Shame my eating habits

[Bathtime17]

My diet is atrocious and has been since I was a teenager, when my poor single mum used to just let us eat what we wanted. I’m 38 now. I often just eat chocolate for breakfast and lunch and then eat dinner with my family in the evenings. More chocolate in front of the telly at night.

Yesterday for example I had two mars bars for breakfast, 2 packets of crisps and a dairy milk for lunch, risotto for dinner and one family sized bar of Dairy Milk in the evening.

Just typing that out makes me cringe.

I am educated about food and can make really healthy choices when I put my mind to it. I just seem to be so lazy and just want junk all the time. I’m slightly overweight but not obese though I should be.

I’m careful to make my kids healthy meals with lots of fruit and veg but just can’t seem to control my own eating habits.

I think I just need the reality check of people telling me the way I eat is disgusting.

I'm trying to compose a decent post but all I want to do is eat mars bars now.

Erm, right, can you just eat everything your kids eat and, given you are preparing it anyway, would make it the easiest laziest option.

Aim to cram as much veg and fruit in as you can and try to crowd out the junk. Maybe get a blood test done to make sure you aren't wobbling on a tipping point for diabetes?

I don't think you really want us to shame your eating habits. I'd imagine that you probably Shame yourself enough, and describe yourself as 'disgusting' and 'junk' and 'lazy'

What do people eat that are healthy, active, energetic and wonderful?

If you want to feel better about your diet, then you know what you need to do, but the hard bit is actually doing it. If you tell yourself all those horrible things, you won't believe you can do it.

Tell us about your good qualities and the healthy foods you like and we can help you make a plan

You know already what's wrong with it. But why? Seems a very childish habit.

If you don’t buy it you can’t eat it. It’s as simple as that.

“Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic. The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being.”

geneenroth.com/2015/09/02/kindness-is-always-the-answer/

She makes a lot of sense.

Thanks for the replies.

@hopeful31years. You are right, it is a childish habit. When I picture a woman who has “got it together” a big part of that is her ability to eat sensibly.

@thenewaveragebear1983. Your message was really kind. I do know what I should do but I suppose I have weird ideas such as if i don’t eat perfectly in one day then I just think “I’ll let myself eat anything and restart tomorrow”. But then the same thing happens again the next day and it’s just days and days of binging.

@FiveAcorns what a lovely article, I especially liked this line
“The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value, and possibility.”

It took this thread to make me realise how negative I am being, and hating myself for my eating habits is just lowering my ability to look after myself properly.🤦‍♀️

Exactly. It’s a self perpetuating cycle. You eat too much so you feel shit, what do you do when you feel shit? You eat, then you beat yourself up for eating too much, you feel shit, you eat...

Time to break the cycle.

Bathtime most people who binge eat do so to satisfy some sort of internal conflict/emotional pain/ stress. I used to be a binge eater very much like yourself. I would despise my body and my internal monologue would be so awful, and then I'd eat chocolate for breakfast and feel worse. I totally gave up sugar in the end, for a few months, and last year I lost 3 stone in total by really really cutting down on sugar and bread and all the stodgy carbs (I still eat carbs btw before the diet police swoop on me) but the key for me was seeing it as a great gift I was giving myself and not a terrible punishment.

Blood sugar diet and Fast800 thread 15 www.mumsnet.com/Talk/fasting_diet/3593022-blood-sugar-diet-and-fast800-thread-15

You can come and join our long running blood sugar diet thread. There are some amazing losses on here, eg. 3+ stones in 12 weeks, but it's a strict diet that requires a lot of focus in the early days.

Diets have a 95% failure rate.

Not being mean just something I recognise in myself - chocolate as a reward or a "nice thing". A psychological pick me up as well as giving energy.

How do you shop? Would an online shop with clear breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack options help? Or a recipe meal kit?

Try low-carbing for awhile. It'll break you of the sugar cravings and force you to cook with whole food ingredients.

I have a horrible relationship with food (thanks to a well-meaning but very restrictive upbringing) and a lifetime of weight problems, but cutting carbs is always a good way to get me back on track if my eating falls into a bad pattern.

All great advice. Thanks @thenewaveragebear1983, I will definitely check out that thread.

