Losing weight if you dont understand why you're fat?

[Chubbrubb]

AIBU to think this is really difficult?

I know why I'm fat on a basic level. I eat too much. But WHY do I eat too much? That's a question I can't answer.

I've lost 4-5 stone twice in the last 6 years. And put it all back on. That was with slimming world. I never got to my target which was another 2-3st. I was a sz 12-14. But I couldn't lose any more, got bored and now I'm back to square one.

I almost never feel full. I think about food all the time. It's my comfort, my friend. I eat to cheer myself up when I'm sad, to celebrate when I'm happy, to reward myself when something has gone well.

I went to a Xmas party last night. I was the only woman there over a size 16. I came home and had a plate of chips and a chocolate bar

Have you tried Paul McKenna 'I can make you thin'? The reason I ask is if you are thinking about the next meal while eating the first one your brain won't register that you are eating.

Two tips from him - eat slowly, focusing on every chew. And never eat in front of the tv or while reading.

I eat too much. I know it.

For me it's partially I like nice food. Particularly the things you don't want to eat.
Partially I like to craze. So I like to sit at the computer with a bag of crisps or something.
But mostly it's habit. I made an attempt to lose weight last summer and put a no snacking rule on myself. The first few days I felt starving and found myself wandering out to the kitchen to look at what I wanted to eat.
After that I didn't feel hungry nor the need to snack.
And I've gradually lapsed back into snacking, so again I feel the need when I'm sitting on the computer or things.

It was much easier to lose weight after I sorted out my emotions about food. Marissa Peer ‘you can be thin’ which is a book an hypnotherapy cd was life changing.

Then I did Paelo diet and Jillian Michaels and am super skinny. I do drink booze but not eat cakes, bread, fizzy drinks, sweets or chocs. But I can eat anything savoury I want.

It’s fantastic feeling to be fit and strong and worth the effort in my opinion. Good luck!

So your parents died when you were relatively young and you were later in an abusive relatinship - that’s quite trauma enough to underpin a disordered relationship with food.

Personally I would focus on the emotional issues behind the food focus. You’ve tried dieting and that didn’t work.

If you were less preoccupied with food it would be so much easier to lose and maintain weight.

The Oprah comment resonates with me. I think the food has replaced family/ friends. I was slightly over weight when I was in my 20s, but half a stone or so. But the weight gain coincided with a time when I was at my lowest, trapped in a bad relationship and needed friends and family, and had no one.

I still feel a bit like that now I guess. That I'm on my own.

Re the gallbladder, I'm clever. Albeit not clever enough to lose weight of course...so I've worked out by painful trial and error what I can and can't eat. Pizza no, ditto butter, cream, cheese (except processed cheese slices), fried food. But I can still eat crisps, low fat ones. And chocolate. Chocolate is the big down fall. It's like a drug to me. Alcohol I can take or leave. But chocolate is my nemesis.

Because everyone is individual. Slimming world and weight watchers don’t teach you that. They just want your £5 a week or whatever it is.

If you stopped buying chocolate what would happen? Serious question.

With eating chocolate you are addicted to sugar. You need to quit sugar to stop the cravings.

I've yo-yo'd and binge/comfort eaten for 25 years. I was very good at dieting to lose a stone or three but could never, ever keep it off as I was hungry all the time on maintenance level calories (not that I ever got to goal weight apart from one time in those 25 years - I maintained goal weight for literally one week!). I tried counselling etc but nothing helped.

Then earlier this year I read the books "The obesity code" by Jason Fung and "Why we get fat and what to do about it" by Gary Taubes - they're not diet books as such but they explain how the calories in=calories out model is flawed, and how weight loss or gain is mainly about the body's insulin response to food. Since understanding how things actually work I've gone from a BMI of around 38 down to 27 so far this year with no binge-starve cycles or hunger. I eat low-ish carb so I can still have plenty of variety in my diet.

