I use to have such amazing will power and determination, it kind of went down the drain somewhere along the way. weight loss just became more real, you know? I started having up's and down's... I started losing slower... It's more a life style now and life is unpredictable.
ok so yeah sometimes if something upsets me to the point where I can't emotionally deal with it anymore I just say screw it and eat too much, or don't workout one day because I don't feel like it, I just binge and give in. Usually starting fresh the next day more motivated than ever.
I don't wanna depend on it!! But I guess addiction is hard to break
My comfort foods are orange juice (if i'm sad I'll drink a whole bottle of 50 cal Tropicana) rye bread, and just about anything else that involves little prep.
I don't do it everyday and I don't make excuse, I take full responsibility and I tell myself "this is wrong but I'll let it slide"
I didn't eat when I was stressed but I did little cheats here and there when I was very sad/depressed and yes it did affect my weight loss. At first I was very guilty and beating myself up but then I was ok.
The one thing that helped me deal with this is that I read a post here that dieters will be extra emotional because of the estrogen stored in fat. If you feel you are very stressed and sad than normal then it's because the bad stuff is going away from your body.
Try to tell yourself that your body is getting rid of the bad stuff and that's why you are feeling very stressed/depressed/emotional. Help your body to rid of the toxins. There will be a day when you will be happy because you got rid os all the bad stuff. Hope you feel better soon dear!!
I don't do it everyday and I don't make excuse, I take full responsibility and I tell myself "this is wrong but I'll let it slide"
Anyone else do that? thanks
Nobody will judge you here, we have tons of posts of people working out ways to lose. Its 3fatchicks, not "3foreverandfit without bumps in the road" chicks! hehe
The point where you take full responsibility and you tell yourself, "this is wrong and I care more about weight loss than the benefit of instant gratification from depressed feelings enough to keep going" you will reach sustainable loss. I try to think that way and you know what? There IS still a point where I don't care! If I reach tragedy, I won't, I definitely won't care. However, that is rare freak-incident tragedy, so for the most part, I just keep it up. Just telling yourself that there are plus sides to both letting things slide as well as maintaining methods to reach and maintain goal, but that you want one more vs the other might help. However, I don't know what it is that actually starts the change in priority, but thinking it through this way might be helpful.
I don't do it everyday and I don't make excuse, I take full responsibility and I tell myself "this is wrong but I'll let it slide"
Anyone else do that? thanks
Hi DF180,
Firstly congratulations on the weightloss so far and for getting back on the horse again each time. That is strong.
This is the part of weightloss that deals with emotions and with our mental self talk. I really think it is the biggest part of achieving any goal. With anything we are trying to change we have to go through a process of changing our habits and our triggers. It is a progression and as you find your new ways to cope with emotions then you will find this disappears.
I think guilt and self judgement are the biggest enemy to any area we are trying to find change in. Let it go. Be kind to yourself. You are doing really well. Celebrate your victories. Let go of the things you think you could have done better. The more guilt the more we perpetuate the cycle of bad feelings, bingeing (or smoking, or whatever the problem is) and we get trapped in it.
There is is thread I have seen on this that celebrates the good choices we made today. Maybe go on that for a week and actively celebrate your great choices and focus there? It will inspire you. I bet you are doing a lot better than you think you are!!
PS. There are worse things than rye bread and OJ to binge on...be proud it isn't crisps and alcohol! :-)
Oh I do this all the time. The last time I posted here, my ticker said I weighed 131. I've been working a crappy job for half a year now and I'm so tired and stressed that I had to update it to 144.2. I keep saying, "Tomorrow I'll cope better" and then I either "reward" myself for surviving the day by eating junk or I sulk in it.
I went shopping today, picked up fruits and veggies, asked my fiance to help me keep on track, and reopened my account here. I'm hoping this will change. It's definitely a mindset you have to get yourself into.
i find that moderate levels of stress tend to make me eat the most and i tend to think "oh this little bite of food isn't a big deal" until i find that i'm not really losing anymore....more like maintaining....
large levels of stress tend to kill my appetite completely....just this past March we lost my brother in law unexpectedly and then we traveled home and spent a week helping with arrangements, burial, etc and i swear i hardly ate a bite the whole week SUPER stressful and sad
but it's that day to day level of stress that gets to me...i eat because i survived the work day, or to relax, or unwind, or whatever...*sigh*
If you feel you are very stressed and sad than normal then it's because the bad stuff is going away from your body.
i think this is a very strange idea. I have no idea where it comes from but it doesn't sound very convincing.
Quote:
I use to have such amazing will power and determination, it kind of went down the drain somewhere along the way. weight loss just became more real, you know? I started having up's and down's... I started losing slower... It's more a life style now and life is unpredictable.
ok so yeah sometimes if something upsets me to the point where I can't emotionally deal with it anymore I just say screw it and eat too much, or don't workout one day because I don't feel like it, I just binge and give in. Usually starting fresh the next day more motivated than ever.
I don't wanna depend on it!! But I guess addiction is hard to break
My comfort foods are orange juice (if i'm sad I'll drink a whole bottle of 50 cal Tropicana) rye bread, and just about anything else that involves little prep.
I am not sure whether your difficulties are triggered by slower weight loss or other emotional difficulties. If its the latter, then you could try to learn some better skills to deal with stress and emotional days. Learn about mindfulness. Go and learn from the buddhists. Or maybe get some counselling. I tend to go and see a counsellor when i'm not coping with stuff and worry that a depression might follow if i don't deal with the problem. I always try to deal with my problems as soon as possible now. Its part of my diet strategy.
if you've never had therapy, and don't think you need it, you might want to start reading some books or doing workshops and learning new skills in this area. CBT, mindfulness, general psychology. Defense mechanisms and so on.
