Not eating so much.Follow

Yup. As long as you're, say, working an office job and not too physically active after, 1500 calories is plenty to live and survive. If you do some activity, might want to kick it up a notch. As long as you're over 150~ pounds you'll lose weight, but once around there, it'll be pretty slow.

... if you're like 300 lbs, you'll lose weight pretty frickin' fast at first though.

Edit: I went on a 1200-1500 calorie diet for a while. After a couple of weeks it's not biggie. I started asking myself "Am I actually hungry, or am I just used to eating now/eating more?" Turns out most of the time I was eating wasn't because I was hungry, but out of habit. Once you change your habit (3 weeks or so for me) you stop even thinking about it unless others comment on it.

Edited, Aug 19th 2011 8:07pm by LockeColeMA

Try smoking, that'll suppress your apatite!

Try cocaine. That will suppress your appetite, and increase your productivity.

For a while ...

Speaking from experience, HCG is total BS. The "diet" part of the equation (ie, eating 500 calories a day) is what lets you lose weight, not sucking up hormones that come from pregnant women.

Salads? :/

I know some people like them, but why not more...filling...veggies like spinach? Semi-cooked leafy vegetable + Garlic + some salt or soy sauce is easy to make and cooks quickly if you cover the pan for a couple of minutes after starting. Salads aren't very fun if you're not used to eating salads regularly, especially dry salads.

Save yourself the $160 and just use water.

I'd also suggest that if you're starting at 260 lbs and presumably are used to eating a volume of food to sustain that weight (10 years at that level, right?), that you not drop immediately to 1500 calories. That might be a bit much. I mean, if you can manage it, more power to you, but most people fail to lose weight because they try too hard to radically change what they're doing.

You might have better success just dropping to say 2000 calories. Your approach of eating "normal" foods is the right one IMO. I've always thought that the idea of "dieting" is self defeating. It assumes that what you're doing is unusual and temporary, which pretty much guarantees failure in the long run. What you want to do is change your normal diet. Period. Make what you eat a normal part of your routine, just eat less of it at a time, and less over the course of a full day. Make it something you can manage without too much difficulty and maintain over the long term and it'll work.

Drinking water is a great idea as well. I don't think people realize just how much of their weight comes from drinking all sorts of crap other than water. Soda, coffee, energy drinks (yeah, right). Not to mention all the chemicals, sugars, and other garbage in those things. You don't need to drink anything else.

Others have said it, but yeah. Not dangerous, and they diminish with time.

Good luck, sounds like you're pretty much going about it the right way.

This x 100. Personally, I dropped 50 lbs just by cutting back on soda, not even by quitting it(I still drink a lot more of it than I should). And when I say "just by" I mean exactly that. No other dietary changes were made.

The rest of what gbaji said there is pretty solid advice as well, IMO.

Firstly, Gbaji was spot on.

In regards to soda, if any of you regular Coke drinkers haven't at least tried Coke Zero yet, you should. It obviously isn't quite as good and full of sugary goodness as Classic, but it's damn close. No, I don't work for Coke or any of its bottlers, I just found Zero a very good substitute for regular soda.

I like to make salads like that with some baby spinach and throw a can of tuna on it. They make a small size single-serving can.

And if you do want to build muscle, there's no harm in a few 'roids.

Edited, Aug 20th 2011 10:07pm by Kavekk

Oh yeah.. if you don't fancy water all the time, buy the new Mio water flavors. It's $3 for a case of drinks in your pocket and they are freakin' delicious.