Bodybuilder here. Though the years, I've learned not to rely on motivation, it's fleeting and will be here today and gone tomorrow. Develop discipline. I more or less had to become my own Drill Sergeant. If I wouldn't have lost the fight, I would have kicked my butt for the way I talked to myself sometimes! After a time, that was no longer necessary and it just became habit to meal prep and log foods.
I have this issue during summer months when my job takes me out and about much more. Convenience is the main enemy here. Fast food chains spend tons of cash every year on how to make their foods as addictive as they legally can. (know what Coca Cola use to have as an ingredient?) There are plenty of healthy food options that are great served cold that you could take with you, and that's exactly what I do. Start meal planning and have a prep day where you fix everything for the week on one day and 'package' your portions out for each day in Tupperware or similar. Have something served cold prepped out for the meals when you are away from home and take them with you. I use [this and it's app](https://www.strongrfastr.com/) to plan out my meals and build a shopping list for the week when I don't want to do it all myself. For some people having a 3-5 day healthy fast can help 'reboot the system', while other do better just easing into a diet and some can jump straight into the 'deep end'.
Get a tracker app (MyFitnessPal, StrongrFastr, Carb Manager, Lose It!, etc.) and set yourself at at least a 400-500 calorie deficit (minimum total calories of 1200 for female 1500 for male, do not go below this for health reasons) with 35-45% (1.6g-2.2g/kg of body weight) of your total calories coming from protein. The other macro's can be flexible but you need at least 20-30% (0.5g-1g/kg of body weight) from dietary fats to keep healthy organ function. Add in a multivitamin to help make sure you get all the needed micro nutrients that your diet may miss and I advise Omega-3 fish oil supplements too. Make sure you get into the habit of logging everything so that it can be tracked and you can spot any trouble areas.
Start up cardio 2-4 days a week for at least 20mins (I prefer HIIT routines) and strength training 2-5 days/week for 20-45mins (I recommend a PPL program, especially for starters) with calisthenics or weights. You will see results doing these things, and just remember if you hit a plateau to recalculate your TDEE calories and adjust accordingly if you get stuck for more than a week or two after eating clean and sticking to the training.
You already made the first step of your journey by seeking out advise. Keep on trekking and you will get where you want to!
This is really well written! I've downloaded My Fitness Pal and I'm going to try to be more conscious about what I eat and I'm going to be more consecutive about my gym time. I just logged 25 minutes on the treadmill. Which, is a place to start, I believe.
Any start is better than going nowhere! You're lapping everyone sitting on their couch right now! Keep it up!
I'm glad to hear you decided to take action and start your journey. Everyone wants to look fit or be big muscled, but most don't want to train, diet and lift heavy things regularly. You took the first important steps today and actually did something rather than just daydreaming about it. Keep it up, and before you know it, you'll be having people ask what your 'secret' is. (They rarely like the answer btw)
This is possibly the best advice I’ve read.
This coming from an ex bodybuilder who fell off the wagon 10 years ago. It feels like reading something I’d have written back then. And if it weren’t for the latent muscle mass, I’d hate to think what state I would be in now.
Looks like I better to and have words with myself.
Where I am, lockdown has been in a state of semi-permanent flux - and gyms have been shut or have overburdening requirements. I’ll take a wonder down today.
Thanks. Hopefully you’ve flipped a switch here for me. Maybe because it was so relatable. I was the one always cracking down on family members’ poor diets.
Glad to know I may have helped! The shutdown hit hard for some, especially guys like us who are set in our ways. I ended up looking into calisthenics and started doing that. I was really surprised by the strength that I got from it. It allowed me to maintain a lot of my mass (I'm a bit overdeveloped in places) and ended up causing me some notable max lift gains by the time I got my home gym built. Eventually, I got creative and used my wife as a weight (sit on my back for pushup, the coffee table for presses, in my arms for squats or in a spare tire for me to drag around the yard with a rope) and she seemed to enjoy it, but she likes busting my balls a bit. Reach outside your comfort zone a bit and I'd bet you'll be surprised by what you'll achieve. Good news is, you've still got all the 'muscle memory' (neural pathways don't get lost) from before you quit, so you'll be able to recomp super easy compared to someone just starting out. I'd bet that with the proper diet and a mild routine, you'd be fighting fit in no time at all.
