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.

Have you got scales? I know it's hard but if you know he much you have to lose at least you're properly informed and it might motivate you to eat more healthily.

If you're only a size 14 you might be pleasantly surprised.

The start of working full time can't come soon enough! Eating is a comfort for me now and I think I need it for my mental state. I'm hoping once I'm busier I will feel better.

I lost half a stone when I started full time. It's really hard being at home with lots of temptation/boredom.

I'm sorry to be insensitive but...

Either decide you hate being fat so much and do something about it

Or accept you are fat and learn to love yourself as you are...

There is no magic wand. Stop complaining and do something about it or don't do anything about it and stop moaning.

I LOVE bad food. Adore it. Could happily eat a takeaway every night. But I hated the fact that I was becoming a roly poly so I joined slimming world and stuck to it.

Honestly the only thing that stops me is not having it in the house. Sometimes we get snacks of a weekend and I will sit there and polish off a pack of biscuits with a cuppa on a Saturday morning. If it's there I'll eat it.

Can you maybe make some healthy treats. Things that feel naughty but aren't. Like a healthy banana bread for instance. So at least the things your snacking on aren't too bad for you?

I have an extremely sweet tooth and would happily eat and eat sweet things. Of course they taste nicer but you do need some willpower. You can't just say they taste nicer than fruit so that's that I ll eat them.

I used to be a big size 14 and lost weight down to a size 8 when I got married and how hover around a size 10-12. I could easily have put that weight back on. I decided to change my lifestyle and found little changes made a massive difference.

I don't buy any sweet things when out shopping so even though I am craving sweet things we don't have any in the house so that either makes me eat something else healthier or nothing at all. I find I can't be bothered to go to the shops for it so didn't have it. Going through the craving was hard but after a while I found it went quicker and I was ok not having it. This was massively helped by the fact I had two pre-schoolers so the thought of dragging them to the shops put me right off! Eventually the cravings became less and less and were shorter.

I have my portions on a smaller plate and found I wasn't hungry afterwards. I still felt like I was having a treat if it was pizza or chips but less than my dh. This made me feel like I must have been over eating before as I didn't feel hungry eating the smaller portion. I also stopped eating when I was full whereas before I would have carried on.

If I fancy something sweet I ask myself do I need it? If the answers no I don't buy it if it's yes I would buy one small chocolate bar and found that was enough to make me feel like I ve had something. I am the kind of person who would happily eat one of the massive bars of chocolate or a whole packet of biscuits in minutes so this really helped. It was hard but eventually I found the smaller size satisfied me and I actually felt sick and didn't enjoy chocolate like I used too so have it less often.

Don't get me wrong I do struggle. This weekend I ve had a flapjack, 3 mini magnums, hot chocolate, 3 large cookies. It's hard.

I could have written your post, I drive myself crazy and I hate being fat but obviously I don't hate it enough

If you find a magic answer let me know!

Op is there no way you can see yourself attractive with a few extra lbs. Diets don't. Work

Both miles are uphill too. So two miles of steenuphill walking is a decent amount of exercise.

I'm not saying this to be an arsehole. But: I walk 3.5 - 5 miles a day. I also go to the gym 4 times a week on top of that and do weights & cardio until I sweat like a pig. I still cannot eat whatever I feel like. By any means!!

I do not eat sweet snacks every day.

I do not keep junk food in the house. Because I will binge until it's gone.

If I did either of these things, I would be fat.

People sorely overestimate what exercise 'allows' them to do.

If you are 12 stone and 5ft6 you're less than a stone off the healthy weight range.

I have some advice you might prefer op. Stop trying to cut down, at least for now. I haven't eaten a magnum in probably a decade (just not tempted rather than will power) but if I had to spend the next hour listening to an internal voice telling me I shouldn't eat one I can guarantee I'd think of nothing else. So I can see why someone who likes stuff like that would find it hard to resist if it came with a load of guilt.

Instead just up the exercise for a few months, or however long till you are less mentally focused on food, even if you are physically eating as much. Then continue increasing the exercise and v v slowly decrease the sugar, as in at the rate of a biscuit a week or whatever you can manage without it being too hard. It will be a lot slower than whatever the current fad diet is, but far more achievable and maintainable in the long term.

Op is there no way you can see yourself attractive with a few extra lbs. Diets don't. Work

For some people. They. Do

fatbernie, you've said you eat because you are bored and lonely, you thin k about food a lot but also that you are young, relatively fit and pretty.

Well stop thinking about being fat, your probably just curvy anyway. You are pretty, healthy and young. Your body is amazing - it's produced another human being. Get out there and rejoice in what you have. You're fab.

A size 14 isn't huge, so although you could probably do with shifting some weight, we're not talking mega amounts.

What clothes size would you feel more comfortable as, think of that not the actual weight?

I'm a 16, was a 26, but think I would be best as a 14, (am 4 inches taller than you), but I'm not pushing to lose the excess at the moment as I've had a rough year with having my gallbladder out and awful problems with that beforehand,

If you don't want to cut down on what you're eating, you'll have to exercise more to burn it off.

We'd all like to eat as much cake as possible but we don't as we also care about our bodies. I have a sweet tooth and would like nothing more than to eat a snickers bar for breakfast, cake for lunch and a takeaway for tea but if I did that, I'd have to spend all day at the gym and who has time for that? Either you want to lose weight or you don't. Not trying to be insensitive but to say you're sick of being fat but don't want any advice on how to change that is a bit pointless.

