Why can't I do the one thing that would make my life easier

[cakefortea22]

And lose weight.

It sounds shallow but everyday I struggle with what to wear. And then go around all day looking at myself in mirrors and reflections in windows and hating what I see. It's so hard to dress this body and feel confident in it. I know from experience that when I weighed less everything seemed simpler and I actually liked seeing my reflection and in photos. Now I sit down and have this massive bulge of a belly in front of me.

It's totally my own fault. As Mimi Maguire says - I am a fucking fat fuck. I love eating. I binge eat. I drink wine a couple days of times a week. I have huge portions. I love carbs. I don't know exercise. I know what I need to do to improve things but I just don't want to because I hate exercising and I love food and wine.

I see countless weight loss threads on here with people listing the fruits and veg and fish and grains they eat and I just think it sounds rubbish. Maybe it's because im not an accomplished cook but i genuinely don't know how I could make those foods feel more appealing to me than a pizza or a Chinese.

I'm starting to think it's something psychological because I don't want to be like this but literally week in week out I repeat the same behaviour. Why? Just why?

It was fear that did it for me. At a routine hospital appointment, the doc asked ‘and how long have you been diabetic?’. I’m terrified at the thought of being diabetic, so the first part of the action plan to stave it off was losing a serious amount of weight, and it was, in my head, essential, not a choice. A year later, and almost 5 st lighter, my blood sugar is normal, but it will only stay that way if I stay slim and measure carbs in every meal.

Read or listen to Why We Eat Too Much. It really changed my understanding and attitude towards food. It's not a diet book at all, it looks at the composition of many modern foods and why they set us up for being overweand unsatisfied.

Overweight

I listened to a few Just one thing by Mosley on BBC, and actually stuck with some of it. Maybe worth listening to one or two and see if they fit you? Good luck!

I totally get this, OP, I really do. I’ve felt the same. Can you change what you see as a treat? Eg healthy dinner than bowl with eg favourite fruit (cherries?), a few of your favourite nuts and a few bits of dark chocolate, and eat it mindfully. Anything I disturbed by small children is a treat! Or having a bath as a treat, with lovely bath salts/whatever? Or just reduce portions/wine if you have the willpower. Can you just change what you see as a treat? Read a book about UPFs (like Ultra Processed People) at the same time as eating your current food and it might change how you feel about it. It’s not really a ‘treat’ at all!

@nutbrownhare15 that's a great approach

OP, I try to think "what can I add?" not "what should I cut out?"

eg around 10am, instead of reaching for a biscuit, I'll have an apple first, with the option of a biscuit afterwards if I still want it. Often, after eating an apple, I find that I no longer want the biscuit

So I am a big fat lady who has lost 5 stone in the last year, going from a size 22 to a size 16. I've yo-yo dieted my whole life and this is the first time I have done it this slowly and sustainably and it seems to be staying off-even when I relax and eat some rubbish... because realistically that is always going to happen...

The crunch point took a long time- the weight crept on and on during covid and extreme stress. I was tired, ill and my joints were suffering, plus I couldn't do fun things with the kids or enjoy walking. Then one day I downloaded a calorie counting app, weighed myself, cried and got started.

I lost 1kg in the first week and got excited... I took up swimming and walking. I got a step counter and started walking to work.

Calorie counting is the best fit for me as you can effectively eat what you want. It's not about never eating carbs or drinking wine- that would never work for me. Its about knowing that if you do drink wine you probably shouldn't have a bag of crisps with it as well (I now snack on olives and cucumber pickles with my wine). My diet has changed (if you are calorie counting things like supermarket pizza seem a shocking waste of stomach space) but not so drastically that it is unsustainable. I have good weeks where I am filling up on vegetables... and bad weeks when I am on my period and I am still hitting around my targets but more chocolate is involved.

Perfectionism will get me nowhere... it's not all or nothing. You can have the cake and eat it... as long as its not every day and 4 times a day. You have to give yourself a break and not catastrophize.. I think that was one of the best lessons for me. I used to start a diet and stop because I "ruined" it eating a banned food. Now I think more about my intake for a week and just carry on and have a better day tomorrow.

I'm much older than you but I can identify with a lot of what you said. My downfall is sweets. I love them. HariboTangfastics are like a drug to me. I am well into the post menopause period of life and keeping weight off is so much harder than when I was young. I was a single parent and I absolutely understand the tiredness and the need for a treat. I did a lot of Joe Wicks workouts during lockdown and they did work. His focus is on exercise making you feel good first and making you look good as a secondary benefit. I now do you tube workouts called Fabulous 50s. They make me feel better and I don't want to spoil that by eating rubbish. It does give you a high and you do want to do more the more you do. Start small and build up. I also joined a walking group. Chatting makes you forget you are exercising and you've walked 5 miles without knowing it. I also don't buy biscuits,sweets,cakes. I live in a village. It's a 12 mile round trip to the nearest shop. If its not in the house I simply can't eat it. I also say to myself each time I want to eat something 'am I hungry or bored'. If I'm 'bored eating' then I make myself go and do something else.