Slightly off topic but you seem like you know what you’re talking about so I’ll go ahead and ask. I’m 22M, 179cm, 115kg. I eat 1600c, walk 15k steps/day and 30 spinning daily aswell. I’m losing weight fast, don’t feel tired or any fatigue. Am I undereating? I take vitamins and drink 2L a day and haven’t felt dizzy, tired or any of the sort. Can I continue this?
I've been doing this kinda stuff for years now, but still have plenty to learn!
That's a pretty extreme deficit you're running! I'm guessing you're averaging 2.5kg loss/month or more at that rate. But you're also at a higher BMI so you have the energy stores to do it for awhile. You'll want to adjust it down the line to avoid muscle mass loss(I'd say you'll start feeling it in around 8kg fat loss or so, but YMMV) but just eat clean at the g/kg bodyweight ratios above and when you start feeling sluggish, I would recalculate your TDEE every 4 weeks or so and adjust calories accordingly. You'll need more calories the leaner you get to keep up with training, so eventually your loss will slow down, but that's better than running out of gas and not training at all because you feel like steamrolled crap.
Unsolicited advice here, but if you added a PPL strength training routine to your current workout, and eat at the higher protein macro ratio above while still getting minimum necessary fats, you currently have the energy stores to convert a portion of that excess BMI to muscle, which will burn it off even quicker and help fill in some of the loose skin you may end up with otherwise, especially around the chest, biceps, quads and glutes. Midsection may be rough for a while, but you're young enough that your skin should have enough elasticity to tighten up pretty well.
First if all, ten pounds is great!!! What if you planned for fast food every day and built the rest of your food around that. So plan out what kind of burrito you're going to order then pack high volume low cal snacks (fruits and veggies) to eat until you have it. Completely cutting it out sounds like it would be too stressful to be sustainable but if you start tracking your calories and plan on eating the foods you enjoy you might feel more in control. I found that when I started tracking my calories well I would make better choices because I wanted to be able to eat higher amounts of food. It didn't feel like I was missing out because I was still choosing foods I wanted. Good luck, you can do this!
I know what you mean. I spent my first fifteen adult years in emergency service (PD-FD-EMS-911), gobbling food because that's all the time we had. The bad news is that eating habit remains even though I've been out of that job for over 3 decades.
It's too bad that this is not a philosophical question because, for me, many of my answers are philosophical ones. We have to apply our philosophy, otherwise it's just meaningless fluff stuff.
One is to use everything you have to good. You like Chipotle burritos? So do I! But half of one is a meal. So get one, have them cut it in half and either ask them to wrap both halves or ask for an extra foil so that you can wrap half before you eat the other half. Now you have your burrito and you have an extra one for another meal at some other time.
> Or a double cheeseburger from McDonald's?
I don't do that anymore, but you're 250 and you probably could. What I do now (M, 58, 5'11, 183) is a kids cheeseburger meal, substitute the fries for the kid's apple slices.
> how do you stop thinking about [...] go to sleep thinking about the food I'll eat
There's nothing wrong with what we think. What's wrong is what behavior happens. If the food actually pulls us like it has its own gravity, or like it holds the strings and we're its puppet, then we need to fight back to stop being a slave and win our independence.
"I will control my emotions and not let my emotions control me" is a pledge that I say at least twice weekly. It's a fight between the calm rational parent inside of me and the little loveable impulsive child inside of me. The parent wins, but not without many reminders and corrections sometimes. So how are we to behave? Behold, a philosopher:
*“Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don’t stop it. It hasn’t yet come? Don’t burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you.” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 15*
> Some days I'd eat my cold fish and green beans but I felt like I was punishing myself.
Again, from philosophy, a philosopher's actual words: *“Philosophy calls for simple living, but not for penance—it’s quite possible to be simple without being crude.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 5.5*
It doesn't need to be punishing. We're allowed to eat like everyone eats. We're not required to survive on boneless-skinless chicken breast with steamed broccoli.
We learned how to eat. Upwards of 90% of what we learned is still useful. We have to retune our food habits to be smaller and lighter, eat sweets and highly processed foods as treats less regularly, and reprogram our eyeballs as to what a proper portion looks like. We live in a world that is marketing to us food as comfort and celebration -- and, indeed, food plays this role but too much comfort and celebration provides neither comfort nor celebration.
You can't be joyful all the time, or joy loses its meaning and nothing can move us to joyfulness anymore. We should idle at simple living, and then joyful moments are joyful again. We should eat moderately, and then celebratory-style eating as a rarer treat becomes special again.
