My weight is spiralling out of control…. how do I stop?

[Overweightandunhappy]

As the title says, I am nearly 30 and just over 16 stone. I am about 5”7 so I think my bmi classifies me as heavily obese..

Food makes me (temporarily) happy and I just can’t stop eating crap.

For example, my food diary today:
Pan au chocolate
Latte
1 bourbon biscuit
1 roses chocolate

Potato with beans and cheese
Banana
Jam donut

About 500ml of squash.

Now having some popcorn and a glass of wine before having an M&S curry meal
for one with pitta bread and probably loads of tzatziki. I’ve then got a Cadbury’s desert / yoghurt for after.

I feel so overwhelmed and unhealthy I just don’t know where to start?

Should I go to my GP? Can they help?

Anyone else felt like they hit rock bottom and they managed to turn it around?

Could you try eating healthier food, nothing too drastic?

So breakfast - muesli or porridge and milk and a banana.

Lunch - soup, salad or sandwich followed by an apple.

Dinner - anything home made with vegetables or salad.

You seem to be addicted to sugar. Perhaps a couple of weeks of nothing sweet will break the addiction?

I don't see what a GP can do to improve your food choices.

That doesn't seem like a lot of food!

The obvious answer is cut out the sweet stuff and increase your protein... easier said than done I know.

I would focus on eating more healthily first. Your example day of food is high in sugar and lacks nutrients. This will make you feel bad in the short term and awful in the long term. Switching to a healthier diet (as a pp has given above) would instantly make you feel better and diminish cravings for junk food. Then you can work on the weight loss over time via calorie reduction, though you may never need to think too hard as it might just drop off with a healthy diet.

You could almost just edit your existing food:

Breakfast: banana and latte (I would add porridge too)
Lunch: potato, beans and cheese
Dinner: Curry and naan, tzatziki, yoghurt

Add a bit more fruit and veg and you have a perfectly good diet

First thing is to understand your eating habits, are you eating for comfort, boredom etc… What about people at home, do you live with people who will adjust their diets to support you?

Is your weight gain purely diet or could there be medical reasons?

You could go to a gp, the first point of call would be discussing your habits and then send you on a course to work on your eating habits before they think about anything else.

I think you’d go a long way by cutting out all the chocolate and sweet treats, try replacing them with something else sweet, berries are a good sweet hit without the calories.

Id also avoid buying deserts, if you need a sweet hit, again fruit/berries or sweet popcorn.

I very rarely buy anything sweet for myself these days, when I buy my DCs sweets or deserts I buy ones I know I don’t like and wouldn’t eat, same with crisps or and other junk. I tend to get my sweet hit from apple juice these days, but I’m also working on cutting that back, but it’s a lesser evil than all the coke and lucazade I use to drink.

Ive tried weight loss pills via the GP, they were ok but horrible side effects. I’m now using Saxenda injections, I’m currently stagnated as I’ve not been using them right. I’ve only done this after numerous years of struggling, I’m a lot older, menopause approaching and have weight related medical issues.

Medication can work wonders, but I’d would highly recommend looking at and working on your habits and exercise first because once you stop any medication you will just regain if you can’t control your habits.

Have you tried 16:8? So you fast for 16 hours and eat all your meals/calories in the eight hour window. I don't ever feel really hungry but will just eat for the sake of it. By fasting, I can just say no to break time biscuits etc because it isn't in my eat window. Same with late night snacks. I find it much easier to be black and white about it rather than moderate myself!

The food you've described today is food that makes you feel full, quickly, and that gives you a happiness hit, quickly.

Think about why you need the comfort and joy/high this sort of food brings you.

It's a process, but when you start addressing that you may not need to eat this much food, and this type of food so much.

While you're doing it, eat more protein and vegetables and fruit, cut the carbs and sugar. The last two contribute to ill mental health. They make a bad situation worse, not better.

Yes I did. I was somewhere else in excess 17 stone (I don't actually know for sure) and just over 30.

One year I just decided I had enough.

I started New years day and slimfasted for 1 and half months. Then I calorie counted for the best part of a year and got down to 11 stone. Took 14 months in total

Mostly it was about upping my vegetable intake, that really does seem to be key. 7-8 80g portions of vegetables. And weighing everything. Expect 2 weeks holiday and one cheat chinese I stuck to mfp calories religiously. Once I started seeing the result nothing tasted as good as being slim felt.

It was also a year when nothing much happened. It was a really boring year which helped.

