I lost down to underweight by just eating less. Cut most of my portions to 1/2 or even less and just stop eating when my portion is gone. Sometimes I am still quite hungry feeling but I have learned that that is a false sense of hunger and that the food is in there and soon my brain will acknowledge I have eaten plenty and register I really am full, not stuffed. After about 20-30 minuites, viola, I feel completely full and quite satisfied. I used to have a lot of hearburn but eating small portions just about completely stopped that problem, I lost weight and now my stomach has shrunken so that it gets quite full on so much less food. I don't know when we Americans got the idea we need bales of food and feeling stuffed to be happy with mealtime. If you think about it, over history, mankind as a whole has not had access to much food on a regular basis until the 20th century in most cases and only toward the end of that did we think scarfing down a whole huge burger, an order of fries and a huge drink was what it took to get full. I remember when I was growing up, my mom served rather modest portions of food, we ate it and that was it. Somewhere I got away from that but now that I've gotten back to eating smaller portions, I can have occasional really bad things but I usually don't have much(forget the entire large DQ malt I had this week!) at one time and so I don't gain. It is getting your brain to recognize that it doesn't have to feel full for you to stop eating that is the biggest trick. Once you achieve that and know you can eat less and feel full in a half hour, you can start to take in a lot less calories. I used to have to take a good deal of BP meds and now, I take BP meds only some days a week and no cholesterol Rx or anything like that. I was pretty bad in what I ate in July due to having to face some medical tests, etc., but I had good results with those and still didn't gain any weight because I just ate small portions of the bad. I can now get into sizes I wore in high school. Now, it is time to go find something to eat! I do so love food!
Am only underweight by 2 1/2 lbs. so don't worry - am not wasting away!