I’d like to share my weight loss secret with you all!

[Mummybo88]

I feel really passionate about this and I’m hoping it might help some of you the way it helped me.

I’ve had problems when it comes to food since about the age of 12 or 13. Up until then I was very slim & very active. Anyway, by the age of 15, I found myself very overweight. This prompted a cycle of me trying to cut a million & one things from my diet, having some small successes but then falling off the wagon, giving into my bodies cravings and feeling like a failure. Cue the self loathing, binging and weight gain.

I went through years of this. I tried everything. At one point, I even lost 3 stone but, lol and behold, I eventually gained it back and then some.

Anyway, one day it dawned on me that what was destroying me was all the rules. I never listened to my body, I didn’t trust myself to listen to my body. Days when I went to bed hungry felt like a success. In all honesty, I had sort of lost the ability to listen to my body. I’d become a slave to this diet - binge cycle.

Anyway, I decided to try something which felt very, very daunting. I decided to forget all the rules and try to learn to listen to my body again. I was terrified that I’d find myself living off chocolate brownies but guess what, it didn’t happen!

My initial focus was to really start concentrating on stopping eating at the moment I started to feel full. This wasn’t as hard as I thought because I felt safe in the knowledge that if I felt hungry again, i would just eat something else. Overtime, all of those forbidden foods felt somewhat less appealing. When I used to diet, I’d spend my days fantasising about all of the foods I wasn’t allowed but now the everything was allowed, I’d find myself craving porridge for breakfast or a banana for a snack.

I also vowed to get out of the habit of weighing myself everyday. Initially, I’d do once a week and now I’m probably once a month (or whenever I remember to!!). The thing is, my weight on the scales each morning was dictating how much I ate. That’s just ludicrous when you think about it.

The other thing I realised is that some days you’ll eat more than others. If you have a day where you are more hungry and you find yourself eating more, don’t beat yourself up about it! You’ll find yourself eating less another day and it’ll all balance out.

I broke the diet/ binge cycle and I’ve weighed in the region of 8stone 10 - 9stone for the past 4 years. Other than my two pregnancies and both times, i lost the weight following this way of eating.

I eat cake, sweets & chocolate, but I also eat fish, vegetables & fruit. There’s a reason why 95% of people who go on a diet regain the weight within a year.

This has really worked for me and I hope it can help some of you. I know everyone’s different and what works for one person may not be so good for someone else but this has really changed my life and I can now enjoy food in a way I never could before.

I hope this can be of help :)

[honeyroar]

Sounds good. Thanks for sharing.

[CB1234]

I am going to give it a whirl too. I will report back in a week. I have 3 stone to lose like the OP.

[Restawhile]

Well done you for controlling the binge cycles.

Can I ask what is wrong with porridge for breakfast and a banana please?

Are you despite your success restricting food groups?

[Mummybo88]

Restawhile the cravings for porridge and banana were a success for me! I had worried that if I took away the rules, all I’d eat would be sweets/chocolate/cakes. That did happen to a degree when I first stoped with all the rules, but I quickly found myself craving perfectly healthy foods (for example, the porridge and banana).

[Mummybo88]

CB1234 great stuff!! The successes will not happen overnight. The key initially is to ditch the rule book and to start stopping when you’re full, regardless of the foods you are indulging in the first few days. I think when I started it, I did eat a fair few treats on the first few days, BUT I did begin to stop eating when I was full. Then, after a few days of possibly not making the best of food choices, it really sunk in that I could eat whatever I wanted and therefore I started choosing better foods. The key to this is, if you eat a chocolate bar, that’s fine! That is NOT something to feel guilty about. While dieting, I found it was the guilt after eating something which prompted the week long binge. This is the cycle that needs broken so that means allowing yourself to eat that bar of chocolate or eat that cake and continuing to listen to your body and stop when you’re full. Hope that makes sense.

[Restawhile]

Sorry I totally misread the sentence my mistake 😁

It sounds like an excellent mindset to get into. Did you find that you naturally reduced portions of carbs and proteins?

[Lottapianos]

Good stuff OP, makes total sense. Keeping the weight off always involves a lifestyle change that you can keep up forever, not a diet for 6 weeks or 12 weeks or whatever where you're 'not allowed' any of the things you love and you feel miserable all the time. Getting healthy should feel good, miserable

[Lottapianos]

NOT miserable! Stupid phone

[Mummybo88]

Exactly Lottapianos!

[Mummybo88]

I started another thread over in AIBU as I didn’t think this one was reaching many people. There’s a lot more info on that one and a bit of debate. Some other people have posted that they have had long term success doing the same thing. As always, there are others who say they don’t believe it would work. Interesting read though if you’re thinking of trying it.

[fishonabicycle]

There's a book about this called eat like a normal person (or similar)