alt Hacker NewsI counted calories and put everything on a scale, for about 2 or 3 months in 2022 (iirc). And you are 100% right. I had absolutely no idea how much calories some food has. There were a lot of things, but I think cashews were my biggest eye opener (probably obvious to a lot of people). I easily achieved my goal of -10kg and saved A LOT of money, because I always had food prepared. And since I was going for a calorie deficit, I easily could afford a few sweets on the weekend.
Then I obviously got lazy. And while I sometimes still think I can estimate how much I am eating, I am probably wrong, because my bathroom scale says something different. My key takeaway is that it takes quite a bit of effort, but once you got into a routine, it's not hard.
Edit: Also, while I might have tried to ditch "wasted calories", I didn't put too much effort in eating healthy. One step at a time.
Nuts are so deceptive.
I love almonds and because I love them so much, if I don't portion them out then I end up eating 2-3X the calories that I thought I did so easily.
I pretty much eat 1k calories per day during the week and then 2-3k on the weekend.
It took constant lowering of calories over a year to get to this point but being hungry just feels normal and natural for me. There must be something with fat adaption going on as I never feel low on energy. Eating during the week has been completely divorced from a pleasurable activity to me too. Chicken breast, nuts, vegetables, not much else during the week. It is just easy at this point for me to wait to eat for pleasure on the weekend.