I just need to vent I guess. I am feeling so overwhelmed right now. I am so sick of failure, so sick of just giving up and hating myself, not feeling like I can stay on the right track at all.
I did it before, I did lose some weight. But I can't seem to get that momentum back and I can't even think of what I did before...I think maybe a big part of it was just that I had went from literally sitting on my butt all day long to actually moving! And I did change some of my diet habits for the better. So I lost that first wave of weight. But now I have to actually make the bigger changes and I can't seem to do it.
Part of it is I just keep screwing up. I am confronted with really bad food or just am hungry or upset and binge. I eat bad stuff & way way too much of it. I don't even know why.
I think maybe part of it is that in that moment I just want that instant gratification. I KNOW that in the long run it is going to be so so much better. But it just gets thrown out the window for right now. It is kindof like someone says I can have a million dollars in 10 years or $100 right now and I keep choosing the $100 like an idiot.
I think that I just have had alot of disappointment in my life. I don't expect good things to happen because they havent often. I was just telling my sister how growing up our parents would always fill our heads with hopeful ideas that would not really ever happen. And things have continued in that same way. So that I have come to expect that the dream isnt really going to come true.
I know that this process is not just this simple black & white physical path but has alot to do with the mental & emotional too. And maybe I fear that I won't ever be able to achieve my goal & therefor just give up before I even try?
But even knowing that is not making it any easier.
I think the hardest part is that I do feel overwhelmed and lost. I know the basic idea is to eat less & move more. but like a normal virgo I throw way too much thought into the process. I want to do it perfectly, as if there was such a thing. I count calories and seem to go over or under by alot I can't find that balance. and when I add in the nutrition- carbs, veggies, protein it even makes it more complicated.
On the other hand, if I don't try to plan and think it all out I just fall apart. I need structure and a solid path or I just wibble wobble all over the place and fall on my face.
So I either put so much thought into it that I just explode into a mess of chaos feeling overwhelmed or I don't put enough structure so I feel lost and don't do anything right.
I don't know what to eat at all. I am on a budget and I am picky. I try to make a menu that is healthy and it just doesn't ever work out. I cant think of food ideas. I think partly it is hard because I really pretty much just eat the same handful of foods and they happen to be very binge worthy trigger foods for me so I have to step away from those.
I have tried to look at menu plans online and either they have way too many things that I don't like that I have to try and find replacements and then it is back to the same problem I started with. Or the menus are more for a whole family or requires buying an item that is hard to justify on a budget when it is just for one dish ya know? even more so when it is several items like that. It adds up.
So then i think ok I will just find what I like and works out and just eat these handful of things every week. But I worry that it is like bad to do that? Is it healthy? will I get bored and binge again? Or is it ok and maybe if I can just stick to that to begin with I can find some sanity and then begin to slowly add in different things.
I just so wish I could afford to have like someone just tell me what to do lol. Like on those dieting shows, have someone plan my menu, tell me what to exercise, plan it all out for me and then I just follow it. It would make things sooo much easier right? lol but I can't
I just want this soo soo badly. More then I have wanted anything and I hate that I keep letting myself down everyday.
I make a game of it. i.e. Today I won't eat sugar. The next day I won't eat sugar or carbs. The day after I won't eat sugar carbs or dairy. Then, I won't snack. Now today I'll exercise. Etc. Then I'll "reset" during holidays or on predetermined days.
It may seem disordered to some, but if you treat it lightly and in the spirit of fun, it's do-able.
The End of Overeating by David A. Kessler was eye-opening for me about how modern foods are engineered and marketed to make them irresistible. And, they certainly were for me.
The Beck Diet Solution and/or The Complete Beck Diet for Life by Judith Beck really helped me change my thinking and behavior around foods which is a lot of what you're talking about there. She's been a godsend for helping me get away from behaviors that seemed crazy but I couldn't seem to stop even knowing that.
Finally Thin! by Kim Bensen has a section that describes dozens of different diets. That might help you choose something that's going to work well for you.
You: On a Diet by Mehmet C. Oz recommends automating your food so that you do eat mostly the same thing day after day, maybe varying one meal a little more. A similar idea shows up in Never Say Diet by Chantal Hobbs -- she says "make food boring" and she, literally, ate the same lunch for a year or more. So your instinct to limit your food choices may be right on target, but you may need to be thoughtful about how to do that and not include triggering foods.
I'm not sure I've seen this written in a book, but I've seen it dozens of times on this site: your food tastes will change. So, keep an open mind. I made it a New Year's Resolution one year to make salad my favorite food. If you go by what I eat most (one or two giant salads every day), it pretty much worked!
Instead of trying to do it all at once, pick ONE food thing and ONE exercise thing.
For instance, food, just take on the challenge of breakfast, don't worry about the rest.
Exercise, do something, whatever you want 3 times a week for 20 minutes. Don't worry about the rest.
As those changes become routine/habit, move on to your morning snack, or lunch or drinking more water. Whatever. As far as exercise, branch out, try something new, keeping the 3 times a week in mind.
You don't have to do it all at once.
