The Giving Up Diets For Good Support Thread 1

[WhatWouldOliviaPopeDo]

Lately there have been a few threads lately from Mumsnetters who are either desperate to get off the treadmill of dieting, or who have already made the decision to quit but are struggling to eat normally again after depriving themselves for so long (like this one and this one). A few of us agreed that a dedicated thread to those giving up dieting was worth setting up, so here it is. We've put it in Weight Loss Chat because it most likely place for people to find us because, let's face it, it's trying to succeed and failing at weight loss that has brought us to this point.

This thread is a place for people to seek support from others in the same boat. It is NOT a thread on which to recommend diets. However well-meaning your intentions may be by doing that, please understand that the reason we are all on this thread is because we've reached the point where we know diets simply don't work for us and we are looking for another way to maintain our health and overcome the psychological issues that years of dieting and disordered eating has inflicted upon us. If anyone persists in promoting diets, we shall - in the nicest possible way! - ask you to remove your post or get MNHQ to do it for us.

I'm in please.
Huge issues with food most of my life. I'd say my relationship with food really began to deteriorate when I was 17 and was on my first diet.

I found the Brain Over Binge book very helpful, as long as I don't try to diet. She has a useful podcast series on the website too.
My eating is much, much better when I'm not dieting but I do find it easy to slip back into diet thoughts. I'm obese and not at all accepting of my weight so it's a constant battle to stay away from diets, even though I do know that they make my eating much worse. Now that I'm older I do find that my concerns around my weight are more health than appearance focused but I'm still struggling so much.

Not sure what else to say right now as I do find this difficult to discuss.

Just popping back to say the body love podcast is also wonderful! Will have a good read of the thread over my lunch. Great to see so many people giving the diet industry the middle finger!

@SpinnerDolphin have a look at that Ted talk. Research shows that overweight/obese people who do the 4 healthy lifestyle things are pretty much as healthy as normal weight people. They have the same health outcomes.

The 4 things were not smoking, low alcohol consumption, exercise and 5+fruit/veg a day.

I'm not denying myself anything, if I end up bingeing so be it. It win the the end of the world, I doubt I could do any more damage to my diet/body/thinking.

I've also accepted that this might take a few weeks or even months to straighten out. So to start with I probably will choose more 'bad' foods because I've been denying myself so long. But I reckon it will get easier and will even out.

I'm having one of my favourite lunches- peanut butter and jam on toast!

Welcome spinner and diva and thank you for sharing your stories. It is SO hard to talk about this but hopefully this thread will help us all articulate how we're feeling. I think that trying to accept yourself as you are is the hardest part of giving up dieting, because when people do it's usually when they're at their heaviest. I don't have any tips right now about overcoming those negative thoughts, because I'm struggling too, and it's so hard when we're faced with constant messages from the media that thin = good and that fat = lazy and stupid. But hopefully MNetters further along the line than we are can share their experience of switching those thoughts off!

I think that's a sensible approach Tufted. Knowing I will most likely have slip-ups along the way and, in a way, giving myself permission to have them, is stopping me feeling guilty. I think it will get easier with time. I just need to be patient!

I'm in! Came here after commenting on Messy's thread and having a revelation when reading the 'Eat Like a Normal Person' linked to on there (and upthread).

I'm not that overweight and am not a major binge eater, but I am sick and tired of constantly losing and regaining the same stone or two and feeling like I need to constantly control my desire to eat things I 'shouldn't'. It's exhausting and takes up so much headspace I could be freeing up for other things!

What particularly struck me on that website was the idea that my strong desire to inhale sweet junk may actually be a kind of addictive panic-mechanism caused by sporadic dieting teaching my body that it can't rely on me to always give it enough nutritious food.

So my plan is simply to feed my body nutritious food and plenty of it, even if that means a bit too much of it in the short term. To eat 3 meals a day, eating until I am full each time. Because leaving myself still a bit hungry after lunch 100% guarantees that I will be starving by 3pm and raid the biscuit tin.

And if the website is correct, my nourished body will after a while both lose its desire to gorge on high energy, low-nutrition foods in fear of being starved any minute, and will learn to know what size poetions of healthuy foods it actually needs.

I'm not banning any foods, I'm just hoping that big piles of meat, fish, eggs, veg, fruit etc will make me satisfied enough not to head for the ice cream!

I’m in too. Having been “in” in numerous too many to count diet threads on here over the years.

When I’m panicking about being overweight and trying to pick a diet I can literally feel them all swirling around in my head. My DH will ask which diet I am on that hour and if it will be another one that afternoon.

I’m all or nothing in some ways so if I have one thing that I shouldn’t I go into sod it mode and that’s it. I don’t binge really but I eat way more than I should and def drink more. Then I decide I need to not drink. Then I feel deprived. Then oh sod it I’ll have a glass of wine and guilt kicks in.

I did a detox a while ago which was no alcohol, no wheat, no sugar, no dairy and no caffeine. So now I even feel guilty if I have a cup of tea!

I have a lot of reading to do. And I’m already panicking because I have holidays coming up and I want to have lost weight.