Also @Vagndidit, I have had success on low carb before I agree it’s good. But I need to avoid restrictive diets as it has given me weird ideas like I should avoid fruit because of the sugar in it (ironic since I live on chocolate)

@EssentialHummus whenever I meal plan I can eat pretty well, at the moment it’s difficult as my partner is doing a low carb diet, my daughter is coeliac and I have an 8 month son to feed. Finding food to suit all of them is a nightmare, hence the quick junk food! But I need to make more of an effort that’s for sure

You're an adult. You can eat what you like, OP.
Take responsibility for it. My parents didn't cook for us; we all learnt to cook & eat reasonably healthy.

I used to eat just like you until about a year ago when it was like my body just suddenly packed up - I was diagnosed with several autoimmune conditions and started to have recurrent whole body thrush (oral, vagina and stomach issues). I have now cut sugar almost completely out of my diet - something I never ever thought I could do and I feel so much better. When you feel your health starts to suffer you’ll wish you’d eaten better - and as you get older you’ll see the results of a bad diet in lots and lots of ways.

(I used to eat 2 family sized bars of milky bar everyday and on average about 3-4 cakes or doughnuts. I was never particularly overweight, just slightly over like you’ve described).

Shaming is proven not to work.

So is expecting people to massively change several habits all at once.

I'm guessing you eat what you do for breakfast and lunch out of ease, so why not buy other convenient items to have for these meals just healthier ones?

Breakfast - Yogurt, cereal bars (yea yea yea still high in sugar and fat but also fibre and other nutrients), fruit is an easy switch, flapjacks, porridge pots etc

Lunch - is it really harder to buy sandwiches or a roll than crisps or chocolate? Is there an on site work canteen or shops nearby? Buy in ready prepped carrot sticks, celery sticks to have either with a dip or if it's partly the salt you're craving (studies of crisps cravers of which I am also one have found its partly a sensory thing - the crunch - but also the salt) then no reason why you can't salt the crudités. That's what I do. Doesn't mean I never eat crisps but I eat far less than I would if I didn't do this. I literally grab a couple handfuls of carrot sticks stick in a bowl salt and toss and munch away. You could do same just pop in a Tupperware box. Those garlic salt grinders from b&m are especially tasty for this even dd is a convert (also a savoury snack addict but not proper crisps as doesn't like potatoes but corn snacks - skips, quavers that kinda thing), fruit or yogurt for something sweet.

"Fruit may have sugar in it, but it also has all those vitamins and fibre, some had antioxidants...." Exactly.

I don't believe in demonising foods or food groups but some foods contain more nutrition than others. You can still have chocolate just not loads and not instead of a proper meal.

You must be knackered! The family, the lack of nutrition, sugar highs/lows.

So don't shame yourself instead tell yourself you deserve good, nutritious food that makes you feel less knackered and run down.

Thanks for starting this thread OP. I needed to hear it too!

Great tips Graphista. Thank you.

Maybe don’t put chocolate in your shopping trolley when out shopping. Change your food shopping habit as well as your eating habit. All that sugar though can’t be good for your teeth either.

My diet was similarly ridiculously high in sugar to yours. Although I probably ate healthier meals, I ate a similar amount of chocolate and crap on top of it.
I needed a drastic change so did the Jason Vale 28 Day Super Juice Me plan. There's a documentary on Either Netflix or Prime that will tell you all about it.

The first four days were really brutal, but after that, it was mostly fine, and any pangs of hunger/frustration were dealt with through a handful of nuts or a Naked bar. Since finishing, I have gone back to normal eating apart from, I refuse to eat Cadbury chocolate and most days have only fruit for breakfast. I class 'normal eating' as I'm eating food including chocolate (anything but Cadbury), cakes, biscuits etc, but nothing like in the quantity I was, but I really don't notice as I just didn't go back to buying it once the 28 days were up. I lost 15lbs/7.9kg in the 28 days, I finished about 7 weeks ago and have not put on any of the weight, I really thought I would have started by now.
I appreciate its only 7 weeks so I haven't gone out and bought a whole new wardrobe yet, but it definitely gave me a kick start and it feels like the changes I've made are sustainable & hopefully worth it.