Amen. Even some people on GLPs just see GLPs as a crutch in their CICO universe.
I've said it before, " I've never lost a f'ing pound in sixty years. "
One of the best steps I took when starting GLPs was to buy 9" dinner plates. They used to be the norm in the 60s and 70s. Now they're 12" and even 13" at some restaurants. It might not be a huge deal, but it plays mind games regarding how much food you think you actually have on your plate. I know it did me. I don't build an engineering masterpiece on my plate, either. I plan to keep them even when I taper down after hitting goal.
This sounds like a great idea. For someone who eats a lot of rice, I was also advised to get black dinnerware, to better see it with contrast.
It's worked for me. I adjusted fairly quickly to smaller portions and have kept it on Reta. Sometimes even less. I try to eat clean and you can still get a lot of healthy food on a 9" plate. One thing I gave up was rice. My rice cooker is in the closet. I decided to save those calories for other things. I now get or make riced cauliflower and use that instead, but it's still kind of boring with a stirfry.
And that's a big part of the trap there. No other mammal in nature needs to track calories to maintain a healthy weight. They only run into problems when they're made to eat foods other than their natural diet. For example, cows are fed grain-heavy diets, turning them obese and giving them diabetes (AKA "marbling"). Compare that to grass-fed cows who are in much better health themselves (but also less marbling).
That sounds a lot like the advice you'd typically receive from a dietician or a diabetes educator. Not sure if you've ever attempted such a plan, but in practice most people on such plans are rather miserable due to constantly feeling hungry and feeling like their lives are being run by food. If you paired that with a GLP, it's not going to be quite as bad, but without one, it's going to be a similar experience to being an office worker constantly looking up at the clock for the last hour of their shift, frustratingly waiting for it to finally strike 5PM. Only you get to have that feeling all day long, instead of just the last hour of your shift. And then you feel guilt when you give in to that extra snack or portion, at some point just throwing in the towel entirely and giving up any progress you might have made. It's a great way to put in a month of hard work that feels like a constant struggle, only to have any progress you made given back in a week or two of "going off the wagon," and then feel emotionally conflicted about whether you want to go back to putting in that kind of work again for what very likely will prove to be fleeting results once again. I suspect industry favors promoting that particular plan because it helps people give up and seek paid treatments more quickly, while ensuring people stay locked into their ultra-processed food addiction along the way. I mean it's possible some people will change what they're eating on such diets, but most will opt for the convenience of calorie counts being printed on the side of packaging, which is less often true with the kinds of foods that are more productive for weight loss.
