I do appreciate the feedback and support — it helps.

A couple of things I've experimented with:

First, this is a great place for single-serving products. Instead of buying pints of ice cream, buy ice cream bars — even the ben and jerry, Haagen-daz or Dove premium bars. It's a lot harder to open that second bar than add that extra scoop to the bowl. it's a good way to start teaching yourself what a serving is.

Second, look at alternatives; lower quality (i.e., less fat!) ice creams are still pretty good, but with fewer calories. explore options away from the super-premiums to see which ones you enjoy; you may cut 25% of your calories just by changing brands, and find it's cheaper, too, and still as tasty.

One option there is gelato (and also sorbets); they tend to be really rich and tasty, but much lower calorie. Here in the bay area, there are a number of smaller brands available that are quite good, and you can cut back without cutting portion size; or maybe you will because they're rich enough to encourage you to stop.

Use a real scoop and not a spoon, so you can consistently put three scoops in a bowl. it helps get you to a regular portion size and make you more aware of how much ice cream you're using.

finally, practice putting in less ice cream, and then covring it with fruit. Here, especially, bananas and berries (we go through lots of strawberries these days, and blueberries and boysen/marionberries). yourn doctor will thank you for that swap….

And as you've noticed, whenever someone says “this is the way to lose weight”, you can bet they're wrong. There are thousands of ways to lose weight, and each one works for some people, and not for others. It's about understanding your situation and finding the keys to making things work for you, not following the “universal” solutions…

I used to eat incredibly fast, and I can still lapse into that habit if I am not careful.

I fly in first class often, where they still serve you a meal. I used to be one of the first ones to finish. I'd get annoyed that they didn't clear my tray fast enough so I could go back to my laptop.

Now, I have noticed that I am one of the last to finish. They have usually picked up most of the other trays before I am done.

Continued good luck on the journey.

I do appreciate the feedback and support — it helps.

A couple of things I've experimented with:

First, this is a great place for single-serving products. Instead of buying pints of ice cream, buy ice cream bars — even the ben and jerry, Haagen-daz or Dove premium bars. It's a lot harder to open that second bar than add that extra scoop to the bowl. it's a good way to start teaching yourself what a serving is.

Second, look at alternatives; lower quality (i.e., less fat!) ice creams are still pretty good, but with fewer calories. explore options away from the super-premiums to see which ones you enjoy; you may cut 25% of your calories just by changing brands, and find it's cheaper, too, and still as tasty.

One option there is gelato (and also sorbets); they tend to be really rich and tasty, but much lower calorie. Here in the bay area, there are a number of smaller brands available that are quite good, and you can cut back without cutting portion size; or maybe you will because they're rich enough to encourage you to stop.

Use a real scoop and not a spoon, so you can consistently put three scoops in a bowl. it helps get you to a regular portion size and make you more aware of how much ice cream you're using.

finally, practice putting in less ice cream, and then covring it with fruit. Here, especially, bananas and berries (we go through lots of strawberries these days, and blueberries and boysen/marionberries). yourn doctor will thank you for that swap….

And as you've noticed, whenever someone says “this is the way to lose weight”, you can bet they're wrong. There are thousands of ways to lose weight, and each one works for some people, and not for others. It's about understanding your situation and finding the keys to making things work for you, not following the “universal” solutions…

I used to eat incredibly fast, and I can still lapse into that habit if I am not careful.

I fly in first class often, where they still serve you a meal. I used to be one of the first ones to finish. I'd get annoyed that they didn't clear my tray fast enough so I could go back to my laptop.

Now, I have noticed that I am one of the last to finish. They have usually picked up most of the other trays before I am done.

Continued good luck on the journey.

I think my personal downfall was conditioning myself to drink large quantities of diet soda (in response to being told I was dehydrated and sick because of it). I'd drink diet soda for awhile, months, years, then freak out about aspartame or saccharin and switch to “regular” soda, without contemplating at all the impact of the sweeteners or the calories.

I too have an ice cream vice, begun with a pint–a–day Ben & Jerry’s habit. I could never eat just a bit of the pint, so it was always a pint. Lately I've discovered something interesting (lately = in the past couple of weeks): if I buy more ice cream I eat less of it. Certainly the temptation is there, but I’m finding I have a couple of scoops (far less than a pint, perhaps even less than half a pint of the really dense B&J flavors), the craving is sated and I go on my merry way.

The thing I’ve tried to convey to people is how incredibly personal “dieting” is —not private, but that each person has his own stew of caloric needs & burns. For me the difference was adding 100-200 calories per day adding up over years, that's not even two sweetened 20oz bottles of soda. That's not to say that my eating habits needed to or still need to change, but people only see the end result and not the incremental changes and decisions that get us to the point we’ve reached.

Seriously congratulations. Have been a fan (follower? lurker?) since way back in the comp.sys.mac.* days of the early 1990s.