Carbie, you have my sympathy. Over in the "maintainers" forum (plenty of us are trying to lose again), we've just been discussing how we struggle to find our source of relaxation, celebration etc. when "fun "food and alcohol are off the table.
When you say you're so stressed out about your weight that you quit, what do you mean specifically? E.g. are you stressed because you feel it's holding you back from something? Or you're tired of putting so much energy into thinking about it/working on it?
Perhaps if you can really drill down to the root problems, you can make more targeted solutions. I've just started a cognitive behavioral therapy book and it's been really useful, I recommend it. It's called the Feeling Good Handbook by David Burns and it is teaching me to identify exactly WHY I have a problem with sugar (it's not a diet book, but it teaches tools for any problem or situation. It's also helping me with work stress).
Re dietary approaches: it seems like the approaches to foods that you can completely do without, like sugar, come in two basic flavors:
1) try keeping treats in your diet but only occasionally ("special occasions" etc.)
2) abstain entirely.
I had been trying approach #1 for the last few years, with variable success. I've recently put myself on a very different eating plan with the hope of reversing some cholesterol/TG problems on recent blood tests. The new diet is complete abstention from sugar and anything with sugar, bread and anything with flour, etc. I'm only 5 days in, but I can say that so far it's not been as challenging as I expected. So I suspect I might be an abstainer personality after all. Have you tried that? Or were you trying a moderation approach?
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