A beautiful strategy. Folks should read this. It’s not 100% what I would do, but it checks two boxes:
The second one is probably the most important one.
Very helpful, just curious: what low calories/high carb food do you eat as main base for carb intake ?
Good sources are potatoes, brown rice, legumes, fruit. These still contain decent amounts of fiber to fill you up.
Low calorie stuff like e.g. vegetables is what you eat next to other foods in order to keep total calories low an hunger down. You are not eating only low calorie foods.
My experience so far with weight loss/gain is that if I don’t pay attention to what I eat and how much, I will slowly increase weight over time. My habits that cause this are: I still tend to eat whole foods cooked from scratch, don’t do soda, not much processed junk. I might snack a bit on cheese/nuts/dark chocolate and probably over-eat at dinner time.
Everyone has different habits, go to foods they crave and food choice in general that dictates the weight they end up with. For me with 182 cm, about 6ft, my highest weight was 95 kg, came back down to 80 kg when I started cycling 10 years ago, and slowly it has been creeping up to recently 85 kg. I have a muscular build with wide shoulders and muscular thighs, but still at 85 kg the small protruding belly was putting me at the start of being overweight.
The point here is that it is not enough to eat “healthy” foods and to exercise. It is a good start though and will most likely prevent you from getting morbidly obese anytime soon. But for me, moderately exercising and good food choices still has my weight going slowly up.
So I had a change of habit about 4 months ago and weight is steadily declining, now at 81 kg. I have counted calories before and I still do it some times for a specific meal, for example after a ride with 1500 Cal burned and 400 Cal consumed, I would allow myself to eat up to 1500 Cal if I wanted to. This does not mean I will stuff myself with junk up to 1500 Cal. I would still eat mostly good whole foods making me full before reaching the 1500 Cal and allowing me to eat a bit more for the next meal as well.
But this time I am mostly not counting calories I would not even describe it as being on a diet. I changed my habits, I don’t feel deprived and therefore it is a sustainable habit change that can be maintained. The point is that you don’t get overweight by only eating too much in a specific period, you need to keep eating those amounts to maintain your weight. It now works the same way in the opposite direction, you don’t keep weight off by eating very little in a specific period, you need to keep eating like that and therefore it better be something you can keep doing.
This is what I changed
Avoiding obvious unhealthy choices and becoming friends with a little hunger.
Personally I like to skip breakfast when I dont have training before afternoon. Also big on cutting alchohol and not opening drawers and the fridge after 20:00 
I got lean by reducing cardio. This helped me get a handle on calories in v. calories out and get in a healthy sustainable deficit. During this time I did many hours of strength and core training. When at home I’d do anything to stay busy. I have a yard that can take some effort to keep up so that helped. Point is keep your mind occupied.
For ref I’m 180cm tall and went from 77kg to 68.
Interesting video posted here a couple of weeks ago made sense to me and has seemed to work for me. Basically said that the number of calories absorbed is NOT what the package says because the human body either doesn’t break it all down (think corn) or some additional energy expenditure is required to break it down, such as splitting out nitrogen from protein. That basically says that diets that are high in fiber and diets that are high in protein are typically more successful because the calories of foods with either of those characteristics suggest less calorie absorption. Highly processed foods are also a negative because the more processed the food, the higher the percentage of calories are absorbed. I’ve increased both and dropped 6lbs in the past month when I’ve been fighting it for months.
Listened to a fairly recent “Fast Talk” podcast with guest Tim Noakes the other day. There was quite a bit of discussion about the practical issues associated with calorie tracking / counting and the typical errors associated with the methods commonly used.
It’s been forever since I’ve followed up on the forums - still plugging this article to anyone who asks (or doesn’t) 
And I’m holding steady around 175lbs, with an ftp increase to just shy of 300w.
Slow and steady wins the race for fat loss and muscle fiber conversion. 
Great progress!
tim noakes is a pretty divisive guy with some interesting remarks. In any case I understand his points and agree partly, but I think, really, there is no silver bullet. Calories in/out ratio must be correct for your aims. Personally, I just load up on fruit and veg - is a simpler equation. Lower cal density for the volume. Not an issue for me as I love this sort of diet, but I can see for people not used to prepping veg in a creative way may find this tough to push.
For me, upping my vegetable intake. Roughly half a plate full of vegetables, the rest is protein/carb. Drastic results and pretty easy to accomplish and actually stick with it.
I want to do more meal prepping, but am having trouble settling on recipes, and having a hard time getting more interesting ways of including enough vegetables.
You have any good references or recipes for prepping? I am a good cook, but with 4 kids I also have trouble sustaining it. Like two weeks of prepping in a row and then I just want to spend all that time doing other stuff.
Absolutely, here is a thread on exactly this
I’ve been losing lately (-7 pounds). My go-to snack was cashews and I was probably going through a bag a week. That bag was probably 2000 calories.
My body seems to respond to excess fat by storing it. I also don’t crave sweets so much. My mouth likes savory: it would want pizza over cake.
To lesser extent I also stopped buying salami - high fat, high calorie, no nutrition.
For the first few weeks I was starving all the time. I replaced the cashews and salami with mandarin oranges and plain yogurt.
Down to 184-186 from about 205 at the beginning of the year. All I can say is that I’m being more conscious about snacking, eating more real food (but still enjoying myself), and paying attention to hunger cues instead of just eating robotically. Power up over 300 so I’m feeling great!
So it’s been a wild ride
Spent too many months not being active at all and weight shot up. (i heard someone somewhere talk about consistency…hmm who could that be)
Anyhow started training on the bike in feb, added the run in march and then the swim in april. Once i did that, late april i focused on my food intake a bit more. What i focused on was:
I’ve stilll got some way to go as per my graph but i’m getting there at a reasonable rate without feeling like i’m missing out on something.
I definitely wouldn’t say it was the best way to lose fat but my 2p story FWIW. I was circa 11.5st (73kg) when I left school 30 years ago. At college I developed Pancreatitis (docs don’t know what caused it and why it miraculously cured its self), but in the space of a month I was down to 9st (57kg) 
I gradually built my self up, starting drinking helped with that, to around 10.5st (67kg). I then started cycling and around 10st (63kg) was my stable norm. In contrast to the classic symptoms of what happened next I gradually rose to just over 10st (65kg). Then bang, bowel (colon) cancer was diagnosed and the operation lost me in a few hours 3kg. The big weight loss was chemotherapy though and only then did I see the classic swings in weight that the cancer was supposed to have caused (it didn’t). My weight fluctuated between 8.5st (54kg) and 9st (57kg). Nearly 2 years post treatment it seems to have settled down at around 9.5-9.9 (60-61kg).
I used to be 74kg, went down to 63, hovering between 62 and 63 lately and just ok with it.
Two things that helped:
mezzo mix - that stuff is so rich in taste… good you cut it out!