Some people might just dismiss this as a fad but honestly, it's been life changing and no-one's trying to flog me eating plans or diet products. I very firmly believed I was an emotional eater but it's only now I'm free of it that I truly realise just how much hormones played a role in what drove me to overeat. Ok it's early days, I'm only 7 months in but I have honestly never gone for more than two weeks without a binge before now, even during phases of successful weight loss.

I understand you need to eat low fat because of your gall bladder but when you say you need carbs to stop you feeling ravenous, I doubt very much you do, you probably need to get through a few days cold turkey (no pun intended). Even if you don't do anything else, please read The Obesity Code. At the very least it'll enable you to stop spending your efforts on a strategy that's not working for you and beating yourself up about it when it fails. Good luck, I truly understand how draining it is to have that daily mental battle around food hour after hour, day after day.

I would have therapy to work on why you need to comfort or reward yourself. Doing that will help you to deal with the root of the problem.

Look at group exercise like Nordic walking rather than solitary exercise like walking on a treadmill.

You know why, OP.
"It's my comfort, my friend"

I went to OA. Some kind of group support for people who rely on food emotionally, is good.

What I mean is that it’s hard to not eat chocolate if it’s there in front of you, but relatively easy if there isn’t any in the house.

Try keeping a food diary. Write everything you eat each day, note also how you feel along side what you ate, e.g.. happy, sad, bored, lonely...

You may notice a pattern in your eating and emotions. Also you may also see what and when you are overeating.

Also try and stop eating when you are full.

I did this and lost about a stone in a month. Still eating everything that I wanted to eat.

OP have you had a read around ghrelin and appetite?

I have recently had a gastric sleeve, which although is bariatric surgery is NOT the same as a gastric band - happy for you to PM me if it helps.

You should not be eating until you are full but just until you nolonger feel hungry. If you go out for breakfast and don’t feel hungry at lunch then it is fine to skip lunch.

What food do you go for? Cut that food or food group out. So sugar or wheat, or all grains. What is really important to you? You manage to not eat fat because of the pain it causes. Why do you really want to loose weight. Really want not think you should?
Bring this to mind every time you feel the biscuits calling or whatever your weakness is.
Don’t allow your go to food in your house at all. You are not depriving your partner and children you are doing them a favour.
Make sure you have periods of the day when you are not eating especially carbs so your body gets a rest from producing insulin and reduces chance insulin resistance.
Every time you want food write down how you are feeling to see if there is an emotional pattern

The thing is you're not always hungry, you're always fancying something to eat, there's a big difference
If you feel hungry you'd have a physical sensation of being hungry
Also the never feeling full, I think you confuse full with being at the point you can't physically eat any more
It's emotional eating ,as it is for the majority of overweight people
You could try and concentrate on the physical feelings, not eating until you are actually feeling hungry, stopping when that sensation goes not when you can't get another thing over your throat

I recommend this book OP for helping you to understand the problems that you describe
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01MAZNMEA/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o02_?psc=1&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8

wtf, how did 'mumsnetforum' get added to the link??

Certain things make me feel hungry:

1. If I skip more than one day exercising (proper raised heart rate and pushing myself, not just a walk). I feel noticeably less cravings on the day I exercise and the following day. Any longer and the munchies are back :( And I start cravin chocolate, sugar and general junk.

1. Try eating as little carbohydrates as you can get away with. Go for lean meat/fish, substitute potato and rice with vegetables whenever possible. Carbs make you hungry and they don’t fill you for long.

1. Try and build new habits to replace old bad ones, e.g. snack on fruit, not biscuits. Buy yourself a giant mug and have a sugar free cup of tea if you see start feeling peckish. Fills me up a treat for a hour or so. Then try another cup of tea until you are genuinely hungry. Have a glass of water BEFORE you eat to fill you up, so you don’t eat as much.

1. Feeling of fullness is delayed. Eat slowly, so it catches up with you before you horribly overeat.

This is what helps me. Wrt plateau in weight loss, you need to change the type/intensity of exercise. Might be worth paying for a personal trainer to put a programme together for you at this point.