I agree koala

Too many people feel like they have "earned" food because they have exercised when realistically you would need to do a lot of exercise to burn enough calories to counteract even a small amount of "junk" food.

I have ran 13k this morning but I am not using that as a justification to eat lots of cake as much as I would like to.

I think the biggest bonus of exercise (proper excercise) when it comes to weight loss is that you become a lot more aware of what you are eating and why because you realise that "food is fuel"

(That's not to say I eat a perfect diet of course - far from it! But I am much more aware of what I eat than when I weighed 7 stone more)

Sirzy, that's true - I knackered myself out on the treadmill this morning for half an hour only to find that I'd barely earnt myself a glass of wine! Never mind the M&Ms I was planning for tonight.

I know what you mean, I can feel very twitchy when staying with people where I don't have my own access to food and feel like I'm starving even if they serve normal meals. I am pretty sure it's psychological though, at the moment I'm on a little bit of a weight loss kick and am concentrating on convincing myself how full I feel all the time, I do think that mind over matter can go a pretty long way. I'm drinking shitloads of water as well which I think can help both as a distraction from eating and as something to actually go in your stomach.

But there are some days where for no apparent reason I feel way more hungry than on other days, and feel bodily weak if I don't eat "right now". It's weird, I can find no rhyme or reason to these days...

I'm with you op, exactly the same. Have you looked at intuitive eating? That might help you to become more comfortable with yourself.

You're certainly not humongous in that case. The way you were writing made me think that you're a size 28 or weighed something like 20 stone on a 5'ft frame.

It is possible for you to lose the weight but you know that. I hope this is just a rant because all health conditions aside then it's just pure laziness and lack of motivation on your part. It will not be easy but it can be done.

The hunger you are experiencing is a message to your brain that you are doing the right thing. You need alternative strategies for dealing with stress and loneliness, what would you like to do instead?

I was really skinny till I gave up smoking to have children now im 3 stone overweight and planning another baby wouldn't it be lovely if it really was a case of eat less move more or just don't buy it (this is all said by the skinny minny's I used to be) perhaps I should take up smoking again once I feel my family is complete.

Apart from being a year older than you, I could have written you first post word for word.

I struggle some people like drugs, some like alcohol. I like food. I thoroughly enjoy sitting around eating. I like feeling stuffed. Only I physically repulse myself and get major depression due to how I look.

Totally totally get where you're coming from.

I'm working on it though. Nearly one stone down. For me it's about being realistic. I am never ever ever going. To stick to a proper diet. Friends stick to 1200 calories a day to lose weight. Me? I'm having anywhere between 1700 - 2100. But this is still a lot less than I was eating three months ago. And along with making sure I do a minimum of 10,000 steps a day I have a big enough calorie deficit to lose on average 2lbs a week.
This of course won't work when I'm less heavy as I won't be burning so many calories due to being so fat, but hopefully by that time I'll be in better eating habits and a much bettged frame of mind

YANBU by the way, you feel the way you feel. However I don't hate myself and I've never been 12 stone, 13 stone + since I first weighed myself at the age of 13. 14 stone at the start of this pregnancy (age 27). I hope you don't hate your whole self, that would be so sad.

Have you monitored how many calories you eat? One week why not log on My Fitness Pal everything you eat (use a scale to weigh the home made stuff), and then work out how much more you need to walk to burn off 2-3,000 calories a week (My Fitness pal can do the calculation for you). If you're already walking 2 miles a day you're burning around 200 calories if you weigh more than 12 stones. It might be that all you need is a bump to 5-7 (10-15,000 steps) miles a day to build a deficit.

When you start losing weight this way then start looking for ways you can control your diet. To be honest I think you do need to find a way to build some self-control. Maintaining your weight at a reasonable number is hard work, that's the point.

I'm doing LCHF for the past few weeks and I honestly never feel hungry now. I eat 3 meals a day and sometimes snack - on parma ham/gouda roll ups, nuts, olives, celery/crudites and cheese or pate. I've lost a stone in that time.

It's one of those things where willpower just doesn't work, but requires a mindset shift. Read one of the books about sugar/carb metabolism like Robert Lustig, Gary Taubes, David Gillespie or look out for their talks and interviews on youtube. Also check out dietdoctor.com. It's not about your morality, or character or gumption or whatever... it's about the interaction between our biochemistries and metabolisms with the hypercorporate obesogenic stressful junk food environment we live in, that's a million miles away from the environment in which we evolved, where the only sugars out there were a bit of seasonal fruit and the very rare abandoned beehive. We are genetically programmed to seek out as much sugar as possible, cos it helps see us through period of winter/famine... indeed, there's no metabolic "off switch" for sweet stuff like there is for starch/protein/fat. Nowadays it's completely maladaptive as we have abundantly stocked supermarkets and cake shops with every confection under the sun. So we're all getting bigger and the health services are feeling the strain at a population health level.

I honestly don't miss sweet stuff now, I bought a pack or GF ginger biccies a few weeks ago and they tasted disgustingly artificially cloyingly sweet. And I felt woozy and fuzzy headed afterwards. Like drunk but without the tipsy silly chattiness, just lousy. I only had 4 Fruit is my sweet treat now and it tastes to me now like haribo used to. Fruit is fine in moderation, say around 2 portions per day, as it has lower overall levels of fructose that processed refined food, and it has high levels of intrinsic fibre which slow down the release of sugar to the blood and the liver as it's being digested.