What work are you doing to improve your relationship with food for the long term?

[seriouslyconsidering]

I’m on the verge of completing an online prescription form, but this is what I am most worried about.

I am a yo-yo dieter, but the yo-yo seems to have stopped working altogether now. I’ve previously had “success” with IF, but the weight would creep back on. I now seem to have lost any sort of discipline. The food noise is deafening and I just seem to be so hungry all the time.

My biggest worry is that WLI will help with the food noise and appetite in the short term, but once I finish taking them I just undo all the work if I haven’t “fixed” my deep seated problems with my relationship with food. Will I just go back to square one.

I’ve read that some people accept they will need to be on WLI for life, but I can’t afford that.

Others say how important it is to see this as a lifestyle change and so to take that going forward. I do completely agree with this, but my question is how. I have 40 odd years of a bad relationship with food and I don’t know how to start addressing that to make sure, the minute I feel slightly peckish again, that I don’t launch myself into a bag of chocolates.

Any real life stories of success? Thank you

I did a lot of reading and listening to podcasts about ultra processed food, nutrition, etc. in the months I was on WLIs and used the WLIs as a tool to overhaul my diet, so essentially cutting out pretty much all UPFs, focusing on protein, switching out white bread, rice and pasta for brown, all that kind of stuff. Now I’m off them, my body has sort of adjusted to that way of eating so it just feels like the norm, I don’t really have a desire to eat UPFs etc. It’s still an ongoing thing I think, for me making learning about nutrition and gut health and food science has become a bit of a hobby, and that makes me more interested in practising it in my own life. When I need a boost, I listen to a podcast or read a couple of chapters of a Tim Spector book or something and that kind of reinvigorates me.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have some chocolate and cake, but I’m more deliberate about planning it, so where before I might have had a proper breakfast, then gone to a cafe to meet a friend and had a big slab of cake, now I get up and think ‘I’m going to cafe with X at 11, I’ll just skip breakfast/have a piece of fruit’. I suppose the time on WLIs has allowed me to be a lot more thoughtful about adjusting intake day to day to reflect what I’m doing, whereas before I’d have just eaten the same three meals regardless of how much else I had eaten in between. So I will eat that big slab of cake, but my food intake for the rest of the day will be altered to account for it.

I’ve lost some more weight since coming off WLIs and am finding that it’s actually quite hard to overeat if you’re eating the ‘right’ things and don’t have the ‘wrong’ things easily available.

I'm trying to instil a few small changes. One is to always have some sliced apple when I have biscuits and cheese. Another is to make an absence of alcohol the default setting for an evening, rather than automatically having a drink every day. A third is to just suck it up and count calories - it's tedious but works.

I've been low carb for nearly 5 years now & have maintained a loss of over 4 stones, which I've never managed before in 40+ years of yo-yo dieting. I don't drink now either.
I've also finally understood that 'moderation & a little of what you fancy' just doesn't work for me, abstinence is key for my health going forward. I really don't feel like I'm depriving myself either now I understand that some foods make me unwell &/or cause me to greatly overeat.

I’m new to WLI but prior to this I maintained my overweight body (at the same weight give or take 3 or 4lbs) for 5 years so I’m taking some small comfort in the fact I do know how to maintain… I just really struggled with losing and sticking long term to a plan.

So it’s not guaranteed but I hope that by losing weight on WLI, when I’m off them I can resume what I was doing before which was to basically track my calories during the week and then have some treats at the weekend.

With MJ, I’m also learning the power of protein. One of my downfalls before was to plan my meals around carbs (within my calorie limit) but now I’m building my meals around protein. This is easy enough as I love chicken and fish so I hope this is something I’ll carry forward. I’m also hydrating properly (min 2 litres a day with collagen powder mixed in). These feel like simple sustainable habits along with calorie tracking that I will happily keep doing.

Like many others over the years I’ve gained and lost chunks of weight and for me I’ve had an attitude of, ‘oh I’m thin now so I can eat again’ but actually I’ve had to accept I will have a lifelong weight problem (just like all the women in my family) and I need to adjust my intake for the rest of my life in order to manage that. There will also be times when I will be heavier than I want to be but I hope to never let it get to this point again (4 stone overweight).

About 10 years ago I lost 5 stone and kept it off more or less for 6 years. My bmi was slightly higher at 26ish but I ate well, I was active and I had routine.

in covid I lost the routine and the structure and ate for comfort. I stopped weighing myself regularly as well and in fact got rid of my scales. I put on the 5 stone again.

i am now about 2.5 stone down thanks to mj but have gone through quite a lot of stress over the last couple of months so mj has very much been taking the strain. It has actually been really hard to manage the emotions without the comfort hit of dopamine food brought me but I have been and so I can lean on that a bit.

Also it is easier to be active when you are thinner and I am finding activities I enjoy and getting back to them a bit. I weigh regularly and whilst I still have a difficult relationship with the scales, I appreciate the need for real data not just going by an elasticated waistband ;)

what I need to do is teach myself not to lean on the mj as much for healthy choices and do it myself. Meal
plan/have the right foods available. Protein is powerful but as a veggie who struggles to tolerate eggs and pulses on mj, that can be tough.

i have got a few more tough weeks ahead realistically so I’m not planning on making any major changes just yet but the good thing is I know what and how. It’s just I need to be a bit gentle with myself and not do it all at the same time (mj has bought me the space to recognise that actually so another helpful point!)

and I think I will be on mj long term. I’m hopeful it will get cheaper soon but to be honest my food bill has reduced

Ive been taking Mounjaro for nearly a year now, and will be continuing for a while yet. Everything about how I eat is different now, and I know that those changes need to stay if I want to keep the weight off long term. It’s not just food though, I know I need to weight myself regularly rather than hide the scales. I’ve also put my full length mirror back up and that also needs to stay. Hiding from my reflection, from photographs and the scales is not helpful. And exercise, that needs to stay, being more active in general and doing exercise for its own sake too.

I have been on Mounjaro for 11 months, my eating habits have totally changed, but I am almost sure that if I stopped Mounjaro tomorrow they would slowly revert back to before as the food noise and obsessive cravings crept back in.

Will I be on it forever? Honestly don't know, but plan for now is I will be on it until at least until end of this year, if I reach target I may try out slowly tapering down dose and slowly increasing calories and see how I get on - I think that will be when I will learn how much I have changed and how much is still Mounjaro.

I am going to give myself time to get used to this (once I get there) 10st lighter body and and hope that set point theory is true!