To Stop Dieting?

[MessyMcDoogle]

I'm 17st 7lbs at 5ft 5 and I've been obese since I was 7 years old.

I've also 'been on a diet' since I was 7 with varying degrees of success, but my lowest ever adult weight is 14st so I've never been a healthy weight.

I've been doing some reading (books, not online blogs etc) and there's a school of thought that dieting actually causes obesity by buggering up your relationship with food. I feel this. I loathe myself whenever I eat and often wake up in the morning feeling guilty about what I ate the day before, then realise I had a good day and didnt binge so I dont have anything to feel guilty about

I binge eat in the evenings fairly regularly because once I'm "off track" on whatever diet I"m doing, I just think 'fuck it' and eat what I want, all the time feeling guilty for what I'm eating and therefore making the desire to binge even stronger. It's maddening.

I want to just stop. I don't want to track anything, I don't want to parse blame for my weight onto whether a particular diet 'works' or not etc etc. I just want to eat like a normal fucking human being and not feel bad about it and keep the accountability on me, not on a 'plan'.

My fear is though that I"m going to get even bigger. I really can't afford to do that, I'm massive as it is. I feel like by removing the restrictions on myself I'm just going to go crazy and have no structure to pull my eating back under control.

Is this a really bad idea?

Oh come on Kubex, you KNOW that what you wrote is spiteful. Messy is really suffering and you came along and stuck the boot in in the most vicious way. And yes, she probably shouldn't have told a PP to fuck off, but when you've endured decades of disordered eating and are mentally exhausted because of it, you tend to have a short fuse when people, however well meaning, tell you to just go on another diet like that's the answer to all your problems.

And the OP does know she's got to work hard to get better - and she's trying to do that by getting her head straight first. People coming on and telling her she's lazy - which is essentially what you're doing - and she just needs to move more (FFS) aren't helping. So please leave her alone.

I second this. I have such a love of food and I've been overweight since my late teens, now 29. I got down to a size 10 when I was 23/24 with slimming work but two pregnancies later and I'm back to a 16/18. I've decided that I'm going to eat whatever I like but make my portions smaller. There's no happiness in denying yourself everything and still being overweight.

I’m fully aware this is going to be hard work, don’t be ridiculous. At no point have I indicated it won’t be.

I think what treatment I receive is down to the professionals, don’t you?

Olivia is bang on, I’m at complete rock bottom. I’m working from home today because I can’t face going to the office and being around people. I’ve been crying on and off for 48 hours because I’ve finally realised this isn’t something I can fix without professional help. Last night, I balled my eyes out on the phone to a stranger while my DH cuddled me and I can see how much this is going to hurt him too.

I started this thread and opened a can of worms I wasn’t ready for and now I have no choice but to seek medical help and I have no idea where this is going to leave me.

All I have is my desperation to get better now we’ve probably identified the problem, and the fact this is the beginning of a really horrible time in my life is looming over me today and making me feel really helpless.

You chirping up with ‘just eat less and move more’ and your shitty blamey attitude is possibly the most spectacular display of cold hearted cuntery I’ve seen in a long time.

Same story here. Diets since childhood which lead to years of restriction and purging. Now it tends to be emotional eating and self hatred. Thanks for the heads up about the online groups, I'm going to try them out too. Good luck x

Thanks mercury best of luck to you too, you have to sign up then they approve you a day or so later, BEAT have been fantastic so far

I'm crying reading your last post, Messy. I wish I could give you a hug too. People just don't understand what it's like living with the constant angst of feeling like you should be dieting, trying to diet, failing to diet and then realising that, after years and years of repeating that cycle, it's caused serious mental damage. As someone just said on our other thread, it's like telling a depressed person to cheer the fuck up.

olivia thanks, sorry it’s a really tough bloody morning.

Messy Good luck for your appointment this afternoon. x

Don't apologise Messy, you haven't been the unreasonable one here.

