diet for years, and ive seen an improvement in my health and my gains in the gym.

If this diet is something that you'd like to know more about feel free to just shoot me a DM

1. don’t follow healthy diet pyramid, rather stick to „healthy plate”. Modern, more doable approach.
2. whenever putting anything into your mouth think if you will give it to your 2 kids
3. strictly low glycemic index carbs and lot of protein at the evening to prevent night hunger
4. be hydrated >2,5 liters a day unless you are kidney failure
5. there is no „scalpel burning cutting eradication miracle professor president approved genius diet” - change your habits on a daily basis slowly but surely
6. psychotherapy to fight escaping into comfort food
7. Exercise daily. Do at least 10 minute of plank or walk but keep working out everyday or every other day.

a calorie deficit is the most important part of weight loss, which just means you're eating fewer calories than you're burning each day. you don't even necessarily have to work out if you don't want to, as long as you remain within a deficit.

i'd start by figuring out your TDEE to find your "maintenance" calories-- this is the amount you'd need to consume on a daily basis to stay at your current weight. a common rule of thumb for healthy and sustainable weight loss is a deficit of around 500 calories a day (works out to about 1 lb a week).

you also have to track your food to ensure you're actually eating at a deficit. i recommend buying a cheap kitchen scale and downloading a tracker app to log everything you eat and drink. it can feel tedious at first but it has worked for me. :)

Move more, eat less... sounds obvious but it works. 

I use MyNetDiary for calorie counting, it's easy enough for me, but calorie counting isn't for everyone.

Avoid high fructose corn syrup , avoid processed food, the most important thing is portion control. Eat lower than your daily calorie needed if you’re an average male it’s 2000 average female is 1500 eat less. 
it also does not matter what you eat, what I mean is if you wanted to you could eat 1400 worth of cake each day and still lose weight granted you Stick to 1400 calories. You’ll be very hungry as cake has almost no food that makes you full and no vitamins or anything else but sugar!  
I’ve started to use zepbound and let me tell you how I lost 75lbs in 1 year. Zepbound made me feel not hungry , full most of the time, so I had like1-2 meals a day. So what I did was I ate 1 meal a day, pizza, donut, pasta, just once a day! And when I was hypoglycemic I drank Gatorade . So our body doesn’t recognize “ooo we eating good calories today let’s burn some fat to make us feel goo” no it doesn’t do that calories are calories whether it’s from cake or lettuce or spinach or snickers bar. 

Portion control is your biggest tool. 
in America we have portions sized for elephants, follow what the French do, when was the last time you seen a fat Frenchman.

Don’t underestimate the power of sleep and meditation 

We often have bad eating habits that are because a hectic and stressful schedule 

Planning ahead for healthy alternatives out you in a better spot

And if you’re not rested you don’t feel your best and won’t make the right choices 

It becomes a vicious cycle til we make different choices establishing better patterns

It is hard to do this an normally takes 30+ days to swap something one at a time don’t overdo things 

You have to be able to live with the changed and make sure it makes you feel better in the end then you have a shot at maintaining that behavior 

GL

1. Control your diet
2.  Eat less food
3. Eat more protein and slightly fat diet
4. Work out more
5. Calories burned>calories in
6. You can't outrun your fork

Sharing some personal tips and habits that helped me get in a better/healthier shape for the past year or so, I managed to lose around 80 pounds-ish in a year now with moderate effort.

- Hit the gym, go for an all around workout routine (preferably 3-5 times a week, two hours minimum per sesh).

- Ignore all the BS you hear, never miss Cardio (especially if you're overweight, very easy and fast to lose calories with bikes, stepper or treadmills..) (a solid cardio hour on a bike usually takes away around 500-600cal/h on a 8 ish resistance setup)

- 3 meals a day, no snacking, no eating after 6pm - Reduce or cut completely on these (Fast or fried food, bread, sodas, prepacked sugary juices, salty snacks, candy/sweets), replace with fruits and dried nuts. (moderate amounts)

- Go for walks outside for a least 30 mins+ every day (could be some groceries run or just a chill time...)

- Drink water, LOTS of it (try it with crushed ice, lemon and mint leaves at least once during/after your training, super refreshing).

But the most important tip is: keep your mind strong, and always remember why you're doing what you're doing.

