To think my life has been ruined because of my weight

[drizzledancer]

This is a very difficult post for me but i am going to try to be honest.

I don't remember a time when weight and food wasn't a big deal in our house. I was a fussy eater as a child and I also spent a lot of time with my grandmother. It was boring so I hate for entertainment. I have some really horrible memories of how both my parents treated me - I remember lying on a chair reading a book once and my dad came in and yanked up my top, poking me really hard in the stomach and telling me to get out and play. I also remember appearing in the local paper because my church was doing something and my dad making me name all the other kids and saying they were thinner than me. I think they were just really embarrassed by me. My mum used to scream when she saw me eating so like any self respecting kid I ate in secret which obviously made things worse.

Objectively I think I was a bit chubby as a kid; it's hard to tell because looking at photos sometimes I look normal size and sometimes a bit lardy but i can't tell.

I was bullied badly at school but never over my weight though which is weird.

In my teens I slimmed right down as I was in quite a restrictive diet and I exercised too. Then my mum died and I gained it, as no one was cooking so I just got into the habit of grazing. This was a bit of a pattern.

I won't go into all the details but basically throughout my adult life I've managed to slim down and everyone says how lovely I look and how pretty I am, I get male attention (shallow I know but when I was about 27 I remember in a really hot summer wandering around town in a little sundress and flip flops and boys/men were looking and smiling and winking.)

But I never keep it off as I binge eat and I end up fat again.

I've gone between 9 and a half stone and 14 stone. I'm 5'3.

Because of my appearance I've never really had the confidence to date and I'm definitely past that point now. I still binge eat and I hate myself for it but can't stop. I've tried counselling but it hasn't helped.

Has anyone actually managed to change?

I'm so angry with myself I've wasted my chance to meet someone and get married, have my own babies, be happy.

Didn't want to read and run. I'm 25, 5ft 5 and for the last 4 years have weighed about 19st, so morbidly obese. Thankfully now I'm on weight watchers and I'm down to 16st 11lbs (since Christmas) but I just wanted to knock this "My life can't progress because I'm fat" stuff right on the noggin.

I have been in a committed relationship for 8 years. He's awesome, we laugh lots, have a fabulous relationship and yes, shock horror, I was fat when I met him. I'm even fatter now and he couldnt care less! That's because being fat doesnt make you automatically unlovable and if you're chasing after men who care more about your body than your brain you will never be happy no matter what you look like. I have never in my life been out of the "obese" category and although I've had confidence worries in the past, I now have a lovely job that involves a lot of public speaking which is something, 5 years ago I would never have been able to contemplate doing. That was before I got given the advice I'm about to give to you:

Your confidence in life should NEVER EVER come from other people. People who care about how they look and how much they weigh are always very outward looking, they care what others think and feel about them more than they care what they think and feel about themselves. This works both ways, so people who will judge you negatively for your weight are usually horribly unhappy with something in their own lives so find looking outward much easier than dealing with their own issues.

It boils down to this (and this was the advice given to me):

If you need someone to wolf whistle at you to give your life value then you have much bigger problems than your weight

I took this and ran with it. I took some time to think about my life and why I was so unhappy despite having a great relationship... I couldn't let my guard down and I couldn't "connect" with the world around me because I didn't have enough self worth to understand I deserved to be a part of society as much as anyone else, fat or not. I thought about the things my brain and my personality could do if they were in a different body, and realised it's not my body that's holding me back, it's my fear of being rejected.

Something in me shifted over a few months and I kind of "emerged".. I was at Uni at the time and I just decided one day that was quite enough apologizing for my weight, it was just time to get awesome :)

Over the next few years I got my job, got promoted, my relationship went from strength to strength, I bought my first house at the age of 23.. all things I didn't think were possible before I realised weight really doesnt matter :)

In terms of the binge eating: Yes, it's possible to stop. I personally use a CBT technique called "i don't eat that" which is where when you're presented with a trigger food, you consciously alter your relationship with that food by telling yourself "I don't eat that". Works pretty well. Also, track all your food, it helps you understand the quantities and quality of the foods you're consuming. I'm on weightwatchers which encourages you to track everything but you can do it for free with MFP.

Now that I'm a happier person and general life is good, I'm finding losing the weight is no where near as hard as it used to be. My cravings are less because I'm not focused on food and my "sticking power" is much improved because I have a lot more determination now that my end goal is for me and not for anyone else :) I chose to start losing weight not because I want other people to see me differently, but because I want to be able to run and swim and walk my dogs for miles and miles. I did an 8 mile walk this weekend, all 16st 11 of me! This is a much bigger achievement than dropping an lb on the scale believe me!

Best of luck to you, set a start date and think of it as your "Get well" date not your "Get skinny" date. Work on the inside and the outside takes care of itself

Drizzle what are you hoping for now? I agree with your point about these threads drifting away from the OP, and that it is really frustrating to be misheard. So I am clear that you're not interested in dating, and you don't want counselling.

And yet you wrote a post you described as painful to you and difficult to write, and you ended it by saying you hated yourself for binge eating and were angry with yourself. You asked if anyone had changed.

Help me get my head where yours is? Why did you put yourself through writing it? If you look in your heart, what do you want for yourself now? What are your hopes? What is it that you think, if it changed, could make things better for you going forwards? And why?