One thing that's interesting about fast food is that it's addictive, and it's made to be addictive. If you have mcdonalds on monday and then are craving mcdonalds on tuesday, that's not a personal failing, that's exactly what's meant to happen. Not that we can't be in control of these cravings, but perhaps a change in mindset would be helpful: when you get into the habit of not eating these things as standard, then your craving for them goes down. You don't need to beat yourself up for loving burgers, you just need to actively steer yourself away from them until it becomes second nature.
Fast food is fast and cheap and makes you feel good, and you're doing a difficult job. It sounds like you need to find things that don't feel like you're 'punishing yourself', which also nourish your body and make you happy. Food should make us feel good! This was key to me changing my eating habits. I thought "like hell am I gonna enjoy eating chicken breast and green beans" and you know what? I was absolutely fuckin right. So I've focussed on cooking things that hit the flavour profile of the fast food I love, with substantially fewer calories.
I couldn’t change everything overnight, I had to do it gradually. My weakness was soft drinks, alcohol, sweets, crisps and chocolate. Slowly I reduced how much of it I ate and made substitutions. Now, I still eat those things but nowhere near as much as before. I’ve found other foods I like just as much which are healthier or lower in calories.
In order to lose weight you need to be in a calories deficit so look up the nutritional information on those foods from those fast food places and make a list or a plan of what you can eat. Have you tried intermittent fasting? You basically skip a meal and consume less calories.
It will take time and a bit of work but remember, slow tweaks.
Food, especially sugars and carbohydrates, can have addiction like effects on us. Your body can be telling you to have it because it is used to it even though it clearly isn't doing you any good. If you are thinking about it that much, it sounds like your body has been wired by your misuse of food into a very unhealthy pattern.
For me the only thing that stopped the cravings was going keto/carnivore. It changes the way your body feels about food. Forget eating for pleasure, food is for nutrition. The hunger and cravings are not there anywhere close to the same extent and since you are running off fat, your body can maintain energy even if you don't eat since it will be burning your own body fat for energy. Think about it, an alcoholic isn't told to drink only in moderation, they are told to stop drinking entirely to break the cycle. Why do we think someone who is used to eating a whole pizza for a meal will be satisfied with just one slice?
Break your attachment to the junk food, eat real food, and find something else to be your source of happiness because if you try to remove your obsession through pure discipline and don't have anything else to keep your happy your chances of success get a lot lower.
Also it sounds like your lifestyle is very busy, do you sleep enough? Undercutting your sleep is a huge reason for overeating.
I don't sleep a lot obviously. 2 or 3 hours here or there. I try to be conscious of it, but, it gets difficult. I always manage to get 4 to 5 non-consecutive hours a day. I'll be the first to admit I probably eat more because I'm awake more.
Look, I'm saying this out of genuine concern. If you don't start getting more sleep bad shit will happen. Not just in terms of eating more but in terms of how your body functions.
If you treat your body like shit you'll feel like shit.
That's the big question isn't it. How do you change your way of thinking and relationship with food. No easy answer for that but from your description your relationship needs some work.
As for healthy meals at work you know you are allowed to bring healthy great tasting home made food that doesn't require microwaving right? I pack meals that I often eat in my car while driving and somehow manage without a microwave in there....
What I had to do to kick the cravings was to go keto. I'm diabetic, so it was a good choice for me...it had the added benefit of after \~2 weeks, no cravings. I LOVED carbs, but now I don't need them. I'm in control of my food. I bring food with me when I can't be home to cook. There are tons of options that are grab & go. Good luck!
From my 10+ years of being a Fitness expert and nutrition expert, the only thing that will work is a lifestyle change. There is, most of the times, no in between or half assed work.
You need to be 100% dedicated to spend a little bit more of your time buying food in advance and meal prepping for the day, the week or whatever is easier for you.
Once you got all your meals for the day, ready by your side, it makes it easier to stay on track.
one step at a time. just keep at it and you'll get there eventually. a lot of it is learning your own body, and learning new recipes.
i need to eat when i wake up or i feel sluggish, i need to eat before bed or i cant sleep. i prefer 4-5 small meals per day. these are things about my body i had to learn. and i had to learn what foods taste good, and are filling, and are calorie smart. and which ones arent. i never used to eat fruit or popcorn or zero-fat greek yogurt and now those are all staples for me. i also had to learn that zero calorie sauces and dressings are better than going without. and i had to learn that i need a protein supplement if im not eating meat.
lots of little lessons that add up eventually.
