Tell me about your behavioral changes.
1. I've long been a runner, but I decided at the beginning of the pandemic that I would go every day, both for health and for sanity (a lot of days, especially early in the pandemic it was my only opportunity to leave the house). I would estimate that, in the past year and a half, I've missed maybe 10 days total. I just kind of decided this was going to be a new part of my routine, like brushing my teeth.
2. I generally eat healthy when I plan out my meals in advance; the scenarios that really trip me up are unpredictable moments -- dinner at a fancy restaurant, the hor d'ouvres at a reception, the brownies left in the office kitchen. Guess what I wasn't doing a lot of during the pandemic? Instead, I really went hard in the other direction and embraced routine in just about all my meals. I would guess that I have the same breakfast 6-7 days a week and the same lunch 4-5 days. Also makes it much easier to track everything on Noom.
3. With snacks, I tried to exercise more portion control. Sometimes it feels really silly, like only having four almonds. But one thing I realized was that, lots of times, I'm more bored than hungry, so just having something small is enough to tide me over.
4. I looked for small adjustments I could make to my diet (this was an idea I got from "
Mindless Eating", which I read years ago). So, for example, I decided I could mostly cut out carbs like crackers or chips when I snacked. Instead, I'll typically have baby carrots with hummus.
The key point I want to get across is not that all of these changes are things other people should copy, but that they were small things that felt very doable to me and didn't really impact my quality of life. I don't feel very deprived in my diet; in fact, one other habit that I've developed over the past year has been finding local craft breweries and having one every night with dinner. Maybe I would have lost even more weight without that, but I really look forward to that beer, especially if I'm trying a new one.