4 Tricks I Use To Maintain My 60 Lb Weight Loss That You’re Going To Say Are “Problematic”
Just hear me out before you send me mean DMs.
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by Audie Metcalf
I admit that title is clickbait. But also, every, single title of every, single article on the internet is clickbait. So I don’t feel bad about it. I’m almost daring you to call me out and yell at me for “disordered”eating. And I guess I’m trying to get in front of that by saying it first. But truthfully, I don’t think any of this is problematic in the slightest. I think it’s the shocking truth of what it takes to lose 60 pounds, and keep it off, without the help of doctors, medications, personal trainers, or experts.
And the amount of energy and thought and effort it takes … shocks me. First, here’s my credentials, in visual form:
If you’re followers of this brand, you know I’ve been writing about my weight loss for about a year. But if you’re not, here’s HOW I did it, MORE here, and even MORE here. Oh and THIS too. As I explain in every article, it’s not complicated. It’s actually quite simple. I eat fewer calories now than I burn. That’s it. However it is tremendously hard to do. Shockingly hard. Because hunger is almost too much to bear, and that’s why most of us want to lose weight but never do—we just can’t manage the hunger.
So I feel like when I realize I’m using little tricks here and there in my “maintenance” phase, I write them down. And once there’s enough of them that I find interesting and potentially helpful, I write about them. And that’s why we’re here together, today.
But these are definitely the trickiest of the tricks I’ve written about so far. And I’m not going to be so insulting as to tell you to step away now if you have emotional distress around food—you’re a grown up and you know how to manage your digital media consumption—but I am going to be explicitly discussing calories and restricting food, so do with that what you will.
Trick #1
We’re all told to “listen to your body.” What a load of horseshit. My body tells me it wants McDonald’s French fries every day of its life. I had no clue what this was or how to do it and it was just another ridiculous, meaningless, safe social media phrase designed to make people feel like they’re saying something smart while making all of us feel bad for not being able to do it. I still can’t do it, but I pay very, very close attention to how satiated I feel when I eat. I no longer eat to “feel full” and I now eat to “not feel hungry.” There’s a huge difference here. The feeling of fullness feels bad. And so I often no longer “feel hungry” after I eat about half of my breakfast. And then I come back to it in a couple hours, as a snack. Weird? Bad? “Problematic?” I don’t care. I want control over my health and body and this tactic has been enormously helpful for me.
Trick #2
I needed to figure out where and why I was overeating during the day. There is no more complex thing that’s happening if you’re carrying extra weight you don’t want to be carrying—you’re eating too many calories. So that might mean that you’re overeating at each meal, or it might mean snacking a lot throughout the day, or it might mean being ravenously hungry at night. Or, if you’re me, it’s all 3! What joy! I get into the nitty gritty details of how I solved this HERE but one thing I do that’s sort of weird now is that I eat with a teaspoon and I use a small plate. PROBLEMATIC!!!
But look. It’s so helpful. I take smaller bites, I don’t have the desire to load up my plate (and my brain still sees a “full” plate of food) because so, so, so, so much of this stuff is just mental. The game itself is a mental game, so unless we use mind games to solve it, we won’t win. And I like to win.
Trick #3
I created a big collection of snacks I know I can dip into throughout the day that are extremely low calorie and mostly crunchy. For some reason, snacks need to be crunchy. I always have these pickles*, hearts of palm in a jar*, teriyaki seaweed snacks*, sriracha edamame*, blueberries (which I realize are a crapshoot, crunch wise, but the jumbos tend to be best), Trader Joe’s marinated artichoke hearts in a bag, and, the crunchy snack of all crunchy snacks, giardinaria*.
If snacking is your issue, the absolute KEY is planning for it. If you don’t plan, you’ll be scavenging your own house for the dumbest carb you can find. Don’t white knuckle anything—it’s a recipe for failure. Plan ahead. Know yourself. Outsmart yourself.
Trick #4
None of us can live without some trash food once in a while. If we make our lives too spartan, we flirt too closely with the “fuck it” line and that’s when everything falls apart. For example, I’m writing this article for you with RSV while hacking up a lung, and I don’t have the energy to make real food and I’m sort of craving garbage. So here’s my lunch:
A trash cup of mac and cheese that we have in the house for true child emergencies, along with 3 oz of rotisserie chicken. It’s good! It feels like those comforting feelings we have when eating mac and cheese but the chicken makes it 30 grams of protein. If I just ate the mac and cheese alone I’d be starving in an hour. And then I’d overeat. And so weirdly, that’s the trick. For the most part in life, eat “good” stuff like chicken, fish, veg, eggs. And when you’re eating crap, add something real to it, to make it a meal. The reason “bad” food is so bad is because it’s just never filling, so we’re hungry too soon after we eat it.
Bonus: Measure your condiments
We’re all used to watching cooking shows “eyeball” what a tablespoon is—a heaping teaspoon typically. I measured this myself. It comes out to about 2 tablespoons. And when you’re talking about mayonnaise or peanut butter or salad dressing, JUST measuring those 3 things every day, is the difference between being in a calorie deficit or not. Which is the difference between achieving every, single goal you set, or not.
Audie Metcalf is the Editor-in-chief of The Candidly, and lives in LA with her family. You can find more of her articles here.
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