How do you learn to eat less and moderate when you love eating?

Maybe I'm just a food addict, but when I don't watch what I eat, I'll consume 4000-7000 calories a day. Here's how this will happen:

• 10am: I'm hungry. What do I want to eat? Cereal. *eats entire box of cinnamon toast crunch*
• 1pm: I'm hungry again. What do I want to eat? Pizza. *eats 8 slices of pizza*
• 5pm: I'm hungry again. What do I want to eat? Chips. *eats entire bag of BBQ potato chips*
• 10pm: I'm watching a movie and I need a snack to go along with the movie. *eats 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's*
• Repeat next day.

My TDEE is ~2500 and I've dieted in the past, but I'm always miserable the entire time, because a diet day will look like this for me:

• breakfast: peanut butter banana oatmeal (one banana + 2/3 cup oats + 3 Tbsp PB2)
• lunch: sandwich, salad, 1 lb strawberries
• dinner: ground beef (1 lb) w/ riced cauliflower (10 oz)

Total: ~2000 calories

This is quite the contrast from how I would like to be eating.

Part of the reason I'm miserable dieting or even miserable maintaining my weight is that I can't eat junk food. If I try to incorporate and moderate junk food, I am extremely unsatisfied with the amount I get to eat (2 slices of pizza vs 8 slices, 2 servings of potato chips vs 7 servings, 1 pint of Ben & Jerry's vs 2 pints). Furthermore, when I eat 2500 calories or less, I'll go hungry unless I devote every calorie to healthy/filling foods. If I use up any of my calories on junk food, then I have to deal with hunger. The tradeoff is not worth it to me.

Any advice? I heard that your stomach shrinks over time if you eat less, but I dieted for five months straight recently and at the end I did a challenge where I ate 70 chicken nuggets in under 30 minutes and I was hungry an hour later and made myself a bowl of oatmeal, so I don't think I fit in the stomach-shrinking camp. These are the solutions I've come up:

• Abstain from junk food completely. I don't think this is sustainable for me based on past experience. I'm miserable eating nothing but oatmeal, salad, and chicken.

• Learn how to moderate somehow. The challenge for me is learning how to be okay with 2 slices of pizza when I'm used to having 8 slices.

• Maybe eat 2000 calories 5/7 days of the week so I can have two cheat days that are 3750 calories each.

Perhaps I'm just looking for a success story: someone who used to eat a crap ton and learned to eat less eventually.

Also gradual changes could be good.

submitted by /u/Fossana
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/fxncn7/how_do_you_learn_to_eat_less_and_moderate_when/