Here’s my list m. Not sure if any will help.
Some back ground. My mum had very disordered eating. Either ‘dieting’ which meant starving herself or compulsive eating. She had BPD. I adored her but growing up was hard.she was very judgemental about my weight. On the other hand, if she had had a meltdown or a manic period she made this up to us by buying excessive amounts of sweets chocolate takeaways etc. I learned from a young age to be ashamed of how I looked AND that food was an emotional crutch.
I became obsessed with fitness in. 30s was very slim. Looking back I had a great figure and still thought I was fat. But I wasn’t necessarily eating healthy. In the last 5 years divorce, mums death and pandemic have led me back to over eating.
I am also adhd and diagnosed with PTSD. The light bulb moment for me was looking through old photos. In one I am 14, on holiday. I remember feel self conscious about being fat the whole holiday. And argument with mum shopping for clothes as I didn’t like what she picked out and she told me that was because I was fat and if I ate better, I would like the clothes. I looked at this photo and I was very slim. Skinny even. Not fat to be seen. It was at that moment I broke down. Remember the way I felt, remembered the argument and realised how I felt about my body wasn’t an actually representation of how I looked.
Mum is gone so I can’t resolve this with her. I can only resolve it with myself. I don’t want to die at 66 from something weight related, like she did. I can’t explain it but something just changed.
I didn’t start eating better straight away. I looked at my lifestyle and thought about ways to be healthier and lowering my stress. I prioritised sleep, even if it was just resting and drank more water at first. That really helped the urge to over eat. I also have pcos, so I started researching what I could do to improve that and started trying small things. More vegetables, eating at regular times. Ensuring I made time to food prep. I started tracking my food, not for calories. To ensure I was having a enough protein and good fats and make sure I was having plenty of vitamins and minerals. That became my focus. Eating for health is my aim. I still have chocolate, but have found I am reaching for it less and less and certainly not in the amounts I was.
I am not weighing myself obsessively. As it’s not about weight. It’s about health. But I did get weighed last week and I have lost 1.5 stones in the last 8 weeks. Still have quite a bit to go.
I have recently read ‘Fast like a girl’. Although I am not planning on fasting, the idea of eating certain foods around a woman’s monthly cycle to support the hormone cycle is quite interesting. I won’t be fasting but will be trying to eat the food types the book recommends for various stages of my cycle. And see how that goes in the next 8 weeks. It’s all very healthy food so can’t do any harm.
Last night I also realised I have had half a large bar of chocolate in the cupboard and not touched it in over week. It’s not been preying on my mind like it would have done 3 months ago. It’s just there. I can have it if I want. I just don’t want.
I hope at least some of that helps.