Morbidly obese but can't stick to diet.

[LEIGH350]

I weigh 25 stone and am almost 60. I have been trying to diet 40 yrs. Sometimes I have lost a stone or two, then I give up, eat normally again, and regain.

It's obvious that I have a slow metabolism but I think that just means I should eat even less and less until I find an intake that causes weight loss.

Despite being pretty much under attack from society 24/7/365, I still don't seem to be able to make myself stick to any diet. It's like there are two of me: the dieter and the rebel, and the rebel always wins.

I am currently supposed to be on Atkins. I keep to it at every meal, but then, whenever I have the impulse to cheat, I pop out (my street has shops) and grab a family sized bag of crisps, a giant bar of chocolate, or a litre of ice cream.

Afterwards I hate myself, feel a failure, sob in bed at night and make plans to re-start tomorrow and be REALLY good, no cheats THIS TIME. All night every night I play MP3s - hypnosis to make you stick to your diet, or hypnotic gastric band. But the next day I cheat.

When I was calorie counting and logging on MFP I allowed myself a treat size chocolate bar every day. I bought a bag of 12 with the intention of having one a day, the whole lot was eaten in 2 hours, so now I never keep treats in the house.

Why do I cheat? I honestly don't know, even after all these years. In the last ten years I have had three lots of eating disorder counselling, lasting about a year each time, trying to get to the bottom of it. None of this has worked.

I resent being told that I must eat only for fuel, whilst everyone around me is using food for pleasure and entertainment ("hey - let's go for a pizza!" and "break open the bubbly!" "ooh, cream cakes - yum!") Friends recount how they enjoyed the eat-all-you-like buffet they had on holiday or at a local Indian (things I never do) then tell me I have to stop overeating. I seethe when I look into the windows of pubs, cafes, restaurants, and see slim people scoffing cakes, pizzas, hot chocolate, muffins, McD's, fry-up breakfasts; I am cross when I see them buying cakes in Gregg's and eating chips in the street, because if I did that I am labelled "naughty" or told I have an eating disorder.

It's taken me ages to realise that it's not what I eat that is the problem. From observing close up the eating habits of my flatmates and friends who come to stay, I don't eat more than the average person. It's the effect it has on my body: clearly, I am still eating too many treats for my particular slow metabolism.

My GP says "lose weight or die young". I've had the same from everyone in my life for the past 30 years and some of them are getting really pissed off with me because they don't think I am taking their advice.

All my stats like BP, cholesterol, etc are good and I am not diabetic. I take no medication. Ironically, many of the slim people who issue these dire warnings to me about my health are themselves on insulin, statins, BP pills, etc, and some who used years ago to warn me about how I was cutting my life short by being overweight have since died of various illnesses, at ages younger than I am now.

GP has made an appt for me to begin the long series of meetings and consultations that lead to a gastric bypass. First appt is in a week.

I have read about this and it is a barbaric mutilation. I have read about several women who died of starvation afterwards. I don't have any digestive issues. Having a bypass causes chronic problems for the rest of life (reflux, vomiting, diarrhoea, constipation, indigestion, malnutrition). Even if I came out of surgery OK, the thought of never being able to eat a proper meal again for the rest of my life (bypass is irreversible) makes me feel I would rather die young but enjoy my food.

My basic diet is healthy, currently two big bowls of salad a day with mayonnaise and some kind of meat or fish or seafood on top. No sugar, and no wheat. I am also teetotal and I never touch fizzy drinks or sweeteners. But then I ruin it all by having "impulse treats": either sugary (ice cream), wheaty (cake or chocolate biscuits), or a family bag of crisps. I do not keep any of these things in the house - ever. I HAVE to go out and buy them.

Each day I get up with the intention to just have the healthy meals and not to give in to the cheating impulse. Probably 4 days out of 7 I fail.

After 40 years I still cannot work out why I am self-sabotaging my every effort to diet. Especially as I now cannot walk more than 50 metres, get upstairs, and my world has become extremely restricted as I cannot fit into cinema, plane seats etc. Predictably, I am still single. (Yes there are specialist dating sites for men who like obese women but they are fetishists who would sabotage a woman's attempts at dieting.)

I am literally making myself disabled, and un-dateable and I don't know why.

I want to live a normal life, get about and have holidays and a great love life, and yet why oh why isn't even all that proving to be an incentive to stop cheating? I want to live again, but it's like I am not prepared to pay the price of constant deprivation.

I am not sure if this is far too complex an issue for a dieting board made up of people who are just a little bit podgy from baby-weight, but I post in the hope that there is someone else out there who feels the same or is in the same position or has some advice on how to escape from this self-imposed prison.

