As it says... I ve developed a destructive, self harming way of eating and drinking that I can t seem to get a grip on. I know how to eat healthily, how to cook, how to cut calories, the whole thing but will not apply it to myself. It's like I m sabotaging myself in losing weight and being fit and healthy. I try to eat well and cut out wine but every day I just give in. I need to lose six stone to be in a healthy weight range. I used to be slim, active and confident. But I can t even remember how it felt to be a healthy weight. In the past ten years I have had three babies, relocated 270 miles away from my home, married and divorced an abusive man, my father died and my narcissistic mother and only sister both turned against me. I only have minimal contact with my mum, none with my sister. No other family apart from an elderly aunt. I left my teaching career to move with my husbands job but he then went off with an ow. I was seven months pregnant. My youngest is now 4 and getting ready for school and I am in the process of getting ready to supply teach. I want to relocate down south next year as the North has not felt right since it all went belly up. I m terrified of doing that but equally terrified of living out my years here. I m in rented accommodation on benefits. Although I am preparing to work in the next couple of months. Despite very good friends scattered around the country and lovely local friends who are supportive I feel like shit most of the time. I eat for comfort, cos I'm bored, cos I hate myself and I drink to blur the edges. I am insightful and reflective on what's been going on in my life, had lots of counselling but STILL will not engage in dropping weight. I m overwhelmed with it all but at the same time know that I am solely responsible for my three little ones. Even that fact does not motivate me to make a meaningful effort. I feel selfish, self absorbed and self hating. Aargh I need some strategies. Anyone??
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My completely rubbish relationship with food is causing me misery....
Lulioli · 03/07/2015 12:49
First of all 
Sounds like you have been coping with a lot of trauma and using food as comfort is definitely preferable to other alternatives!
How about cutting yourself some slack. Instead of saying 'I must cut out this and stop eating that...' just add in some healthy stuff. So eat the usual crap but make sure you have some fruit and veg too. Have the wine but make sure you drink a couple of pints of water in the day. It will stop the punishment aspect of it all. You need to be nurturing yourself, not adding more guilt.
You sound like you are doing an amazing job to me to have coped through all that you described.
I am in the same boat as you (apart from narc mum-my mum is terminally ill though. Things I've been doing that are working:
Walking lots
Joining curves
A book by Marisa peer called you can be thin
I know exactly what you are feeling though, it's like give a dog a bad name
Actually you're not 'really floundering' so don't put yourself down. You're a strong woman who has already coped with one heck of a lot and is trying to cope with even more. You just need to be a little careful, I think. Delaying dealing with things - by whatever means - usually doesn't make them go away. (It's like trying to re-paper a damp wall without dealing with the water problem. (Can you tell what I was doing last weekend? 
))
I most definitely second joining a group like WW, the support people there give one another is simply amazing. You are self sabotaging each day perhaps as a self fulfilling prophecy that you are the things your ex and his charmless ow said.( oh how they sound as if they deserve one another).
Your plan to move and start afresh is good because having long term plans for improving your life has to be motivating,too. The weight loss is clearly a long term goal and will be a lifelong management issue but you can do it.
Very best wishes to you.
Lulioli, have you seen this weight loss thread? Really lovely and full of supportive people ("Team Arse"!!) and great suggestions.
You have taken the most critical first step: acknowledging a situation that's making you unhappy and looking for solutions, which is brilliant. OA or AA would be terrific places to understand more about what's going on in your head, which you quite rightly note is the most important thing to sort out. Both of those groups take a "one day at a time" approach that I think is useful for not getting so overwhelmed. You don't think about putting together a string of dry days; just focus on today as a dry day, for example. The other thing that is sometimes helpful for me is to tell myself, out loud, "don't think, just do" or "you don't have to feel like it, you just have to do it" to cut off the arguments and bargaining that go on in my head (you know the ones: I don't really feel like chopping up a tomato and some cucumber for a healthy salad; maybe I'll just throw in a pizza and open a bottle of wine while I wait for it to cook or should I go for a walk now or binge watch Game of Thrones while eating biscuits?). In other words, no negotiation with myself, as the self-sabotaging me always wins. No brisk walk around the block or time at the chopping board is ever as bad as how shit I feel about myself after the self-sabotage.
The hardest thing to do is get started with different eating/drinking/exercise habits. It sucks for a few weeks, plain and simple. You get headaches and cravings and sore muscles and fatigue, and more often than not the scale doesn't move. But magically, after a couple of weeks, that stops and you feel SO much better. If you can just gut it out (day by day, with heaps of support) until you get to that point, your body and mind adjust, and it is immeasurably easier.
As others have said, you have dealt with a LOT in the last few years, not least of which is producing and caring for 3 little human beings! You are already a strong, capable, successful person, and your worth is not in any way diminished by your size or by the fact that you've been using food and wine for more comfort and support than you are now comfortable with.
Wishing you the best of luck! Keep us posted!!
I have BED (binge eating disorder) and what I found most difficult was suggestions my issues were to be solved by dieting or or going to weigh in groups.
The only success I've had was by working on the problem and putting in the thinking to assess and challenge my issues and learn to be different. The problem is not food, food is just the symptom. If it wasn't food it could have been drink/drugs/gambling/shopping/anything!
Dieting is for people who've eaten a bit too much and it's added up over the years. Dependency on food for reward/punishment/sabotage won't be solved by healthy eating or diets.
Find the issues and solve them and the food issue will then fall into place. That's not to say you don't diet or healthy eat, just that it disguising the actual cause in the short term.
I'm part way through yet another course of CBT and have done NLP and some other approach who's name escapes me. Each have put pieces into the jigsaw so I'm gradually getting there.
Tbh the NHS weren't much interested until I literally fell apart last year and contemplated suicide. You may need to consider going private.
Best of luck and be kind to yourself
You might also find this thread a good read - I'm sure they'd give you a warm welcome if you decided to post, even if only occasionally. 
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