How do slim people stay so motivated?

[bleakprewinter]

I have at least 20kg to lose but I just can’t stop eating too much. I’ve been out on antidepressants and had some counselling but I just end up saying the right things so I don’t have to attend anymore. Every day I have multiple treats, because they’re there or because I buy them. Even if I don’t have them in the house I will go to the shop and buy them. I was so good on holiday but when I was alone I ate the biscuits and nice stuff we had bought.
I can't seem to say no to food. Sat in a meeting today and someone brought some chocolate in, I held off for a bit but eventually ate a bar (despite having had yogurt and fruit and a pastry for breakfast, a huge sausage role and some fruit for lunch… and then had homemade curry and rice and wine for tea) even though the other women around the table said they wouldn’t as they had sweets yesterday/have an event next week etc.
I just don’t know how people eat “normally”, I just can’t stop myself but I can’t keep piling on the weight and being even more unhappy with how I look.

Exercise is great for you, of course, but you can lose weight without it.

I am in the healthy weight range and I think about food all the time - don’t believe those who say somehow we can just ignore food thoughts.

What helps is being busy. I have to be super organised, so when I’m meal and lunch planning, it’s just as easy to plan healthy food as junk, and if everything is planned in advance I just have to grab whatever I have planned out of the freezer or fridge. I don’t buy food out (work canteen is okay but quite expensive), and I cycle as many places as possible.

And frankly, I don’t want my kids thinking that eating shite food and snacking off junk is a good way to live. Monkey see, monkey do - so I model eating 3 good quality meals a day with occasional small snacks.

The fact that you are depressed is going to make it harder.
Some people reach for alcohol, some drugs and some reach for food.

A PP said don’t go on any fad diets which I completely agree with, this will make you crave junk even more.

I don’t have a lot of willpower and so I just don’t keep things like biscuits in the home because I know I will just eat them.

If I want biscuits, I will buy them on my way to work and share them there.
I know I’m only going to have a couple at work, whereas at home I’d eat the entire pack.

The biggest thing that helped me lose weight was going to bed early and walking.

I would go to bed as early as I could, take a cup of tea and a book.
If you’re in your bed, then you’re physically not eating.
If you’re getting a decent amount of sleep then you’re not going to be as tired and you won’t reach for the high energy foods like biscuits.

Walking is also great because if you’re out then you’re not physically eating.
You’re also getting some fresh air and exercise which is great for MH and weight loss.

Its a marathon, not a sprint.

Being a bit more social may help you too.
This is very difficult to do when you have a child but you could eventually join a book club (in person or online) and perhaps find a friend or family member that will come along on your walks with you.

It’s also important that you get alone time without your child.
When DH comes home, make sure you go out for a walk on your own or something.

Sometimes we just need to switch our brains off and we cannot do that when we’re in charge of a child.

I think a lot of people feel like you OP, I'm definitely like this, lots of 'food noise' and cravings that I choose not to ignore. This is why many people turn to injections, because it's no effort, the cravings/noise go away and don't need to be worked on. But as soon as you come off the injections it all comes back, which is why most people don't maintain the weight loss. So the answer is self discipline.

Honestly my motivation is that I would rather not have the chocolate - or even rather be hungry rather than fat.

That doesn’t really help you though. It sounds like you have trouble saying no to eating - and maybe need to work out why as it doesn’t sound like it’s hunger.

Have you considered any therapy around that ?

This is so true. I'm 70 and extremely fit. Yesterday I worked out for an hour and walked nearly 24,000 steps. I can ski for hours without a break. I weight train with 5, 8, 10, 12.5 kg dumbbells. I can do pull-ups and push-ups and hold a plank for 5+ minutes. The effort is so, so worth it - and what's more, once I got started I began to enjoy it.

The pastries, sausages and sugary snacks are making you more hungry due to blood sugar spikes and dips. It's not just about Will power. A healthy diet leads to a healthy diet because the cravings are less intense.

Totally this. Sugar, refined carbs and UPF spike our blood sugar and insulin, without actually providing the nutrients our bodies need. They also literally assault our taste buds, to the extent that real food tastes bland. Ditch this rubbish and (re-)learn to appreciate the more subtle flavours of vegetables and fruit. Use lots of herbs, lemon juice, garlic, ginger etc to lift them to a different dimension.

NB: I found Mark Hyman's The Blood Sugar Solution a real eye-opener. Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken is also excellent.

