So I'm actually not bingeing. In fact I'm not really hungry most of the time. Which some would say is actually conducive to weight loss. Unfortunately every time that I eat I make the bad choices. The good foods just don't sound good when I'm trying to decide what to eat. I recently hired a nutritionist and she's fantastic. Unfortunately I'm the only one who can follow through with her advice. She can't follow me around all day and if she could that would be extremely expensive.
Case in point tonight I was trying to decide what to have for dinner. And I thought and thought about it and nothing good (which is all that I'm keeping at home these days) sounded good. So of course I ordered chinese delivery. Now I ordered what I thought would be the least calories (except the delicious crab rangoon) to justify my decision. But the decision was actually ridiculous. And the sad thing is that overall I didn't even really enjoy the chinese. So it soooo wasn't worth it.
So how do I get over this? Again, I'm not craving anything and I'm not bingeing (at least now although I have in the past). So how do I change my habits. My nutritionist put it one way in that a) I've lived a good life (i'm 35) and eaten what I've wanted for so long that I just need to understand that I'm going off on a new path and b) the food that I'm eating is literally killing me. I have diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. It is literally killing me. Yet even that discovery isn't enough for me to change habits?
So what is it that helped you? How can I work to change this behavior.
I don't make the best choices all the time either. I'm sure I eat way too much sodium but I also drink tons of water to try to counter it. The only thing that works for me is telling myself that the pleasure I get every time I can get into a new size, seeing a smaller number on the scale, or accomplishing a new NSV is so much bigger than the temporary, small pleasure I'll get by eating something that's not on plan. Oh and I give myself a cheat day every two weeks so if I really want something I tell myself to just be patient and I can have it then, it'll still be there.
We have modified our favorite dishes so they not only taste good, but they are healthy too. You can make a nice homemade stir-fry at home that tastes as good as any Chinese take-out. What a shame to order in something you don't like, not to mention the cost.
I don't call foods good or bad, but I do call some Junk food (the ones that lack the balanced nutrients we need that are also heavy-laden with salt, sugar, and fat). We limit those drastically. I had a chicken burger tonight with salad and loved it; it not only tasted good, but it is healthy.
Last night, I had my favorite fish with a salad. I love my own homemade veggie pita pizzas; much healthier and lower in calories. Eating good food that tastes good will help you make better choices. Make up a menu of your favorite foods and change them to make them good.
I'm going through the same thing-ish right now. I calorie count still though so I'm aware of how much damage to my daily goal my bad choices are making. When I first started, I went through something similar where I lived off the most boring dinners. Green salad and grilled meat/fish for dinner. So once a week, I'd get bored and just eat Popeye's chicken (within my calorie limits) for the day. I gradually realized that that wasn't good either and broadened my horizons a little wider in terms of food.
Here's the thing, an occasional splurge is okay. But when it becomes a regular thing that's when it becomes a problem. I think there's no reason why you can't recreate your favourite foods at home and make them healthier. You CAN make your own healthy version fried rice (with spices, lean meats, veggies, boiled rice and a teaspoon of oil) or recreate beef and broccoli. Or make healthy version pizzas with pita bread, cheese, sundried tomato tapenade and lean meat/seafood. I don't really believe in "healthy" food or "non-healthy" food. Maybe with the exception of candy and chips, which I consider treats and not for regular consumption, most things can be made healthy. Yes it's more convenient to order in but my oven-"fried" (non-fat) chicken tenders or calamari rings are to die for if I do say so myself (lean meat, crushed cornflakes or flour or breadcrumbs, seasonings). If I feel like a sub, I keep deli turkey breast on hand to make one. I like my own bolognese sauce (made with ground chicken) better than the ordered in version. These are just examples. You don't have to just eat vegetables and boiled skinless chicken breast. There's the entire world of foods you enjoy to make healthy. I used to HATE cooking but now I'm a cookbook/cooking show fanatic and I'm just getting into "healthy" baking and love finding ways to make my favourite foods healthy.
Make little changes. Don't eat something just because you ordered it if it doesn't taste as good to you. It's not worth it. Consider it an expensive lesson learned. There are too many amazing things to eat to waste time on food you don't want. Try to eat less outside food and more things you prepare at home. That way you can watch things like fat (especially the quantity and quality of it) and season things to your taste. Have a plan. Do you have a plan? Calorie counting? Carb counting? Low-fat? Portion control? What are you doing? While some people are successful with intuitive eating, it's not necessarily as easy as it sounds especially when you're just starting out. Life is made a lot easier when you have a plan, this is what I've found. You need to have rules for yourself if not it's hard to break lifelong habits. What does your nutritionist suggest?