I was 26 and a half stone at my heaviest op. It's tough.
Personally I think Atkins is faddy and can't be done long term.
Have you been offered a gastric band instead? This is far safer, has less side effects and is reversible if needs be.
I'm not eligible for surgery.
I've recently lost 4 stone so am now 22 and half. Still a long way to go but that was through slimming world. I think the group element does help. Plus you can make big, tasty meals on slimming world and still lose weight.
I still have days where I binge on junk food. But eating well 80% of the time means I'm slowly losing. All in the right direction. Just don't see one bad day as a failure and stop all together, we all do that but just get past that day and eat better the next day.

You can do it! Join a group.
You sound so unhappy. Unhappy people don't live healthily. You need to sort your thought processes out too. Have you ever had counselling? It's worth a try.

"Each bit of cash you get out.

BTW, diets are for people who want to lose a bit of weight to look good on holiday. That's not going to work for you. You can't go on a diet for the rest of your life. That really does feel like constant deprivation, stretching out into the future. That's impossibly daunting and nobody can deal with that.

Something I wasn't expecting after weight loss was the back pain. I think it's because most of my extra weight was at the front, so my back muscles were developed in such a way as to keep me upright when the weight was distributed like that. When I lost weight, it mostly came off the front so presumably my back muscles had to rebalance to deal with the new weight distribution. It didn't take long, though.

The brain over binge thing is not just eating when hungry. The big thing about it is that she found a way of not giving in to the urges to binge, because she identified them as not coming from her higher brain, but being survival instructions from her lower, animal brain. When she treated the urges and instructions to binge as being just so much unnecessary white noise, she found that she could have urges to binge, but because she didn't take them seriously, they gradually subsided and eventually stopped. Its quite a different approach to any other boob I've read, in that she goes by think that the binge urge is caused by emotional problems, but merely by a kind of malfunction in the brain, which is fairly easily overridden

Bella belly thank you for posting and here are my replies to your questions:

"If you really are constantly feeling deprived, of course you're going to "rebel" and so the self-sabotage cycle is never-ending."

All dieting comes with deprivation, though - I mean, that is the point. All dieting is based on eating less than you want to. To lose 15 stone would be constant deprivation because it's so long term - two or three years perhaps of calories being below what the body uses. Else it won't work.

"if you can relax your ideas about food good / bad, "junk", and enjoy what you put in your mouth, there wouldn't be the feeling of deprivation".

Not sure how that would lead to weight loss. I can't just eat what I want. I think my current basic meals are delicious and enjoyable.

"it sounds like you have a pretty fab life, apart from being very unhappy with your weight. Does it feel like life is passing you by? Or does it just feel like everyone ELSE is telling you to lose weight? Is it something you REALLY want to do for yourself?"

My home and work life are good, and I am very lucky in that, BUT going out is painful, uncomfortable, awkward, humilating. Don't fit into seats anywhere (cinema/plane/bus) and I don't drive so I am very restricted. I absolutely LOVE to travel abroad and at last I have the money AND the freedom to travel anywhere, yet I have had to stop altogether as the last few trips were a living nightmare of pain and public embarrassment.

Yet, even that incentive hasn't stopped me from bingeing.

I hate myself right now for what I am doing to myself.

I will look at the Moseley book.

Assam.

Yes I have tried fasting. Never made it past 2pm and then binged bigger than ever before as was absolutely starving hungry to the point of feeling faint.

Wow that was long, sorry! I do think that the approach in the book deserves more attention though.

What other people think of you, seatbelt extenders, fifteen stone, all those things aren't going to help. If you lose a stone you'll still look fat, and you'll still need a seatbelt extender. Fifteen stone is a horribly daunting target. You're not aiming for that. In fact your not really aiming for anything. A stone probably won't even be visible. But if you lose a stone that WILL help. And it'll just be a byproduct of what you're really doing - dealing with the bingeing and its effects on your mind and body.

Thanks again to everyone for posting. I really appreciate your time and effort and am reading all posts carefully.

IcedVanillaLatte ~ regarding the Atkins Diet, it is a high fat diet, and there is no calorie counting. Mayo is allowed.

itsbetterthanabox ~ GP said it has to be a bypass. I don't know why, but he is emphatic. I've been in groups, and found that the more weight others lost, the more I felt a failure. I then felt ashamed to take part as I wasn't progressing. I have successfully lost, but only on my own.

Have you tried slimming world op? I know you said rebelling is an issue but what stood out in your post was your basic diet- if I ate 2 salads as my meals I'd be ravenous and more likely to binge on rubbish to fill me up. SW works for me as there's no weighing or measured portions, I fill up on big hearty healthy meals including pasta, rice, chips(!) and other things that are usually banned on diets and then am less likely to want treats as I'm properly full from my main meal.

