Help me please

[Minerval]

I'm now at my heaviest 18 stone. I have tried all the diets and nothing works. I am nearly 45 now and I despise myself. I actually hate food now. I no longer know where to start to either feed me or my family. Help me please how can I lose this weight and be happy.

@Minerval

Hi,

I was watching a post by Team RH about this and there are some great free videos on explaining why although you tried all the diets you probably tried them and stuck to depreciation day diets Monday to Thursday and then are what you liked Friday to Sunday and didn’t loose weight as by the time you included booze and snacks you are more averaged over the whole week than your burner.

There are loads of free videos on their Facebook page.

I wouldn’t try a drastic diet I would make a decision that I and my family need a new way of eating, cut out the crap and the best way to do that is not to have it in the house, so get rid of it and meal plan healthy meals and snacks with no calorie drinks.

If you google healthy family reciepes I’m sure you get loads of ideas and the. Do an online shop and make sure you don’t buy junk

Tried team RH also for a month and stuck to it religiously, weekends also. I gained a stone. They weren't very helpful in response.

Have you been to see a GP? If you have tried diets and end up putting on weight there must be something that needs addressing medically.

I have an interactive thyroid for about 30 years and autoimmune diseases

The basic principles of what they say do work, I don’t follow them religiously but drastically cutting your calories won’t work in the long term for a lot of people. Have you tried sticking to 2000 calories no booze and a high protein low carb diet with 10000 steps a day?

If you weigh your food carefully and keep the steps up you will be burning a lot more that 2000 calories and will loose weight. I struggle to loose weight quickly and if you up your exercise even going from 3000 to 10000 steps you will gain some muscle but it should be offset by your weight loss.

Is it possible you have made errors with your weighing? Or not included everything? My DH used to drink flavoured water as it was water and healthy and he thought it was calorie free being water, I checked the nutrition label and it was 140 calories per 500ml bottle. Sometimes so of the entries in My fitness pal can be wrong and I know how easy it is to enter one serving but the serving recommended is different than we think or how easy it is to enter a 30g packet of crisps as 25g using the preprogrammed searches for the crisps. I don’t think anyone weighs perfectly and I know I can be lazy and look for the nearest option.

Where do you think you go wrong?

Have you ever tried MyFitnessPal for tracking your food.

I found it best to log a normal week, just being absolutely honest about what you are consuming, food and drink.

That way you can see how many calories a normal day includes for you, and how you consume them. Are you racking up loads of calories by having 6 cups of tea with 2 spoons of sugar? That kind of thing.

It also breaks down for you what percentage of your diet is carbs, protein and fat.

Once you know what you're diet looks like for real you can decide what you need to cut down on.

For me I find if I reduce carbs I lose weight, so I cut sugar from my coffee, only eat pasta once a week and don't have bread/crackers. I've also really upped my veg intake, mainly green beans, asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms and baby corn and reduced fruit.

I've just hit 20lb loss, loads and loads and loads left to lose but it's working.

Hi OP

I have lost close to 3 stone in weight. I’m no expert but here are my tips in case they help:

• consistency is key. You need to eat in a caloric deficit every single day. No cheat days or even cheat meals. That doesn’t mean no treats because it’s easy to build in some nice stuff if you’re eating plenty of calories. But seriously, you will not see results if you have ‘fuck it’ days where you eat everything you want. This is the single most important thing.

• eat enough calories. You will definitely be able to eat 2000 if you also walk. Don’t go down to 1200 even if people tell you to because it will screw your metabolism up. Work out your BMR (and never go below that) and your TDEE (google these terms for a calculator). Subtract about 500-750 cals from your TDEE and revise this whenever you lose weight.

• exercise is also essential. I know many say it’s not but it ramps up your TDEE loads, meaning that you lose more and can eat more. By exercise I mean 10,000 steps of walking or slow jogging, so nothing extreme at all.

• don’t get too fixated on your weight, especially at the beginning. If you need to lose around 7 stone, this will take ages so don’t expect miraculous results. Just keep up the consistency even if the scale doesn’t always show it.

• never do a diet or eating plan that you are not able to do forever. If you do, you’re going to fall off the wagon and will regain weight you have lost. Things like Exante and Cambridge promise huge losses but their success rate is very very low. You will only change long term by adopting a healthy eating plan that you can keep up forever.

Good luck OP. It’s not easy but it’s doable. I was 14 st 7 in March, hated myself and thought there was no way out of this. I am now 11 st 10 and feel awesome. I have a few more pounds to go but I am now in the range where I want to be. Lots of my chronic health issues have just vanished. I don’t feel deprived because I don’t follow a fad diet.

Can you get medication for your thyroid? If so, that should help with losing weight.

I also used to think that it was incapable of losing weight but I wasn’t. In fact, once I got a proper handle on it, it turned out that my body was boringly predictable and my weight loss mirrored my calorie deficit almost exactly. Very very few people are medically incapable of losing weight and nearly all who gain weight are consuming more energy than they expend.

When did you last have a thyroid test? If my medication is too low I pile on the pounds. And when I say "Too Low" I am still medicated within the acceptable range.. but I still feel tired/cold and put on weight. I spoke to my GP and he was happy for me to ^^ my level of levo. I did. Symptoms disappeared, weight started to reflect eating (so if I dieted I lost) and I feel great. Had another blood test and still within the acceptable range just higher up. Our NHS acceptable range is something like 12-21. At 16 felt crap. At 18 or above I am good.