"the sad thing is that overall I didn't even really enjoy the chinese."
That sounds like a great thing to me. It's like you're starting to connect to what your body really wants to function well. It's hard though because a lot of 'food' is intentionally engineered to be addictive.
At the risk of sounding harsh - and I hate being harsh to someone who is struggling - sometimes you just have to suck it up and get with the plan. It's hard to believe that NOTHING sounds good. Get it in your head that you HAVE to change. Period. We are an indulgent society and it has gotten us into trouble. Your nutritionist is right. I don't know what you typically eat, but if you have all those medical problems at only 35, you are truly killing yourself one forkful at a time. Change your habits or die. Or live a miserable life tied to medical problems. What is harder? Losing weight or living a miserable life? Only you can decide.
You have to want to be healthy more than you want to eat what you know you shouldn't. You have to plan ahead for each day's meals. "Deciding what to eat" can't be an unplanned thing. You have to work at this - at least a little. No take out for a while. Fix things at home that are not loaded with MSG and sodium. Shop with healthy meals in mind. PLAN AHEAD. You already admitted that the Chinese wasn't worth it. Next time, remember that and make a better choice. Keep things on hand that you like and fix them. If it's the same meal - lean meat, veggies, salad - every night - oh well. This isn't punishment, but it isn't a picnic, either. Get things under control first, then you are free to eat a less structured diet.
If you were bleeding from a cut artery you would but a tourniquet on it and stop the flow of blood as quickly as possible. You wouldn't put a band-aid on it every few seconds as the old one got soaked. You'd take drastic measures for a drastic situation. Maybe it's time to think of losing weight in those terms.
That said, I realize change is difficult. We don't make the best choice every time. But we have to make the best choice MOST of the time or this won't work. Your Body Mass Index (5'-1" tall and 226 pounds) is over 43. A BMI of 40 is morbidly obese. Healthy is between 18.5 and 25. You deserve to be healthy. You deserve to be happy. But, you have to want to be healthy and happy or you won't be. You have to want to lose weight or it won't happen. I know you can do this. You're too young to live the rest of your life in poor health. You didn't say if you have kids or a family. But I'm sure there are lots of people who would love to see you healthy - starting with me. You can change your attitude. Sometimes it's as simple as just doing it. good luck to you.
at 35 I think it's difficult to really understand what those health problems can mean and lead to. maybe food feels like one of the big pleasures you give yourself (it did feel that way to me), and to change that, to "diet," is a scary deprivation (and many diets in my past have been just that). It's hard work, it means facing the weight problem, the number on the scale, the size of the body. to face changing the eating is to let go of denial.
mentally at the beginning it can feel like an extreme, but the truth is, as others have said here, tons of healthy low cal foods are delicious, not a deprivation at all. and after you eat them, you don't have to feel physically sick, hopeless, out of control, and still hungry(!), which is how Chinese food has left me feeling many times.
I wanted to say too, major congrats on not binging. I had to work on binge issues for a long time when I was younger.
one step to change your habits is to plan ahead and have the stuff you want to eat on hand. get into a groove. days you'll go shopping, what days you'll make what. have this be a positive of what you can do and can have, rather than a negative of what you have to do without and can't have. hope that helps.
Last edited by dragonwoman64; 11-05-2011 at 04:28 PM.
I am at a very similar place as you with my eating and it can be very hard to make the right choices but I am making progress and I am sure you will too
I really feel like like this whole weight loss thing is a process. You don't have to start out being a superstar, you just have to start. When I started, I just focused on sticking to my calorie limit every day. I ate what I wanted just less of it. I did try to make healthier choices, but it really was about the 1800 calories, if that included some less than healthy stuff, then so be it . Doing that, I was eating what I wanted, so things like Chinese were really not all that tempting because I was eating foods I liked and I could resist. Then slowly as I got the hang of REALLY sticking to it, I slowly made the switch to better and better choices.
You have to change your mindset. If you think you can't stick to it, you are right. If you think you can, you are also right.
Not Bingeing but not Eating Well
