Soooo much of what you’re saying resonates with me.
But I lost 2 stone with ww a few years back and I would say slimming clubs can be incredibly helpful and motivating. I still
need to lose more but with my health issues currently I’m actually doing well just not gaining!
The mindset is what you have to address before you’ve any chance of weight loss.
You can’t approach it or think of it as a temporary thing, it has to be a permanent change. A new way of living altogether. Because your current way of living isn’t working for you.
It’s also pointless beating yourself up about it, negativity just makes you feel down and more likely to want to “treat” yourself with unhealthy food/drink.
Literally don’t run before you can walk! Whatever activity you do don’t set unrealistic goals which you’ll then fail to achieve and be pissed off at yourself about. I also found swimming and walking to be Best But I also have a physical disability so I can’t do most exercises anyway. At my most well I had a gym membership at a discounted rate as I also am mentally ill and physical activity helps with that but I worked with a specialist trainer at the gym who deals with disabled members and designs routines that suit their capabilities in my case I can’t do running/jumping high impact stuff and I have to watch my spine so it was walking on the treadmill, using elliptical trainer in a particular way and only on days I knew I could manage and the exercise bicycle to a Ltd extent, and NEVER on the rowing machine (which pre disability I used to love!) fixed weights and only certain machines and NEVER free weights (again loved these before)
I am also an ex nurse and I hate crash or faddy “diets” and I especially hate meal replacement plans! They are not healthy, not sustainable and you don’t learn to manage your diet (meaning your nutritional intake) or the food environment that so many of us struggle with.
Cutting out entire food groups has no sound scientific basis, we are designed to eat a wide variety of foods and many foods we obtain the best nutrition from them thanks to eating with complementary foods eg iron rich foods should be taken with vitamin c rich foods to aid absorption, healthy fats are necessary to absorb certain vitamins and metabolise them.
There’s a theory (that has scientific basis) that we more or less always eat the same VOLUME of food throughout the day but the calorie density is what makes the difference - common sense really - 100g of lettuce is a lot of lettuce because it’s light weight but takes the same amount of space in your stomach and triggers the same level of fullness reaction as 100g of chocolate, but 100g of chocolate has far more calories and is sort of “compacted” so easy to eat that much that’s only about 4 squares of chocolate, but would be a massive bowl of lettuce.
So you do need to exercise moderation with more calorific foods.
It’s also pointless eating less of the more calorific foods and NOT REPLACING that with something else - classic weight losers mistake and leads to hunger and cravings and irritability.
That’s where clubs and even online support can be worth its weight in gold because you’ll learn tips from other weight losers on how to fill up on more nutritious lower calorie food and dishes.
Some I’m sure you’ll have heard of before but they’re repeated because they’re true:
Drinking more as thirst is often mistaken for hunger - major issue for me, and as you’re diabetic you need to be drinking plenty anyway, preferably water. If like me you’re not a big fan, chill it, ice it, flavour it (naturally) to make it more palatable. I chill all mine in the fridge and add a squirt of jif lemon when I fancy or cucumber in the summer sometimes mint too.
As pps are saying load up on veg - I’m veggie and still find this hard but really only when I’m being lazy. Add veg to every meal and for your main meal it should make up at least 1/2 the serving. Veg soup (home made) as a starter every night is also a good, nutritious, low sugar, low calorie way of filling up before eating your main meal.
Sounds like you’re a night snacker like me too - ime slimming clubs are good at helping to identify your areas you’re struggling with and helping you find solutions.
When I first was going ww I tried to follow what the others I got friendly with were doing but they had different areas of difficulty to me so that didn’t work.
Got chatting to the leader and she’d been the same as me (both single mums too) - could easily go through the day being busy and not eating much if at all (that’s a bad habit too of course as you just end up hungrier) but come when I collapsed on the sofa at 9pm to watch my favourite tv in peace as dd was in bed I’d suddenly realise I was hungry but cba to cook that late and so reached for the easy snacks of crisps, dips, chocolate, biscuits, small cakes and sweets.
With ww you are (or were it seems to have changed? Anyone know?) allocated a set number of “points” which really were a method of allowing easy calorie counting. Now for arguments sake (and cos I can’t properly remember!) say I had an allowance of 25 points a day that I had to use (a minimum for health) and then there’d be another 15 you could use IF you wanted to within the week - you could either spread them across the week and have a few extra points per day OR save them for a night out/special occasion.
There were also some foods that were “free” they were so low cal you didn’t have to count them in points - mainly veg, some fruits and things like flavourings where you’d be using such small amounts the
Cals weren’t worth counting. Also sugar and fat free drinks (eg a pps aforementioned black sugar free coffee, but also diet drinks) and some fruits. And you’d also learn which were very low point items like low fat yogurt.
With my eve snacking habits I was advised to basically skew my calorie intake towards the evening to best fit my rhythms but not late evening. So breakfast would be very low cal fruit alone or eggs or yogurt, a sort of medium cal deal for lunch usually a sandwich made with bread that came in smaller loaves, low fat mayo, Quorn deli slices and a little mustard, instead of crisps with lunch I’d have veg sticks either plain or (top tip for us salt addicts) seasoned - I like the garlic salt crushers you can get for this type of thing, maybe with a little serving of low cal dip, a low fat yogurt and instead of my previous blueberry muffin or high calorie Choc bar I’d have a Jaffa cake or slice of malt loaf or a treat size chic bar or a low cal bar like Milky Way rather than a snickers. Dinner was actually usually healthy anyway but I’d got in the habit of using less veg, ready made sauces and vastly overdoing the carbs! So I reined in (but didn’t cut out!) the carbs, I’d been unwittingly making myself enough for 3 people and serving dd an adults portion! (She’d complained for years I gave her too much and I worried she wasn’t eating “enough” she was eating plenty!) added more veg, went back to making my own sauces (pure laziness there!).
Then for evenings instead of going mad on crisps, full sugar cloudy lemonade or coke, or in the winter hot choc made with cream AND marshmallows (yes I know! D’oh!) and chocolate AND cake I’d have veg sticks (again seasoned to get that salt hit, sometimes a wee bit of a low cal dip - dead easy to make your own too), maybe a quick wee bit of scrambled eggs sometimes, fruit, sugar free ices in the summer (certain fruits freeze really well too), black coffee with sweetener or occasionally an options hot chocolate but without the marshmallows and cream!, a Jaffa cake or treat size choc bar or low cal one. Not all in the same evening! But just some examples.
Leader also helped me to realise I was eating because I was bored mainly so I went back to doing hobbies I’d not done in years because of being a lone parent (tired, hard to concentrate and not easy to pick up/put down if a very little dd woke up, but she was much older by this stage) of knitting and cross stitch and tried some new ones too tried to learn crochet (unsuccessfully need to try again) - other benefit of these being they occupy your hands! You can’t really eat and cross stitch!
Sorry much longer post than I intended hope some of it is of use.
Seconding
IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT
Our food environment in this country at the moment is positively toxic! Plus I have a theory that artificial sweeteners are fucking with metabolism.