I envy you. I'm 60 and 6'. Hit a 35 year low of 174 back in July. I looked emaciated, but I PR'd in both my races last year. Life's gotten a bit hectic and I'm only getting 2-3 hours per week. Up 35 lbs... I WISH I knew how to put the fork down!

The funny part is that I looked skinnier at 174 than the 140 I weighed when I graduated from high school.

As someone who put on weight while injured and found it hard to lose it at age 39: use a smaller plate at dinner, and fill half with salad with only vinegar as dressing. Your calories will go down immensely.

Other things I did: we make pizza with trader Joe's pizza dough once a week and I used to eat 5 of the 8 slices. Now I'm allowed 4.

We eat tamales often, and I'd eat two. Now I get 1.5.

I do no carbs at lunch (basically a salad with lots of protein).

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https://markmcdermott.substack.com

Start keeping a food log or log food on one of the line options like my fitness pal.
This will help you to realize the crap that you eat- and when you eat it.

One thing that I do when trying to get down to race weight (starting now for a June race) is to only eat 'planned' foods. By this I mean only eating your normal breakfast, lunch & dinner (and healthy snacks in between). Someone brings in doughnuts (or fill in the blank) to work? That's unplanned and you don't have one. Stick to what you know is good for your body and the weight will come off.

Snacking actually helps me loose weight. I do lots of carrots with humus - it's pretty filling and healthy. Nuts, even though high in fat, are a good snack, as they are healthy in moderation.

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Blog: http://262toboylstonstreet.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/NateThomasTri
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You say you know what you need to do (count calories, use an app), but are you doing that? There's a difference between going "yeah, I know what I need to do to hit race weight in 4 months" and going "I want to eat this now, but that doesn't align with my long-term goal, so I'm not going to do that."

I'm struggling with this right now. I've dropped ~12lbs since early February and I still have quite a way to go to reach my goal. What helps me:

1) Read Racing Weight. Absorb the philosophy. It's not just quantity, it's also quality. Make sure you're not starving yourself.
2) Step on the scale every day. Personally this is my big motivation. I log the data in two ways:

a) Daily weight in one column. Moving 10-day average in adjacent column. This gets graphed in Excel and I plot a linear regression line of the average weight line:

b) XmR chart showing individual daily weights, their average, the moving range, and a 6-sigma upper/lower limit. This tells me if a fluctuation is something to get happy/worried about, or whether it's just normal daily variation. It also helps me spot trends where I'm moving above/below my average, etc. See also: Nelson Rules.

3) I keep a lot of fruit/veggies/lean protein around me. At my desk at work right now I have 12 citrus fruits. I have a pack of sliced lean turkey breast in the break room. There's a tupperware container with sliced carrots and celery. At home I have more of the same. When I get hungry, I first determine if it's head hunger or body hunger (read Racing Weight), and if it's body hunger, I eat a grapefruit or a few slices of meat. Then I wait a while and see if I'm still hungry. Low calories, high satiety.

4) Dinner before dark. This isn't always easy, but I've found an early dinner seems to be helping my body shed weight. If I am still hungry after dinner, I reach for a snack like fruit/veggie/protein.

5) Shooting for 8 hours of sleep every night.

6) No beer. The occasional glass or two of red wine.

7) Positive mental attitude. I know I can't realistically lose more than 2lbs/week (and my rate will be slower than that as I approach race weight). What I eat today doesn't affect my weight tomorrow. My weight tomorrow is affected by what I've been eating for the past several days. My progress with my weight is a result of consistently good choices about diet, exercise, and sleep. It's not the salad I eat. It's the salad I always eat. It's not the workout I do. It's the workouts I always do (well, I'm on week 5, let's see in 6 months). It's a process, and it's continual, and you need to ask yourself with every bite "do I want the immediate satisfaction of this food, or do I want the long term satisfaction of achieving my goal?" What's more important to you?

That's it. I've done this before so I know it works for me. You gotta be patient but at the same time you need to always keep your foot on the gas, thinking of your goal. If you find that you just can't put the fork down, then replace what's on your fork. Make a small plate, finish it, then if you're still hungry 20 minutes later, reach for the snack. If it were easy we'd all be at race weight all the time. Good luck.

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Your favorite mafia sucks.

I think the key is finding out why it's going south by dinner time for you.

I had a long hard look at my eating habits recently and found I had three things that really affect my weight: eating because I'm bored, lack of portion control and regular alcohol consumption. They're pretty common issues (I think) but might not apply to you. Once I figured out what my particular weaknesses were, it was easier to come up with strategies for dealing with them.

As I understand it we each have a daily allotment of "will-power" (for a lack of a better description) that we use up throughout the day. People are much more likely to do things they regret later in the day, you can experimentally get people to use their will-power and then show they don't have the same self-restraint afterwards, etc.

I'd look at when you are failing to put the fork down and what else is going on in your life.

^^^^^This.