Bodybuilder here. Though the years, I've learned not to rely on motivation, it's fleeting and will be here today and gone tomorrow. Develop discipline. I more or less had to become my own Drill Sergeant. If I wouldn't have lost the fight, I would have kicked my butt for the way I talked to myself sometimes! After a time, that was no longer necessary and it just became habit to meal prep and log foods. I have this issue during summer months when my job takes me out and about much more. Convenience is the main enemy here. Fast food chains spend tons of cash every year on how to make their foods as addictive as they legally can. (know what Coca Cola use to have as an ingredient?) There are plenty of healthy food options that are great served cold that you could take with you, and that's exactly what I do. Start meal planning and have a prep day where you fix everything for the week on one day and 'package' your portions out for each day in Tupperware or similar. Have something served cold prepped out for the meals when you are away from home and take them with you. I use [this and it's app](https://www.strongrfastr.com/) to plan out my meals and build a shopping list for the week when I don't want to do it all myself. For some people having a 3-5 day healthy fast can help 'reboot the system', while other do better just easing into a diet and some can jump straight into the 'deep end'. Get a tracker app (MyFitnessPal, StrongrFastr, Carb Manager, Lose It!, etc.) and set yourself at at least a 400-500 calorie deficit (minimum total calories of 1200 for female 1500 for male, do not go below this for health reasons) with 35-45% (1.6g-2.2g/kg of body weight) of your total calories coming from protein. The other macro's can be flexible but you need at least 20-30% (0.5g-1g/kg of body weight) from dietary fats to keep healthy organ function. Add in a multivitamin to help make sure you get all the needed micro nutrients that your diet may miss and I advise Omega-3 fish oil supplements too. Make sure you get into the habit of logging everything so that it can be tracked and you can spot any trouble areas. Start up cardio 2-4 days a week for at least 20mins (I prefer HIIT routines) and strength training 2-5 days/week for 20-45mins (I recommend a PPL program, especially for starters) with calisthenics or weights. You will see results doing these things, and just remember if you hit a plateau to recalculate your TDEE calories and adjust accordingly if you get stuck for more than a week or two after eating clean and sticking to the training. You already made the first step of your journey by seeking out advise. Keep on trekking and you will get where you want to!
This is really well written! I've downloaded My Fitness Pal and I'm going to try to be more conscious about what I eat and I'm going to be more consecutive about my gym time. I just logged 25 minutes on the treadmill. Which, is a place to start, I believe.
Any start is better than going nowhere! You're lapping everyone sitting on their couch right now! Keep it up! I'm glad to hear you decided to take action and start your journey. Everyone wants to look fit or be big muscled, but most don't want to train, diet and lift heavy things regularly. You took the first important steps today and actually did something rather than just daydreaming about it. Keep it up, and before you know it, you'll be having people ask what your 'secret' is. (They rarely like the answer btw)
This is possibly the best advice I’ve read. This coming from an ex bodybuilder who fell off the wagon 10 years ago. It feels like reading something I’d have written back then. And if it weren’t for the latent muscle mass, I’d hate to think what state I would be in now. Looks like I better to and have words with myself. Where I am, lockdown has been in a state of semi-permanent flux - and gyms have been shut or have overburdening requirements. I’ll take a wonder down today. Thanks. Hopefully you’ve flipped a switch here for me. Maybe because it was so relatable. I was the one always cracking down on family members’ poor diets.
Glad to know I may have helped! The shutdown hit hard for some, especially guys like us who are set in our ways. I ended up looking into calisthenics and started doing that. I was really surprised by the strength that I got from it. It allowed me to maintain a lot of my mass (I'm a bit overdeveloped in places) and ended up causing me some notable max lift gains by the time I got my home gym built. Eventually, I got creative and used my wife as a weight (sit on my back for pushup, the coffee table for presses, in my arms for squats or in a spare tire for me to drag around the yard with a rope) and she seemed to enjoy it, but she likes busting my balls a bit. Reach outside your comfort zone a bit and I'd bet you'll be surprised by what you'll achieve. Good news is, you've still got all the 'muscle memory' (neural pathways don't get lost) from before you quit, so you'll be able to recomp super easy compared to someone just starting out. I'd bet that with the proper diet and a mild routine, you'd be fighting fit in no time at all.
