This is from CalorieQueens.com........
Learning to live with food, not without food.
The hardest part about our sensible approach to weight loss is convincing people that it works. When we tell people that we've lost three hundred pounds eating fabulous food, they simply can't believe it. For most of us, trying to lose weight has always been associated with feeling deeply deprived while eating horrid food. But we'd "been there, done that" with the deprivation and horrid food. A lifetime of "yo-yo" dieting is how we got to be so fat!
Most of us with weight problems no longer have any idea what it takes to support a healthy weight. We're always either dieting or planning to diet. And when we're planning to diet, we're EATING! How do you lose weight and keep it off? You have to stop dieting, stop planning to diet, and start learning to eat correctly. How do you begin?
Choose a reasonable goal weight. Calculate your daily caloric intake using the following formula:
Female: Goal weight in pounds X 12 calories/pound = Daily caloric intake
Male: Goal weight in pounds X 14 calories/pound = Daily caloric intake.
Start eating a well-balanced diet that contains this number of calories.
After a few days, take a good, hard look at how you're doing. If you're not happy with the amount of food that maintains your goal weight, you have two choices: you can either start exercising or you can decide to weigh more. If you lose weight by eating less food than you're willing to subsist on forever, you're wasting your time. As soon you start eating more calories, you'll start gaining weight.
If you lose weight by "practicing" to maintain the weight you wish to achieve, you'll know how to sustain it when you get there. And we're living proof that it's possible.