Best of luck in your journey friend, make yourself proud :)

start tracking part of your intake. track all of it if your willing to. find your estimate maintenance and stay on it for a week and watch your average weight. if it doesnt move then you are close to ur maintenance cals. depending on your goals you can then adjust your deficit. Anything between a 300-1k deficit is safe for optimal fat loss, though, as you get closer to the 1k mark you have increased MBS(muscle breakdown synthesis) which can lead to muscle loss. You can counteract this by keeping protein high(1.2g+/lb bodyweight) and training high intensity(high mechanical tension(70-90% of 1 rep max to failure). Prioritize carbs and protein. Protein is your body's source of amino acids, it needs AAs for MPS and MPS signaling. Carbs are more protein sparring than fats, they increase insulin which will signal ur body not to breakdown tissue. You still need fats tho for proper hormonal function but you want to be eating near the bare minimum to be optimal(0.3g/lb bw). Also want to ensure your sat to unsat fat ratio isnt too wild to keep blood cholesterol levels healthy. I would recommend not going under a 2:3 unsat:sat fat ratio, higher unsats is better but your body still does need some sat fats.

if you drink a lot of soda, drink diet soda. You will die of obesity long before any artificial sweeteners have any affect on your body. Studies done on mice that show side effects are done so with large doses which you would basically never even get close to.

edit: also 1lb of pure fat takes around 3.5k cals to burn. if you want to 50-70 lbs thats 175,000-245,000 cals. that would be around 1k-1.5k cal deficit a day. Also note that the higher body fat you are, the more protein sparring your body is. so you could theoretically be in a 1.5k deficit and be perfectly safe from muscle loss and even put on some lean mass. Just make sure you keep protein high 

monkey eats a lot. monkey eating dirty = monkey gains fat + weights.

monkey eats less and counting calories. monkey eating dirty =  gains fat.

monkey eats less and counting calories. monkey eating clean foods = monkey loses weighst  + loses fat.

The one thing that people miss a lot is CALORIE COUNTING. Please, you can do intermittent fasting all you want, but if you take insane amount of calorie everytime, your fasting would be a waste.

After that, MACRO nutrient management. Fat, protein, carbs. ChatGPT/Claude isn't 100% accurate, but it can help a lot. Try to use premium calorie counting app if you really serious into it. AND BE CONSISTENT.

Then, the rest is micronutrients, which is hard but relatively easy to fix with one or two cheap multivitamins and fruits.

Calorie Counting was my best and easiest method although I can understand why people avoid it. People can also tend to overdo it which makes the method a bit of a balancing act (for more than just that one reason).

But it worked for me because I treated it like a game. In a lot of ways, its not to unlike the basics of Torn. Figure out the amount of calories you should be eating based on weight and height and eat at a deficit and also enough. Technically, you can eat whatever you want but that probably won't work in the long run.

When I started out, I stuck to my deficit no matter what I ate but eventually learned more about nutrition and food substitutes, etc. and found that I can be really creative and love cooking in a healthy manner even when budgeting calories. When starting out, you might not want to cut a certain food out of your diet, and you may not have to. Eventually you might want to eat less of an unhealthier thing or find the joys in cutting it out completely. Who knows. But that's basically what worked for me. 

if ur in a deficit youll lose fat no matter what. you can eat trash and still lose fat

That is true, however, if you eat trash you might run into a vitamin deficiency. 

But yes, it's really that simple: burn more calories than you put in. 

Read/listen to Ultra-Processed People! 

I’m medstudent here and have work in obesity clinic once 

 you might already get some advice from many comment above already some of them useful some don’t infact in general restriction calories and excercise is enough answer to lose weight.

so you ask 2 thing and i gonna try answer that use some medical knowledge i have 

1.you ask for what to avoid type of food

• well in common sense we all know that we should avoid fry food / oily food / processed food because most of them are usually high calories and not healthy which can effect your weight
• try to seek for healthy diet and low calories diet should include high fiber gain some protein and not too much calories 
• furthermore than that try to improve eating behavior like more chewing and drink water will make you eat slower and full faster (decrease gastric empty time) which something you should train if you want to control your meal

2.you ask about how to avoid craving sweet drink

• well it physiologic normal for human to craving sugar it like reward system in brain and can addictive
• so to avoid the you should try to eat something that sweet but less sugar like synthesis sugar drink (which still not recommend but atleast low calories than regular one )
• or try to eat sweet drink that come from juice atleast you it natural one and usually less sugar inside.

If you still fail this and still seek for help there is Nutritonist / Physician that Can help you about try seek for them. in the last part if everything fail and have some commorbidty seek for obesity clinic they have some way to help include some medication/intervention.

I hope this answer will help you not much or least.

Chicken+Fish+protien based foods including cereals, vegetables/fruit and vitamins; Drink water and start walking miles but bring a lot of water+a small chocolate/sweet to stop light headedness and intersperse lifting+carrying until you ache, if you're in sharp pain, stop immediately and rest.

Fat is essential to bodily function but getting it lower is 100% good and you'll feel lighter and more confident. :) Lemonade is less caloric than conventional soft drinks depending on country and low sugar options and still has the lovely texture and no caffine (Avoid energy drinks too imo)

Have sugary food as a treat and do it as you're out, train your brain to associate gains with good feelings to restructure it and keeps blood sugar up. Air fryers also make food less caloric and require less oil, I own one, good piece of kit and cooks fast.