To rant about dieting

[Champagneandthestars]

I've just lost 3 stone over 4 months and I'm so so so so sick of dieting! It's one step forward 2 back, if I even eat one OTT (normal) meal I put on 2 lb and have to eat 800 cals a day for a week just to get rid. I have boobs and hips and I love food! I'm the person who turns up to a picnic with enough to feed an army, cheesecakes serve 4 not 8. I know how to diet, I'm just so tired of watching everything that goes in my mouth to both lose and maintain. I watch people thoughtlessly eating crisps and cakes with blind envy. I hate healthy food and just want to eat crap! Sorry for the rant, needed to get that off my chest.

As you were.

Yanbu. I need to lose some weight after having dc2 at the end of January. I know what I need to do, it’s just a will power issue and I turn into a big (fat) toddler when I have to eat less calories; “but I’m HUNGRY”!

We’re only talking maybe 10lbs to a stone I need to lose, so you’d think it would be easy, but no!

Though, if you put 2lbs on after one meal, I really suspect that’s just water weight. I think it’s something like you need to eat 3,500 calories to gain a lb of fat? Surely that isn’t possible in half a meal.

Well done for losing three stone, that’s a brilliant achievement. But sounds like you’re very much in ‘diet mode’ rather than ‘change habits for life’ mode and that does wear thin. I put on weight from the slightest thing too, but if you’re eating very low calorie your body probably is grabbing on to fat and sugar as soon as you eat something more indulgent. Also some people can eat what they like and stay thin (which is frustrating if you’re not one of those people, me included) A lot of the new weight loss research is undoing the ‘calories in/out’ idea, microbe science in particular. The book The Diet Myth is really interesting if you want a different perspective.

*fewer calories

Exercise? Do you do much op?

I find I can get away with murder if I exercise it off!

I’ll join you in that rant.

I lost 7 stone up unt8l June last year, and maintained until Christmas. I had a week off, and put half a stone on, and then had a health issue in Jan which made me put another half stone on. I am struggling to get the stone off, and like you, seems one step forward then two steps back. If I so much as sniff a cake, nothing comes off. I don’t want to live off fruit and ryvita the rest of my life.

This is my third time, I'm an old hand at this. Lost 4 stone and kept it off for 7 years until pregnancy 1. Put on 3 stone, lost it and maintained until pregnancy 2. Put on 4 stone have lost 3 and one more to go. Before first big weightloss have been on a diet since I was about 9 and a bit chubby (thanks mum). I just seem to love shitty calorific and sweet food more Han my naturally skinny friends. Life revolves around food for me and I genuinely think about it all the time. It's quite miserable really .

YANBU. Dieting sucks and it doesn't work. Fuck it and live your life.

You sound like you have a big appetite but that often changes when people start to eat less and lose weight.

It's only been 4 months, so there's plenty of time for it to possibly lessen.

Keep it up and good luck.

I wish I could just fuck it but I would be HUGE! If I could eat what I wanted it would be non stop ice cream and dominoes. I hate vegetables, tolerate fruit and not keen on meat. It's embarrassing but I have the tastebuds of a toddler. I have to pretend to be grown up and like grown up food, but I don't.

I don't have a big appetite. I want to snack on crap. If someone offered me a Sunday dinner or a whole packet of chocolate digestives and a pot of tea, I would take the latter in a shot. It's not meals, it's snacking that's the problem and as I've said, I've done this before. It doesn't get better, it's just my life.

I’m the same op. If I said “fuck it” I’d overeat. I’ve read some amazing stories about people who give up dieting and lose weight though. I just don’t think I’m one of those people. I need to know what I’m eating or I will eat too much. My perception of a normal day’s eating is too much I think. B

You've done amazing at the weight loss OP! But I think the next part of the journey is not to keep 'dieting' but to make new habits and a new relationship with food. Dieting forever can't be the solution. If your weight is where you want it, now start learning how to enjoy the right amount of the right foods. It's a psychological battle now to fix your mind. You've done the work on your body.

I couldn't look at a cheesecake for 8 and cut it into 4 without feeling a bit revolted. It's just too much to enjoy it. How can you get your mind to see the cheesecake like that? If I were you I'd be feeling very proud of myself for the weight loss but moving on to studying mindfulness and the psychology of food, maybe even hypnosis.

Sorry, I was going on you eating one meal and gaining 2lbs and "I'm the person who turns up to a picnic with enough to feed an army, cheesecakes serve 4 not 8."

Often when someone loses a lot of weight, they just can't go back to eating as much as they did before.

Or if they do, it's over the course of time IYSWIM?

I asked my mum - how many people does a cheesecake serve? She instantly said '4'. She's a total feeder (as am I) but spent my whole youth telling me how I could just look like the other girls if I lost my belly .

Your childhood is long gone.

The best of both worlds would be to fill up on your dinner and have a small bit of cheesecake afterwards, if you still fancy some.

My weight gain over pregnancy shows what happens if I open the floodgates. I'm reasonably attractive about a size 10/12 but I want to be skinny as that has value. My best friends are very slim hipped and small booked. Unfortunately girls built like me find it hard to be and stay skinny. It sucks.

Boobed even!

Are you dieting using meal replacement options or actually practising healthy eating?
One method is sustainable, the other leads to yo yo dieting and I think causes more problems than it solves iyswim.
I'm dieting by losing weight much more slowly this time but focusing on eating healthily for life.

Well size 10/12 is generally slim unless you're about 5ft tall or less.

I understand worra and in awe of people like you. My brain would be saying 'eat the entire fucking cheesecake with a spoon' and I would have to fight it the whole time I ate my slither. It doesn't go away no matter how many years I maintain.

I'm 5'7 (maybe 5'6 and a half ) and eating healthily to lose. I just hate it.

You have my total sympathy OP. Dieting is hard, and even harder when food is really important to you and your preferences are for high calorie foods. You can't help what you like and there is very little you can do to change your metabolism! It sounds like you have iron willpower to have lost so much, well done! Hopefully in the long term it will all start to balance out a bit for you x

But if you don't have a large appetite and you fill up on dinner, how could you manage an entire cheesecake that feeds 8 people?

It's possible you just need to eat more of the healthy stuff and then you won't have to deny yourself the unhealthy stuff...just that you'll be eating less of it.

Firstly, you've done amazingly with your weight loss - well done!

Secondly... omg, you are me. I was very overweight as a child/young adult then painstakingly lost it over a period of a few years. People who have known me only since then sometimes comment on how lucky I am to be 'naturally thin'. No. Every day is a battle. I skip meals because once I start eating, I can't stop. Periodically, I put on a load of weight then have to go to eating the bare minimum for as long as I can bear it to get back to fitting into my clothes.

I put on 4.5lbs last weekend because DH and I had a weekend away and I thought "fuck it". Now I've got weeks of trying to lose that, fraction of a pound by fraction of a pound, with depressing backsliding along the way. Will probably be months before I can get into the right mindset even to start.

Tried hypnosis, doesn't work (for me). I do eat reasonably healthily but evening binges are my downfall. And no, I don't keep masses of unhealthy food in the house - I can just find calories in anything once I put my mind to it

No helpful insights, just wanted to sympathise, congratulate and join in with the vent.

I love that sick feeling of eating too much bad stuff! I couldn't eat a whole cheesecake - but I'd have a go. I don't like dinners though and would graze happily all day eating toast and Nutella off a spoon and wotsit sandwiches. I get that I could eat a larger amount of healthy food but I just don't like it. So I don't eat anything I actually like to eat.