I wholeheartedly agree. Eating less for some people with strong hunger pains can be almost impossible. I was one of them. Skipping breakfast would make me irrationally angry, and the pain of having an empty stomach was too much to bear. I could not concentrate even if I had mild hunger.

I'm going to plug in a program that changed my life, even though I have never done that, and I don't really agree with their business model, but their methodology for training yourself to eat less is top-notch and incredibly simple. The program is called Naturally Slim, and many insurance companies cover it.

I think their $50/month fee for non-insured people is a bit outrageous because the principles are simple:

* Eat really slowly and stop eating when you're not hungry anymore (not full, just not hungry). Throw away the rest of the food or store it for later.

* Only eat when you're really hungry.

* Drink diluted orange juice at a 1:8 ratio throughout the day to maintain a steady glucose level and prevent hunger.

* Your meals should consist of about 1/3 vegetable or animal protein to keep hunger away.

* Instead of having breakfast, drink plenty of water or the diluted orange juice. Most people aren't really hungry in the morning.

The beauty is that as your body weight drops, your caloric requirements drop, and if you're following the first rule, you're eating less every week.

Probably that's how anorexia sufferers get to eat so little without feeling devastating hunger.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Counting calories is fairly simple if you are eating fast food or out of packages. I found it to be a huge pain in the ass when eating whole foods.

That's an unfortunate alignment, because those foods that are packaged and marked with calorie counts are the very ones that are more likely to leave you wanting to eat more calories than you need.

Whole foods are harder to get an accurate count for, but seem to leave me feeling full after consuming a more reasonable number of calories.

Seconded. When I used to cut weight for HS and college wrestling it was considerably easier to plan around fast food and pre-packaged options. Those aren't always awesome choices, but they're highly consistent and I can get accurate counts as to how much calories/protein/fiber/fat/carbs I've had.

Doesn't mean I was eating it 3 meals a day, mind you; still mostly brown rice, broc, and chicken breasts. But I could plan around a lunch at Wendy's, while the local steak house was a crapshoot.

You don’t need extreme precision when counting calories. The trick is to A develop a reasonable baseline for breaking even at your weight and activity level. Then B make a significant reduction sufficient to lose weight in a reasonable timeframe. You can call them calories or magic beans, as long as the energy ratio is about right that’s plenty.

Really, the difference between say 2,500 calories a day and 1,800 is about the magnitude you want and not that hard to differentiate.

As an alternative, check out a whole-food plant based diet. Many foods in the standard American diet (junk food like chips and sweets, meat, dairy, eggs, oils, even fish) are generally very calorie-dense -- you don't have to eat much of them to be over-eating calories, and eating an appropriate amount doesn't fill you up.

If you switch to getting your calories from whole grains, beans and legumes, potatoes, rice (ideally brown rice), fruit, etc, and don't add fat or oil when you cook, you can eat until you're full and still not gain weight. Nuts and seeds are the only whole plant food you may have to watch out for a bit -- the oil in them makes them relatively high-calorie.

The downside to this diet is that you'll probably have to do a lot of the cooking yourself at home, because virtually all the prepared food you can buy has had oil of some sort added to it. You can buy some things like pasta sauce, but you have to pay close attention to the nutrition label and try to get ones with minimal added oil. It takes a little while to get used to it, but it soon becomes pretty intuitive.

And of course, cutting out dairy and meat means that you'll want to supplement B12.

The upside is that this diet has health benefits (based on research, not just anecdotes) that go way beyond weight loss, though. Reduced risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes, reduced fatigue, less pain from inflammatory conditions, less anxiety, better digestion, etc.

Although, the anecdotes are generally impressive and fun to read, so if you want those: https://www.forksoverknives.com/success-stories/#gs.6onygn

If I don't make a conscious effort to reduce my intake I can easily eat 5k calories a day of beans, potatoes, or rice.

The challenge is that diets that rely on how your body metabolizes certain foods inherently depend on a lot of details about your digestive and metabolic processes. Some of those things probably are very generalizable, but many of them will vary widely in how well they work depending on genetic factors, gut flora, and lifestyle.

By contrast, calorie counting requires only that you obey the laws of thermodynamics. At some level of reduced intake it will produce weight loss for literally anyone.

Having said that, if not eating carbs gets you there that's great-- I don't want to diminish anyone else's experience with weight loss. I just think more people should be up-front when talking about their new diet that any surprisingly easy way to lose weight is surprising because things don't normally work that way.

One could spin it around and argue that what that maintenance level is depends heavily upon the individual's metabolic processes, which depend upon gut flora, diet, weight, exercise levels, timing of consumption...

The way to eat less is to reduce carbs and increase healthy fats. Carbs spike your blood sugar, which your body then works at removing, causing a sugar crash a couple of hours later where you are hungry, which is why people snack between meals. If you avoid carbs, you avoid the sugar spike and crash. Instead of carbs, eat healthy fats. Fats don't spike your sugar and they keep you satiated for hours on end. Keep your protein at a normal level. Protein increases blood sugar some but not enough to cause a sugar spike and crash and make you hungry.

The right drugs can kill your appetite and they're very effective and ensuring weight loss. For me, just caffeine can ensure I don't eat for the whole day and then I can still go climbing.

Throw in some Bronkaid and you have a proper EC stack. Be careful if you have family history of heart disease and especially if you have heart issues yourself. Also, like anything don't overdue it. And research the heck out of it first please.

I've done ec stack and I develop a tolerance to the appetite suppressive effects in a couple weeks, also I don't like how I feel on it. Two or cups of coffee per day is enough stim for me, more than that makes me feel awful.