Food is ruining my life

[canichange]

Anyone else feel like this?

I have a great life. I'm a SAHM to two lovey boys. One is in school and one goes to nursery two days a week, so I have some free time for myself. Married a good man. We live in a beautiful house in a beautiful area. Enough money. Lovely friends. I've got the life I always wanted. Except.....

I am 2-3 stone overweight, and it ruins every single good thing in my life.

It holds me back from doing things with my boys. I still do things with them because I don't want them to miss out, but there's always this underlying negative feeling. I don't enjoy intimacy with my husband because I hate the way I look. I don't enjoy my amazing garden and the land with our house because I feel uncomfortable in my clothes. I waste money buying clothes that I think will make me look better when in fact, nothing will until I loose weight. I'm reluctant to do things with friends because I'm embarrassed about the way I look. I like to exercise, but this extra weight I'm carrying around makes it so much harder to do.

My unhealthy relationship with food is ruining all the good things in my life. I'm so much happier when I have had a good day of healthy, satisfying eating, but I just give into the cravings, then binge until I feel sick. It's horrible.

If I could just break the cycle I'm in when it comes to food, everything would be better.

Not sure why I've posted really, just can't stop thinking about this and feel like I need to get it out there.

Read the book 'why we eat too much '

Oh OP 

Thé recommendation of Mnusernc is a good one. It explains why diets don't work and provides an outline of how to fix things.

It can feel like an impossible task to start with, but once you get on track, it becomes easier and easier. And enjoyable.

Why don't you join us on the Why We Eat Too Much threads in Weight Loss Chat? I've lost over three stones and have never felt better. I hate to be evangelical as it can seem off putting, but the way of eating we are following does work.

Thanks both, I've just ordered the book on Amazon and will look up the threads.

I've done it before. I lost nearly 4 stone for my wedding and really got into running. I looked and felt amazing. Then after both of my boys were born I lost at least 3 stone of baby weight each time.

I've been 'on a diet' since the first lockdown, yet I am nearly the heaviest I've ever been during that time. I think you are right that I need to get off the diet train.

How you look is mainly a factor of how you eat, so start there.

This is really important to you.

Use your child-free time to meal plan, shop for and prepare food. Make it so that you never have to decide what to eat when you’re hungry.

Then walk as much as you can, including to school and nursery if you can.

Put your comfy stuff on and get out in the garden… brush up, do some weeding, Porter around.

You’re in a really good position to sort this out.

By Christmas you’ll have some new habits.

In the new year, think again about whether you want or need to do some more intensive exercise.

By this time next year you will have changed your life!

Dieting slows your metabolism so that's why it gets harder as your body is desperately trying to bring your weight up. You need to very gradually lower your set point and keep it steady. The book explains it all.
As a quick win though I would add kefir every morning and cut out fizzy drinks if you have them

My unhealthy relationship with food is also ruining all the good things in my life :( I don't want to go into details but you are definitely not alone.

I lost 2 stone this year having been miserable about my weight for years. Weirdly, two things gave me the motivation to do it. One was seeing someone go from overweight, walking with a walking stick, in constant pain, to size 8 fitness instructor now taking minimal medication. I just looked at the her and looked at myself and thought 'well, if she can do it...' The other was probably quite a well known saying but it really resonated with me. Which is that losing weight is hard, and being overweight is hard. So you have to choose your hard. I had never thought of it like that before, that staying overweight wasn't the easy option at all, it was still hard.

Anyway, in practical terms instead of just doing exercise classes or whatever, I joined a gym that does coaching - exercise, mindset, nutrition, accountability, the whole works. It is really expensive but it's the best money I've ever spent. And I've more than saved a similar amount by not wasting it on clothes trying to paper over the cracks and make myself feel better.

You can do this, you really can. You've done it before, you can do it again.

Sorry, I missed off an important part of what I was trying to say!

My relationship with food was terrible. I craved sugar, I was a binge eater, I thought about food constantly.

Weirdly, once I started losing weight, I felt like I control my food, food doesn't control me anymore. I don't think about it all the time and I am able to enjoy it more.