I also went to the gym 4 days a week so my body was generally fitter. I went from never setting foot in the gym to realising how important exercise was for my mental wellbeing

I kept it off more or less (stayed under 12 stone) for the best part of 7 years. Whenever I my weight started slipping up I calories counted for a bit. I also did les Mills at home more or less daily during lockdown and got the family walking more than our nature tends itself to

That said I'm at 14 stone again after I eat my way through a really really stressful year last year. After several false starts I can start to see the mind shift changing back to losing again, just calorie counting really

The mental bit is the hardest bit. After a couple of months in it became really much easier because you started to see the result and you get fuller quicker naturally

Ive got a growing theory (and can only apply this to myself) that when we talk of emotional eating, although there is some comfort in it, what we are actually experiencing is the dependency on carbs/sugar

I say this because thats how I described myself for years and years, emotional eater. There was some truth to that but not to the degree that it was the only reason for over eating. I also noticed that the so called emotional eating would disappear if I was able to cut out starchy carbs and processed carbs/refined carbs.

I am greedy and love good food, Im an excellent cook and like very rich, highly flavoured foods. I like a lot of it too. But the cravings and 'need' reduced when I was able to eat high protein, high fat, lower carb. I dont believe the compulsion would reduce in that manner if it was mainly emotional eating.

See if you are able to plan for a couple of weeks to focus on that type of diet and if it has an impact. I know how it feels to have food in control of you rather than the other way round

I am also more or less the same height as you

I wouldn’t start banning or stopping food. I would start with positive habits. Starting from tomorrow have a glass of water with each meal. Then start looking at healthy breakfast - containing protein and veg or fruit and bit of healthy fat. Then start looking at finding health lunches and then dinner. After you are comfortable with that start cutting the sugary stuff but I think you will naturally have started to cut back on it once your eating a mostly healthy diet.

Start planning meals, I've just bought a keto recipe book that's got some healthy meals, when you look forward to cooking something nice and different. My goal is to lose some weight for the summer.

Are you getting a good nights sleep? I fine if I’m tired I eat a lot of sugar.

Have you tried eating to be healthy rather than to lose weight?
None of the foods you have eaten today will make you feel good, or energised properly.
I am overweight however I have a thyroid condition that doesn't help. I always eat at least 5-8 portions of fruit and veg per day otherwise I feel awful.
Even if you don't lose weight cutting the crap food out will make you feel better.

Thing is as long as you aren't actually starving yourself there isn't a good or bad way to do it

Only the way that works for you. 1200cal mfp, intermittent fasting keto it's whatever portion control method you're go to stick to.

For me I needed a total break from food but after that I relished the freedom calories counting gave me. Every night for about the first six months of calorie counting I saved enough for an 80cal Ben and Jerry's mini ice cream sandwich. I did have the odd ,(small) fish and chips or (2 piece) kfc. But Genuinely I couldn't eat as much six months in.

The only one I'm puzzled about is the just edit what you are eating... chances are your portion sizes are way off being able to do that. In the end I got myself to 17+ stone because I naturally ate too much, im not going to be able to lose weight without some form of conscious portion control. That menu would easily be a 2000cal + menu left to my naturally devices 🤣🤣🤣

Have you tried eating to be healthy rather than to lose weight? I worked in geriatric eating disorders for 5 years, don't think a single person considered this.

I have multiple severe allergies, trying to avoid anaemia and osteoporosis means I have no choice but to eat healthier. Reading multiple threads like this makes me want to cry. If somebody wanted or even thought they wanted to be healthier, they'd do it.

I'm not sure if it is brainwashing from the very profitable diet industry or a total lack of self control or somewhere in between. Believe me, if your other option is to die today, you make the change.

This is quite short sighted. I appreciate its based on your experiences within a very extreme environment but I'm not sure that's then correlatable to the outside population.

I did have a goal of basically making my body work better. Hence the gym. I wanted to be able to run for the bus or even just walk upstairs without getting out of breathe. (I tend to low tone so I don't find exercise overly easy.) I worked primarily on strength.

But that isn't why I was fat. I was fat because I ate too much. I enjoy food. You can't get round that fact. Fitness happens through exercise, diet happens in the kitchen

I don't feel intrinsically better when I eat healthy food. I don't really like vegetables. I hate cooking. I absolutely cannot abide cooking when stressed.

If you told me I was going to die tomorrow, I might start losing weight or, like the lung cancer patient with a cigarette, I might find I deal with the stress with a nice Indian takeaway... afterall if I'm going to die anyway I might as well die happier.

My £30 a year mfp subscription is a bargain really.

Thank you for the invalidation @Icedlatteplease

I could have written your OP I am the same height and weight as you. My problem is definitely sugar, and I would definitely say that I eat as a result of stress and boredom.

I have managed to turn it round before using keto, but I've really struggled to get into the right mindset since covid and I just seem to be getting bigger and bigger each year.

I don't know the answer but just wanted to say that you're not alone

I used to eat to be healthy rather than lose weight per se over the years. Unfortunately without a focus on losing weight I simply gained more and more weight because I Iove all foods and high calorie nutritious were no exception.

The down side of eating that way meant tht it was counter productive and I became less and less healthy due to the weight gain, despite all the nutritious 'healthy' foods I was eating because the body cant compensate for the excess weight.