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.

That is SO good to hear Flighty! I know it's the right thing for me to do, but to hear someone else say they've been successful in giving up dieting is really inspirational.

Hi anyone around to chat how their day went?

Hi all I've been doing pretty good. I stopped binging back in August last year and also dieting. Easter of course is a bingers nightmare but I no longer beat myself up if I over indulge.

I try and reflect he next day on how it made me feel, it's always crap I never feel good after binging. So instead of then restricting I just eat when I'm hungry and try hard not to pick when I'm not.

I think the more I'm doing this the easier the habit is becoming. Dieting fucked up my relationship with food for so long I no longer know how to eat normally!

I hate half a chocolate other other day and stopped. That is unheard of. They have always been my binge chocolate of choice.

I'm allowing myself chocolate until Easter eggs are gone. I think it's fairly normal eating to have more chocolate over Easter.

So lovely to find this thread! I'm opposed to dieting and try to trust my body, but it's changing as I go through perimenopaus and it's hard to resist an urge to try and lose weight. Will read back through the thread.

I've only read the OP but the idea that I could be helped psychologically re food is very welcome.

I'm 46, peri-menopausal and about 2-3 stones heavier than I want to be.

If I was told what to eat at each meal I'd be fine. I'm just rubbish at working things out (current brain issues after a trauma or two) and I've also got fed up at weighing everything to calorie count.

I eat when I'm bored, sad, tired. I panic at the thought of being hungry. I don't like waste so I'm the dustbin. Do okay with veg but hardly eat any fruit. Drink very little.

Took six months to lose the baby weight from dc1, 12 months for dc2 then got poorly after dc3 and put two stones on. Lost it then back on again. I think through not eating enough, often miss breakfast as can't face it, and at the wrong times. Exercise makes no difference and I've never lost an weight through regular exercise.

I'm going to read all the thread now.

Hi all I'm currently on holiday and as you do, I've been thinking what to do about my eating and excess weight
I'll read the thread all the way through when I get some better WiFi
in the past 6 month I've tried at least 6 different diets. I've been on the rebound since losing a stone on a low carb diet last year. I've been on diets forever and am no thinner or healthier
My instinct is to cut the diets out of my life but I'm scared of losing control.
How do I get out of this dysfunctional way of eating. It's affecting my whole way of life.

I had a major wobble yesterday. I went out for a work lunch and afterwards had some time to kill so I went shopping because I've got an event coming up and would like something new to wear. Tried on a skirt and trousers in my current (biggest) size and to my dismay they were rather tight around the waist and tummy, in a I-can-do-them-up-but-breathing-is-difficult kind of way. I've been feeling so confident about myself since my brain switched off from dieting and I stopped weighing myself that I was certain I was slimmer. I FEEL slimmer, if that makes sense. And more attractive/sexier/energetic. Yet the clothes I tried on told me differently.
My automatic reaction was to panic and think I can't do this, I'm getting fatter, and I went to re-load a calorie counting app to my phone. But then I forced myself to stop and I gave myself a good talking to – do I really want to swap how brilliant I've been feeling lately with the stress of dieting again? The answer was an overwhelming NO. So I gave up shopping and went to the nearest pub, had a pint and read my book for a while to distract myself!
Afterwards I popped into John Lewis on my way home (I was in Oxford St) and found a couple of gorgeous tops in my size that fitted nicely and flatteringly so I bought those instead.
I'm not reconciled to getting bigger by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm going to step up my exercise so that I'm at least more toned. Tomorrow I'm heading to my parents' house for the weekend and they have bathroom scales. Normally I'd hop on as a matter of habit but this time I won't go near them!

Well done WhatwouldOlivia, so hard, that sort of thing would have set me right back. I am with you on exercising to feel more toned etc

Wow oliviapope, that's brilliant, well done. It's awful how a disappointment in the changing room can dent our confidence, it happens to me too. Your response was fab, really mindful.

I left half my tea last night because I was full, not something I'm usually good at doing. Am pleased.

Thanks belonger and Octopus37! I am kind of amazed that I didn't crack and download the app, as that's what I've done in the past. What's great is that I feel good again today and I'm not dwelling on the too-tight clothes.
Now I'm sitting drinking a can of actual Coke, which I haven't done in about 25 years! I've been reading about the links between Diet Coke and obesity and how it makes sugar cravings worse, so I've gone full fat. It's one of the new thinner cans but I actually don't think I'll be able to finish it as it tastes SO sweet!
And it sounds like your response to your dinner last night was equally mindful belonger - that's something you'd probably never do if you were feeling deprived in diet mode. Well done!

Couldn't finish the Coke. Too. Much. Sugar.

Lol! I've realised my sweet tooth can actually only cope with small amounts of sweetness

I am just desperate to be 'normal'. I want to think about food like a normal person - have cake if I want to without feeling overwhelming guilt.

I've been on some kind of diet since I was oh, 9 or 10 or so. First of all it was those weird bulking pills my grandmother gave me.

