To hate how fat I am

[fatbernie]

I know all I have to do is stop eating so much (so please don't give me diet advice. I've heard it a million times before).

It irritates me so much that no matter what diet I try I can't stick to. I lose a stone and then it's all back on. I even went a full 6 months on slimming world but eventually got bored.

It's not savoury food I crave. I make all my meals fresh. It's just I eat far too big portions and far too much sweet food. Today I've eaten a magnum, a mr kipling apple pie and an ice cream cone. My breakfast was scrambled egg on wholemeal toast and lunch was baked sweet potato with veg and chicken so my main meals are healthy but I eat so so much snacks it's unbelievable.

I can't stay at anyone's house because I feel like I'm dying of starvation when eating 'normal' amounts of food.

I walk a lot and enjoy walking. I walk two miles a day at least so that's one positive but I cannot stop using food as enjoyment.

I just eat when I'm bored. I would love to be slim but I never will be. I never have been since the age of 8 and I'd not even know how to eat a normal diet as I'd be starving!

Anyone else the same? I know it's acommon problem.

I'm only 28. I should not be so fat. I have a pretty face, I could be gorgeous. It's such a shame.

i know you just want to vent. And I totally understand your mindset.

But what changed my mindset was reading 'potatoes not prozac'. It explains what's happening that makes you crave sugar - and how you can slowly and sensibly overcome the craving. Without needing willpower.

If you need willpower, you're doing it wrong......

Hypnotherapy helped me reduce my sweet tooth considerably
The therapist convinced my brain that sweet sugary things were horrible in fact so sweet that they made me feel sick
I still can't chew chewing gum - drink soft drinks or have sugar in my coffee
It didn't totally solve my weight problems but I easily lost some weight
More recently doing slimming world has helped even further but I've had to accept that this will be a way of life for ever if I want to get thin and stay thin

You have my sympathy and I wish I had the answer. I am a lot older than you but feel like my weight impacts my life so much. I'm exhausted, can't cope with my job, have persistant backache etc. I won't go swimming with my kids because I'm so embarrassed. I know a lot of it is psychological, I dislike parts of my life and eat to cheer myself up, I work really hard and feel like I need to reward myself. I have lost significant amounts of weight in the past with slimming world but it's the amount of thought and preparation that puts me off.
Like you it's snacks that are the problem, bread, toast, biscuits, cake. I have them in the house because I have 3 super skinny forever hungry teenage boys.

Hi,

I know you don't want advice but I had a similar bingeing problem a few years ago. I went to my GP who referred me to a counselling service specifically for eating problems. Talking about it and wider issues affecting me at the time (which I had been ignoring/using food to distract) really did help and got me back in control.

Have you tried eating a very low carb high fat diet, OP? I have seen that work near miracles for some people. The greatest thing about it is that you can eat as much as you like, including snacks - except that they must be very low carb. So your snacks wouldn't be sweets but would be nuts, pork scratchings etc.

Resolve not to eat anything that contains more than 10g of carbohydrates per 100g. Give it a try. You will start losing weight within days.

People saying 'just don't have it in the house' have no idea

How do you come to that conclusion? I was fat because I ate crisps and the only way I could manage it was to not have them around. Yes, I occasionally would slip and go and buy them but that's much more effort than going up the cupboard so it happened much less often.

You have an addiction to food, or more accurately, sugar. Treat it like that. Can someone else shop for you? Remove your access to money so you can't buy it? Have someone with you constantly to police you? Sounds extreme, but if it were drugs, or alcohol, this would be the advice.

I had this problem too. Sounds like you need to cut sugar (anything with added sugar) out completely for a while. That means no breakfast cereal, desserts of any kind, sweet breads, preserves, fizzy drinks, ice-cream... NOTHING with added sugar! Do this for at least a month and expect to feel lousy for a while. Watch the fruit, too—stick to berries as fruit has a lot of natural sugar. You will get used to it and your palate will adjust, then very gradually you can have desserts occasionally, as a treat. Don't wait as I did until you're in your 40s to do this... it will only get worse.

People saying 'just don't have it in the house' have no idea. It's an addiction, wholly absorbing any willpower and happiness, making lives miserable

^This

You sound as if you are healthy with all the walking, you have a family and a great job. Why not stick two fingers up to the advertisers image of perfection?

I think it was the flapper look from the 1920s where the obsession for skinny came in. Other cultures value the more meaty woman.

Stuff 'em all girl and really try to ditch the guilt and enjoy your food.

I will be working full time soon. I'm really hoping this helps as I will be much more busy and around people more.

I don't have much adult company and eat out of boredom/loneliness.

I spend far too much time in my house when not at work and only work two days a week at the moment.

You sound as if you are healthy with all the walking, you have a family and a great job. Why not stick two fingers up to the advertisers image of perfection?

Unfortunately there's the greater risk of diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, arthritis...

A doctor working in this area told me that when you lose weight your body initially tries to regain that weight (because your body evolved to try and regain weight when food was scarce), it is only after being your new lower weight for about 2 years that your "set point" weight changes and your body realises that this is your new normal weight.
So yo yo dieting is common because once you stop following the diet your body does everything it can to regain the weight. It isn't a moral or psychological weakness on your part.
I've found intermittent fasting v useful, you have a daily eating window of 10 hours and can only eat during that time. A regular fasting period is good for losing weight, in addition to simply eating less it activates hormonal changes which are beneficial for reducing fat stores.
Similar to 5:2 diet but I think easier to follow if you are able to eat freely every day during those 10 hours, rather than two days when you are starving.
The Blood Sugar Diet by Dr Michael Moseley is also a good read.
If you can stop eating sweet stuff for a while your taste buds will change and they will taste really sickly.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that it isn't all about willpower. It isn't about you not being good enough or not able to do something.

