Willpower and diet: advice?

I do not believe that you identified your problem correctly.

Hunger has more endurance than most people's willpower, so the trick is not to make it into a contest. That's why lifestyle change is one of the standard recommendations of slimming down in a healthy way.

So, I would re-frame your question as "How do I change my lifestyle to get more sleep and less stress?"

Here's a practical suggestion: bake crackers. Buying gluten-free crackers can get annoyingly expensive, but it's not hard to bake your own, and they come with the following benefits:

1. They're easy to bake in large amounts if you stock up on gluten-free flours like almond meal or rice flour (which will also save money in the long run)
2. They won't go bad if you don't eat them within a day or two, so you don't have to worry about packing the right amount every day.
3. Similarly, they won't go bad in the mail, so your parents might be able to do the baking for you if you're pressed for time.
4. They're pretty close to the comfort foods I'm sure you're missing.

Easy recipe: Preheat oven to 350.

Mix together about 2 cups of different gluten-free flours.

Add some savory stuff like parsley flakes or sesame seeds if you want.

Add a tablespoon of oil and a couple tablespoons of water, and mix together.

(Add more water and oil if you can't get it all wet - some flours are drier than others.)

Roll the mixture out flat between two layers of parchment paper.

Remove the top layer of paper and score the dough into cracker shapes (I do a simple grid with the blunt side of a butter knife).

Bake on a cookie sheet in the oven for ~10 minutes. (You're looking for them to turn golden-y.)

Hope that helps!

Why is it inevitable that you cannot pack enough food for 16 hours? Do you not have a bag of adequate size? Are you not calibrating effectively or willing to overshoot?

I don't diet, in the sense of setting out a program of food restrictions that I have to stick to. I just count all my calories. I lose more weight that way.

I started doing it when I realized that my finances work because I track my expenses, even though I have little success sticking to a budget.

Maybe a food journal would help? Or do you already do that?

Have you tried snacking on almonds and such all day and never being hungry?

I possess a roll of belly fat that I (and my boyfriend!) would prefer to say goodbye too.

I sympathize. Most success stories involving becoming attractively-thin (i.e. having so little fat that you can see abs, or whatever turns you+partner on) don't involve feeling subjectively hungry, or craving any food in particular. You sure can do a lot of exercise, especially aerobic, and not lose weight (assuming you're already skinnier-than-average) - because eating simply cannot be held constant, forever.

If I undereat for too long (really feeling hungry), and a satisfying food is available, I'll overeat. As in, I could have eaten 1/3 as much and still felt satisfied for a few hours. On the other hand, people can get used to a fixed eating routine that's difficult at first; some people don't eat at all until evening. Perhaps they're successful only because they don't (psychologically) feel hunger, or perhaps this means that hunger isn't necessarily the downfall of moderate eating.

Also, caffeine (ok) and smoking (bad) reduce appetite.

It's best to experiment with kinds of food until you find a way to reach a weight you're happy with. Diet is more critical than exercise. You may not be lucky enough to find anything that gives you what you want; consider learning to be happy with what is 90% of how you'd like to appear and is 50% more comfortable than reaching 95% (or whatever).

Definitely experiment with satisfying hunger with foods that satiate you for longer (regardless of calorie count). Wheat is definitely suspected by many to have a bad satiety curve (compared to comparable calories of other foods). For non-celiac sufferers, the only thing I've heard that seems scientific is that wheat has phytic acid, which should simply mean that you effectively need 50% more of various minerals (calcium, magnesium, zinc, whatever - I forget the details). I think there were rat studies that suggested most grains are worse for obesity than many other foods (except oats and white rice, which were neutral). There's a chance that doesn't translate to humans. Most of what you hear excitedly claimed on the internet is simply not trustworthy, but there's nothing wrong with indulging in placebo-tailwind experiments, if you find something that makes you feel good, physically.

Also, reduce stress and increase (regular, during dark/quiet hours) sleep if possible.

Are you restricting fats?

I stopped eating wheat two years ago (no relapse since then). I've found that the following technique makes the switch tremendously easier:

Eat a cup of whipping cream before meals.

Explanation: the easiest way to make wheat-craving go away is to already consume enough calories without wheat; I suspect that much of wheat-craving is the result of overestimating the caloric value of a wheat-free diet. Also, low-carbers often has to push themselves to eat slightly more than what they'd otherwise eat because they tend to be more sated than what is common among high-carb people. Moreover, a barrier to major diet change is that time expenditure on food preparation and purchase will inevitably go up for a while after a change. People with scarce free time fall back to old diet patterns because they often find themselves urgently needing calories and grab whatever is most convenient.

Whipping cream is cheap, very dense in high-quality calories, contains almost no health-controversial nutrients, it is very filling, packed in easily measurable and quantifiable units, reasonably palatable (especially if you make an effort to seek out the tastiest available one) and requires zero preparation. Three 175 g cups of 20% fat whipping cream is roughly 1000 calories, which could easily crowd out wheat urges. Even if you dislike the idea of eating whipping cream by the spoon in the long term, it is perfectly able to help you bridge the critical newly wheat-free period, in which period you gradually grow accustomed enough to your new diet so that you can eat diet-compliant sophisticated foods without a significant hit on free time.

How does your boyfriend eat? I find that my diet is highly dependent on the diets of those I spend time with. Wheat aside, are you eating sugary food?

In my experience, successful dieting is not a matter of willpower. You do what you want to do. If you believe that the benefits of losing weight, even time-discounted, will be greater than the benefits of having food now, you will lose weight.

So the two things you can do to lose weight are:

• Examine your beliefs about why you want to lose weight; and figure out exactly how much you want it.
• Calibrate your time-discounting.