Also, I didn't mean to upset you with my earlier question and apologise if I did. I thought before I asked, that if someone in an anonymous forum had asked my aunt just that, how she might have opened up and saved herself some time. I hope you understand the spirit it was asked in.

That's an amazing post pickle!

Op, I was like you 2 years ago.

There is no miracle cure. It really is a case of EAT LESS/MOVE MORE.

I went from a size 16 to a size 8. Here's how : 1200 cals a day and walk 4 miles a day. No alcohol 5 days per week.

That's it!

And the best thing - it only took 4 months to do.

But, have lots of low cal things in, to eat. French fry crisps, snack a jacks, weight watchers yogurt, carrot sticks, thins instead of bread, ryvita, cup a soups, kellogs cereal bars, weight watchers ready meals, Batcherlors Mug Fulls.

I seem to be grazing all day long and I am never hungry.

Good luck!

Oh and track what you eat by using on My Fitness Pal. It is amazing!

yes that is a gorgeous post pickle - just brilliant.

Another fan of pickly's post. Some very good advice and inspiration in there.

OP you are unreasonable to say that your life has been ruined by your weight. Why make such a damning judgement at this point in your life, and why let your weight have such a powerful role? If you would like different outcomes, then it's the thinking and processing of information that needs to shift.

pickly
Best of luck to you, set a start date and think of it as your "Get well" date not your "Get skinny" date. Work on the inside and the outside takes care of itself

This is sound advice. By framing everything around your weight OP, you are making it very difficult to achieve your goals. If you would like to alter things, then making small positive changes in pursuit of health and wellbeing will, from a psychological point of view, be much, much easier than chasing prescribed weight loss targets, which invite rebellion and upon which arbitrary notions of success and failure hang.

Slutbucket's CBT website suggestion is helpful. There are also plenty of books out there on the psychology of overeating, mindful eating etc.

And please stop punishing yourself with thoughts of never meeting a partner (catastrophic thinking). These things can happen when you least expect them and berating yourself is unhelpful and creates barriers.

It's not therapy in the sense you look at the past it is a more practical kind of tool to help you change behaviours. So if you binge for whatever reason it will help you to see your triggers and think of helpful ways to get over the need to eat unhelpfully. As soon as i get the slightest upset eat. It did help me to pin point the issues of what would upset me. Any kind of diet is some kind of therapy because you are seeking to change something. You could see a diet coach and that is a form of therapy. It doesn't have to be deep soul searching for you to get some benefit.

pickly what a great post, your confidence and attractiveness just radiates out of it - you sound awesome 😊

drizzledancer - I agree with those who suggest you try CBT-type therapy. Just because counselling didn't work, it doesn't mean another type of intervention won't work. It sounds to me as though your weight is the least of your problems - it is not that which stopped you ever having a boyfriend, or made your parents abusive (it was just their pathetic excuse). Your problem is an eating disorder. Even when you have been slim, you haven't believed it will last. You seem to use food as both comfort and punishment - to comfort and simultaneously disgust yourself. You can't stay slim if staying slim is some form of self punishment. You don't have to be stuck like this, you really don't. You do need help to get out of the vicious cycle, though - don't use needing some psychological support to deal with it as yet another stick to beat yourself with!

My personal experience is that the bingeing and cravings are all about sugar and since the start of the year I've pretty much given up anything with added sugar (biscuits, chocolate, sweets, cake). Not because I'm virtuous, at all - but because I KNOW I find it highly addictive and can't control how much I eat. I can't just have a little bit of these foods and be satisfied, the cravings are NEVER satisfied and I then binge eat and feel rubbish. I really believe it's an addiction and that like alcohol, some people can handle moderation and some just can't. Hence stopping altogether is easier than trying to have limits that you can never keep.

I sometimes then eat a bit too much bread or crackers or whatever, but somehow that's not as addictive and doesn't make me feel as rubbish as a sugar binge.

Oh and I did fall off the wagon a few times (Easter Sunday - less said the better)..... but realised fairly quickly how rubbish I felt when I did so and went back to cutting it out. The cravings for sugar are way less frequent now than at the start and I can go whole days with no desire for sweet stuff, I think my body's got re-conditioned to it.

Thanks for the love guys

Agree bibble, i too have a massive problem with highly palatable foods (high sugar, high fat, high salt). It helps to identify these foods as "trigger foods" and recognize you have a problem with them. I have a list of about 30 foods which I treat just like any other addiction, avoiding as much as I can. A few examples: green pringles, chicken bbq pizza from our takeaway, chocolate hobnobs, peanut m &m's... it goes on! If I find myself eating a food when I'm not hungry and find myself unwilling to stop, it goes on the list. I have some major slip ups and I find if I engage with one of my trigger foods, it's then the start of a spiral and I'll binge pretty much none stop until I get hold of myself again. Food addiction is a thing. You don't get to 19st by just having a big appetite! You should always allow yourself treats though. So I will have chocolate or crisps, but it will be tracked and accounted for in my daily diet and it will be varieties of those things which are not as appealing to me as the foods on my list. For example, I'll have a WW chocolate bar instead of hobnobs, or a pack of quavers instead of pringles etc. Start by writing down your trigger foods, it really helps :)