As someone who dropped from 205 to 151 between October 2015 and August 2016...my own variation of the above was as follows. I wrote the text below for a friend of mine who wanted to know how I did it. During the weight loss period, I was not training. I'd been out of the endurance training game for 9 years (hence the 50 lbs). I started back actively training in October of 2016. Since that time, I've gained several lbs of lean muscle without gaining any total weight, and currently sit at 151 and 12% bf.




I used four tools to lose the weight:

1. 
   An Android app on my personal phone called Loseit! It’s a nutrition tracker---there are many others. The key is that they make semi-accurate calorie consumption tracking mostly painless. With barcode scanners, and a database that also includes lots of chain restaurant menus, indivual data entry isn’t required very often. I use a food scale to weigh everything I eat (at home), except things that are packaged in “servings”. If I have to eyeball something, I over-estimate (eg, if I think something is ¼ cup, I log ½ cup). That way, if I’m wrong I win.
   
2. 
   I used google fit and the activity tracker on my phone to estimate calories burned per day. I don’t have a fitbit or any other fitness tracker. I use all google calories burned estimates.
   
3. 
   I have a tanita body fat scale. I weigh and measure my body composition every day, immediately after waking up and going to the restroom.
   
4. 
   I have a spreadsheet that I created to track and estimate my “expected” weight loss by totaling the difference between calories burned and consumed. I calculated several “trendlines” and determined that I personally lose 1 lbs of body-mass for every measured 3750 calorie deficit accumulated.
   

My average sustained deficit was 875 calories per day (as estimated by the difference between LoseIt consumption and Google Fit exercise). From the trendline, I averaged 0.27 lbs/day of real weight-loss at that estimated deficit from 30-Jan to 30-May. My average consumption was ~1500 calories per day, when exercising; and about 1200 per day when I wasn’t. I was hungry between meals for about the first week or two. Then it just became routine. If I got hungry, I went for a walk or drank a glass of water---but, after that first week or two that was rarely necessary.


I ate (and still eat) evenly sized meals. I try not to eat a big dinner, but rather keep all three meals very similar in calories. I don’t like “cheat days”, I found that they sabotaged my psychology when I went “back” to a normal day. So, as much as possible I tried to keep it to the same routine every day. I don’t drink alcohol Sun-Thu. I don’t do any oddball diets (no-carb, paleo, SouthBeach, or whatever). I make sure I get enough protein (~2 g/kg lean-mass), and vegetables, and eat healthy fats (olive oil, canola, safflower, etc). I eat high-fiber carbs (brown rice, whole wheat breads and pastas, etc), to fill in the balance of calories. Generally, that worked out to be about 33/33/33 between protein/fat/carb calories. Nothing that I tried to do consciously---it just worked out that way.


Eating out is hard. I avoided it, mostly. When I did go out, I ate salads, fish, and chicken---I can’t remember ordering beef except for once at Saltgrass (see below). I get dressings on the side, and only used about 1/3rd of it---typically a low-cal vinaigrette. No cheeses, and mustard instead of mayo on sandwiches. I rarely ate the starches while eating out, and tried to pick grilled or steamed vegetables when given a choice. I couldn’t go to a Mexican restaurant, because of “chips and Salsa” (I have no self-control for those). I calculated the calories for a meal BEFORE ordering it---because I’ve been fooled more than once by what “looks” like something with a reasonable calorie content.


We went to Saltgrass one night (we had a gift card, and it was a “cheat day” before I gave those up) and I ordered the lowest cal items I could. I only ate half the plate, etc. While waiting for the check I looked up the calories for it…1200 calories for the half that I ATE. I checked it 4 ways from Sunday…looking up calories on multiple sources including Saltgrass’ own website. No way around the fact, that I ate a 1200 calorie dinner. And, I still had a togo box with another 1200 calories in it!!!! I think I skipped breakfast the next day.


Calorie counting is about controlling your choices. But, if you don’t know how much you are eating until the meal is over…how much control and choice have you exercised? That said, if I get surprised by a meal…I compensated for the next meal or two in order to recover.


I did 4 modes of exercise: walking, cycling, rowing machine, strength training. I aimed for 2 hours a day split between morning and night. I think strength training is an important part of the plan. I lost 5 lbs of muscle mass and 45 lbs of fat-mass. I attribute that to the strength training and higher-protein intake. The research supports that conclusion…but, I’m not going to regain the 50 lbs and try again to prove it.


I found that my bodyweight fluctuates by ~4 lbs in any given week. Sometimes, I would gain 2-3 lbs over a week, only to lose it 1-2 lbs for 4-5 days straight afterwards. I could see some pretty long “plateaus” in the graph. It wasn’t regular or very predictable. The spreadsheet and trendlines, helped to keep me motivated and “on track”. I stopped regular food tracking on 10 May (when I hit my “goal” of 160 lbs). I continued the same “meal plan” for the next month until I hit 15% body fat, at 155 lbs.


