Anyone up for a chat thread?

[AnnieLobeseder]

Evening all

I could do with hooking up with a few people who are also trying to be more healthy - better diet (whichever method works for you) and more exercise. But I do so much better when I can chat to a group about how I'm doing and when I have a hand to hold when it goes wrong.

I've been on one or two on here but they never seem to get enough traffic and fade out after a few days.

So I'd really like to start a weight-loss quiche. Anyone in?

I have about 3 stone to lose, most of which I have gained after injuring my ankle and having to give up running 2 years ago. I am also a stress-eater, and with the stress of doing a degree, I have been stuffing my face lately. Now the degree is (almost) finished, but I have the stress of job-hunting, plus we're planning a relocation, so I'm still eating way more chocolate than I should! I'm getting far better with exercise though, and getting to the gym a good few times a week, so that's a start anyway.

I didn't do well today. I had a work lunch and I had dessert (chocolate creme brûlée with shortbread). And DH had bought me a box of chocolates from Godiva. And I haven't done any exercise since the Sunday before last. Oh dear...

Doing ok. Have eaten pizza and four after eights for tea but still within my ww points (this is why I need A System so I adjust enough to lose weight but not so much I give up)

Annie - well done. Start again as of right now.

My only exercise today was light housework. Oh, and hoicking the toddler out of a variety of places in response to calls of, "Mummy... 'tuck." But on the plus side, the only non-plant things I have eaten today are sausages, two slices of toast, and a bit of bacon.

Good luck Annie!

Weighed in today and lost 1kg. Back below 80kg (now only by 0.1kg, but every little counts!) for the first time since the baby! 9kg to go...

Hello!

, salad for lunch and saved my plane sandwich for tea and bought some fruit so I don't have to eat out in a restaurant tonight.

Can't say a plane sandwich sounds delicious Yonic, but it does sound disciplined! Hope the (work?) trip goes well.

Nice forward planning there, Yonic. And thank you, Penguins, for the mental arithmetic test. If my calculations are correct, you've hit my target weight, so very well done!

I may have sort of accidentally eaten the toddler's bag of chocolate raisins yesterday. Calling it a Sunday treat and trying not to feel too guilty.

Ha ha. Wasn't meant to be cryptic. I am 79.9kg, which is the first time I've dipped below 80kg since the baby. And my target is around about 71. 68 would be nice, but I'm not kidding myself.

I find that what works best for me is a disciplined week and a fairly relaxed weekend. I think it's why Slimming World was rubbish for me. I don't mind being careful in the week if I'm then allowed two glasses of wine and a takeaway on Saturday

It wasn't a bad sandwich, actually brought my own mustard to addand my salad was v good. So I feel pleased!

Not so much cryptic as metric. Never did get to grips with person-weights in metric.

On my last great big weight loss expedition I tried limiting myself initially to one bit of junk food per day (that being a fairly major reduction at the time). It was amazing how quickly I adapted, and found myself having just the one bit of junk a week. Which sounds reasonable, so if I don't replace the chocolate raisins until the weekend it'll be grand.

Ah, see I went metric about 10 years or so ago as an experiment. I found that, after a while, I didn't know what metric converted to, and I found that I skimmed over all those celebrity weights as they started to mean nothing to me. Quite 'cleansing' actually.

Sorry, sorry, here I am! Big exam done with (and passed, yay!) and yet I've still spent the past 2 days stuffing Cadbury fingers into my gob. I'm sick of my (previously) huge baggy sweatshirts being too tight, I'm sick of the way all my trousers bunch up into my crotch as I walk so that a) I need to walk like a cowboy every few steps to shake them down again and b) it makes all my trousers too short so my socks are constantly in show. I'm sick of not being able to stretches at the gym not because I'm not flexible, but because my fat rolls are in the way. Yuk, fuck it, enough!

I'm going to sign up with Slimming World on Monday. It has really worked for me in the past, but I'm useless at going it alone. I need to hand over money and be faced with having to tell a group how my week went and how my weight loss went.

I've been telling myself we can't afford it on top of my gym subscription, but the truth is that I'm spending more than Slimming World fees on crap each week, so we'd actually be saving money if I signed up.

