Unfortunately there are no shortcuts to permanent weight loss. Basically to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume. Your body needs a certain number of calories each day to function properly so starving yourself is never a good idea. Your best bet is to make healthy food choices and exercise regularly.

I wouldn’t consider doing a starvation diet if I were you. This may be just my way of thinking, but I wouldn’t give myself a hard time starving when I know that sooner or later I’ll stop seeing results (the commonly known diet plateau) and the moment I eat a tiny bit more than when I was starving, I’d gain all the weight back plus interests.

Starving may sound nice, because you lose a lot of weight in a small amount of time, but in all honesty, it doesn’t work on the long run and it just gives you more troubles than solutions.

niether. stop beating yourself up and learn to love food that is good for you. eat every 2-3 hours, and never feel like you’re starving. bonus points if you find a way to be physically active that you also enjoy and do it every day (like dancing, running, jumping rope, whatever). i have yet to do the second part, and i recently gained back a little bit of weight because i was slacking on the first part and only eating like 2 times a day in big doses (and eating totally unhealthy stuff) because i was stressed out with school stuff. but now things are a little less hectic and i can focus on taking care of myself. i’ve been through a lot of diets, and some really unhealthy habits, and i’ve got to say, developing healthy habits and loving myself are by far the best ways to lose weight.

it’s just the way your body works. if you starve yourself (and this includes going on a diet where you feel hungry all the time), your body will go into starvation mode and you will not lose weight. if you do lose weight, you will gain it back as soon as you start eating again. if you enjoy eating and make a point of finding foods that are good for you that you love, it’s much easier to take in fewer calories than you’re expending without ever feeling hungry. even though i recently gained back a few pounds, it was much less than i would have if i had been dieting recently, because i still kept a lot of my healthy habits, even when i was in total stress mode, skipping breakfast and eating ice cream every night. here’s what an average day’s diet looks like when i’m at my best, feeling great, loving myself, taking care of myself and losing weight without even meaning to: breakfast – 2 hard boiled eggs, sliced turkey, water, decaf coffee (optional) or tea, multivitamin (w/o iron); mid-morning snack – banana, handful of walnuts (maybe calcium supplement); lunch – greek salad with romaine lettuce, feta cheese, olives, vinegrette dressing, and whatever else may be on hand; mid-afternoon snack – yogurt with raisins and more nuts (nuts are great for killing hunger pangs – that’s one habit i kept even in unhealthy times ‘cause it’s just practical); dinner – chicken with beans and veggies (iron supplement); evening snack – small piece of dark chocolate.

i derived a lot of this from the you on a diet site. once i got into the habit of it, it was really easy, just three meals a day, plus little snacks in between to keep me going. here it is:
http://www.realage.com/ct/the-you-docs/you-on-a-diet/

no absolutely no starving! That does NOTHING for you in the long run. You’ll eventually either kill yourself or start eating again and consume too much. The best and most effective way to lose weight is to count calories along with exercising. You should lose .5 to 2 pounds a week which is healthy. Find out how much calories you usually use daily and cut out 500-1000. It’s not as hard as it seems as long as you eat healthy nutrient-rich food. Especially if you’re vegetarian.(which will help the world AND you a lot!)

The only way I’ve lost weight is by only eating when I’m hungry. It’s simple, really, but that’s what I’ve found works.

I lost 25 pounds between November and April. It’s stayed off so far.

Best of luck.

