From here to obesity

[ILookLikeAPinkBlancmange]

On 1st Jan I weighed 17st 12lbs.

Shocked to realise my first target is to become Obese! At the moment I am Very Obese :(

To be considered Obese I need to get down to 16st.
Then, to be merely Overweight, I need to get down to 12st.

Height 5ft 3in, age 62
Weight 16st 13lbs

To tone as I go, I've just started going to a gym for the first time in my life, doing a very gentle 45-min exercise plan every day which hardly deserves to be called a workout.

I'm a sugar addict (literally) so I've cut out all cakes, biscuits, sweets and chocolate, i.e. 95% of my food intake!

I'm a faddy eater and hate most veg, try to eat them with the evening meal.

This is my diet:

Treats: if it is a hot day, I can have an ice cream. If we're out for a meal (very rare) I can have dessert or a cream tea if everyone else is having one. If it's a birthday, I can have 1 slice of cake.

Breakfast: 1 banana, 1 multi-vitamin pill.
Lunch: 1 round of sandwiches (usually cheese salad) + a bag of crisps (or occasionally something like scrambled eggs and tomatoes on toast, or a toasted corned beef sandwich).
Evening Meal: A non-greedy serving of whatever we're having.
Snacks: unlimited fresh fruit, 1 mini box of raisins, 2 soft dried figs - if hungry, maybe 2 Cheddars.
Drinks: I only drink Diet Pepsi - maybe a small box of orange juice about once a week.

Any thoughts?

@LegoTherapy How do you find the time to walk so much? I tried to do 10,000 steps a day which is five miles and I really struggled to fit it in. I do work full time and have DC as a single mother though so my schedule is already v busy.

@Fantina I'm also a single parent and I'm a full time carer for my mum too. I don't drive and the school run alone is a 5 mile walk per day. Add in the 2,5 miles to mum's and the shopping and walking around the house and it soon adds up. It's very hilly where I live so a lot of those miles are uphill. I bounce on my gym ball in the evenings too if I am watching tv and haven't done much walking. I'm on less than 8 miles today so once ds is finished bedtime it's ball time. Each bounce counts as a step and it's great for thighs and core which in my case need all the help they can get! Bouncing keeps me from snacking too.

@LegoTherapy Well done, it’s impressive.

@Also62 Gosh, I'm certainly not getting my height measured, then!

My flab is due to: 1. Long-term greed/eating disorder, 2. Gained 3st giving up smoking, started to diet it off then 3. My DH was ill and died, consoled myself with jumbo tins of Roses chocs!

@LegoTherapy
Your food intake and language around it strikes me as restrictive and as though you view it as a reward or as something you are allowed rather than something that fuels your body. Ditching the Pepsi would be a massive positive step. Could you wean off it and gradually replace with water? I was a Diet Coke addict
I choose to restrict it, but yes, it will always be a reward. I feel my sugar addiction is just greed - I'm not in denial and I don't eat in secret. But when I had no sweets in the house, I'd have been rooting through the cupboards and eating Frosties or golden syrup on toast to get the sugar fix. I'm not doing that now, it's controlled by having sweet treats available like a bunch of grapes, 2 dried figs or a golden delicious apple.

I don't eat enough veg because I don't like them, so I feel the fruit is not too bad, intend to cut it down later. I won't try to fight the Pepsi addiction until I'm confident I'm beating the sugar addiction, just as I didn't worry about the sugar until I'd definitely given up smoking.

So sorry for your loss @ILookLikeAPinkBlancmange 😔

I'm sorry for the loss of your husband and it's completely understandable to take some comfort in chocolate
I have a sweet tooth and always have. I've given up chocolate for Lent but have also given up sweets because otherwise I'd eat more sweets instead. I love savoury stuff too but since having ds I've had a thing for sweets.
Fruit is good for you. It's naturally occurring sugar combined with fibre, vitamins and minerals, antioxidants and lots of water. Fruit is good!

I think things can be very overwhelming at the start but you've made excellent progress and you are right not to do too much at once and take it step by step with small changes that become ingrained habits over time. I rarely ate porridge for breakfast but would have toast, crumpets or cereal that never kept me full beyond 9am. Then I'd eat a couple of doughnuts mid morning. Followed by a bagel and cheese with crisps. Mid afternoon snack of chocolate or toast. Dinner of big portions of pasta or pizza followed by pudding sometimes but always chocolate and lots of it in the evening watching tv. Those habits were ingrained until I slowly replaced them with my new ones. It feels great to know I'm eating better. It's not an amazingly healthy diet and needs less sugar and more veg and protein but it's a lot better. If I can do it then you can too😊

Thank you - that's very encouraging!

This is exactly how I lost 3 stone, although I did have more protein, veggies and salad but I didn't restrict any food groups, had chocolate, sweets or cake every day because I like a treat. One thing I did cut out completely was alcohol as I just saw that as wasted calories, but I ate exactly what I wanted and cut down to about 1800 calories a day and moved about 2 hours a day - walking and cycling with the odd dance class or tread workout thrown in. Took me 9 months as I didn't go for overly restrictive calories and I have kept it off for 3 years adopting the same principle. Sometimes I go up a bit and I then just go back to the above for a few weeks and it all evens out again.

The main takeaway from your diet is that you eat virtually no vegetables but eat unlimited fresh and dried fruit, which has just replaced the processed sugar addiction for another type of sugar - fructose. I am also a sugar addict so I know what this looks like. The raisins - they are insanely high in sugar. I am not sure you have cracked the sugar issue as much as you like to think. Swap out all that fruit for things like carrots, peppers and cucumbers or something

i know you say you don’t like veg but you would be better off eating crackers and some kind of cheese (Philadelphia) than all the fruit.

Try a raw pepper they are very similar to fruit in texture.