Brutally honest post: my fat excuses

[1stIVFjourney2015]

Brutally honest post: I hate myself

I haven’t lost any of the 3 stone I gained when I was pregnant - that was 2 years ago. There is no excuse.

All I can think is it is related to my history of self-sabotage and self-harm, and I’m sure this is just the result of some underlying mental issue I must have. When I start a diet, I do great for the first few days then I hugely binge, like I am punishing myself for doing well – that’s the feeling I seem to have when I am doing it. I also struggle to exercise (queue the excuses) I have a two year old and I work full-time in an office, my husband works evenings and weekends so when I get home, I’m right to cooking tea and looking after my son, then I put my son to bed at approx. 8pm and he takes around 1 hour to fall asleep. Once he is asleep, I go downstairs and do a bit of tidying, then I’m tired and go to bed at around 10pm. I find it difficult to find the time to exercise, but then when I do, my back is so bad that it kills me (I literally cannot walk for 5 minutes without needing to sit down due to my back). I had back issues before pregnancy, but they are worse now, and I know my weight is part of the problem and I feel like I am in a rut of excuses and I need to change, but I cannot figure out how to allow myself to do it!

I feel like the block is mental and I don’t know how to get past it, it is making me miserable and a terrible mother. I hate being the size I am, my BMI is 34.5 therefore morbidly obese and I am 31 years old. I don’t go out where I need to dress up anywhere as I am embarrassed to be seen, and I comfort myself with food. Ill take my son places but thats it, ands its always somewhere not local, so I dont get seen by people who knew me when I was slim

Can anyone else relate? What did you do? How did you break this terrible cycle?

Medical conditions: Anxiety, depression (on medication, so I feel fine when I am on it) and PCOS which leads to weight gain - great

You do sound like you think you need to punish yourself - either by dieting hard, or by being horrid to yourself if you "break" your eating plan. I don't know how you solve that other than in tiny steps - perhaps try and catch yourself having that thought that's mean to yourself, and re-frame it into a new thought that's healthier? So "I'm useless at this" is replaced with "this is really hard I will keep trying" if you see what I mean?

I also found I'd fallen into some really unhelpful beliefs, such as sugar will help when I'm tired. Um, no, a glass of water will help when I'm tired, and longer term losing the weight will help a LOT with the tiredness too!

Try not to be so tough on yourself. You are (I hope) wanting to become the healthiest, happiest version of yourself through changing how you eat and gradually building up to exercising again. You don't need to be punishing or blaming at the same time.

You are very short on time and I hugely sympathise with the reality of that. Even a short walk in your lunch break (if you get one) or a longer walk at the weekend, will make a difference when done regularly

Antidepressants can make you gain weight and IME cause food cravings that create binges (I never binged before them, or once I come back off them). So that might not be helping, but obviously important not to relapse into depression and anxiety. Hormonal imbalances, and especially PCOS, can cause weight gain. So actually that you have not GAINED weight is a bonus here. Yes you haven't lost it either, but that means that your energy intake and output are about equal. How is your sleep? Not sleeping enough can cause weight gain too.

So, how to lose weight? Well, really this is about finding a way to prioritise some "me" time (hard to do when you have a busy life and are a Mum I know!) You will never find hours to spend at the gym or hours to cook from scratch out of nowhere, but you can find a little bit of time to chop up some fruit, or boil some eggs, or do a 5 minute meditation, or take the stairs instead of the lift at work.

Finding a substitute for food binges or binge foods is important too. So find a lower calorie version or watch some Binge worthy Netflix instead.

I think the big key is to just make little changes, and if you "mess up" work out the root cause and work on that.

I think counselling basically helps everybody, and is a much more effective treatment for anxiety and depression long term than medication is, so that could well be beneficial too, but don't make that another thing to stress about. Finding 5 minutes to do a mini meditation or read about CBT techniques you can try yourself will be great too, and are much easier to fit in to a busy life!

Losing weight can seem like such an overwhelming big issue we forget to break it into bite size chunks. Start making small changes (the first one I'll help you with: it's to be kinder to yourself!) can make more difference long term than strict adherence to a low calorie diet, because you can change your habits so that you don't just lose weight, you never gain it back either.

