How I lost 100 pounds with portion control, the missing link in weight loss

Hello my friends of this blog on how I lost 100 pounds without gastric bypass or weight loss drugs. I celebrate my 10th anniversary of shedding morbid obesity and while I'm still, according to the BMI a little overweight, I've managed to maintain weight loss. Today while enjoying some homemade mac and cheese, I realized that a large part of how I lost 100 pounds was with  portion control and that this is the missing link in weight loss. 

I often look to the gastric bypass reality show "My 600-lb Life" for links to obesity and inspiration for blog posts on how to lose weight. And one major reason "My 600-lb Life" participants end up needing gastric bypass bariatric surgery is portion control fail. They not only eat very calorie dense foods but also way too much. 

I call portion control the missing link in diet discussion because, while we talk about what to eat, we don't talk enough about how much. Probably the biggest hurdle for folks on "My 600-lb Life" is amend 12,000 calories a day to a 1200 calorie diet. I got to thinking about this because as I was about to write a post on diet recipes for favorite comfort foods, I realized that I don't always want diet versions. I want the real thing: gooey mac and cheese, meat lovers lasagna with real pasta, not lentil noodles and Lindt Lindor truffles, not sugar-free Splenda chocolate that taste more like playground monkey bars than chocolate. 

That's one reason obesity is such a problem: we like our comfort foods and diet versions mostly don't satisfy.  Part of how I lost 100 pounds without gastric bypass was to eat as though I had had bariatric surgery, as if I  had a smaller stomach that could only hold smaller portions. At first, when my stomach was larger, I was really hungry. So I filled up on vegetables. Later as my stomach shrunk, I was able to feel more satisfied with portion control. 

I did make diet recipes of favorite foods because let's face it, 100-200 calories of mac and cheese is like 3 bites. And I'm not going to get full on that. But I wove it into my daily 1200 calorie diet. I also learned to rethink satisfied hunger and accept the fact that it was okay to feel some. I'll blog more on that in the next post as this is a biggee in weight loss.