I've had it with this obsession with food and weight.

[JamesPringle]

Just a rant.

I am a woman in my forties. I have three children, a career, a lovely partner, and I am privileged and blessed in all the important, significant ways. I am so so lucky.

I have spent my entire life being obsessed with food and weight. I can't remember a time when I didn't want the cake, all of it to myself, and neither can I remember a time when I wasn't feeling either ashamed of being overweight or elated with being slim. Food dominates my days, either because I'm planning on eating too much of it and that excites me, or because I'm planning on not eating enough. My entire mood is affected by how tight my jeans are. If I'm on the heavy side, I feel truly monstrous, and if I'm on the slimmer side, even if I'm gaunt and unwell, I feel sexy and attractive.

I've just started yet another diet, and something has clicked inside me.

Fuck it.

Fuck the diets. Fuck the feeling that I hate my waist, and that my upper arms aren't pretty enough. Fuck the hateful feeling I get when I'm looking in the mirror. Fuck the fact that I think far more about my weight and what I'm eating than I do about my career, which I absolutely love, and that even when I have success, I concentrate more on how I'm looking.

I don't know how to do it, but I'm going to try and change this battle I've had with myself for as long as I can remember. I am not going to judge myself in this way anymore. I want to enjoy food and then forget about it, and I want to treat my body with kindness and tenderness.

<and breathe>

Here here

I’ve been doing so much thinking about this recently. I’ve spent so much of my life dieting, failing and basically being really unkind to myself. Such a waste.

I’m determined to change. Some things I have done include- getting a notebook and really thinking about the difficult questions about food- why do I feel that way, why do I binge etc. ; laying off the calorie counting and just trusting myself to eat 3 meals a day; hiding my scales. I’ve kept up my exercise and my meals are all fairly healthy. Just trying to lose the obsessive behaviour. It’s making me very unhappy.

Thanks so much for this. The notebook could really work for me, I think. I've just reached a point where I feel a bit stunned that half my life has passed me by, and my body has given me health and happiness and children, and I'm still down on it.

All my siblings have issues around food, and it's clear why. One of our parents has their own weight insecurities and projects that on others. But at least now I can see that and acknowledge it, and hopefully that will make it easier to move past it.

Hi @JamesPringle I can wholeheartedly relate to your post - I’m completely fed up of it too. I’m planning on re-reading my copy of Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole. I read it a few years ago and found it really enlightening but I’ve recently found myself tuning back into all the diet chatter that surrounds us. I need to refresh the process on breaking free from diet mentality.

Sounds like a plan to me!
I've had the most success I've ever had with weight loss now and I wasn't thinking about being thin or a size whatever....I was mainly concerned with being as fit and healthy as possible.
So now I've lost tons of weight by eating a diet i love and doing exercise I enjoy. I may have more loose skin now then a Bassett hound but who cares!?
I feel amazing!😁

God I feel this! I am sick of my life being dominated by my weight and never being able to look forward to any kind of social event because I immediately go into panic mode because I know I won't find anything nice to wear and feel like everyone will just be talking about how fat I look. Mine also stems from my family and my tiny French mother and grandmother constantly commenting on my body. It's depressing and takes over all of my thoughts at times, even when I should be enjoying myself or at work where I am super confident in my ability to do my job and love it. It's so unhealthy yet it seems like so many women feel way, it's very sad.

If you have the time watch Georgia Ede on YouTube. She is an American psychiatrist and she look sat food in terms of brain health. It is a very interesting take on it, and some of her insights might help you understand your relationship with food.
Best of luck!

read "why we eat too much" by Andrew Jenkinson. It will explain everything you have experienced, and how to move into a healthy regime and get away from food obsession.

I second reading Andrew Jenkinson's book. It is quite science-y but completely changed my thinking on food and nutrition, almost overnight!

If there’s such a thing as dadsnet, guaranteed it wouldn’t be full of threads about weight and all the things you describe OP!

I’m With you too! I’m early 60s and it’s terrible the amount of time I’ve spent on thinking about my weight and now changing shape and ageing face - I’d love to be free of the chatter in my head!

There's an author who originally trained in substance abuse and is an advocate for the very approach that you mention - treating yourself with self-compassion as the key to weight loss: Shahroo Izadi. She has two books - The Kindness Method and The Last Diet.