We have a nation of obese people and this isn't because we are all shit human beings with no self control all of a sudden.

We are presented with lots of high fat, high sugar, concentrated calories that are cheap and available easily. That sort of food is ok in moderation but when that's the thing you eat to deal with everything else, that's when you become obese. When you don't like yourself very much and spend your time castigating yourself for being 'weak', having 'no willpower' etc you start to dislike yourself. You don't care about yourself and your body. You treat it badly. You don't care what you put in it. Case in point: I started being nicer to myself food wise and now there's chocolate and snack food that I won't eat because it's not 'good quality' enough. I still eat a lot of shit but it's good quality shit

OP YANBU to hate being fat. YANBU to think that diets are unsustainable and don't work in the long term, because who wants to deprive themselves of nice things FOR EVER in case they put on a pound? (and no, fruit salad is nice but it will never be a fucking chocolate cake and no amount of slimming world fakeness will make it be a proper chocolate cake).

The only person I've ever read who makes any sense about this is the rebelfit guy. Because his science is real evidence based journal science. Because he doesn't 'ban' food or food groups. Because his theory is based on learning to love your body and that eating is for fuel but it's also for pleasure and that means sometimes eating the cake! I'm not saying you should go and read his stuff and it will magically help you lose weight as if you want to, you need to be in the right place for it... but until you are it's still not unreasonable to not be happy with the place you are in.

People saying don't have it in the house do have a clue. Because some of us have been there, done that got the t shirt.

But it seems pretty simple. At the moment you don't want to lose weight and that's fine. It will only work when you want to make changes. Sounds like you need to learn to accept the way you are rather than get upset about things you aren't in a position to change.

Sounds like you want people to tell you it's ok to be over weight because junk food tastes good and it's so hard to avoid you can't be expected to avoid it.

If you unhappy stop eating so much and exercise more if you don't want to do that then stop moaning about being fat amd accept it's a product of your lifestyle. Don't expect people to validate your bad decisions to make you feel better.

I've been fat and have to work every day not to gain weight it's not easy but thats life you need to decide whats important to you.

I know you don't want advice - but, have you read Gary Taubes's "Why we get fat and what to do about it"? It takes away all the moralising about fatness and shows why some people have really awful cravings that are very hard to resist. A cliché, but it did change my life - and certainly my attitude towards my body's propensity to store fat. It's much easier to eat properly when your relationship with food isn't bound up with self hatred! Read it.

Hi I don't normally post but I wanted to answer. I follow a guy on Facebook "scott baptie" and he has a business food for fitness. He is really pragmatic about these things and says just start by changing one small thing and work upwards. So if you drink 5 cans of coke a day cut it to 4 or 3 a day. Do one press up a day or walk round the block once a day then once you have done these things and you feel happy and confident about your achievement change another 1 thing.
For me if I didn't exercise I would be overweight that's how I deal with sugar cravings. Good luck op 😘

If you have convinced yourself that you really cannot lose weight, then that is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So you can decide either to accept yourself at this weight or change your thinking. Those are really the only two options.

Whom do you live with? A partner and young children? If so, it is easy to control what you buy. If your partner is supportive, he ought to be able to cope without the sweet stuff in the house. If your living situation involves flat mates, it might be more difficult.

However, seeking some sort of therapy might be the key for you, to recalibrate your entire way of thinking about food and diet.

Working will help you OP. It helped me...as did moving house and suddenly having to garden!

I also stopped lying to myself about how much excersise I did. I used to ride my bike with the DC to school and back...it was 3 miles there and 3 back so I'd say "I ride 12 miles a day!"

In reality I gently rode 6 and then freewheeled another 6. The rides with the DC were slow and it wasn't enough.

Walking 2 miles a day is nothing.

And I agree with CuriousOwl - people going on about "willpower" and the "simply eat less and exercise more" brigade is not at all helpful, and not based on evidence.

I walk a lot and enjoy walking. I walk two miles a day at least

But that isn't a lot at all. That's way under the recommended 10,000 steps a day activity level, for someone physically fine it's hardly anything. The fact you think it's a lot is striking.

If you can't give up your snacks, you'll need to try burning them off at way more than 2 miles a day (with rest of the time in the house?).

I know how you feel. I've put on about 3 stone in the past 18 months or so. My main meals are healthy but I can't stop eating junk food. I don't buy junk food when I'm doing my main shop, but it's on my mind all day, from the moment I wake up. I try to resist but it nags at me and completely occupies my mind and eventually I give in and buy the food, and only then do I stop thinking about it.

I feel ashamed of how I look and I always think people are looking at me when I leave the house.

I think don't feel you are weak/ bad/ lazy though. We live in an obeseogenic society.
Our bodies are evolved to surviving food scarcity, not to resisting obesity.
Sugar is addictive.
There is a multi billion dollar industry trying to make you buy and eat unhealthy food.
Our society is set up for sedentary life.
Yes we can all make changes, but you are swimming against what is easy, so don't feel bad about yourself for not managing it yet.
I used to be slim, am fat now, I've been surprised how difficult it is to shift the weight.

I could be writing your posts OP! It's uncanny. I'm finding what is helping me is:

1. focussing on eating non-processed foods as much as possible
2. seeing my personal trainer (it's been a year), who helps me with diet too and is a general cheerleader
3. Reading Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole.

What is not helping me, is being pregnant and having a carb craving babe.