@VerveClique thanks - I really like the bit you've said about new habits between now and Christmas, then ramping things up in the new year and then hopefully being somewhere near where I want to be this time next year.

I'm sort of trying to do that actually. I've started doing some Joe Wicks YouTube workouts, just the 15 minute ones, and I've been trying to go for a run at the weekends and do a bit of walking. We live out in the country so I have to drive to school, but I could park further away from school and make the boys walk. I quite often stick the little one in the pushchair and go for a good stomp when the big one is at school. It's hilly around here so I always build up a sweat.

I think that's kind of the point I'm making though. I do all this stuff, then ruin it by gorging on chocolate and cake and other unhealthy things. It's like I'm addicted to junk food. It's not like I lead a really sedentary lifestyle and 'deserve' to be overweight, I just can't stop making terrible food choices.

You are completely right in what you say though, I am in a brilliant place to make changes. I think I almost use that as a stick to beat myself with - I should be able to do this and therefore I really must be useless if I can't.

You've described the way I feel perfectly. My life is great, and (apart from having very little spare time due to being a single parent) I'm in a good position to make changes. I'm even reasonably (sporadically) active (in terms of dog walks, sea swimming etc). But I just keep sabotaging it in the evenings, and I'm so frustrated with myself. This extra 3 stone I'm carrying around affects everything, and I'm tired of papering over the cracks (as another poster put it) by buying new clothes, toiletries etc.
I'm going to try and figure out some small changes I can make in the evenings, that's where I ruin everything by just parking my knackered bum on the sofa and mindlessly watching tv/eating rubbish for hours. I've ordered that book too, thanks earlier poster for the recommendation.

Definitely read 'Why We Eat Too Much' - it's a revelation. I've just turned 50 and have got to the stage where the amount of headspace I've given to dieting over the decades, losing the same stone or two repeatedly, makes me furious!

Ditch the dieting, eat filling, nutritious, homemade meals, avoid highly processed foods and sugar as much as you can). Do a manageable amount of exercise that works for you. Accept that weight loss will be slow and steady. Oh and look after your gut - I take a good probiotic.

Feeding yourself good food, and enough if it to make you not hungry, will help you to resist the cake and chocolate. Dieting makes you hungry and sets you up to fail!

Thank you @canichange!

I’ve not exactly cracked this myself. But I’m self employed and work 50 hours per week sometimes and I’ve just had to do it. My health was deteriorating.

I actually started the other way around, with a lot of hardcore exercise, which I still do, because I find food so difficult to address.

I just don’t have a lot of time or headspace to commit to it.

Have your snacks ready. Eat half of something. Don’t open things you’d rather not eat, or better still try to not have them in the house. Think about really caring for and feeling your body. Find little habits you can break.

Take care. It’s tough. I really do understand!

Fueling

Small thing that really helped me was when i heard someone say... it is ok to be hungry.

Changed my way of thinking and i have lost 1.5 stone.. halfway to my goal weight and feel so much better. Dont be scared of feeling a bit hungry. You overcome it very very quick, it is like re-training your body. Now i dont even feel hungry constantly and dont think of food all the time.

I’m sure you’re not the only one, Op and you’ve eloquently described the dilemma. it’s sad that women judge themselves so! Especially when it gets in the way of actually LIVING! (Also a man who is a couple of stone overweight might not be crazy about it, but he would be unlikely to beat himself up about it!)

I also think getting off the dieting treadmill is the only way. Esp for us more emotional types. It just makes things worse. You will never accept your self as you are if you are on a diet, thinking about going on a diet, or coming off a diet! So best to forget about them altogether and (I think) let the chips fall where they fall at whatever size that may be.

I am really anti diets these days; they never work. In terms of everyday food and eating etc I think self-care is the key. Not self-denial but looking after yourself. Self care, love, self-appreciation and acceptance.

Reduce carbs! I was like you - 3st overweight and miserable. I lost weight the conventional way and put half of it back on within months. Since I went low carb, I’m down 3 stone, normal BMI and my sugar-cravings have gone! There’s a low carb bootcamp going on run by @BIWI. Not too late to join!

