> find a snack incredibly difficult [..] I basically had to eat carrots and hummus
You make it sound as if it was not normal to cook your own food from basic ingredients and not regularly eat processed snacks.
When I was growing up, practically everything I ate came out of a packet, and was usually cooked in a microwave.
My parents never made sauce from scratch or used their own herbs and spices. Any sauce came in a jar or a packet. Gravy was that disgusting mix of maltodextrin, MSG, and colouring that you simply add to hot water. Pasta sauce always came in a bottle, with the inevitable hit of sugar. If we had tacos, the seasoning came in a packet, which is mostly sugar with a little bit of cumin and chilli.
The meat would inevitably be cooked in a microwave so as to not require using oil to cook it. My mother practically had a phobia of fat and salt. The only meats I ate were chicken breast and ultra lean mince with the grease drained off.
It wasn't that my parents were unhealthy, I ate a lot of vegetables, and as I mentioned, I had a very low fat diet. I guess it was a lack of time and creativity that drove them to using packages for everything.
And Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" is the most read book in my house. My wife and I have taken to calling it The Bible.
Both books have a good number of quick recipies (Bittman tends to write his more like guides), with general cooking tips and history mixed in.
This is easier with meat based meals (better calorie density), but works fine with vegetable based meals too. Just get bigger pots. :)
All those people cooking for 30 mins per day are hardcore.
After I hit my lowest weight I decided to ease up on the extreme calorie counting and shift my efforts towards eating simple home cooked meals since they'd be less expensive and, if you believe the common wisdom, healthier. Consequently, I put on about 30 pounds. This was mostly eating tofu, eggs, potatoes, fruit, mushrooms, various vegetables, cheese, and homemade bread (usually whole grain).
So I went back to what worked. One other thing eating packaged foods did was give me a bunch of time back. I'm still about 10 pounds up from that experiment.
Another useful tool is a food scale. Everyone has measuring cups and stuff, but having a food scale can make stuff like measuring a serving of mixed nuts for my breakfast way easier.
However, packaged foods vs. from scratch is an element of time and convenience as well. I just make food when I have the time/feel like it (I enjoy cooking as a hobby, but am not always up for it) and use 'easy' meals when I need to: throwing together some pasta and a pre-made sauce jar I keep in the pantry, plus some frozen TJ's meatballs or something.
Knowing how much of what to eat isn't the problem. It has never been the problem. The problem is actually sticking to that diet when your body is screaming at you to eat more, when the part of your mind that evolved to keep you from starving --which is what losing weight is, since your body literally has to eat itself-- starts playing tricks on you and conveniently forgetting that you ate earlier, and when your metabolism, which has been unavoidably and permanently damaged by the mere act of losing weight at all, requires that you eat substantially less than the daily average.
I'm really sick of people assuming I'm a moron because losing weight is difficult. Do you know what it is like to only eat one meal a day? To have to avoid all social functions at which free food might be present? To ensure that there is only ever enough food in your house for exactly one week of your caloric allotment of 1600/day?
Trust me, whatever parroted advice you're thinking of offering next, I've heard about it and tried it.
Food is absolutely addictive and we have so much available. Combine that with a car based and sedentary lifestyle and it's a huge problem. The only thing that has worked for me is being a lifelong runner and cyclist. Burn an extra 500 to 800 calories a day and most weight loss goals are much more attainable. I am trying to help my mom lose weight and when you are very overweight adding huge amounts of activity is very hard.
She seemingly also has a 'slow' metabolism but in reality she moves as little as possible. Whereas I am always wandering around doing things at top speed. Activity begets activity because it begins to hurt less to move.
Anyways, best of luck in your efforts.
Main take away for me was to eat fibre rich foods - so instead of potatoes eat squash and celariac, instead of rice eat bulgar wheat, and so on.
[0] The Truth About Carbs: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b5y6c0
These things are not simple, are they?
One strategy is to focus on the healthy veggies that your genetic ancestors likely ate; your body is more likely to be adapted to those foods.
This is the shit I'm talking about. If you have difficult losing and maintaining weight people crawl out of the woodwork to parrot bullshit advice they got from some clickbait article as though knowledge isn't the easiest part of the process. People don't have difficulty with their weight because they lack knowledge, people have difficulty with their weight because suffering sucks and the human body doesn't like having to eat itself.
I lost about 70 pounds and now am easily maintaining a normal BMI.
Kitchen scale and MyFitnessPal.
Also don't have food around that doesn't require prep! It is super easy to snack on fruit and bread. If everything in your fridge is raw meat or veggies that require cooking, there is no way to over eat.
Also I try to avoid prepping too much food in advance, since if the food is good I am tempted to eat it all without waiting! So I cook each meal individually, which takes a lot more time, but it works for weight loss.
Either that or I do a weeks meal prep and commit to not buying any more food, that way if I am stupid and eat more food per meal than I should, one of my future meals is going to come up short. It is amazing how quickly self control develops under those situations. :)
In comparison, packaged food requires at least a bit of conscious prep work, so people are aware of the time they spent and of the calorie consumption, thus I can see why that route can be easier.
Yes, somehow I managed to lose half my body weight and keep it off despite a setback from a failed experiment without every knowing how to count calories or properly measure things in a kitchen.
What is it with talking about health and nutrition on the internet that makes everyone come out and offer their unsolicited advice that assumes the person they're speaking with is an idiot?
You mentioned that you had problems with home cooking, and found portion control easier with pre-packaged food. I proposed that measuring out home cooked food gives the same effect as prepackaged food.
I fail to see how that is accusing anyone of being an idiot.