I think it's better than calorie counting as it focuses on good foods- 500 calories of chicken stirfry and 500 calories of crisps are both the same calorie wise but one will fill you up for longer and is packed with veg and protein whereas the other has no nutrional value, will probably be eaten between meals and won't leave you feeling satisfied. I think lots of people on calorie controlled diets eat as little as possible in their meals to allow themselves leftover calories for treats, which is counterproductive. Diets don't work but lifestyle changes do, else you put back on all the weight you've lost as soon as the diet ends as you go back to your old eating habits.

ageinrunner .... I do get the mentality behind the book, and thank you for spelling it out: "a kind of malfunction in the brain, which is fairly easily overridden".

Well I have made it to 3pm today without cheating or bingeing.

I am going to ask to be referred to a health psychologist, perhaps one of those can help me.

Forgot to add you could do online membership or even just google how it works and find the basics for free if you didn't want to join a group.

That's brilliant user! This is the start of your weight loss. There was another long thread which started with a similar op, who then used the thread for support and went on to lose a lot of weight. Might be worth searching for, I'm sorry I can't remember the details though.

annatha ~ my salads are very hearty, made up of a lot of different things and served with mayo and plenty of meat. I don't think there is anything wrong at all with my basic daily diet. I am not left hungry and the binges are not caused by hunger.

I joined SW 18 months ago and followed it to the letter. The scale jumped up 3lb the first week and I was told to throw away the scale and only weigh once in a while. I didn't throw it but I put it away with the batteries removed. After three months I weighed and I had gained 2 stone. I was absolutely horrified.

Everyone in the group of course said I wasn't doing it right but I was. I still have all the books they gave me.

I then went onto a zero carb diet and I re-lost that 2 stone in one month. Then the binges re-started and I have regained a stone. I would not touch SW again with a barge pole. I think I am very carb-sensitive and eating potatoes, rice, porridge, fruit and yoghurts and all those Syns used on chocolate and processed treats, it was too carb-heavy for me. We are not all the same. I was gutted because many ladies lost huge amounts of weight on SW.

And so I ended up back on Atkins, which is zero carb plus veggies. Clearly, that isn't working, either. I'm lost.

Atkins probably isn't going to work… and you're not doing Atkins, because you're bingeing. The idea behind Atkins is a) you'll be eating fewer calories because fat is satisfying and it's actually really hard to eat a lot of protein, and b) you'll be going into ketosis. A ketogenic diet is so abnormal that is almost impossible to sustain, and you'll feel like shit - fatigue, pain, bad breath etc.

And Atkins isn't a proper ketogenic diet anyway. Ketogenic diets are more hardcore. If you're worried about never being too eat properly again with a gastric band, Atkins is way worse than surgery in that respect.

And the thing is, you're not in ketosis anyway. Every time you eat carbs it'll pull you out and it takes ages to go back in again. And you won't be getting all the micronutrients you need.

Mayo might be "allowed", but there are lots of things "allowed" on Slimming World too. And lots of people will still fail to lose weight on Slimming World because they eat so many "free" foods that their calorie intake isn't actually any lower.

Get away from the named diets! They're not for you. They're for people who need to lose a few pounds temporarily.

Sorry about my username. I just joined and MN gave me this name all by itself. Computer generated. I will try to change it.

I actually lost most of my weight in a low-ish carb diet but I didn't go into ketosis at any point. Now I moderate the carbs and choose low GI ones. I think of it as just "how I eat".

Trying to stick to someone else's "rules" is deprivation and it's really hard :(

It sounds like you need to reprogramme your idea of 'normal'

You will never lose weight if you can't get past the misconception that you eat a similar amount to people you know who have a healthy BMI

It may be the case that you have a slow metabolism and need less calories than some people but I doubt this is as big a factor in your problems with weight than you believe it to be

It is one thing to enjoy the occasional takeaway or slice of cake alongside a normally balanced diet but eating family bags of crisps and a full litre of icecream on a regular basis is NOT normal!

Firstly i feel obliged to comment that people in this thread are talking about type 2 diabetes which is diet related rather than type 1 which is is an autoimmune condition, totally unrelated to diet, but who's suffers are constantly looked down on by the general public who don't understand that their condition is completely not their fault!!

Secondly- OP by labelling foods as bad and good and deliberately not eating the 'bad' ones you are setting yourself up to crave them. By telling yourself you can't ever eat sugar/wheat/whatever you will want to eat it even more. If you allowed yourself a thin crust pizza/ cheeseburger/ pasta bake/ chocolate brownie as a planned part of your normal eating you are much less likely to crave the forbidden. There are no bad foods, anything is ok in moderation as part of a healthy diet (assuming no coeliac/allergies).

Can you give an example of what you would choose to eat without any diets etc. including treats and all.

