No Need to Starve to Lose Weight
Starving yourself is never a good way of losing weight. It might work in the short term, but countless studies show that if you drastically cut back on your food, your body might go into "starvation" mode.
If it does that, it will hold onto accumulated fat in an attempt to keep you alive through lean times without food. On the other hand, you may actually lose weight. But when when people who starve themselves normalize their eating habits, the weight can come back with a vengeance.
This is why crash diets rarely work and why a lifestyle change is much better. It's makes a lot more sense to remain healthy and lose a pound or two a week and keep it off.
Moderation is key. When you make moderate changes you are much more likely to be able to stick with them. Eat well, reduce your intake a little, and get more exercise. Make a point of moving throughout the day, and try to find some sort of extra exercise that's pleasant for you.
It's true that some people lose weight on a program of dieting and depravation, but that's not a very enjoyable way of doing things, and such an approach has a high attrition rate and doesn't always work in the long run. For myself, the Italian way works best -- that is, eating and enjoying food to its fullest, but in moderation. It involves eating three times a day and eating things with staying power, like pasta, plus fruits and vegetables.
Now, my Italian way does involve something I call "exquisite agony." Don't worry about that word "agony," because it really is exquisite, or pleasurable. This was something I learned on the Isle of Elba, where most businesses close their shutters between the hours of 1 o'clock and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. There is no possibility of responding to your stomach's "feed me" call, unless you want a gelato. And those are small, as are the towns, so you can't keep going back for more, unless you want to develop the reputation of the town pig!
All you can do is enjoy the gentle rumble in your stomach as you approach the dinner hour of 8 p.m. And that's a pleasurable torture, because you know that dinner is going to be fantastic.
This pleasurable "sweet longing" was something I took back to the United States with me as a souvenir of my time in Italy. It's the reason I urge you to cook for yourself and plan things you love, so you have something wonderful to look forward to at the end of the day.
It's that feeling of anticipation that allows you to forego the snacking habit. When you know you're going to have something fabulous at dinnertime, you won't want to ruin it by eating beforehand. The wait is worth it.
This is the carrot, versus the stick approach to weight loss!