Losing weight especially at the lower rnds of the scale (aka bikini body) is very hard. Even models , actors, professional sports people yo yo. It is not easy at all. And not sustaianable for long periods of time.
Movie stars can get in prime state for a movie...then you see them 6 months later and they have put 10lbs back on.
Victoria secrets models are full time...exercise like gell...are young...genetically gifted..starving most of the time and they too have to cycle their leanness. What chance dies your average working class parent have?

Binge on sprouts....green veg...thank me later.

I feel very sad for you.

My experience is that the longer it's been since you had your child the more difficult it is to lose weight. The weight you've gained somehow "settles" and your body accepts it... I think you need to change your eating habits rather than diet and maybe also look at some self-care/self-love literature? You sound very sad and disturbed and you most certainly make excuses in your post ... I think you really need to rethink your attitude towards weight loss and see it as your friend not your enemy

Best wishes x
I hope you can move on and pop that self destructive bubble

Forget exercising at bedtime if you’re knackered, you’ll just punish yourself when it doesn’t happen. Weight loss is 90% food intake anyway.

I’d do a long walk at the weekend and a 10 min walk each lunchtime instead.

You need to sensibly change your eating habits though. Look at slimming world-join online if it’s easier.

Exercise isvery important for health, the problem is that it's easy to to over compensate and eat back and more the calories you have used, but the importance of exercise goes above and beyond just the calories it uses.

I'd focus on cutting calories to lose weight rather than through exercise.
Example, I was looking at slice of cheesecake earlier, 346 cals, that's say 45 mins on the treadmill.
If you get a lunch break, can you go out for a 15 min walk just for sake of the exercise, rather than weight loss, and the otherwise try and lose weight by calorie restriction.
There's no need for any special diet, just lower calorie intake to lower than the standard daily requirement of 2000. Even if you only cut down to 1600 daily, you'd still lose weight, albeit gradually.
Protein and vegetables/fruit are your friends. A little bit of carbs is ok and fat ditto.
Eg instead of having whole jacket potato with fillings, just have half the potato with fillings.
Lunch, have a sandwich but no crisps. Depends what you eat but let's say you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, just see if you can cut 150-200 from each meals and you're done.
It genuinely doesn't need to be more complicated than that.

For a start, don't beat yourself up. Working FT with a 2yo is a lot more than many mothers do. It's hard, exhausting and puts you in a situation of survival mode that makes being proactive very difficult if not impossible. It might very well be that right now is just not the best time to consider taking on the huge demands of losing weight on top of it. The more pressure you put on yourself, the more tired you'll be, the more disheartened and depressed you'll feel, and the more you'll want to eat to make you feel better. It's a vicious circle.

So start by being kind to yourself and congratulate yourself for what you are managing to do. Then reduce your expectations for the time being and focus on the little things you can do to help yourself. Could you rely on your colleagues to give you moral support? Being able to be honest, talk about it, realise that you're not the only one, and mutually support yourself so that you at least don't eat much during the day is a good way to go about it. If breakfast is an issue, eating unhealthily, could you consider waiting until you get to work and having something there healthier?

Then try to come up with small strategies. What's your weakness that makes you binge? Take aways, cakes and biscuits, anything? If take aways, throw away all the leaflets, get rid of the apps. You won't be able to go out with your 2yo, so you need to fight the ordering.

If cake and biscuits, don't buy any, but one thing that could help is buying sugar free lollies, that you can suck to get that sugar craving. Lollies take longer to get through than a biscuit and have much fewer calories. Freeze healthy yogurt, or even if you are desperate for a bar of chocolate, buy only one, and put it in the freezer in the morning.

Tell yourself that if you are good to your standard for 5 or 6 days, having one bad day is really not so bad, no need to be filled with guilt afterwards.

As for your back, sadly, it is highly likely that what will help is exercise, gently, even through the pain. Do go and see your GP for advice though.

Think of ways you can distract yourself when the urge to eat takes over. Are there any activities or things you can do that would bring you some pleasure besides eating.

And finally, break any habits associated with eating. If you are used to eating whilst watching TV, once your child is in bed, it is going to be very hard to stop it and that's usually where most of the damage is made. So instead of focusing on not eating, focus on what else you can associate watching TV with, or what else you can do that you won't associate with eating.

Through it all, remember that you can lose weight at any time, so if right now is not the right time, next year or the year after might be so. Don't let this make you feel even more miserable.