"My entire mood is affected by how tight my jeans are"

My God I felt this!! I wish I didn't care. I find summer is hardest, because I seem to be surrounded by tiny people who just throw on shorts and a vest top without a second thought. Every now and then I will try on something like that in a shop changing room, thinking screw it I should be able to be nice and cool and comfortable and how bad can it be, then I have a little cry at my appearance in the mirror and hate myself for the next two weeks. Such a waste of energy.

Whoever said (I think it was a supermodel), "Nothing tastes a good as skinny feels." was talking shit. I say that as a 162cm, 40kg woman. I buy most clothes in Asian sizes or children's sections and look ill because I am ill. I've never had an eating disorder but

know I physically fit anorexia guidelines.
As long as it's not affecting your health through being overweight I'd be delighted to be able to eat, drink and enjoy myself rather than being fed through a tube.

Same here! 15 years ago I made the conscious decision to make some small changes, eat better and move more. I refused to weigh myself and just focused on improving how I felt and my energy levels.

Funny enough as the months went by, I found myself eating less and making better choices and learnt what really fuelled my body and the weight just naturally came off.

I recently gained weight through steroids but have caught it before it escalates further, doesn’t take much to gain on them and this time I have had to reduce my portion size, but I’ve done it very slowly, keeping health and fuelling myself still at the forefront.

I feel the same OP and am now mid sixties. I'm going to try and move away from the obsession too. Looking at it rationally it's crazy. I've had an eating disorder in the past ( well, I still have it, it just manifests itself differently) so that doesn't help 🥲

Thanks all for sharing. It's such bullshit isn't it? I have a baby daughter now and am really trying to sort out my head so that the I can get rid of the habits of at least three generations, but God is it hard. I keep thinking, "Yes I'll eat normally and model good habits, but first I'll lose this extra stone." And the way I've trained myself to do that is by being extreme.

All the mind space all this shit takes up!!

I am naturally big-boned and am tall, so I'm never going to be sylph-like. I know that I should celebrate my height and strength, and the way my body has stayed healthy and has given me wonderful kids. But it's about unlearning what my parents taught me, really, and that is tough. Something clicked in me recently when my father made a comment about a child's weight, and I clocked how fucking mad that is.

Thanks for all the book recommendations!

This sounds like such a healthy mindset, and I'd love to be this way. Like a pp, I have had an ED in the past (and yes, it's still there, lurking.) I remember someone advising me not to think so much about food, to just chill out about it. The ability to do that feels so alien to me! When I've decided to focus on health and not weight, I've spiralled very quickly, and though I've told myself that it's about health and strength, I was lying really. I wanted to be skinny.

There is so much unlearning to do!

@JamesPringle

There is so much unlearning to do!

There really is! I was a fat kid in the 70’s - unheard of 😄, and I grew up listening to my Mum and Grandmother constantly discussing my weight and how big I was.

I felt constant shame all my life until I decided enough was enough and took the pressure off myself. No weighing myself anymore and I still don’t to this day and no time limits, one day at a time.

I'm in my 50s and have several friends who have had health scares, heart attacks, bowel problems, cancer treatment due to their diets and I'm now just concentrating on eating healthier for health reasons rather than weight ones.

I'm avoiding processed foods, no frozen chips, pizzas or jars of bolognaise sauce and am gradually cooking more and more meals from scratch, and for the 1st time in my life I'm enjoying cooking rather than sticking something in the oven and waiting 30/40 minutes.

The odd biscuit or blueberry muffin is now a treat which I enjoy rather than scoffing the whole packet. I've no idea if any weight is coming off but I feel better and am sleeping better, and hopefully I'll avoid some of the health issues which are so prevalent now.

I think about this health aspect a lot as I get older. I think that yo-yo dieting is so so bad for your body, and I've done it so much over the years. I feel the physical impact of carrying more weight, but when I've been very strict with my diet, the effects have felt far more serious- palpitations, bowel issues, plus very shaky mental health (probably due to lack of energy as I was taking in so few calories.)

My automatic mindset is to obsess about food, but more and more often as I get older, I want to cry when I think how terribly unkind I can be to this body of mine. How I've stuffed it full of unhealthy things that don't nourish it, and then to deprive it of what it needs until it hurts. I want to be kinder to myself.

For me the really ironic thing is that I’m similarly happy with my partner and job and actually we have a very comfortable life and yet when it comes to buying clothes as soon as you’re above a size 16 clearly the presumption is you have no shape and can only wear sacks. I’ve never had more spending power than I do it at this very moment But I find the quest to find quality clothes I like in nice brands (cit well, beautiful materials) in my size makes me more depressed than anything