Mountjaro.

Then you can develop all the good habits above.

But without it, as statistics prove, it can be next to impossible for many people.

I don't think it's true that all slim people get no food noise. I am slim, but I think about food all the time, almost continuously throughout the day. But I am slim because I value being healthy so much that 99% of the time I say no to the food noise. It's neverending, but I keep choosing no, over and over.

Because it's so difficult, I have in place systems that help me win.

• plan meals and shop for a whole week, so I almost never get takeaway or pop into the shop to 'see what I fancy tonight' because that would waste food and I hate food waste.
• always plan the meals (and do the shop) with a full stomach
• have healthy snacks to hand ready to eat - pre-boiled eggs, carrot sticks.
• don't have ANY unhealthy snacks that you find irresistible in the house. At all.
• if you are hungry between meals, have tea/coffee/water first. Sometimes this sorts it.

You will still crack sometimes, but with less opportunities there is less cracking.

Well, I acknowledge that it doesn't taste nice.

I don't like biscuits or shop cakes. They all leave a nasty chemical aftertaste. They make me feel sick. They coat my teeth in sugar. They make me feel tired from the sugar crash.

I do eat too much bread though and it is still possible to get fat on cashew nuts and £5 sourdough!

I'm just under ten stone, 5ft6 and exercise as often as I possibly can (daily at least).

I also don't really eat dinner, I'm not bothered about eating by 5pm and ready for bed pretty much.

Ultimately because I want to be slim more than I want to eat crap and be fat.

Also you have to put in some hard boundaries. Stick to eating between 10am and 6pm, have the odd time when you relax it but try and do it the majority of the time. Accept that loosing weight means being hungry sometimes and that’s okay.

I get what you mean OP. I was always slim and fit up until about 42, I'm now 45. I know all the rules, because I used to follow them - exercise, healthy eating etc
I just don't have the motivation anymore, and sugar is actually like a drug to me. I have no willpower. I can tell myself till I'm blue in the face, but I still can't do it.

I notice OP you talk a lot of having fruit and you mentioned yoghurt, was that your breakfast on that day?

I know people rave about fruit and yoghurt on here, nice full fat greek yoghurt and fruit (I like full fat greek yoghurt) but that meal would only make me feel very empty and hungry.

Im not a massive fan of fruit to be honest, it always makes me feel hungry

My breakfast this morning for example is omlette with beetroot salad and guacamole

Oh regarding food noise, I occasionally get a craving for something random like a pizza which I'd never ever normally eat. But then I remember I feel sick if I eat it and I'd have to save all my calories all day to fit it in without gaining weight.

I get food noise for lunch when I'm.m hungry but I know that the healthy choice will fill me up exactly the same as the unhealthy one.

This is good advice which would work for me. I personally prefer to moderate rather than completely abstain from any vice or bad habit I want to change. If I try to cut something out completely it becomes a huge battle of willpower that I can never win.

‘try on’ a new self for just a day. How does it go?

if its doable try it again another time. If you can do it, maybe 5 times across a few months, it may start to feel like a real possibility of change.

i like the cleaning teeth tip! I was going to say, if you feel like eating, immediately get up and go out for a walk or to do an errand. It keeps you away from the source of ‘danger’.

i am reasonably slim and there is a bit of motivation involved. For example, I mostly resist chocolate because I find it very addictive. So I just don’t start. But it’s not completely banned. Sometimes I just really have a craving or I might start eating it every day over Christmas and then it takes me a while to phase it out again.

on the whole though I would say just start very small. A few ideas:

• cut down on what you eat by 10% (take a smaller portion, leave the last mouthful; dont take the last biscuit)
• decide on what the treats for the day will be upfront (be quite generous) and dont eat any other treat spontaneously
• improve the quality of your food overall - eat tasty, fresh home-cooked seasonal food (the taste satisfaction starts to replace the satiety satisfaction)
• set a fixed hour in a day when you will not eat anything (make it an hour where there might be treat temptation, eg 10-11 am). You can have the treat outside that window. This can help build up the willpower muscle.
• keep a food duary. Where do you notice the temptations or pitfalls?
• if one approach or experiment doesn’t work, dont worry about it or consider it a failure. Try another. Invent your own.
• dont even think about the 20kg. Celebrate if you lose 1 kg. Celebrate even the tiniest behaviour change too (independent of the weight loss). Acknowledge that it is very hard.