All dieting comes with deprivation, though - I mean, that is the point. All dieting is based on eating less than you want to

And this is why dieting isn't going to work for you, OP. If you think you're depriving yourself, you'll be tempted to rebel against that.

Dieting is a temporary thing, and doesn't work for many people - not unless they want to fit in a specific dress by a specific day or whatever. A "diet" isn't about long term health. What you need is to think of yourself as starting a new, healthy way of eating, for life.

The vast majority of the slim people you see aren't "dieting", they're eating well, forever, and exercising. It's different.

The only people I know who "diet" are overweight. Everyone I know who is a size 8 or 10 doesn't diet at all, in that they don't count calories or follow a regime - they just never, or very rarely, eat crap food.

I eat what I want to. Only I don't want to eat biscuits, cakes, crisps, takeaways etc. Because eating that stuff would make me overweight and unhappy. It's not a "treat" to eat something that makes me feel shit afterwards.
If I have a dessert at a wedding or whatever, I might enjoy it, but I can then go another month without having one.

I used to be bigger than this. When I lost weight it was about health, not about a short-term "diet." My running wasn't going as well as it could and I wanted to be faster. So I made the conscious decision that I was going to put healthy food in my body and eat what I want to eat, every day. And I'm now substantially lighter and faster.

I'm not depriving myself at all. I'll have a cake if I want one - I just genuinely don't want one as I've chosen not to eat that way. There's a cake that's been in my kitchen a week because DM brought it round. DH and I have ignored it because we choose not to eat cake.

At the moment, by thinking of chocolate etc as "treats" you're giving that food huge power. You need to take back control. You decide what to put in your body, it's your body and the only one you'll ever have.

You deserve so much more than to let those foods screw up your body and ruin what you claim is an otherwise healthy way of eating.

I don't know what to recommend other than to say cakes and chocolate are not treats, they're not to be looked forward to, they're not to be put on a pedestal. They're worthless, nothing-foods that make you feel crap in the long run, and the sooner you decide to start eating healthily, every day, forever, the better.

I hope that makes some sense. Very best of luck

Icedvanilla ..."you're not doing atkins, anyway". Each and every day I TRY to do Atkins. That is what I am doing on the days that I don't slip off the wagon. I don't need reminding that I am failing ~ my failure is what this thread is about.

I say "Atkins" for shorthand. What I mean is, a high fat, moderate protein, low carb, zero sugar-and-wheat diet, high in raw vegetables and unprocessed meats and fish.

But yes, clearly I am failing to keep to it and might as well abandon it.

I have tried calorie counting, tried "eating whatever I fancy", tried just plain old "healthy eating" of veg and protein.

So what next? Probably back to calorie counting. My fear with this is, without the high fat in the diet, I will be ravenously hungry all the time. That is what happened before, and I coped with it by constantly nibbling on low calorie stuff all day long.

OP apologies if this has been suggested in the thread already, but have you tried slimming world? Your post could have been written by me a year ago, completely resonates. Slimming world has enabled me to see what exactly it is I'm doing wrong, so to speak, and allows me to eat normally - within reason. I've lost a stone so far this year and don't feel as if I've changed my diet much at all. Is more of a lifestyle change really, albeit a small one.

EXACTLY what runningup said. I don't mean to sound horrible - but you're kidding yourself when you say you have a healthy diet with a few days of binging on crap. That isn't a healthy diet. I think you have to get your head around two basic facts:

1. Your diet has been crap for the last 40 years.
2. You need to change the way you eat FOREVER, not for a few months/years until you've lost the weight. Whatever change you make has to be permanent otherwise you'll continue to be obese.

You're not "failing" at Atkins. You're understandably not able to stick long term to somebody else's rules. If you constantly think to yourself "Atkins won't let me eat that" then of course you're going to feel deprived. The ways that Atkins supposedly works are not going to work for you.

Thanks everyone for your posts. I do truly appreciate them.

Blue grey asked me a question: "Can you give an example of what you would choose to eat without any diets etc. including treats and all."

Blimey, that is actually quite a hard question. I am trying to imagine, what if I could take a pill, be instantly 10 stone, and the pill would stop me from ever gaining weight, regardless of what I ate. OK .....

Breakfast: a big bowl of fruit and fibre (I love it!) with lashings of Jersey milk. Or six slices of toast dripping with butter and Marmite. Or a ig fry up in a cafe.

Lunch: Pepperoni pizza (assuming the pill protected me from wheat!) followed by fresh cream doughnuts.

Dinner: Chinese or Indian take away, or fish and chips. Cadbury Sensations ice cream - half a litre.

There is, as you can see, a huge discrepancy between the amount of junky, fattening, sugary, starchy food I would eat if unrestricted, and what I currently eat!

Probably after a week I would be craving a simple salad and a tin of tuna!