thank you for this!
TW: calories.....
My mum has always lived by ‘you can lose weight without exercising’. Hence she always lost weight by eating 1000 calories a day (sometimes less)! I did 1000-1200 in my early 30s and it made me so ill and just fuckin miserable. I am trying to lose weight now in my 40s but won't go back to those old ways again. I'd rather lose it slowly and it be sustainable.
Here's the thing. People often think they need to exercise to lose weight, and overestimate how much exertion it is. This means they often avoid it because it seems like miserable hard work, they exercise too much to burn as many calories as possible but forget to eat more to fuel that workout, or most likely, they do a medium amount of exercise and overestimate how many calories that burns and eat to "make up for it."
i.e. "I went for a run, I've earned a Mars bar".
Exercising doesn't burn that many calories. It ranges drastically depending on your height, weight, the activity and the intensity. A 30 minute run for the average person will only burn 200 calories but you often feel hungry after and the mars bar is 230 calories.
If you have a few extra pounds to lose but you're not actually gaining any more, and eat just a bit too much, it's much easier to pick ONE big thing to cut out of your diet. Don't rehash it, don't think you have to completely convert to something your mate told you about. There's usually something really obvious you can change.
If you pick up a McDonalds Big Mac for lunch at work every day, get a cheeseburger instead. That's 200 calories less. Make those changes until you get to the calories you SHOULD be eating, then find one more.
It's easier to not eat the big mac/nightly chocolate bar/4 biscuits with your afternoon cuppa than it is to burn those extra calories off through exercise.
Ideally, you'd eat a diet with lots of fruit and veg, healthy grain and beans and lean proteins, you can actually eat a lot, have some "treat" foods, and exercise a few times a week. But that sounds super boring and people look for other answers- like a special diet or fancy gym.The diet indutry and lots of influencers make it so much harder than it needs to be. They mess with our brains to make us feel bad so we buy things. Overcoming it is hard, but knowing it takes time, and having people support you (a running group, a whatsapp chat with mates, good family joining in) are your best chances of sustainable weight loss.
Each to their own and if she can function with them then fair enough, maybe she's got it all down to a fine art.
I have no words 
