Oh man I have so much to say on this topic! I'm actually in the middle of trying something new...which has actually been going really well.

A little backstory...

Early 2018 I was the heaviest I've ever been - and I started eating "Lectin free". If you google Dr. Gundry - it will all come up. It's kind of a mix between paleo and keto. You basically eat grain free, gluten free, low sugar... and smaller amounts of meat/dairy etc. It focused on reducing foods that contain lectin and casein - which are toxins for your body to process.

My body LOVED it. I dropped 30 pounds pretty quickly. It was insane... I was thinner than I was in high school, but felt totally healthy.

Than going to Poland and eating a million perogi's mixed with the holidays and I gained about 15 pounds back. I figured once I started eating stricly lectin free again I'd drop those 15 pound fast.

Sadly... I was wrong.

So the last week or so I've done something that I never thought I would do... I'm counting calories. Even though I'm eating super high quality, gluten free/grain free foods - I was still consuming WAY more calories than I thought. I was eating a lot of products made with almond flour and not paying that much attention to how much oil I was using in sautéing vegetables etc.

Like I said this is all pretty new - but I've already lost a couple pounds in the last week because my body is responding so well to this. I thought counting calories would feel restrictive - but it's actually been really freeing.

Someone offered me a delicous, homemade chocolate chip cookie (glutenfull and all) yesterday and I usually would have felt guilty about eating it and paid for it later by feeling kind of bloated. I just budgeted for it in my caloric intake that day and ate a smaller dinner. I felt totally fine. I know cookies aren't the best form of calories - but it was nice to eat one without feeling guilty about it.

That last statement makes me think about what you said in your video about how much time we spend THINKING about food. You are so spot on. We spend a crazy amount of time as a culture obsessing over it. Myself included. It's tricky because I'm such a foodie and I love good food...but I also want to take care of my body and have a slim physique.

In general though... I've just focused on finding "replacements" that I really like and then not spending too much time obsessing past that. For example - I found a brand of ice cream that uses coconut milk and monk fruit instead of sugar so it's fairly low calorie and super low sugar.

Phew... this might be one of my longest comments in a while! haha I'm actually thinking about making a video talking about calorie counting ... so we'll see how that turns out. :)