Years ago there was a diet in the Readers Digest called the "Change One" diet, that advocated, changing one thing at a time, using if I remember right 9 week time frames, and then keeping that change and moving on and adding another.
If I were asked to tell anyone, embarking on the journey to be healthier, I would say, not necessarily in this order.
1. Do NOT look at this as a battle or a cross to bear. Embrace the challenge.
2. Be patient.
3. LOG everything and learn from the feedback. Feed back is not failure, it gives you info to do better.
4. Keep an open mind. Try new things, even if it's in small doses.
5. Hang out in places where fit healthy people are, it rubs off.
6. Be patient, with yourself and the process.
7. Be patient, changing a life time of bad habits and learned behaviors is not easy, but can be done.
I've been fairly successful, with my food and my working out, however the one thing, until a week ago I had refused to do, was to get in my workout before I went to work in the morning. Well, due to life it was getting to be a struggle to get this in on my lunch hour, or after work, I'm to tired. So, since I'm up early anyway, I decided this refusal was an excuse and silly. I have the time, so now I'm hauling my behind out of the house and working out before work.
Amazingly, that has been a great choice. I get in, get it done and I feel so much better! I now wish I would have done this long ago!
Although, lol, when I showed up at work the other day at the veterinary hospital with wet hair from showering after my workout, my boss looked at me like I had my bra on backwards, or forgot my pants or something equally strange. I finally told him, I had just come from the gym, and showered right before I got to work.
I think the hardest part is that I do feel overwhelmed and lost. I know the basic idea is to eat less & move more. but like a normal virgo I throw way too much thought into the process. I want to do it perfectly, as if there was such a thing. I count calories and seem to go over or under by alot I can't find that balance. and when I add in the nutrition- carbs, veggies, protein it even makes it more complicated.
On the other hand, if I don't try to plan and think it all out I just fall apart. I need structure and a solid path or I just wibble wobble all over the place and fall on my face.
You and I, we have alot of the same problems is sounds like. The instant gratification Inner Adolescent looms large inside of me as well. She is very, very hard to tame, particularly after being indulged for a long time. You are currently conditioned to give in to her every single time.
But even worse is the OCDish Perfection Pusher. I have in the past done exactly what you're describing: diligently tracked micro- and macro-nutrients and sodium; weighed things like lettuce and measured out tiny amounts of mustard; obsessed over trying to eat a broad range of vegetables across every day and then trying to get in the RIGHT fruits to maximize antioxidants; freaked over meal and workout timing because I wanted it to be OPTIMAL; worried endlessly over how much water to drink and my brain would explode if I had a sip of something with artificial sweetener; and on and on. I personally think nobody could have made it more complicated and stressful than I did, I worked HARD at making it HARD. And I did take off weight, for sure, but I did not MAINTAIN because I could not live long-term like that.
This time around here is the secret I have discovered for myself (everybody is different of course): Success does not require perfection. And I do just fine with a much easier, much more flexible "structure" (like you, if I don't do ANYTHING structure-wise chaos ensues). I write my food and exercise in a [messy, food-blotted, sloppily written] notebook. I blog my feelings. I come to 3FC and learn from others and share. I eat a simple and repetitive diet (just like that "handful of things" that you mentioned in your post) and cut out foods I *know* are triggers. And that's about it.
I don't do any of the other things I listed anymore and I was just as successful at losing weight this time as I was previously -- with the added benefit that I am finding it so much easier to maintain. All of that wretched busy work I listed above is gone. Also gone is all the stress and worry that I "wasn't doing it the BEST way or the RIGHT way". I don't freak out and throw myself into a bin of Fritos for 6 months when I make a mistake, because I finally learned that making mistakes here and there won't actually hurt me. It was never the 1 night of over-eating that was making me fat -- it was the guilty, punishing, "oh well I already ruined it ALL so I might as well eat EVERYTHING" 200 binge nights that followed that one night. Those really did me in.
Letting go of the idea of perfection in all things was pretty key for me. Perfection is boring. I am imperfect and messy and I'm likely going to make some imperfect, messy choices. And that is A-OK. I don't give one HOOT about my frickin nutrients and antioxidants and blah blah blah -- I'm eating much healthier food than ever before, that is just going to have to be good enough. It is surely a drastic improvement over a life of constant corn chips and swedish fish binges. I'll take it.
Oh, and taming the instant-gratification Inner Adolescent gets easier with time. At the beginning it is hard because you've established a pattern of giving in. There is some gutting it out as you establish a NEW pattern of NOT giving in. Then it gets easier because that becomes your new normal. So remind yourself at the beginning as you are beating that brat into submission, that it won't always be that hard.
You CAN do this. There is great advice in this thread. Don't give up!
I have in the past done exactly what you're describing: diligently tracked micro- and macro-nutrients and sodium; weighed things like lettuce and measured out tiny amounts of mustard; obsessed over trying to eat a broad range of vegetables across every day and then trying to get in the RIGHT fruits to maximize antioxidants; freaked over meal and workout timing because I wanted it to be OPTIMAL; worried endlessly over how much water to drink and my brain would explode if I had a sip of something with artificial sweetener; and on and on.