I’m fat because I like wine and cheese too much and have an underactive thyroid. I’ve started going to the gym every other day including one swim session a week. Also corking most meals from scratch and smaller portions. Have lost 9lb so far. And starting to enjoy the exercise. The joy of a fit healthy body starts to outweigh the craving for wine.

saturated fat is bad for the gallbladder ! It’s rapid weight loss that causes gallstones !

I wonder whether you need to look for cheats to change your mindset? I've never been overweight. I enjoy wine. I enjoy food but I like all foods with a preference for natural food. I wonder whether you programme your body. I regulate without thinking about it at all.

I batch cook at the weekends and stick them in the freezer. If you have room could you do this for your favourite meals but homemade? We make our own pizza. I think it tastes nicer. A Chinese dish could be made and frozen. Or a stir fry is easy to make and to start with just buy the sauce and make it with more veg and protein.

Can you train yourself to like dark chocolate? It starts off bitter but I prefer it and you need far less.

Download an exercise app where it is as simple as 10 mins a day. Start there. If you miss a day, accept it and start the next? You will want to move on once you start to become consistent.

I would start small and not obsess with calories but rather look for healthier foods.

I agree with so much advice on here.

If you binge eat, then it’s because you’re restricting yourself too much at other times and then will of course crave junk.

I used to be a binge eater and I have managed to get out of it by eating 3 normal meals a day and not getting overly hungry.

Sleep is one of the most underrated weight loss tools there is.

During the evening our weight loss slows right down because our metabolism is getting ready to hold on to our fat stores for the night.

Going to bed early will stop you eating so much and also not make you gain weight by storing more fat. It will also make you energised and not feel as much need to eat high calorie foods to keep yourself awake during the day.

Before anything else, I would simply try going to bed at a certain time. The earlier the better.
This was my biggest help when loosing weight and giving up smoking. I would literally go to bed at 8:30pm, read for an hour and then go to sleep.

I would then write down how many calories you’re eating and keep a food journal. I wouldn’t worry about working out how many calories you should be having etc as it’s just about mindful eating and your brain processing what you put in your mouth.

After you’ve successfully tracked your food for a few weeks and been sleeping better, I would start by thinking of ways to reduce your calories.
You can still eat pizza and drink alcohol etc but sometimes you just need to make swaps.
Still have a takeaway once a week but order slightly less and have slightly less calories during the daytime to make up for it.

Do not cut out food groups or restrict yourself too much else you will fail.
Work out how many calories you eat per day and then try and reduce this number by 500kcals.
Plan for 3 meals a day and 2 snacks.
If you’re still hungry have some ice pops or something ready but if you’re going to bed early you won’t have the late night cravings.

Most importantly your DCs are going to end up the same way as you and you do not want then being miserable and having to deal with binge eating their entire lives.

As others have said better than I ever could, until you are mentally ready, any excuse will do.

You are putting off dealing with this. I did the same, put my life on hold until I was thinner. And I was miserable 24/7 until I finally did something about it.

Eventually you will run out of excuses or have a health scare.

Do you cook from scratch at all? The enemy is processed food. Bread, crisps, biscuits and chocolate are my downfall. Ditch alcohol, diet drinks, processed crap, ready meals and takeaways for one day. Then repeat.

Set yourself a goal of 30 days. You might cave on day 2 or 3 at first, but don't beat yourself up.

There's a Chris and Xand van Tulleken BBC podcast about processed food that is helpful. There's also a book just out:
www.penguin.co.uk/books/451300/ultra-processed-people-by-tulleken-chris-van/9781529900057

Get some rest. Instead of binging, go for a walk. Or give yourself a manicure, do a jigsaw, read a book, take up knitting or crochet. Or batch cook and freeze some healthy meals as a standby, if that's possible.

You can do it, because I did. And I used every excuse in the book. Tried a different new diet every Monday and fell off the wagon by Tuesday. Steadily gained more and more weight. I had a wardrobe of lovely clothes that didn't fit, and lived in leggings and baggy tops. I thought I deserved the junk that I ate as a treat or reward. Then I realised that feeling great was better than all the cake and self loathing.

Apologies, that was a bit of a brain dump, and I hope it didn't come across as patronising OP.

Good luck.

Lots of good suggestions and explanations of how and why UPF is so addictive in this thread.

I'd just add that eating healthily can be 'learned'.

UPF, especially those loaded with sugar and other refined carbs, literally assault our taste buds - to a degree that we become so used to them that this is all we crave.

Try to teach your taste buds to appreciate the much more subtle taste of vegetables and fruit by consciously eating them, chewing slowly and focusing on their taste. The sweetness of carrots, the aniseed flavor of fennel, the unusual texture of roasted aubergine, etc.

Experiment with different dressings, spices and flavourings.

The allure of triple fried chips and chocolate exclaims will probably still be there, but you'll see them as rare treats, whereas the healthy stuff becomes the real food.

