To feel totally overwhelmed with my weight

[Overwhelmed10]

I weighed in at 180lbs / 12.8 stone yesterday

I’m 5’6” so this gives me a bmi of around 29. I have a small frame so do not carry extra weight well.

My weight has yo-yo’d throughout my adult life - my best size where I feel healthiest is around 135lbs / 9.6stone - but this is so far away, I’m struggling to even get started with tackling my weight.

AIBU to feel really overwhelmed and hopeless? Does anyone have any words of wisdom on this? I’ve gained a significant amount of this weight over the past 12 months - I had a cancer scare which involved hospitalisation, surgery, and medication with a side effect of weight gain (but tbh I take full responsibility for the poor food choices I’ve been making!)

I’m feeling quite low and depressed about it today. I’ve purged the house of junk food this morning but that’s about it.

Is the book the 21 Day Immunity Plan by Dr Aseem Malhortra?

That is his message too - cut the ultra processed crap

www.amazon.co.uk/21-Day-Immunity-Plan-bestseller-transforming-ebook/dp/B089Q81QQ1/ref=sr_1_1?hvlocphy=1007118&hvnetw=g&keywords=21+day+immunity+plan&hvadid=449371182206&qid=1600184315&dchild=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwzIH7BRAbEiwAoDxxTsE50TfrT-0sQ1DaEzyZiq2CbKf8vYxtmHH55KJsMRCwEDoiRM0fVBoC3c4QAvD_BwE&hydadcr=24427_1748929&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&hvtargid=kwd-933483043366&adgrpid=105339684635&hvrand=2767428503691309072&sr=8-1

It’s called Why We Eat (Too Much) by Dr Andrew Jenkinson. He’s a bariatric surgeon in a London hospital and this is his theory after seeing loads of people who are at the end of their rope and going for gastric bypasses etc.

SlimmingWorld. Lost 5 stone in 8 months and maintained for a year. It gets a lot of hate on here from people who have never done it or did it years ago. You don’t have to eat carbs, Muller lights, mugshots etc. Basic idea is homemade food, 1/3 plate veg each meal. I’ve had eggs and mushrooms for breakfast with a wholemeal English muffin, salmon Caesar salad for lunch, portion of Ben & Jerry moophoria ice cream and will have 2 fishcakes and broccoli later. I’m not hungry and I feel well for elevating this way. 18/20 to a 10/12.

It’s a cliche, but so true that every journey starts with a single step. If you sit there and only concentrate on the destination the journey is just going to be full of “are we nearly there yet” and every diversion will just be seen as a blocker.

Think about what you want to change. Do you want to eat more veg? Move more? Eat less of x? All of these can be immediate wins and will immediately help your body, mind and soul.

Change can be scary but the ability to embrace change and uncertainty is the key to freedom from whatever you feel currently binds you.

Accept you are going to set out on a journey, grow and learn from everything that comes your way on that path. The destination ie getting to a weight you are happy with is a very small part of what opportunities lie ahead.

The most interesting part was a study showing that people who overate didn’t gain as much weight as you would expect. It’s called the Vermont Prison Experiment, where they took a group of prisoners and fed them 4000 calories a day each. The men did gain weight to start with, but then they just stopped gaining. The scientists were surprised and started feeding them 10,000 calories, but they didn’t gain more weight. It turned out that their metabolisms had increased to burn off the extra calories. After the experiment stopped, all the men went back to their original starting weights without dieting, over a period of approx 12 weeks.

I thought it was fascinating - there are a couple more corroborating studies and a meta analysis referenced as well. He calls it a negative feedback mechanism.

@pepsicolagirl

I am 5ft6 and weigh 19st. I have no idea how to even begin - and I swear to god, any of you say "eat less move more" and I will hunt you down liam neeson style. Although that would probably burn calories...

Seriously though, the overwhelm is real. It does make me feel a bit rubbish when people at my target weight are disgusted by their size, but that's my problem not yours!

From what I can tell by watching others who clearly have their sh*t together more than me, the key is to stick at it. Whatever it is.

Mike Moseley's Fast800 diet. It works,I promise. Lots of support here on the diet/ 5:2 board.

Don't set yourself any weight goals, it can be demoralizing when you're starting out and you dont hit the goals. Try eating a bigger meal and lunch and a lighter meal/snack for dinner. You should burn off lunch through your afternoon movements. Start walking, 1/2 hr a day round your neighborhood, increase your time each week. You can do it!

Thanks @TooExtraImmatureCheddar. Just downloaded it.

Whatever you decide to do, just start. Don’t wait another day or week or month. Every day you put off addressing it is another day wasted. You can do this.

I’m 5’5” and lost 5.5 stone last year so I know how daunting it is. I felt the same at the start...it seemed impossible and it was so depressing to think that I was going to have to diet for months and months. But I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life heavy, so there really was no point delaying the inevitable.

Whatever you decide to do, just start. Don’t wait another day or week or month. Every day you put off addressing it is another day wasted. You can do this.