So here we go. Wish me luck.

I think you can get GP referrals to SW now Annie? Might that be an option? Or does it need to be your money to work?

I don't think I'm fat enough, Penguins. I'm just "obese" and I suspect you need a "clinically" in front of that before you get a referral. I might try....

Round here I think you just need to be clinically overweight. Might be worth checking?

I might have to look into that too. Willpower alone isn't quite doing the trick.

SW really didn't suit me but lots of people love it. Worth looking into.

Annie if you did Slimming World before then it didn't really work did it?
Otherwise you would have kept the weight off forever eating the SW way. But the way of eating is restrictive in its own way as it controls what and how you eat. To lose weight successfully you need to learn to tune into your own true hunger signals and eat when your hungry and eat whatever you are hungry for and stop as soon as you feel "satisfied" not full. Eating mindfully. Slimming world and other diet clubs make millions out of peoples insecurities. Diets have a lot to answer for. People have such disordered eating patterns and are either on a diet or off one and overeating. Have you thought of trying to just maintain whilst you relearn how to eat like someone who has never had an eating/weight problem?

Nillia, I know you mean well, but I do know how to eat healthily, and I'm well aware that the issue with weight loss for me is in my mind. I binge eat when I'm stressed. Nothing to do with my everyday meals, which are very healthy. It's inhaling 3 or 4 boxes of chocolate fingers and cherry bakewells in one sitting every day during times of stress. I know exactly what the problem is, but what I don't know is how to fix it. All these weight loss programs focus on how to eat correctly, but none teach you how to channel the response that makes you eat crap in addition to your normal healthy everyday food into something more constructive. I've read "mindful eating" books and they don't help either. I wish I knew how to break this flaw in my mental make-up.

However, when my mind is in the right place to eat well, I find Slimming World to be an easy and healthy way to lose weight. There are lots of aspects of the diet industry that are dangerous, I agree. But I don't find Slimming World to be restrictive, and it is very much in alignment with how I eat healthily when I'm not binging.

Hi. Sorry not read whole thread. Why do you binge Annie. Its called emotional eating. It comforts us when we are stressed be cause then we feel full of something. Comfort, warmth, hugs. Its well known that we can overeat and binge also when we put food into good and bad catogaries. You say you eat healthily on slimming world but then say you overeat on biscuits and cakes so you are making food to emotive. When you let go of the diet mentality all food becomes equal, not good or bad. Its learning to allow all foods to be eaten that can free you. Overcoming overeating is not easy but can be done. If you put as much effort into thinking before and whilst eating as you do when dieting then you can relearn to eat like a slim person.

There are actually many books and online sites that do in fact teach you how to deal with your bingeing.

I'm pretty sure allowing all foods to be eaten is part of the problem, actually. Annie, if SW helps you, then go for it. The accountability aspect of it certainly sounds useful.

No just the opposite. Diets and depriving ourselves of so called "treat" foods are what cause us to binge on them. If your on a diet then of course at some point you will go and eat something not allowed on the "diet plan". Then because you have not been allowed it your mind rebels and you start eating it and cant stop. Hence the bingeing on foods that you consider a treat.

Eating shouldn't be this difficult it really shouldn't.

This Neuroscientist tells it really well. Sleepwhenidie posted it on a thread the other day.

www.ted.com/talks/sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_usually_work?language=en

I stopped dieting 15 years ago and re learnt how to eat "normally" again. I wanted to change the way I saw myself and the way I saw food so that my little girl didn't grow up believing that diets are the way to keep slip. I didn't want her having the disordered bingeing pattern that had followed my my whole adult life.

Good Luck to you all. Just hated to see the pain that Annie was experiencing because I have been there too.

So, the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a disaster. First we all had a bug, which meant I was even more sleep and time deprived than usual and grabbing whatever food I could - mostly bread and cheese and chocolate and coffee! Then I had a week of lost momentum.

But I'm back on it this week. I'd like to lose at least another 1.5 kg before Christmas (which should be do-able as I've put on a bit and I think a 'good' week could take of 1 kg).

Where's everyone else?