Then...
Weight Watchers (Why can I eat a shitty ready meal but not an avocado?)
SW (I FUCKING HATE SYNS)
Grapefruit (mouth ulcers)
Cabbage soup (fart central)
Some ridiculous self-devised 1 meal a day and apples the rest of the time (faint and bonkers. Nearly ate my own arm)
Atkins (felt wretched after 3 days)
GI (NO MORE PORRIDGE, PLEASE)
South Beach (free with a magazine)
Harcombe (Utterly joyless)
Blood sugar (went carb-mental after that one)

...and on and on - over 40 years people. 40 years of self-hatred - and as a consequence I have some hugely fucked up ideas about myself, my self-esteem, my weight etc etc. It's just horrible.

I hate that supposedly the nicest thing anyone can say is "have you lost weight".

I hate that food is so heavily emotionalised.

And I REALLY hate the whole good/bad food thing.

I have signed up to Rebelfit because I want the encouragement to exercise, and the motivation. His approach to food is perhaps outside the bounds of no-diet but since he hates SW as much as I do I can live with that, and everything he says is "do your best, whatever works for you".

I hope that doesn't fall in to the "have you tried" camp, I'm absolutely NOT suggesting anyone else "should" do the same at all! I'm just adding some exercise in to my very sedentary lifestyle - easier now the evenings are a bit lighter!

Oh but toast for breakfast! COUNT ME IN!

@Flightywoman I get you - I've been there got the t shirt, as they say
I don't what is normal - do I like cake or not? Is it just a reaction to one of the diets or plans I've done in my life?
I could add a few to your list - the packet soup diet, the all bran diet, my friend dressed up in a plastic suit and frantically exercised every night!!! The laxative diet - urghhh why do we subject our bodies to this??

I don't really know how I'm going to find my normal, because I don't know myself properly it's buried under years of diets and crazy eating advice

I'm going to re-read When Women Stop Hating Their Bodies. It really helped me a while ago. Can't remember the authors

I’ve just signed up for Rebelfit too Flighty. It’s not a diet. He hates diets with a passion! But it’s about nutrition and exercise. I tried it before but I think it looks better now.

Im not doing well at doing anything on my own. Even not dieting! And was seriously thinking of either WW or SW yet again. But that way madness lies. The Beach Body plan seems sensible and it ends the day we go on holiday. So perfect timing really.

I’m currently reading the Jason vale book on giving up alcohol. That is one of my main issues. I have to accept that I cannot drink wine and lose weight.

After that I’ll finish Why Diets Make Us Fat - which was rcmmended th last time I tried Rebelfit.

I was just like looking at Jason Vale titles on A**zon - he's very.....diety!

Loads of lose 5lbs in 5 days/7lbs in 7 days juice diets...

Calorie counting and dieting aren’t the same in my opinion. I eat whever I feel like to maintain my weight (I can maintain on roughly 2-2,100 cals per day now as pcos is under control and I am active) but I count every calorie. If I have an over day then I manage it the next day.

Hi all - can I join please? What a refreshing thread! I’ve read through all the posts.

Like many of you I was exposed to diets from a young age (I’m 30 now) and was put on a diet at 11 by my mum. I was slightly chubby but I suppose you’d say it was ‘puppy fat’. Anyway, that was the start of a lifetime of hating my body and dieting. Even in my early teens I would flick through catalogues and think about how I wanted to look like the models and the kinds of clothes I could wear once I’d lost weight. Very sad to think of how many years I wasted.

Anyway, after 19 years of diets I’m bigger than ever! I started to realise about a year ago that diets were not the answer after yet another failed SW attempt. Since then I’ve been dipping my toe into eating normally and giving up diets but was almost still treating that as a diet and thinking about what I should be eating and how much I was eating. This thread is going to be so helpful to me I can already tell.

I’m not happy with my weight, I wouldn’t choose it. But I’ve decided to not spend another second agonising over my body. Instead I need to concentrate on looking after it, being kind to myself and making it feel good.

Looking forward to sharing this journey with you all.

Calorie counting is restricting your diet in some way- by calories. If I calorie count then I start to feel guilty about food, see good food and bad food. I'm more likely to binge if I go over my allowed calories and 'fail' that day.

Counting calories isn't listening to your body. I'm about 1.5 stone over my upper BMI and 2.5 stone over where I'd like to be. Or used to want to be.

Part of giving up dieting is about accepting the fact that I may never lose anymore weight. I could be this weight forever. And that's OK.

Flighty - yes he is. He does the juice fasts etc. I’m not into those. But I have a def problem with alcohol and his book on giving that up gets good reviews. Not diet related.

CiderwithBuda his book on stopping drinking really changed my attitude to drinking and I've gone from having wine several nights a week, to barely drinking at all - haven't touched a drop in 8 months apart from the odd glass when away on holiday.

That’s what I’m aiming for FlightyMare. (It’s confusing having two Flighty names! )

I cannot drink the way I do and lose weight.