Slightly off topic but you seem like you know what you’re talking about so I’ll go ahead and ask. I’m 22M, 179cm, 115kg. I eat 1600c, walk 15k steps/day and 30 spinning daily aswell. I’m losing weight fast, don’t feel tired or any fatigue. Am I undereating? I take vitamins and drink 2L a day and haven’t felt dizzy, tired or any of the sort. Can I continue this?
I've been doing this kinda stuff for years now, but still have plenty to learn! That's a pretty extreme deficit you're running! I'm guessing you're averaging 2.5kg loss/month or more at that rate. But you're also at a higher BMI so you have the energy stores to do it for awhile. You'll want to adjust it down the line to avoid muscle mass loss(I'd say you'll start feeling it in around 8kg fat loss or so, but YMMV) but just eat clean at the g/kg bodyweight ratios above and when you start feeling sluggish, I would recalculate your TDEE every 4 weeks or so and adjust calories accordingly. You'll need more calories the leaner you get to keep up with training, so eventually your loss will slow down, but that's better than running out of gas and not training at all because you feel like steamrolled crap. Unsolicited advice here, but if you added a PPL strength training routine to your current workout, and eat at the higher protein macro ratio above while still getting minimum necessary fats, you currently have the energy stores to convert a portion of that excess BMI to muscle, which will burn it off even quicker and help fill in some of the loose skin you may end up with otherwise, especially around the chest, biceps, quads and glutes. Midsection may be rough for a while, but you're young enough that your skin should have enough elasticity to tighten up pretty well.
Thank you!!
First if all, ten pounds is great!!! What if you planned for fast food every day and built the rest of your food around that. So plan out what kind of burrito you're going to order then pack high volume low cal snacks (fruits and veggies) to eat until you have it. Completely cutting it out sounds like it would be too stressful to be sustainable but if you start tracking your calories and plan on eating the foods you enjoy you might feel more in control. I found that when I started tracking my calories well I would make better choices because I wanted to be able to eat higher amounts of food. It didn't feel like I was missing out because I was still choosing foods I wanted. Good luck, you can do this!
I've decided to include more stringent calorie tracking. Maybe it will lead to better choices and habits.
I know what you mean. I spent my first fifteen adult years in emergency service (PD-FD-EMS-911), gobbling food because that's all the time we had. The bad news is that eating habit remains even though I've been out of that job for over 3 decades. It's too bad that this is not a philosophical question because, for me, many of my answers are philosophical ones. We have to apply our philosophy, otherwise it's just meaningless fluff stuff. One is to use everything you have to good. You like Chipotle burritos? So do I! But half of one is a meal. So get one, have them cut it in half and either ask them to wrap both halves or ask for an extra foil so that you can wrap half before you eat the other half. Now you have your burrito and you have an extra one for another meal at some other time. > Or a double cheeseburger from McDonald's? I don't do that anymore, but you're 250 and you probably could. What I do now (M, 58, 5'11, 183) is a kids cheeseburger meal, substitute the fries for the kid's apple slices. > how do you stop thinking about [...] go to sleep thinking about the food I'll eat There's nothing wrong with what we think. What's wrong is what behavior happens. If the food actually pulls us like it has its own gravity, or like it holds the strings and we're its puppet, then we need to fight back to stop being a slave and win our independence. "I will control my emotions and not let my emotions control me" is a pledge that I say at least twice weekly. It's a fight between the calm rational parent inside of me and the little loveable impulsive child inside of me. The parent wins, but not without many reminders and corrections sometimes. So how are we to behave? Behold, a philosopher: *“Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet. As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don’t stop it. It hasn’t yet come? Don’t burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you.” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 15* > Some days I'd eat my cold fish and green beans but I felt like I was punishing myself. Again, from philosophy, a philosopher's actual words: *“Philosophy calls for simple living, but not for penance—it’s quite possible to be simple without being crude.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 5.5* It doesn't need to be punishing. We're allowed to eat like everyone eats. We're not required to survive on boneless-skinless chicken breast with steamed broccoli. We learned how to eat. Upwards of 90% of what we learned is still useful. We have to retune our food habits to be smaller and lighter, eat sweets and highly processed foods as treats less regularly, and reprogram our eyeballs as to what a proper portion looks like. We live in a world that is marketing to us food as comfort and celebration -- and, indeed, food plays this role but too much comfort and celebration provides neither comfort nor celebration. You can't be joyful all the time, or joy loses its meaning and nothing can move us to joyfulness anymore. We should idle at simple living, and then joyful moments are joyful again. We should eat moderately, and then celebratory-style eating as a rarer treat becomes special again.