I agree with that! No "next monday" etc. Just that's it. Now. It eliminates the "oh well, that didn't happen because of x, let's try next monday". I had many Mondays until I started mid afternoon on Thursday😂

Make sure you get in lots of spices and herbs to make your food really flavoursome. It helped me a lot. Tasty food satisfies me more than meh food mentally

It’s called Why We Eat (Too Much) by Dr Andrew Jenkinson.

Fantastic book! Thanks for recommending it, TooExtraImmatureCheddar. I downloaded it yesterday and just finished reading it.

It made me pretty cross, like other things I've read about the scandalous fact that the NHS is still peddling the 'eat low fat and replace saturated fats with vegetable oils' bollocks.

But in terms of weight loss, it's the first book I've read that really made the very important point about the 'weight set point' and properly explained why diets don't work, why it's not really about willpower, and why it's also really not about calories. It's an absolute rebuttal of the arguments of the 'eat less, move more' people.

The only thing that's ever worked for me is calorie restriction.

@borntohula

The only thing that's ever worked for me is calorie restriction.

Me too. I tried low carb, fasting etc. I just can't do it🤷🏻 But calorie counting helped. The first time I am actually losing!

Low carb really works for me, if I can stick to it. I combine it with 16:8 fasting.

Brilliant post KihoBebiluPute

@lazylinguist exactly!!

I'm greedy and like to eat and eat. I've moved onto huge portions of veg, and am vegan (which instantly cuts out loads of crap food). I mostly avoid anything 'white'. Rice, bread, potatoes, sugar. Make great big stir frys, roasted veg etc. Its worked.

The only thing that's ever worked for me is calorie restriction.

Yes it does work, but you have to do it forever. Almost nobody can. And your brain gets the message that you're depriving it, so it does everything it can to make you claw back what it lost and more, as insurance to help you survive the self-imposed famine. That's why most of the people who fall off the diet wagon (i.e. virtually everybody in the end) end up fatter than they were when they first started dieting. Plus one of the ways your brain/body try to fight back is by lowering your metabolism so that you have to eat less and less in order to keep losing weight, or even maintain weight loss (hence the diet plateau effect).

If you can lose weight through calorie restriction and keep it off permanently, hats off to you - you're very unusual!

And @randomusername2020 Finding Zoe Harcombe and others like her have made such a difference to me. DH is nearly on board, but not quite.
When I met him I was slim and he was overweight. Guess which one of us are plenty of real food?
Apparently, my larder could be stuffed with real food and full fat everything because my kids and I were naturally slim and could get away with it.
Yet he and his ex were overweight so needed all the low fat low calorie rubbish.
He's slimmer now I do most of the cooking. And less hungry. But he can't quite shake the fear of fat in his food yet.
Work in progress.

The problem with calorie restriction alone is it will work while your metabolism is high, but then stop working when your metabolism slows down alongside your new calorie restriction. You’re just constantly chasing your tail basically.

You need to stop triggering your insulin across the day. If you can get that sorted then your in a sustainable lifestyle plan that will drop weight and more importantly maintain that weight. I wish we all had access to continuous glucose monitors. If we could actually see what certain foods were doing to us there’s no way in hell we’d keep eating them.

Absolutely spot on, randomusername2020.

I haven’t read the thread but I wanted to offer a handhold and let you know I was where you are now 3 weeks ago. I’m weighing myself in KG because I have no real understanding of what that translates to in stones/ lb. I am keeping track of the weight coming off but until I hit 68 kg (that’s 11kg down from my start point) I’m not looking.
I set myself 2 goals.

1. Get 8000 steps a day
2. eat under 1500 calories. That’s it. I’ve done slimming world and fancy diets before and it’s just not sustainable long term. I’m struggling with my knees and my job is quite active so I just need to lose weight. I’m down 3kg in 3 weeks and I can see the difference in my clothes already. I’d like to hit that target of 68kg by Christmas and my overall target is 60kg. The thing that makes the most difference to me is just deciding to do it! I have to be mentally ready to succeed or I fail. I can’t think of another way to explain it. I’m ready now and I’m certain I’ll hit my goal.

@lazylinguist

It’s called Why We Eat (Too Much) by Dr Andrew Jenkinson.

Fantastic book! Thanks for recommending it, TooExtraImmatureCheddar. I downloaded it yesterday and just finished reading it.

It made me pretty cross, like other things I've read about the scandalous fact that the NHS is still peddling the 'eat low fat and replace saturated fats with vegetable oils' bollocks.

But in terms of weight loss, it's the first book I've read that really made the very important point about the 'weight set point' and properly explained why diets don't work, why it's not really about willpower, and why it's also really not about calories. It's an absolute rebuttal of the arguments of the 'eat less, move more' people.

That’s exactly how I felt, lazylinguist! I haven’t yet started putting the principles into action properly, apart from low-carb breakfast, but I’m going to as soon as I get the car back from the garage and can go and do a big shop.