Eating in a calorie deficit

[PinkMoscatoLover]

Right guys, help me out.

I weigh nearly 22 stone (I wear a size 18-20). I’m only 24 years old so I’m massively overweight. I have binge eating disorder and two little ones with health conditions/disabilities so stressful periods make me binge more. I’m finally on the waiting list to get help for my eating disorder and should be starting this before the end of the year.

This is the first time I’ve felt in control with my life and with eating. I’ve recently joined Fitness First and the classes I go too are really good. I’ve been trying my best to eat three meals a day which seems to be working out quite well for me. Now I know to lose a substantial amount of weight, you’ll need to eat in a calorie deficit.

My question is, how do I go about doing this? How do I know how many calories my home cooked meals add up too? How/where do I track my calories and how much calories should I aim to eat in a day? If anyone has any articles that explain all of this clearly or if people would like to share their own experiences, that’d be really helpful.

I’ve posted on AIBU for traffic so I’ve got my hard hat on as no doubt a few posters may fat shame me🫣

Only thing I would say is that calorie counting (or any similar system like WW points) tends to make binging worse. There is good research on this, which is why NHS treatments for disordered eating don’t use calorie counting

I wonder if you would be better focusing on 3 healthy meals a day, and paying attention to portion sizes, eating protein and fibre with every meal and dropping most refined carbs and sugar (white bread cake, biscuits etc). Once you’ve had some treatment for the binge disorder, they can advise on loosing weight safely. (It will probably be around portion sizes).

The other thing that might be useful is to eat regular meals, and perhaps keep a diary where you record your feelings when you binge or overeat.

https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/support/healthy-living/healthy-eating/healthy-eating-toolkit/food-portions

BEAT is the charity for eating disorders and they have online support.

You also might find Ranjan Chatterjees Loose Weight Feel Great useful, it’s not a diet book but a guide to healthy eating, which takes into account that it’s harder for some people - he includes ways to manage stress which I’m guessing you need with two little kids.

It’s not keeping a track of your eating that’s usually problematic for binge eaters, it’s restriction systems.

I absolutely echo what @theduchessofspork says. Tracking your meals is fine and part of treatment for BED. Calorie counting / dieting in the most traditional sense is not recommended. It might be okay in the short term but ultimately you have to accept that when you have an eating disorder some of the 'normal' rules about dieting don't really apply to you at least until you are well into established recovery.

Thanks for your comment. I plan to do exactly as @Dutch1e when they said, ‘If it helps at all, for the first couple of months I didn't change my eating habits. I just tracked my normal diet purely for the sake of information/data.

Right now, all I want to do is try my best to eat three meals a day (which is something I’ve struggled with for years) and track what I’ve eaten. My long term goal is to eat in a calorie deficit in order to help lose weight. I didn’t go into all of that in my OP because I couldn’t be bothered!

I know how binge eating impacts me and I won’t be restricting anything! I’m trying my best to eat full meals in order to binge less. I just wanted a way to track everything. Thank you for all the comments:) you’ve all been so helpful

Agree with this. I have had some form of eating disorder all my life and any kind of diet / tracking / restriction always ends in disaster for me.

It’s around a 3500 calorie deficit to burn a lb of fat so 500 calories a day less in compared to how many you’re burning to loose a lb per week. As you’re quite overweight and not eating well it should be fairly easy to loose more than that to start with if you stick to 3 healthy meals a day. Also, be careful of the MFP weight loss plan as it can go to very low
calories. You should be able to loose on 2000 calories a day to start off.

You see a lot of "do this calcuation and take 500 off" online but if you go too hard with the deficit you might be more likely to binge- this would happen to me.

What I did was just for a while track everything and not worry about the number. Just to get used to tracking it and weighing everything. Doing that for a while you find patterns- you see some things are way more calories than you expect, a serving size is smaller than you expect, that dinner is fewer calories than you'd expect, I could swap X for Y and it'd cut it by Z.

I worked on eating at "level" for a while. The amount to maintain weight. There are calculators for that. When that wasn't overwhelming I reduced by small amount of calories. 100 fewer to start with etc.

This is way slower than a lot of people online go but honestly doing it "fast" and the ways that are recommended just led to binging and putting anything I lost back on. I've lost just over 20kg this year since january, about 0.5kg a week, which is slow going but closer to the pace the NHS recommends.

Are you still having trouble with binges? I had to get my mental health up before I even started thinking about changing how I eat. Regular exercise has really helped me so I'd make it a priority you stick with that, not for weight loss just for the brain 😂

The advantage of being heavier at the start OP is that you can drop weight while still consuming a fair amount. Plus you're young which helps with metabolic rate.
So, if I were you I'd focus on eating loads of veg, up to ten portions a day, if you can, some whole grain carbs and lean protein in about half the amounts you'd normally have, and one treat a day. Don't drink any calories. If you can have a walk every day, even ten minutes then build up to longer, you'll drop weight without all the faffing and fad diets.

What @5128gap says!

And lay off sugar and UPF

I am a size 8 and very conscious of eating healthily and honestly have no idea how many calories I eat in a day or anything like that. Worrying about numbers etc is not sustainable/ lifelong and therefore a waste of time imo. If you eating 3 healthy meals a day, drinking plenty of water and not snacking then the weight will almost certainly come off. Try to focus on healthy eating for life and having a positive mindset so that it's something you want to do. That mindset is an absolute game changer. Good luck.

Thank you guys:)

I just want to get in the habit of tracking my three meals a day which is quite important to me. I won’t be focusing on numbers and restricting food as eating three proper meals will already be me eating in a calorie deficit in comparison to how I usually eat🫣

I really would like to cut down on sugar and stuff but that would end up in me binging if I restrict certain foods. I’ll wait on the counselling to start before I try any of that by myself. It’s never ended well for me in the past

I'm passing 8st weight loss at the moment and I definitely used to lean towards binge eating.

I started during the COVID madness and my main goal was to get a better sense of the calories in what I was eating. I wasn't interested on 'healthy' eating at first, I just wanted to know how to get the most bang for my buck calorie wise i.e. how much shite can I still eat without gaining more weight. Lockdown was miserable enough without being on a diet but I had already hit the "enough is enough" stage with my weight so I still felt motivated to take some baby steps.

MyFitnessPal was really useful for me because, once you start to get a sense of the calories in food, you start to see where you can make easy substitutions to lower the calories while keeping your eating habits mainly the same. It really helped me get some quick wins fairly early on without having to put in too much effort. The time spent scanning and tracking is an effort itself but worth it.

Over time I've gradually shifted my habits to integrate more balanced, healthy eating but I've used MyFitnessPal all the way through. My overall eating and fitness habits are fairly good now. Not perfect, but good for where I started.

My top tip is to be honest. It's a journey and you need to be comfortable that it might be 2 steps forward, 1 step back and that's fine. In the long term, it's still progress. Make sure you track your binges as much as you track your good days because its just as important to be able to see your patterns and maybe use the info to learn more about your triggers and weaknesses.

my approach might not work for everyone but I'm 2 years in and couldn't be happier with how it's turned out.