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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 |