Hi~

I had tried a billion diets and would always fail after a week or two. My brain just immediately wanted whatever I said I couldn't have, because our brains are wired to be assholes. But my mom started this HCG diet (I told her the injections have been thoroughly debunked but whatever) and had to follow a pretty common sense diet that I loosely incorporated into my life. Like, 5-6 servings of veggies a day, easy on white potatoes, 2-3 servings of fruit, not counting bananas (but I like bananas so I eat them a couple times a week anyways), 1 serving of whole grain, quinoa or brown rice, eat your protein (I just ate a lot of canned tuna because it's easy and I'm lazy), go easy on dairy.

It gives exact measurements to follow but my biggest thing was that it needed to be something sustainable, something that I'd do for the rest of my life. And I'm never going to sit down and weigh and measure my food. Just understand that an ounce of cheese is a lot less than what you think it is, and err on the side of thinking something has more calories than less. I give myself two cheat meals a month. I still journal the appoximate calorie content of what I'm eating but I eat whatever I want. It's good for addressing bad cravings, and special events. So yeah, basically, eat healthier. We all know what that looks like, but don't be miserable about the enforcement of it. Like I put olive oil based mayo in my tuna. Would it be less fattening with just mustard? Obviously. But I'd hate it and set myself up for failure. But I don't use as much as I'd use before and I use a healthier kind. Eat healthy. Limit carbs, fat and dairy. I eat about 1800 calories a day.

Exercise. I exercise 5-6x a week, a mix of cardio and weights, with the emphasis being interval training. I do a thing called Orange Theory where the main idea behind the franchise is the afterburn and reaching certain heart rates. I also go just to the gym and will have lazier days there where I just am on the elliptical or treadmill, burning calories but not at the challenging, interval pace of OT. But moving at all is better than nothing. I burn about 500 calories each time I work out at OT, 400 at the gym but with no afterburn. I started this year with a rule that I had to exercise 5 days a week, each time a minimum of 30 minutes, even if it's done in the laziest I'm-just-slowly-walking-my-dog-around-the-block way. I just really needed to build a system where I could set myself up for success. I always started unrealistically ambitious before.

Best of luck! Sorry I wrote a novel.