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Recently I've gotten a new gust of wind in my sails and I have been trying to lose some weight.
For the past couple years I've been primarily focusing on increasing my exercise level to burn fat, which to a certain extent has worked, but I always still had a layer of fat on my belly that I could never burn through. It certainly decreased in size whenever I got back into the routine of working out, but never got to the level where I'd be truly happy to be shirtless in public. Part of the problem is that I would justify eating worse foods, saying that I'll just have to work extra hard the next day, a promise I didn't always keep.
Now that I've gotten back into the swing of cooking most meals, I realized how easy it was to control what I was eating and make foods that tasted good while being healthy. I never really made unhealthy meals before now but my general formula for a meal was protein + carb + vegetable, with the carb probably being the largest portion in that equation. This was mostly fine and if I weren't trying to cut weight it is a solid formula for a decent meal. The tweaked formula is now protein + vegetable + vegetable + (carb)/2. I'm generally cooking a larger quantity than I was prior as well.
I don't like thinking about what I'm doing as dieting, to me there's a certain sense impermanence to the term. Dieting also makes me think of fad diets, not being based on sustainability or health and purely on reaching a goal weight, before inevitably caving. That being said, what I'm doing does somewhat resemble "paleo" and to a lesser extent "keto" diets. I'm not avoiding carbohydrates all together, but when I do have them, I avoid complex carbohydrates like bread or pasta and opt for something like potatoes or rice. The primary objective when I cook is to make something I'm going to enjoy eating. I'm not obsessively weighing out each portion or making sure I'm getting the right amount of protein macro-nutrients, I just look in the fridge and freezer to see all what I have and try to piece something together from that. Most of the time it turns out pretty good, certainly better than any fast food, and I'll have enough left over to eat for a couple days.
Partially I'm doing this to also make it easier to grow the things I eat. Owning chickens goes against the lease so I can't grow my own meat for now, but I've started my garden and have lots of vegetables planted, vegetables I'm already eating now. Even now, before vegetables are essentially free from my garden, I'm saving a significant chunk of money on cooking over getting pre-made meals. Vegetables are pretty cheap at the supermarket and so is the meat. A package of either can be used for multiple dishes, each dish having multiple meals. So even if at check out all the ingredients are $50, that's $50 that feeds me for the entire week instead of $15-$25 for each pre-made meal.
Most of all it's given me a lot more energy. Food here in the states are pumped full of so many preservatives and sweeteners that you find yourself feeling lethargic and gross after eating them. When I visited Germany I noticed that eating the food never made me feel tired like it did at home. My cooking still hasn't given me quite the same energy as in Germany, but I feel awake in the morning and my recovery from a harder workout takes less time. It just feels like I've gotten a fresh oil change and everything is running ever so slightly smoother.
That being said I'm still adjusting to my new way of eating. When I get to the end of a meal I feel full but not quite satisfied. After eating, I'm craving bread or something sweet. It's not overwhelming and after having a glass of water or two, the cravings subside. If I get hungry in the middle of the day I'll have a banana or if I need more than that I'll cut up the banana into a bowl of plain yogurt.
So far this regimen has been working well for me! I've lost ~5 pounds over the past week and a half and I'm not longing for fast food as I was initially. I haven't been perfect, I had a sandwich on Monday and some spaghetti on Saturday, as well as some cereal bars peppered in throughout the week, but I'm also happy about that. This isn't meant to be a strict diet where I can no longer eat anything outside of a small circle of foods, it's meant to be a tweak on my eating habits that I'll be able to stay in line with for the future. My goal is a sustainable change in my life for the long run.
Good food is essential for a good life.