Well neither is a great choice to be totally honest. Starving would be the worst choice. Your body goes into starvation mode and holds onto fat to survive and survives off the muscle first. Muscle burns fat so you are double defeating yourself there, not to mention it is extremely unhealthy and unfair to your body to starve it. The purpose of losing weight should be to be healthier which means you should take a health approach to getting there. As far as the slipping up part here is my advice. I am a lifetime yo-yo dieter, if there is a diet or a pill or some new and improved something I have bought, taken or tried it. My friend use to always tease me about how I had tried it all. The problem is that it doesn’t matter what you buy or what you do until you decide YOU are worth it. Once that determination has been made you will get it done. It’s not something you can force or make happen. If you don’t have that key component none of the other stuff that you do will work. One thing I did (which really helped me) I had 1 session of hypnotherapy to help block out cravings for sweets and fast food and to help reprogram how I approached food in general. I have to say that was in January and I have not touched a bite of fast food since then and aside from some fresh fruit with meringue and a light champagne sauce (at a special dinner which was a relatively “healthy” choice from what was offered) I have had no desserts. I started a medically supervised weight loss plan back in mid March and have stuck very strictly to my diet guidelines and dropped 34.6lbs in 8 weeks. I also cut out all drinks except water and no alcohol…2 things that I think helped A LOT. I pretty much decided 2 things: first this was going to be my last diet because I deserve to be healthy and feel better. second anything that I could possibly want to cheat on my diet with will still be available to me when I reach a size that I am happy with. It’s a lot easier to restrain yourself and not add to what you already have because along with the calories you add the guilt and self loathing . Once you get to where you are happy then you can have those things in moderation and occasionally and spend a little extra time in the gym to burn those calories off. Not to mention when your are thinner and have less fat and more muscle your body will burn more calories so those things don’t hurt you the way they do when you are already overweight. Take sometime and do some self searching try to recognize when you eat and why. What trigger you? Boredom? Stress? Depression? Also work on the emotional healing once you get it the other will fall into place. Set yourself small reasonable goals and reward yourself when you accomplish them. Find something besides food to do it with…this is a biggie!! I had the hardest time with this. Also a good support system is important, when you go for it let friends and relatives know that you need them to support you. This means not suggesting fast food or social outings revolving around food. If you have to do something social involving food research ahead of time. Go online and look up the restaurant and get the nutritional info so you can make healthy choices when you go. Sounds like a lot of work and it is but you are worth the time. I log everything I put in my mouth and have since mid March. At first it was a pain but now it is second nature. I right down the food it’s fat, calories, protein & net carbs to keep track of what I eat. You’d be amazed at how quick it adds up if you’re not careful. The most important thing is to love yourself and forgive yourself if you mess up, you are only human. Just try to make some healthier eating choices for now and when you truly know that you are ready to commit to doing it then go for it. Till then just eat as best you can because beating yourself up daily is destroying your self esteem which is just continuing the cycle and getting you nowhere. I wish you the best and I know you can do it!!!

Food is not your enemy!
You need to eat DON’T skip meals, eat every 3 hour small amounts of whole foods and drink plenty of water. Take a natural fat burner and appetite suppressant till your stomach shrinks to its normal size again. My friends and I did it we lost the weight and kept it off. www.strongappetitesuppressant.com
and order regular or extra strength it works. I just got an e-mail they offer free shipping in June, July and August. Many of us need a product to reduce hunger and burn fat. With a little help everybody can do it.
Get ready for the summer, it works, god luck.

I would recommend www.thedailyplate.com

It free to use and is basically a huge database of food so you can pick out what you’ve eaten everyday.

It then tells you the calorie, fat, carb, protein, sodium etc content of everything.

It also tailors a personal daily calorie goal for you based on your current weight, your weight loss goals and your activity level.

I have found it a god send!

PLEASE don’t starve yourself, its not the way to lose weight and keep it off, and certainly isn’t healthy.

Treat yourself little but often, eat meals when you are hungry and not when you are bored, drink plenty of water and snack as much as you like on healthy things like fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds.

Best of luck to you, stay healthy!

xxx

Your question made me a bit sad. I agree with some of the less extreme answers here – work on developing a relationship with food that’s healthy and sane. I’ve lost 144 pounds, but there’s no magic. Decent portions, healthy food, no cutting out whole food groups, no diet pills, moderate exercise, etc. A good, free website is www.sparkpeople.com. I’m chris2365 there too, check it out. They’re not selling you anything or advocating some crazy plans, just being sane.

Truly, I am the wrong person to ask about weight loss…I just finished eating a bunch of candy, almond roca and hershey nuggets while I watch it rain (of course I could be working out at the gym) but I do work out and I do core strength training which is palades and the elliptical and I like to weight train and do core balance exercises because I golf…I am planning on finishing the pizza I got the other night for lunch…I also walk my little dog every day, just move your body what ever way you like! It’s all good!
Never starve youself…you will only make yourself more hungry!

The best thing to do is moderation
Eat more small meals a day, because you actually retain weight and gain more weight whenever you start to stop eating because your body is going into survival mode, stay busy but eat little healthy snacks along the way, get outside, move around, get involved and youll start to notice the inches shedding, and thats another thing dont be concerned about the numbers on the scale, remeber muscle weighs more than fat.

dnt starve lyk

eat when your hungry.
excerise regulaurly
eat healthy
drink plenty of water

If I’m trying to lose weight I do a semi starvation thing where I aim to consume less than 2000kj a day (476.19 calories). Usually I lose about .4 – .6kg a day by doing this.
It’s ok if I go a little over, but never ever ever ever! more that 5000kj… (1190.48 calories)

but this of course is because I’m too lazy to exercise and focus on my food…

Something easier is to just not “over eat”. That is, STOP eating once you’re full :)

The only real and lasting solution is get active and only eat what you NEED. My activity has slowed and as a result the pounds have started to come back.