Weight loss when vulnerable to disordered eating

[Positivitank]

I am seeking some help from those who have experienced this if possible. To put it simply, if I restrict or calorie count it leads to obsession and disordered eating. I discovered today that I am now the top end of overweight and I don't want to go any further - I would like to head back to the healthy zone! 😅 I am in my early 50's. I don't drink alcohol. Has anyone been able to do this without calorie counting? Believe me, it triggers really unhelpful mental health issues for me, so I CANNOT go back to that. However I do need to lose some weight. Feeling overly hungry or 'deprived' can be another trigger. It is so difficult. Really want to make changes but am frightened to set something off. Has anyone near my age and stage ever managed some weight loss without calorie counting or serious deprivation or post disordered eating and if so - how?

Some suggestions that have worked for me:

More and regular exercise. Not that you lose weight through toning/calories burned, but definitely seems to trigger cravings for more healthy foods - veg, protein and fruit rather than rubbishy sweet stuff. Also probably helps with that emotional eating thing of wanting “something” and stuffing down that feeling with food.
Adding in more food. As in more veg, slightly bigger lean protein portions etc. Gets away from that hungry feeling as you are more satiated.
Understanding your triggers. Ask yourself “what am I really hungry for?” Try a book such as Martha Beck’s 4 day weight loss miracle. Or Gretchen Ruben is really helpful with her 4 tendencies and tips that will help.
Build on good habits. See Atomic habits - basically make it easier for yourself to pick good stuff and harder to choose the bad stuff.
Read Unprocessed People/listen to audiobook. Really helps you to make better choices
Finally, try lower carb. Not carb counting but I find carbs have a snowball effect, the more I have the more I want.

Hi OP I can TOTALLY relate to this but I have to calorie count ❤️

Hi OP. I am in almost exactly the same boat as you. This might be a bit long, but I hope that is useful.

I understand exactly you mean re calorie counting - I quickly get into the mindset of ‘but if I shave 50 off here and 50 off there then I’m under 1000 yay’ and have two super strict days before falling over.

And I totally hear you about feeling deprived. I seem to have some sort of internal protection mechanism and so as soon as I start thinking about limiting - or even managing - my brain kicks in and I can be triggered into overeating really quickly.

I do a fair amount of exercise, and it definitely makes me feel like ‘I care about me, I deserve to be well’ but the only time it ever ended up with me losing weight was when I was cycling 60+ miles at a time three times a week.

What I’m trying at the moment though feels like it might be sustainable. I hope!

I saw something somewhere that said the government or NHS or someone ‘official’ recommends 400 cal for breakfast 600 for lunch and 600 for dinner. This felt easier for my brain to believe and cope with than all the ‘work out your unique calories’ things. Just thinking about that gets me obsessed. It doesn’t work for me to be in my head for long periods of time about this stuff. I’ve got to just make it flow..

Over the course of a few weeks, I’ve worked out five delicious breakfasts, ten delicious lunches and ten delicious dinners, that meet those calories levels. These include fruit / yoghurt as puddings, and an occasional (homemade as I’m off UPF) biscuit or something to make sure I don’t go pop because I can’t have them.

I’ve been trying them here and there to make sure they’re super tasty, and filling, with the idea that I’d be able to write them out as recipes without the calorie information on them so I can’t get stuck on that part but I’ll just know that I’ve already made the decision and I don’t have to think about it again.

My plan is to eat those meals four days a week. This was the first week of eating those ways and it felt good. And I’m going into the weekend thinking that I actually don’t want to let myself off the leash and stuff loads of chocolate into my face.

I won’t be managing food at all, but I will just try and eat what I want and not ‘make up’ for the fact that I’ve put, because I haven’t.

I don’t know if this would be good for either of us, but we could maybe buddy each other on this?

I forgot to say. I’m also meal prepping or at least ingredient prepping ahead of time.

This means that I don’t have to make decisions when I’m hungry. So I might have taken things out of the freezer and have them sitting in the fridge defrosting or at least have portioned out Ingredients so that I can’t just accidentally add more.

Sounds familiar, as soon as I tell myself I am on a diet I go crazy and can't stop eating. When I tell myself I can eat what I want I don't seem to want it.

Arhhh it's so hard

I really like the idea of the 4,6,6 thing. I like the simplicity. I think if i worked it out in advance and as you said meal prep maybe it could work? Much better than spontaneous counting which makes me COMPLETELY obsessive then…rebel in a RAGE.i am up for giving it a try i think… I also like that it’s four days a week so it’s kind of practical. I’m just scared by the numbers a little bit but hey it seems worth a try to me. I can always stop. No reason why we couldn’t buddy up for this! Thanks for the long considered reply. I will try to incorporate some of the volume eating recipes in to the meals as well as per earlier advice.

Hey @Positivitank hope you had a good Easter weekend? I was off-line for a while and then my back went so am just catching up with online stuff now.

I was thinking about this conversation over the weekend and I wondered if it might help to explain a bit more of how I do this. I realise that I’m basically picking and choosing bits of different eating plans that I’ve looked at over the years. I think I’m trying to educate myself into what is a sensible portion size as I’ve never had any real idea.

When I started working these recipes out I was horrified to realise really how little I’ve been trying to survive on before and so there was no surprise that I kept failing. The meals that I’m eating now have carbs, protein, fat and lots and lots of fresh veg. They are delicious and long term satisfying so I don’t find myself thinking about snacks. Previously, I’ve been trying to build in snacks throughout the day cause I thought I always needed to have something available. I think it’s better for me to just eat really good meals and not think about food until the next one.

One the things that matters to me is quantity, if I see a small amount of something which I can eat quickly I end up going crackers. So pretty much every meal has a huge great handful of fresh spinach or fresh lettuce and cucumber as part of it.

I enjoy being organised so I do a lot of meal prep at weekends. I can find it really hard to cook a sensible amount of certain things, for example rice or pasta or mash. So I often batch cook those things and either have them sitting in the fridge or in the freeze, already portioned up. Not being able to accidentally had double the amount of rice has been a game changer for me.

And four days works for me as it suits my routine. I do notice that I’m learning portion sizes as I go along so ok the other three days I am making better choices.

I’m aiming for 1lb a week and am on track so far…

How are you getting on?

i try and frame it as eating better rather than less
so swapping the mayo with my tuna for Greek yoghurt, adding up chopped tomatoes, onions, pickles etc into it
Planning to eat more. More veg, more fruit, more fibre. By the time I’ve done that then I’m pretty full

I've not been through it personally but I did support my OH with a history of eating disorders when he needed to lose weight for a surgery.

One thing that helped him a lot was never being told his weight/BMI. The me or the nurse at the appointment would read it for him and just say "everything's going fine" or "a bit too fast, slow down" etc without giving exact numbers. That way he knew things were working without being able to obsess over numbers.

He had two days a week where he could eat whatever he wanted no restrictions, and went veggie for the other 5 days. He went for huge plates of veggies for meals so he didn't get into a habit of restricting the volume of food he ate as that was a big trigger for him. Snacks would be protein rather than carbs since that make him feel full for longer (cheese or nuts usually).

He also made a point of adding lots of flavour to his food using some restaurant quality stock pastes to make all his meals delicious so that he'd want to finish them as diet food often ends up a bit bland and boring.