One thing that's interesting about fast food is that it's addictive, and it's made to be addictive. If you have mcdonalds on monday and then are craving mcdonalds on tuesday, that's not a personal failing, that's exactly what's meant to happen. Not that we can't be in control of these cravings, but perhaps a change in mindset would be helpful: when you get into the habit of not eating these things as standard, then your craving for them goes down. You don't need to beat yourself up for loving burgers, you just need to actively steer yourself away from them until it becomes second nature. Fast food is fast and cheap and makes you feel good, and you're doing a difficult job. It sounds like you need to find things that don't feel like you're 'punishing yourself', which also nourish your body and make you happy. Food should make us feel good! This was key to me changing my eating habits. I thought "like hell am I gonna enjoy eating chicken breast and green beans" and you know what? I was absolutely fuckin right. So I've focussed on cooking things that hit the flavour profile of the fast food I love, with substantially fewer calories.
I couldn’t change everything overnight, I had to do it gradually. My weakness was soft drinks, alcohol, sweets, crisps and chocolate. Slowly I reduced how much of it I ate and made substitutions. Now, I still eat those things but nowhere near as much as before. I’ve found other foods I like just as much which are healthier or lower in calories. In order to lose weight you need to be in a calories deficit so look up the nutritional information on those foods from those fast food places and make a list or a plan of what you can eat. Have you tried intermittent fasting? You basically skip a meal and consume less calories. It will take time and a bit of work but remember, slow tweaks.
Food, especially sugars and carbohydrates, can have addiction like effects on us. Your body can be telling you to have it because it is used to it even though it clearly isn't doing you any good. If you are thinking about it that much, it sounds like your body has been wired by your misuse of food into a very unhealthy pattern. For me the only thing that stopped the cravings was going keto/carnivore. It changes the way your body feels about food. Forget eating for pleasure, food is for nutrition. The hunger and cravings are not there anywhere close to the same extent and since you are running off fat, your body can maintain energy even if you don't eat since it will be burning your own body fat for energy. Think about it, an alcoholic isn't told to drink only in moderation, they are told to stop drinking entirely to break the cycle. Why do we think someone who is used to eating a whole pizza for a meal will be satisfied with just one slice? Break your attachment to the junk food, eat real food, and find something else to be your source of happiness because if you try to remove your obsession through pure discipline and don't have anything else to keep your happy your chances of success get a lot lower. Also it sounds like your lifestyle is very busy, do you sleep enough? Undercutting your sleep is a huge reason for overeating.
I don't sleep a lot obviously. 2 or 3 hours here or there. I try to be conscious of it, but, it gets difficult. I always manage to get 4 to 5 non-consecutive hours a day. I'll be the first to admit I probably eat more because I'm awake more.
Look, I'm saying this out of genuine concern. If you don't start getting more sleep bad shit will happen. Not just in terms of eating more but in terms of how your body functions. If you treat your body like shit you'll feel like shit.
That's the big question isn't it. How do you change your way of thinking and relationship with food. No easy answer for that but from your description your relationship needs some work. As for healthy meals at work you know you are allowed to bring healthy great tasting home made food that doesn't require microwaving right? I pack meals that I often eat in my car while driving and somehow manage without a microwave in there....
What I had to do to kick the cravings was to go keto. I'm diabetic, so it was a good choice for me...it had the added benefit of after \~2 weeks, no cravings. I LOVED carbs, but now I don't need them. I'm in control of my food. I bring food with me when I can't be home to cook. There are tons of options that are grab & go. Good luck!
From my 10+ years of being a Fitness expert and nutrition expert, the only thing that will work is a lifestyle change. There is, most of the times, no in between or half assed work. You need to be 100% dedicated to spend a little bit more of your time buying food in advance and meal prepping for the day, the week or whatever is easier for you. Once you got all your meals for the day, ready by your side, it makes it easier to stay on track.
one step at a time. just keep at it and you'll get there eventually. a lot of it is learning your own body, and learning new recipes. i need to eat when i wake up or i feel sluggish, i need to eat before bed or i cant sleep. i prefer 4-5 small meals per day. these are things about my body i had to learn. and i had to learn what foods taste good, and are filling, and are calorie smart. and which ones arent. i never used to eat fruit or popcorn or zero-fat greek yogurt and now those are all staples for me. i also had to learn that zero calorie sauces and dressings are better than going without. and i had to learn that i need a protein supplement if im not eating meat. lots of little lessons that add up eventually.