Please help, I just can’t stop eating

[CathyTurnbull]

Every Monday I start my healthy eating and intermittent fasting. By Thursday I’m reaching for the chocolate biscuits and cheese sandwiches. I’m so fed up of failing so miserably. Is anyone else in the same viscous circle? I just can’t find a way out.

Agree with others, you are still carb detoxing that early on. Carbs are highly addictive but can be beaten!

Perhaps rather than start offf with an 'all in' approach you should start with just replacing carbs and not thinking about intermittent fasting and calories. So just think of it in 7 day groups:

Day 1-7 - cut down/out carbs - remove white carbs - biscuits, bread, pasta, cereal but make sure you eat lots of fat and fresh fruit and veg and maybe keep some brown rice?

Day 7-14 - start to look at intermittent fasting but keeping lunch and dinner as above

Day 14 + intermittent fasting, looking more closely at calories using MFP

The way I deal with it is not to buy sweet things in the first place (but I can't stop others buying them) and following a low GI diet. For example, if I eat blueberries I have almonds at the same time to lower the sugar.
Carbs make me have cravings too. Habits are hard to break. If someone offers me something sweet when I'm not thinking, I might take it and then I'm back to square one.

Find out about Keto: very low carb, high fat and high protein. It's a bit of a faff at first, but once you know what you're doing the weight just falls off. Oh, and don't have sugary carbs in the house.

Replace rice with blitzed cauliflower, loads of Keto pasta available online, if you really crave bread, try Hi-Lo (available from Sainsbury's) and READ the carbs on everything you buy. Keep under 20 mg per day!

Sorry, 20 g.

Get MyFitnessPal as an app, which really helps, and Lidl do a weighing scale which tells you the calories, carbs, fat and protein of everything.

It does sound a pain, but DH and I have dropped well over a stone without much effort at all and kept it off for over a year. We could easily have lost a lot more if we needed to.

Pretty much anyone suffering from binge eating disorder will have started out on a restrictive diet of some sort. I'm just advocating a more moderate approach, before it becomes more serious.

If you deny yourself something you'll only crave it more. Is it better to eat what you really enjoy but a little less of it?

I find if I don’t buy it I don’t eat it. If you live with other people say to them I really want to lose weight/become healthier so please support me by not having certain things or if you do please have them away from my view.

Meal plan so you know what your having when and you can plan healthy meals you know you’ll enjoy.

Make swaps so brown bread/rice/pasta instead of white. Cut down portion size by having a salad alongside, low cal jelly or reduced sugar biscuit when need something sweet. Swap potatoes for sweet potatoes. Try to drink water or tea instead of sugary drinks/juice. Try to exercise each day even just short walk as you’ll feel better.

If you fancy a takeaway food try to find a substitute that you like. Like my partner likes a kebab so instead we’ll have plant based shawarma in wrap with salad and il cut up potatoes into wedges and season and drizzle olive oil over and put in oven. Not same as takeaway kebab but he enjoys it and he does like greasy takeaways haha Just making small changes can help make you lose weight and feel better and is motivation for making bigger changes.

I’d recommend the book Why we Eat (Too Much). I found it very insightful and has an excellent suggested diet - lots of good protein and healthy fats. Although ‘willpower’ and mindset obviously comes into this, it’s too simplistic to blame a lack of willpower for overeating. And if you can avoid getting into punishing and potentially disordered thinking (such as imagining a dog’s vomited on your food 😡) so much the better.

I find making a meal plan helps