Very overweight. what would you do?

[Labdo]

Hello.

im currently with slimming world, have been going for 4 weeks and have lost 7.5 pounds so far which I’m really pleased with.

However, I do have an eating disorder and I do feel that weighing every week might be not the best thing for me mentally. I now know the diet well enough to continue doing this alone (without counting syns, but just making healthier choices).

I would also like to implement a sustainable exercise program. The idea would be to not focus on the weight loss, but by how I feel, my body feeling healthier and my clothes getting smaller. My only obstacle is myself, I know I’m very lazy and I also have 2 children so by the time they are in bed I’m very tired.

I’m currently 17 stone and a size 18 and I would like to get back into a size 10. I am built like a fridge so I’ve never been slender but a size 10-12 had always looked nice on me.

My main goal I think now needs to be to work on the self hatred and self loathing, not in the number in the scale. I think if I feel happy and confident in myself then I will naturally just make better choices and I won’t binge and purge on junk food.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Thankyou

Could you talk to the leader of your SW group? I have done that too and find going to and staying in group is vial for me. But understand about the weighing. I would bet they have encountered this before and have a way of helping with it.

I think I might have to. Currently not able to stay at group as I have a class that I go to straight after but that finishes in 3 weeks so then I can start staying again. But now my baby is mobile it’s a bit of a nightmare tbh! My evenings are also now taken up by baby and his awful sleep regression he’s going through. I usually could put him down and then get in my exercise bike for a while but atm I’m just stuck holding him all evening (but hey at least I’m not snacking!)

You will only get encouragement at the gym not ridicule

i recommend fasting as well a 9-5 eating window and nothing but water during the fasting period

If your BMI is 35 or over, your GP can refer you to your local weight loss centre and you can be seen by a trained dietician. They help patients learn about mindful eating but also flag ED such as binge eating or emotional eating which in the long term need to be addressed. There are so many different kinds of diets these days but the weight is unlikely to stay off unless you can deal with the underlying ED. I personally think that regular weight checks can make people obsessive about their weight loss and I always tell patients it's not just the number but how you feel in yourself as well

At the end of the day, its up to you what you decide to do.

Here's my experience FWIW. I'm currently on SW. I've attempted to lose weight for a few years on various diets with limited success. I have come to realise that my problem is daily weighing. I would get discouraged if I did not lose a large amount of weight quite literally overnight. Daily fluctuations would determine my whole mood for the entire day. If I didn't see the progress I wanted, then I would binge because WTF was the point?!

I realised a few months ago that I had to just stick to a plan regardless of how much weight I lost. I chose SW because it is mainly just healthy eating. (Don't listen to the MN naysayers who will spout muller lights, mountains of pasta and mug shots at you!). It's just cooking from scratch with a third of your plate being veg. I do it now and just eat what I want on plan each day regardless of what the scales may say. I had to really work hard on not weighing myself. I weigh in once a week at class still, but that's it. I don't lose every week, but I stick to plan every week. And the overall trend is downwards. I am not losing weight as fast as I would like TBH. And that is my next mental barrier to overcome. But I just keep pushing through, one day on plan at a time.

I've pretty much had to focus on teaching myself to eat healthier instead of focusing on eating to lose weight.

I do Slimming World online and weigh myself at home (but you don't have to weigh yourself).

I think the SW plan is really good as it's basically encouraging you to eat whole foods and monitor your processed food intake.

I'd definitely stick with a formal plan for at least 3 months.

Firstly, and above all else, well done! That's a fantastic start. 2lb a week is a healthy and sustainable rate, and to do that for four weeks is amazing! Try not to get overly focused on the week by week numbers, but in my experience the discipline of a weekly weigh-in can be a great help in avoiding the self-sabotage that often scuppers weight-loss attempts, which is probably why the main companies tend to work that way.

You can do it on your own though, of course you can. If you do then my advice would be to make sure that you keep the focus on day-by-day meal planning even if you drop the weekly weigh-in, as it's the idle unplanned snacking that leads to the "oh today's a write-off so I may as well eat what I like" that leads to the "this week's a write-off, let's have a takeaway"...etc. The way you avoid the binge is to plan each day so that you know exactly where your next meal is coming from.

Good luck whichever route you take! Another four weeks and you'll be at a stone. Then to two by Halloween, maybe even three by Christmas. You can do it! You're not lazy, far from it - you're bringing up two kids while working yourself, it's bloody hard work. So is this, but you can get there if you make sure you focus on whatever strategy you decide to follow.

This has really helped me

www.theproteinworks.com/diet-meal-replacement-extreme