Wow. That sounds like borderline orthorexia. I'm glad you were able to loosen up on the obsessing. For my part, I don't trust nutrition science enough to fully believe anything about the "right" way to eat, so I aim for "mostly healthy" and call it a day.
Wow. That sounds like borderline orthorexia. I'm glad you were able to loosen up on the obsessing. For my part, I don't trust nutrition science enough to fully believe anything about the "right" way to eat, so I aim for "mostly healthy" and call it a day.
F.
Yeah, I'm glad, too. I've never heard of orthorexia, so thanks for teaching me something new.
I agree with your assessment of nutrition science. I blame the Interwebz for my previous obsessive approach. Easy access to too much information, all of it conflicting, and online tools to measure every gram of food and break it down into its components and lots of pretty colored graphs and charts to show me where I was failing. (Too much protein on Monday! *sirens go off*. OMG on Tuesday I had 60% fat *my brain implodes*).
I'm a sucker for data and charts, but that was possibly too much of a good thing for me. I got lost in the process for sure.
I know just how you feel. I've been struggling to be on plan since May when I decided to go vegan (meat and dairy aren't the issue for me - binge eating on junk food is). While I've had a few setbacks (binge eating episodes, two of them lasting for 6 days), I have been doing much better overall and I have lost weight and am feeling much more energetic, more positive and less stressed.
What seems to be working for me is to get the word DIET out of my head. Even though I need to lose a lot of weight, I know myself well enough to know that if I approach this as a diet, i.e., the goal of focusing on losing weight, it will turn into a short-term thing for me and I'll start to feel deprived and rebellious. But if I look at it as the building blocks for a health lifestyle that will keep me sane and at peace into my old age without having to worry about the modern Western diseases, it becomes a whole other issue.
My first rule was DON'T WEIGHT IN. Ever. I know that sounds totally counterintuitive to what most people do here, but I find that if I start to weigh in, I'll be obsessed by the number on the scale and it will be counterproductive for me. I did weigh myself when I started in May so I know what I started with. But since then, I have not weighed myself. Instead, I am taking measurements now and then and also looking at how my clothes fit and how they feel. That's how I know that I've gone down one size since starting in May. Not weighing takes a lot of the pressure off of me in terms of having to get to some insane number which really doesn't help me in the long run.
Another thing that has helped me is to think of this as an entire lifestyle balance. It's not just about food. It's also about physical exercise, stress reduction, and emotional and psychological well being and exploration to find out why I am so food obsessed. It sort of sounds as if you've been doing some of that, as you mentioned talking with your sister about stuff you went through as a child. That's been a huge help for me too - exploring by reading books what my upbringing was like, what I really went through, and how it is related to how I live my life, including how I approach food.
I also have added a little exercise each day (only about 15 minutes first thing in the morning, so we're not talking about a huge thing - but it's been helping tremendously to shape my body better and also help me get rid of migraine headaches). I've also been doing a ten minute stress reducing breathing meditation before I go to bed. I find that consistency for me is the key - even if it's just 10 or 15 minutes, if I am consistent with it, it is helping me.
Thanks for the wise words, Mrs. Snark. You are so right. I was raised by a perfectionist father and it's been really tough to break out of that cycle.
I also agree that it's not about perfection - it's about consistency. As I mention in my post, I focus on doing things consistently, even if not perfectly. Take exercise. I started exercising again about a month ago, after having gained about 70 pounds. I only do a 15 minute 1 mile walking DVD. But I do it every single day and I really enjoy it. I do it first thing in the morning because I find that's when it helps me combat migraine headaches that I've suffered from since college and it also gives me energy for the rest of the day. It's not a long time to exercise but it works for me so far. I could feel bad that I'm not doing the 30 minutes suggested by most experts each day, but I know that 15 minutes is enough for me right now and is giving me a lot of benefits. So it's consistency, not perfection.
I count calories and seem to go over or under by alot I can't find that balance. and when I add in the nutrition- carbs, veggies, protein it even makes it more complicated.
This resonates with me a lot. I always had the problem of going over or under until I realized that I had to plan in order to be successful, and I've been planning ever since. I just follow my plan and know that in the end of the day, it adds up to the right amount.
Taking a minute at night to write out all of your meals may be helpful to you. You may not eat 6 times per day, but this is just an example.
Your meals don't need to be ornate, just something that you like.
I cook for my six year old daughter and myself, but she often eats way before I do, so we sometimes eat different meals. Easy one serving foods like quesadillas, flatbread or tortilla pizzas, tuna cakes, loaded microwave baked potatoes, breakfast for dinner, pasta with meatballs and sauce, or even sandwiches come up time and time again. I've been known to eat a can of sardines and rice crackers if it's in a pinch - there are no real rules to this.
We also make things like soup, chili, stew, meatballs, burgers, nuggets, and burritos and freeze so we always have them too – cook once to eat for many days. Rice, frozen veggies, canned fish, wraps, etc are easy staples to have on hand for quick foods.
overwhelmed & not sure what to do.