Oops I meant to say, they don’t work long term. Short term maybe, after much effort, but how pointless is that when its more than likely most or all of the weight comes back on! Only changing long term habits really work and IMO these changes are best done quietly, slowly and with as little fanfare as possible, whilst one gets on with life!

I was saying to someone recently that part of what allowed the weight to creep on and took me so long to take action to lose it was that deep down I didn't really think I deserved it. My confidence was so rock bottom that I felt like it was my punishment for being useless.

Believing you can do it is the most important thing, the rest of it follows after.

Lots of good advice on the weight loss but I wanted to respond to your comment on intimacy. I had a similar experience after gaining lots of weight and tried to avoid being intimate with my DH. I lost 4 stone a few years ago, my confidence soared and we went back to having amazing sex regularly. It's been 3 or 4 years now so I've had lots of conversations with DH about it. He's told me several times that while he's glad I've lost weight and I'm happy about it, there wasn't a single moment when he didn't find me attractive. The only reason we stopped having amazing sex was because I lost my confidence and kept rejecting him which went on to dent his confidence. If I had whipped my clothes off and suggested an "early night" when I was 4st overweight he would have jumped into bed in a heartbeat. I'm glad we're back on track but I could kick myself for all that time wasted worrying about not being good enough for him. I probably wouldn't have believed him at the time but he really does mean it when he says it was always about my avoidance and never about him not wanting it.

I agree that if you can afford it invest in some third party support. I was exactly the same as you, spent a fortune on diets and clothes to hide / accentuate a ‘curvy’ figure but I felt like crap and like I was just waiting for my life to start once I got around to losing weight.

I wish I was one of those women who just accept the way they are and embrace it but I’m not. So instead I’ve signed up to a plan with a local personal trainer who focuses on nutrition. It’s been worth every penny I’ve lost a stone and introduced healthy habits and ditched unhealthy ones I never thought I’d see the back of.

There are people who have the motivation to do this alone - it’s not as if there’s not a million plans and books out there to help - but if you can’t then being held accountable by someone else who spoon feeds you what you need to do each day checks up on you weekly and is at the end of the phone whenever you need is priceless.

OP, this may be way off the mark, but your post reminded me of something I read recently, and I wondered if it might help. Below is an extract from the article and here is the link: www.oliverburkeman.com/never

" I think virtually everyone, except perhaps the very Zen or very old, goes through life haunted to some degree by the feeling that this isn't quite the real thing, not just yet – that soon enough, we'll get everything in working order, get organised, get our personal issues resolved, but that till then we're living what the great Swiss psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz called the "provisional life." ("There is a strange feeling that one is not yet in real life. For the time being, one is doing this or that… [but] there is always the fantasy that sometime in the future the real thing will come about.") "

It might not ring true (I read it to DH who couldn't get it) whereas for me it summed up feelings I hadn't identified. I am middle aged, 2 kids and still don't feel that life has really begun yet, that it will when I've lost weight, got the new job etc. But it has and I'm halfway through!!!

I can't be of much help on the weight bit as I'm 1.5 stone overweight and the taste of something in my mouth outweighs the discomfort of the tightness of my waist (I'm trying to work on this), but I hope this article can encourage you to start living your life and enjoying yourself whilst you sort your weight out, not after you have done.

@MilduraS

I also had this when I was overweight. I knew DH found me attractive (at least he said so a lot and he's generally trustworthy) but I didn't find me attractive so I didn't feel sexy enough.

Have a look at a book called Just Eat It by Laura Thomas

@CheshireSplat - that quote is spot on. I really get it . Describes things perfectly. Thank you!

Sorry to derail OP.

You've had some good advice here. Can I just add... I held back off the new clothes thing, for similar reasons. Far too long later, I was still wearing clothes I didn't feel good in. Clothes wear out anyhow. I bought some new stuff, that I felt better in. I am losing weight, but meanwhile I am feeling better in the clothes I bought (and therefore about myself, which affects whether I comfort eat or not). So buy some new stuff, would be my advice. It gets past it best anyhow, and you will be able to charity shopit in the comfortable knowledge that it is now too big for you! I think by not allowing myself to have new stuff, I was punishing myself, which was counter-productive.