As a fairly slim person, I ate what I wanted in my teens and my 20s, but I always liked fruit & veg more. I've never liked greasy or sugary stuff and watching friends eat deep fried brie used to make me feel sick.

I've always cooked from scratch, at first from financial necessity, and now because it's quicker & healthier than eating out so I know what I'm eating.

In my 30s & 40s I made sure I didn't keep chocolates or biscuits, or cheese etc in the house. If it wasn't in the cupboard I couldn't eat it.

In my 50s with a teenage boy at home, there are snacks in the house but I don't want them. I eat fruit or wait until lunch. I much prefer veg to crisps or biscuits.

So I don't have a food-struggle in my head. It just doesn't occur to me to snack. And I like exercise.

I think you need to find healthy foods you genuinely like. Carrots served with thyme, new potatoes with sprigs of mint, rich winey casseroles, pasta sauce with capers and olives and anchovies.
Don't limit yourself. Eat as much of those as you need to satisfy yourself. Then you don't want pudding.

Recognise your triggers, even slim people have them, (mine is stress or irritation (mostly with work) and try to mitigate them. You need to retrain your brain. I find so much of my excess eating is just mindless, so I try to be more mindful.

For me I think it helps to focus on health rather than weight (although that's easy for me to say with older children, I don't think I had the luxury of time to think about health as much as I do now compared to having toddlers!) I don't calorie count, or follow diets (well I have done but always ends up the same way) the most successful I have been has been focusing on doing a bit of exercise for the good of my mental health and heart as opposed to calorie burning, and eating whole foods avoids all the crap that is so easy to eat and worry what it's doing to me. This has focussed my mind so it is more of a lifestyle rather than a temporary element of "being good".

I also find this mindset has stopped the idea of a wagon and whether I am on or off it, which inevitably feels unsustainable because when you fall off you tend to overcompensate negotiating with yourself a new start date that may or may not come. If I have a day where I've snacked a bit more than usual, no exercised, it doesn't throw off my whole week or month, it's just the choices I made that day that doesn't need to define any other day.

I hate excerise so have bought a walking pad. I walk for an hour each morning whilst watching the tv. I have to do it this way otherwise I won't do it, I get too bored 🤦‍♀️ I get very sweaty so hopefully it's helping!

My goto "good" food at the moment is punnets of baby plum tomatoes. 60 calories per 300 gram punnet. Quite filling and sweet. Maybe find something like that to snack on?

This is all new to me, I never had a problem with my weight until I hit 45, now I feel like I can't even look at a cake without putting weight on 😂 I only need to lose a stone but my god it's hard.

Yesterday was bad, the shop was delivered and I ate 3 twirls and loads of crisps that were for the kids 🤦‍♀️ so today I'm starting again.

I'm not "slim" but I'm a healthy weight and I don't need too much motivation to ignore "treats". I have been really affected by the Ultra Processed People book and various other podcasts and articles.

It's not "will power" it's a different mindset.

It's a myth that slim people don't have food noise. I have always been slim but have always had cravings. I have an urge to eat all the time, it's become a running joke to people I know.

You have to say no and distract yourself. I never ever have junk food in the house.

It’s easy for me. I remember being fat, and it wasn’t good.

The thing is, I imagine you already know what you have to do to lose weight. Eat more fresh foods, less processed foods, exercise more, blah blah blah. You already know that. But you’re not doing it. Why? I’m guessing you just don’t care enough at this point. Is there anything you can think of that would truly motivate you? For me a major health concern kick started my motivation - I suddenly thought of all the places I’d never seen, all the things I wanted to do, and my kids alone. Every time I looked in the cupboard for snacks I thought of my kids at my funeral. Totally morbid but it curtailed my snacking!

I am trialling new eating habits. Remember , is all a habit. Make the same menu with almost non existent carbs and rotate the fruit and veg daily

On certain day you can have a danish and cappuchino, on some other a small cake...but don't have these two every day, all in the same day

the rest has to be very minimal I am afraid

I sometimes think people are either born closer to a Collie or closer to a Labrador. I am definitely a Labrador.

If you are born a Labrador you might be ok when you are a pup, but once you get older you need to make a conscious effort every day and that never ends.

The Collie's just won't ever get it! If you are a Labrador you'll never be a Collie, you can do it but you need to think about it and put in the effort all the time.