Originally Posted by
TrojanHorse
OK, ultimately you should cut processed food and sugar entirely out of your diet. Stop eating out, make your own food and track what you eat. Sugar substitutes aren't doing you any favors either. At some point, foods that you don't expect to will taste sweet (e.g. if I have a latte, the milk tastes sweet to me now) and sugary foods will taste cloying and inedible.
I totally agree. Once I cut soda out of my diet, now if I drink one it tastes WAY too sweet. I have to put it in ice and water it down a bit. But mostly, I prefer just an iced tea.
There's a great (free) app called my fitness pal that will help you track what you eat. That should really help you get an idea of what you're eating and help you understand what you're doing to yourself. And don't eat back 900 calories if the app foolishly says you burned 900 cycling, you're not trying to maintain weight, you're trying to lose weight.
I agree that MFP is a handy tool, I used it for a while and it helped me keep track of what I was eating. And the thing about that app is that it really opens your eyes to how little you have to eat in a day to reach 2,000 calories. I also agree about not eating back the amount of calories it says you burn through exercise. Partly because even though you have a calorie deficit, that much more burned will help you lose that much more weight. And secondly, I don't know that the amount of calories it says you burn is anywhere near accurate. If it says you've burned 500 calories when you've only burned 300, and you eat that 500 calories back thinking no harm done, you've just taken on 200 extra calories you have to burn off.