A fundamental tenet of mine is that everything is only an estimate of reality. You estimate what food you are consuming, LoseIt estimates how many calories that equals. Google Fit estimates how many calories you burned, based on some estimate of intensity. The scale is the only MEASURMENT that is being taken. REAL Weight loss = REAL caloric deficit (not estimated). So, if you aren’t losing weight, then you are consuming the same calories your body is burning---the scale can’t lie by more than about 4 lbs. If your estimates say you have a deficit of 10,000 calories (~3 lbs loss), and the scale says you’ve gained 2 lbs….then the estimates ARE wrong (you’re deficit is more likely ~3000 or 1 lbs). In that case, I simply altered my consumption and exercise until I was losing at the rate I wanted. Then I used the estimates to continue the trend---the actual numbers don’t matter, just their consistency and repeatability matters.


That’s what worked for me.

Eat more natural fat (avocado, small amount of brazil or macademia nuts, olive oil, eggs, butter, cream) and less carbs (rice, bread, pasta, pizza) and eliminate sugar.

Doing that will eliminate the need for snacking and that will allow you to eat without counting calories. Just eat until your satisfied, the fork will come down easily.

In MY instance, I found that habit was (in part) caused by being hungry, because I ate ~50% of my daily calories for dinner. So, when I got home...I was hungry. My solution was to redistribute my daily calories evenly between my 3 meals. I ate a much larger breakfast, and a moderately larger lunch, and a much smaller dinner. For me, this evened out my hunger pangs during those trouble times which occur several hours after each meal (1030am, 530pm, 1030pm).

I also found that KNOWING the calories of something BEFORE I decided to consume it...made a huge difference in making that choice. A (pitifully small) handful of nuts (I love all kinds of nuts) is 100 calories?!? That would take 30 minutes of walking (my main mode of exercise then) to work that off. So, if I was genuinely hungry, I would take the time to look up what I wanted to eat...and then DECIDE what it was worth. That mere act, often was enough to simply put it back and walk away. Often I knew the calories for individual out-of-hand items..1 pistachio was 3 calories, etc.

For me it took about 4 weeks to form the habits outlined above. One meal at a time.

I think the benefit that we (endurance athletes) have on the rest of the population, is that we are generally data and metric obsessed. Give me a metric (and a way to measure it), and tell me which was is "good" and "bad" and I will (simply out of competiveness) obsess over making it "better". Tell me to create a deficit of 1000 calories, and I'll make it 1100...just to be "better".

Put the fork down by literally putting the fork down.

It's a Weight Watchers trick: after each bite, set the fork down on the table. Chew. Swallow. Take a sip of water. Then pick the fork back up for the next bite. Between the extra time and the water, you feel full before eating as much as you usually do.

That and stop eating or drinking anything with sugar unless you're mid-workout.

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<The Dew Abides>

Something I gleaned from racing weight was that we eat with intent. I find the days I stick the closest to my calorie allotment are the ones where I plan out the day's food the night before.

I'm also self-aware enough now to realize I can't have it in the house. I still eat junk now and again when I have calories to spare, but I can't keep snack type food in the house.

Only other thing I'd add is that I've recently begun planning my meals around my work outs. If I plan out the day taking into account the work out, the fuelling before, and the recovery after, it makes the plan easier to stick to.

Logging your food will help if you are diligent about it. If you need to count the handful of crackers you eat when you get home, then you will likely just skip it realizing you don't actually need it. Ultimately, I think you need to train your brain to understand the difference between being hungry and being not-full. Many people, including myself, mistake being not-full for being hungry and there is a difference.

I have lost over 70 lbs over the last three years. It started off with easy lifestyle changes (start exercising, icecream only once per week, etc) , but has grown to what is now a very healthy diet. I got to a point where I was decently lean. I am 6'1 and got down to 180-185 lbs for last season's tri's and I felt good about that weight. This winter, I have decided I want to loose a little more for this season, and the more you loose the harder it gets. I am now 170-175 (depending on the day, i fluctuate a lot), so I have lost 10-15 over the last 4 months. Looking to get to 165.

My diet consists of mostly animal protein, vegetables, and healthy fats with well timed carbs (lots of fruit, some whole grains). I avoid added sugar like the plague. I still eat a decent amount of carb right now, but it is always the meal before a big workout, or right after when my body needs it. I do my best to time my nutrition needs with my workout needs to I am fueled for the upcoming workout and replenished after the workout, while sticking to animal protein, healthy fats, and vegetables for meals not surrounding workouts.

I do have a pretty high training load so I am able to consume 3-4.5 thousand calories and still hit a mild calorie deficient to keep slowly loosing weight (aim for 300-500 cal deficit daily). I do have a crazy high appetite, but I satisfy it by consuming copious amounts of vegetables. It is not uncommon for my dinner to include 300-400 calories of steamed broccoli. If you have ever seen that much broccoli, it is a LOT. More than most families consume. I have grown to love vegetables and it satisfies my cravings.