How do you intentionally lose weight while also knowing about the perils of the diet cycle?

I feel a big disconnect between what I see on communities like this and what I experience in my life and with clients. I’m a mental health counselor and have a few clients with disordered eating behaviors. I also was raised in an environment in which I was very abused by my mom for being “fat” (I literally wasn’t at all, normal BMI), constant criticism and disgust of my body and how I ate. I often restricted, binged, and/or felt the need to exercise off any “cheat” meals I had. I always felt guilt around eating. I was a college athlete and naturally after college couldn’t maintain an exercise regimen of 2 hours of cardio per day (nor was it kind to my body).

Point being, I feel frustrated. With myself, with not knowing what the truth is? My training, my work with clients, my own life experience has taught me that intentional decisions to restrict calories or food groups or times when you eat will inevitably lead to increased hunger, cravings, surge in appetite and/or binges, due to the feelings of psychological deprivation.

Literally any time I try to restrict at all- even try to eat 100 calories less per day or even just TRACK my calories, I immediately feel a panic/anger, and a bunch of cravings pop up. Or if I have a few successful days of weight loss, when I see the scale I think, “thank god, I can actually eat now.” Even if I was only restricting like 100 calories.

I struggle a lot with how easy? It seems to be for so many people on here to do these things to lose weight. Do you literally not get the increase in cravings or binge urge? When they come up, how do you talk to yourself to make them go away? Do they go away? What’s your internal world like as you embark on this? After you achieve your goal, how is your relationship with food and movement? Is it always guilt, fear or shame based?

I’m a very self-aware person and try hard to be kind to my body. But it doesn’t feel like intuitive eating and increasing movement a bit will actually get me to 50lb weight loss. (I gained 50lb while pregnant and my body didn’t lose any of it.)

it just seems like I would totally have to disconnect from my body and its urges and cravings, or be super mean to myself, in order to do the weight loss I see posted here.

Can someone help me understand ? I’m not trying to be a dick just really stuck and nothing meshes.

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