I had to really lay down the line with my fiance a few years back when he talked about ‘naughty’ treats, or other ‘encouragements’ to help me keep to the diets I was trying.

The effed up part of my approach was responding to treat, convenience and junk food when feeling stressed and low. So if I felt really good about myself - losing a few pounds, clothes looking better - the best way to keep me on track was to NOT FOCUS ON DIETING. Just keep thinking I’m doing great, so I don’t stress about it, and don’t feel crap about myself and need to reward/boost myself with, you guessed it, junk food.

Without thinking about dieting in a systematic way, yes, I’d have a few treats etc, but generally feel positive most of the time to not need to ‘spoil’ myself, so lose weight much more gradually and permanently.

That sounds like a healthy approach you've adopted thecatsthecats. Removing the denial-then-reward mentality is something I definitely need to work on. How long have you been an ex-dieter?

Well done for getting help.
From my experience bingeing is about having an empty feeling which you fill with food when it's really about something else. I think the real key is to find out what the missing thing is and you will eat more normally naturally Therapy will help.
In the meantime get rid of diets, I have given up dieting and find I have lost about half a stone in a year I eat normal meals with my family and have a snack or treat if I want one I do eat sensibly though, if I want some crisps I have 1 small bag, if I want a biscuit I have 1or2 not more as this is what my normal weight family do.

OP thank you for sharing your story re: your parents. It's very sad reading. Did your parents and the childminder not communicate over issues such as diet? Surely the childminder told your parents about not giving you the milkshakes?

Also, why did your dad hide his food? (Unusual behaviour for a man?) And didn't he notice when it kept "disappearing"?

How did it go with the nurse today? :)

I dont think most diets are sustainable. Its better to address portion size and snacking habits, not watching calories, grams of fat, carbs. I constantly watched what I ate before having children, it may have been good for my figure but was bad for my mental health. Since having children and leaving my parents house, I introduced natural fats and more meat/fish into my diet (grew up on low fat, lots of vegetarian), I feel much better though could do with losing 2 stone but have maintained the weight I am and dont suffer half as much with depressed/anxious episodes.

I don’t really know why dad hides his food, he still does it now. He also cooks and lies about the ingredients to make the food seem healthier than it is. Really sadly, he got very sick recently and when I visited him in hospital, the only thing he could talk about was how much weight he’d lost because of his illness he’s a deeply insecure person.

I don’t know about nursery vs mum and dad, I was too young really but I vividly remember standing in the kitchen at my child minders and her throwing the powders in the bin, then saying to me ‘you’ll eat with the rest of us, don’t worry a bit’ and that was that. I imagine she spoke to mum about it but it was never mentioned again.

I just got home from the nurse practitioner and she has given me the same advice as BEAT. There’s a 12 week waiting period for the most local eating disorder referral centre and it’s 49 miles away, so she’s given me some stuff to read and some self help resources to access in the meantime and I now have a fortnightly check in with the practice councillor at 7pm on Tuesday night to check how I’m feeling. It’s a 15 minute check in but she’ll assess me each fortnight and discuss any binges or lack thereof etc. That’s the best she can do for now, but she’ll give me a call if a space opens up before the end of June for a referral.

Advice I’ve been given is not to diet or try to lose weight and to work through the self help stuff about body image and self esteem in the meantime. She says if I binge it’s not an issue, just to write down what triggered it and try to move back into a positive frame of mind as quickly as I can. She was really good and I felt listened to.

I feel very low in mood and tearful, but weirdly the last thing I want to do is binge

Very sad about your dad. He obv has a messed up relationship with food too.

But good news about the nurse. That all sounds really positive. Obviously it won’t be easy but you have so much more awareness now than you did.

Maybe if you allow yourself to binge, you'll feel less inclined to anyway or you'll naturally self limit? Same applies to people with anxiety, we put so much effort into trying not to worry, trying to stop intrusive thoughts. Actually if you set aside some dedicated 'worry time', spend an allotted time going through your worse fears, you find you don't spend half as much time worrying as if you try not to do it.