Chocolate eclairs!!!

What small changes can you make that you can stick at?

Do you like walking? It's September 1st. Do 10000 steps a day for the month (on my watch this is 4-5 miles a day proper walking not the I pottered round the house kind that I suspect are over sensitive to wrist movement). It helps force you out after tea to get those last few thousand in and takes up some of the time to be tempted by treats.
Or swimming? Both good for mental health as well.

I think you need to be realistic. Some people do a total overhaul successfully but not many make it last. Cut down your portion sizes, don't have the extra sides, cut out fizzy drinks, have wine and soda so you halve the amount.

It won't give you rapid results but it's more sustainable.

Why? Just why?

This is why people go to therapy. I went to OverEaters Anon.
PP are right that you can try to train yourself to think of other things as also a 'relaxation treat'. A hot bath, a walk in fresh sunshine by yourself, a funny movie, colouring a book, making a miniature doll house, whatever gets your serotonin receptors happy.

Perfectionism will get me nowhere... it's not all or nothing. You can have the cake and eat it... as long as its not every day and 4 times a day. You have to give yourself a break and not catastrophize.. I think that was one of the best lessons for me. I used to start a diet and stop because I "ruined" it eating a banned food. Now I think more about my intake for a week and just carry on and have a better day tomorrow.

This really resonated with me.
I would eat so well (and restrictive) for days and then cave and have something unhealthy and then think I’d ruined everything and eat crap for a couple of days and then be annoyed with myself so restrictive myself and the cycle would just continue.

Once I stopped punishing my body for eating unhealthy, it became so much easier to stay on track.

If I had a binge one evening, so what. I just carried on with my normal eating the next day.
My normal eating was normal meals but sometimes lower calorie either by having slightly smaller portion sizes or doing swaps eg instead of wine I’d have a spirit with a Coke Zero or instead of a mars bar I’d have a mars ice cream or areo.

If you get into the routine of planning your meals and snacks then it’s so much easier to not get overly hungry and binge.

Anything that is too restrictive is never going to work.

You've had great advice here. I would echo the poster that said start with food, not exercise. Years of TV shows like biggest looser sold the message that you have to be sweating and grunting in an expensive gym to lose weight but it's mostly useless if you don't change the food first. Yeah pizza tastes nicer than carrots but that's life, work is harder than staying in bed but you have to get up. And carrots with hummus or peanut butter is a decent snack. So change the food first and then the exercise will follow, walk to school or into town instead of drive etc. It's not easy but the nice stuff rarely is. And it doesn't have to be expensive. A couple of cook books would be a good investment. Try and decouple one treat from another, like if you always drink wine during netflix try tea instead. Best of luck !

I could have written your post! I am exactly there same! I dislike most healthy food, and after a day with the kids and work and life, I’m shattered and lazy! I’m so sick of being fat but sat eating a pain au chocolate while I write this 🤦🏼‍♀️ I do tonnes of walking (two young kids!) but don’t exercise because I can’t leave them and can’t take them to the gym with me! I was so excited when I saw the weight loss injections were being sold, but can’t afford to buy them, and can’t get them free because I’m not diabetic. No advice, but if you find a magic cure, let me know :)

Same boat really, I’m focusing on getting enough sleep so when the summer holidays are over I can focus on getting in a bit of exercise and cooking better.

I would start with just trying to deal with the tiredness, if you are tired go to sleep. I know with small kids it then feels like you have no time for anything other than kids/work/cleaning but I think everything will feel more manageable with some sleep.

If you can afford some help get it, whether its a cleaner or gusto or whatever. Sometimes I think we need to take stuff off our plate before we start adding more to it.

Have a look at volume eating. It’s working really well for me.

Sugar is addictive.

I watched someone on my 600lb life say they'd kicked alcohol addicition, they kicked opiod addicition, but they could not kick sugar addicition - that's how strong it was - and that's a large part of what you're cravings are around.

As you change your diet so will the cravings eventually.

I follow the fitness chef and his way of thinking is so refreshing.

Most diet people will tell you to cut out food groups or not have any treats etc but he does not shame any food and just suggests alternatives, so you can still enjoy food and lose weight.

When I saw the title I knew it would be about weight!

To understand why we struggle so mich with our weight you could read Why W Eat (Too Much) by Dr Andrew Johnson, a UK bariatric surgeon. It has a lot of science about why the obesity crisis has happened, and it's not the fault of individuals.

To get a plan together about how to improve things mid to long term, you could read Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth, it's not a new book and it takes time to do her approach (I'm part way through).

To lose weight fairly quickly and feel better, try Slimming World. The approach is basically eat lots of veg and raw fruit, and stay away from treat foods, although you can have them in moderation. It can kick start weight loss but for many of us over time you get fed up of doing it and the emotional reliance on comfort food hasn't gone away so we creep back to emotional overeating. That's when you go back to Geneen Roth!

Agree so much with the wise poster who said "if being slim was easy, nobody would be fat". The majority of us struggle. Good luck