Eolian - yes I’m going to try just eating sensibly. Nothing banned. Except maybe white bread. Lots of healthy fresh unprocessed food. Not stressing about olive oil on my salad or avocado.

I want a mindset that I am eating healthy food because it is good for me. Not that it’s going to make me slim. And hopefully my body will adjust and my brain will catch up.

Hi all I'm not thinking of joining just yet but I am interested by your plan and have a genuine question. How do you square giving up diets with the health thing of needing to be in a certain weight range for good health? For example if someone were in the obese range and at risk of health problems or even has some problems already e.g. prediabetic what is the advice you would give them? Don't take this as a criticism I'd really be interested.

If you watch the TED talk by Sandra Aamodt, or even read the book she shows that obese people who engage in 4 healthy activities (can't remember exactly what she calls them) have the same health outcomes as normal weight people. Those are not smoking, low alcohol consumption, exercise and 5+ fruit and vegetables.

Dieting makes you gain weight, each time you gain the weight back and usually a bit more. And each time it changes your body's normal weight point, so it becomes harder and harder to lose weight. It also changes the way your body reacts to leptin (something that helps tell us we are full) and the hypothalamus.

Short - my hope is that by fuelling my body with enough healthy fresh food that I won’t feel deprived triggering eating crap and that my body will naturally find its natural weight. I have to accept that it might well be bigger than I’d like. But I’ve been overweight for years and dieting has not helped.

Rebelfit is quite good and I remember from reading that that at my current weight I need X amount of calories. Diets try to reduce that too much. So if I’m eating enough of the right sort of foods my body will feel safe and not need to feel like it’s in starvation mode.

short It's a good question for which I don't think any of us know the answer. We know health is paramount but I think to start with we need to let go of the dieting mindset. It's not an overnight fix.

Tufted thanks for the TED talk. I need to watch it every day, especially the second half of it! I've been feeling quite down and worried about my health for a year or two now, so it was helpful to watch that. I stopped smoking 15 years ago, I don't drink a lot of alcohol although I do enjoy a couple of glasses of wine now and then. I do need to work on the exercise and more veggies.

To be clear, none of us are saying we're medical experts and know what to do and that's not what this thread is about. What we are is a group of people exhausted by dieting and looking for another way and looking for support from others like us.

Learning to make your body feel safe is a lovely way to put it, Cider.

How do you square giving up diets with the health thing of needing to be in a certain weight range for good health?

Well the point of giving up diets is that they don't work (long term)! So a better question would be why on earth wouldn't you guve up diets?

People have come to this thread because dieting has given them a messed-up relationship with food. Maybe the only way they have any chance of being in a certain weight range for good health is precisely to stop dieting.

Short - meant to say, I'd advise them to go and look at the 'eat like a normal person' website, which made me realise that dieting was the source of the problem, not the solution! Most of us are fatter than we were when we went on our first ever diet. In other words, we would probably be slimmer now if we had never even stepped on the scales and tried to lose weight in the first place.

Hey Messy, how did your appointment go?

The Well Fed Women podcast is brilliant. They offer 'Empowering advice for women, from women'. I listen to it as I walk my dog or do housework, and the presenters are really knowledgable around the issues of binge eating and negative impact of food restriction.

Thanks for that Jaimx86, I'm going to check it out now!

Thank you all for your kind words and providing a safe place

Good luck with your appointment tomorrow pinkstinks. It's brilliant you're seeking the help you need. Let us know how it goes.

Hey, appointment was really positive, I’ve been referred to my closest eating disorder clinic but there’s a 12 week wait, so in the meantime she’s given me some guidelines to follow and I have a fortnightly meeting with the gp practice’s psychologist who will supervise me until I get in at the clinic. Guidelines are basically:

Avoid weighing myself

Avoid any activities related to diet or weight loss.

Avoid anything that triggers binges and if a binge occurs, write down what triggered it immediately.

Continue engaging with BEAT and she thinks the eating disorder group is a good start as a self help.

Work on body image and self esteem. She’s given me a referral to an online CBT thing for that.

In terms of diagnosis, she isn’t able to fully diagnose but she said I strongly fit the criteria for BED and have some bulimic purging tendencies in the mix as well that I need to watch. She feels I need an assessment at the clinic as quickly as possible and she was really good. I basically just cried at her for 10 minutes while she tried to go through the assessment questions with me .. she didn’t push me though and just let me get it out.

She said she could see I was really low (I’ve seen her before for random things on and off for years) and she’s going to try and see if she can get me in at the clinic any sooner but I doubt she’ll be able to. She asked if I felt I needed to go back on fluoxetine but I’ve declined.

Fantastic Messy! That sounds like such a great meeting and it's really, really impressive to see all the help they're providing to ease you through the 12-week wait. I think those guidelines will be helpful for a lot of us - I've certainly found that not weighing myself takes away so much pressure so I'll definitely keep fighting the urge to replace the scales I threw out!

I know you were feeling rock bottom earlier today - hopefully now you're feeling more positive about being able to overcome this.

Yeah a lot better, considering I’m at the arse end of this at the moment it’s interesting how little I’m wanting to binge. A few cravings here and there but worlds away from where I’d be if I was this low without having gone through the realisation I’ve had in the last couple of days. It’s odd.