I love food, tried many diets and failed then I joined the gym. I have kept the weight off for 3 years now, am a size 10. I still eat quite a lot but I try and eat healthy during the week and at the weekends I eat a take away and maybe some cake. I go to the gym 3-5 times a week for a hour at a time but I don’t really push myself too hard. I will probably gain weight over Christmas but will lose it once I’m back at the gym. I eat 3 meals a day and snack in between. I did slimming world before but couldn’t loose much weight doing it and could never keep it off. I think the secret is exercise.

OP, part of it is a mind set change:

Being hungry does not mean you HAVE to eat

The whole snacking culture is ridiculous really. If you had breakfast, and for example, you are hungry again at 11, just acknowledge the hunger and wait until lunch time.

People seem to be almost afraid to feel hungry these days, or a bit thirsty (hence everyone now carrying water bottles everywhere).

I find that when I am hungry, I am.usually actually really able to concentrate at work. Whereas a full stomach makes me dozy.

Anyway, a bit of "hunger" in between meals is normal enough, though people aren't used to it anymore.

I agree with pp you don't drink enough water, dehydration can be mistaken for hunger and water does fill you up.

Can try it with lemon or lime to flavour it? And ice to chill it and give it less of an bland effect.

When I was overweight I started to naturally cut out things as they didn't appeal to me or I just decided to make small decisions, if I was bored I would start looking to raid my kitchen but I realised this and usually can walk away with nothing same with comfort eating noticed it massively when I found out my cat had died and in no time at all was weeping in my kitchen stuffing my face So stopped after that

I'm a big coffee drinker and used to take sugar with it, I cut the sugar out and now can't stand it in my coffee.
Liquorice tea is really nice and sweet and also calming without any calorific effects so I would drink that on occasion.
I stopped eating mince of any kind after heaving at the sight of the amount of fat in it when cooking it. Rarely eat it today, ditto sausages and bacon. Although I realise you already limit your fat intake.
I am also not a big bread or carb eater.

I found if I drank any fizzy drink pepsi I craved food after so rarely drink fizzy drinks now either.

Alot of the things I did was unconscious and about some of the food I ate.

There is no one answer to the right way to weightloss and maintaining but trial and error atleast will help you find a way.

I'm like you OP, I think about food all the time and am never full UNLESS I am eating low carb.

Eating is an emotional thing for me for sure, I developed BED during a shitty long marriage as a way of squashing all my feelings down and food is still my anaesthetic of choice, but it is much easier to control if you cut out all sugars and all carbs except vegetables and pulses.

I find that never full feeling goes in a couple of days if I eat low carb.and I try to stick to it most of the time. I combine low carb and low fat (I also have a dodgy gall bladder) though I do eat small amounts of fat to help nutrient absorption.

I have recommended this on another thread but I don't have shares in it honestly - try Michael Mosley blood sugar diet for 8 weeks. Nice tasty recipes and I find it fairly easy to follow - much easier than WW or SW - I can't have wheat, oats or sugar based carbs at all as once I start I can't stop. I just reduce the fats in the recipes. After the 8 weeks increase the portion sizes a bit but stick to the same principles.

I never feel so calm or so well as when I eat this way and it hugely reduces my blood sugars, I was diabetic before I found this way of eating.

As a bonus the weight fairly falls off so you see progress quickly. Carbs and sugars are definitely what make me fat. I do still binge if I am down but my go now to is a pile (and I mean a pile) of mixed raw veg, a hard boiled egg and a pot of low fat hummus. That gives me a lot of satisfyingly crunchy and filling food to stuff my face with and does not seem to cause any weight gain.

Sorry for the long post, the other thing is, don't try and give up chocolate, I think it is an essential :) but push your tastes upmarket. Buy high quality high cacao percentage chocolate or plain diabetic chocolate. I promise it does not take long to learn to love them as a substitute for cheap crappy sugary chocolate and you will never want to go back because the cheap stuff is just not as satisfying because you don't get that cacao kick. Break the bar in two and freeze half and enjoy the half you eat guilt free, a couple of times a week. Again, if it is not sugary you will not want to binge on it.