If what's upsetting you is slow weight loss, then maybe it would be a good time to pause your diet for a while. Have you been doing it for a while. Your metabolism can slow down and cause struggles at this point. If you read the book called the Don't go Hungry diet, you will understand what might be the issue. She discusses it very well. To be extremely brief and not do this justice at all, there is now a general understanding in weight loss science that when you lose about 10% of body fat your weight loss efforts can start to stall and can trigger a rebound. This is all based in human physiology. There is a hormone that reads the fat loss in the body and tells the brain to start making you want to eat more and put on weight again. Its called Leptin. Review of weight loss studies have shown that most people regain the weight after a loss of about 10% fat loss and very few people are able to keep the weight off for more than a year. Leptin is the explanation. So i urge you to read that book if you think this could be going on for you.
Anyway the basic answer to this problem is to start eating more for a while. There is no reason to go and pig out but just increase the amount you are eating while continuing to try to eat healthy foods. At a certain point, your body will realise there is no famine and no danger and your metabolism will correct itself and you will be able to start losing weight again with relative ease.
Through all that, i would continue to keep strict vigilance on what you eat and a food diary. If you take a break for about a month (as i did) then consider if you are ready to start again, you may find all this difficulty goes away. So the key is to generally lose weight more slowly. And to take a break from time to time to reset the body.
I do this more often than I'd like to admit but rather from stress or emotions, I get this feeling of "whatever, my so can eat whatever they want, I want to do that too! Just today..." And then I'll eat pizza and breadsticks and corned beef and hash and McDonalds /cough/didthissunday/cough/
I know it can stall my weight loss but I've come to terms with the fact that sometimes, I crave delicious, unhealthy food. I'm going to eat it. Then I'm going to go to the gym the next day and eat better. Cheat days won't undo all your work, they're just speed bumps on the road to your goal.
I absolutely struggle with this and I'm a long term loser and successful maintainer! It's not something that necessarily goes away entirely, I find with me that it ebbs and flows.
Some seasons I'm bang on and nothing can shake me, there's no boredom or emotional eating, the scale doesn't phase me.
Other times every day is a struggle and I'm hanging on by the skin of my teeth. Even small things will trigger a monumental internal struggle.
It's not a matter of knowing how to manage the situation or even having been successful in it - every day has to be dealt with as it comes, maintenance and losing are a day by day process. And sometimes it is easier than others! For me, when I catch myself in a slump I generally choose to be a little more lax with myself and allow some generosity in my plan so that I don't feel like an utter failure. Then after a bit of that I'm usually ready to pull on my work boots and get back to dietary strictness, whether I'm feeling it or not.
But yeah, it's a lifelong struggle for me. It hasn't gone away with the weight lost or even time passing. It's more hormonal and life related than anything and it's something that doesn't have to beat you if you don't let it. But don't believe if you knock emotional eating that it will stay down, because you may be in for an unpleasant surprise. Just focus on one day at a time and don't psyche yourself out
I use to have such amazing will power and determination, it kind of went down the drain somewhere along the way. weight loss just became more real, you know? I started having up's and down's... I started losing slower... It's more a life style now and life is unpredictable.
ok so yeah sometimes if something upsets me to the point where I can't emotionally deal with it anymore I just say screw it and eat too much, or don't workout one day because I don't feel like it, I just binge and give in. Usually starting fresh the next day more motivated than ever.
I don't wanna depend on it!! But I guess addiction is hard to break
My comfort foods are orange juice (if i'm sad I'll drink a whole bottle of 50 cal Tropicana) rye bread, and just about anything else that involves little prep.
I don't do it everyday and I don't make excuse, I take full responsibility and I tell myself "this is wrong but I'll let it slide"
Anyone else do that? thanks
I want to congratulate the part of you that says "screw it." You've lost a lot of weight, no doubt with a lot of effort so you must know how strong you are. But even the strongest of the strong and even the thinnest people will eat out of stress or emotions sometimes. Food IS comforting, it holds a lot of memories and can raise our serotonin levels to make us feel good, it's completely within the realm of reason that we would need a little more of a certain food to help us maintain our sanity.
The only thing that can hold you back is the guilt that you feel. You are in no way a bad person for drinking orange juice and whoever told you that is a vile person. Moderation is something that most normal weight people survive on yet people who are overweight swear up and down that it can't work - who's word are you going to take?
Of course I have a different take on this sort of thing because i practice intuitive eating and I've learned that bingeing is brought on by over restriction. So now I know that if I binge I've either been restricting too much or using the food to deal with an uncomfortable emotion. Either way I'm not being a bad lazy weak willed person. But I do use the experience to get to the bottom of why I had the lapse to begin with. Was there some kind of stressful situation that caused you to reach out for the juice and bread? Have you been over restricting yourself? When we binge our body is trying to tell us something, it's trying to find a way to cope with something and if we try to listen we can figure out what that need is and address it!
You are beautiful, you are strong, a little juice does not make you weak. How could it?
When I have an occassional binge I come to 3FC and read my signature, it does help me.
Last edited by Palestrina; 05-21-2014 at 07:16 AM.
I appreciate your honesty, df180. Life IS unpredictable. Thank Goodness we don't have to do it perfectly! I find I go through cycles too - I do best when I have compassion for the imperfect times and strength for the "on track" times. The fact that you are more motivated the next day, and are willing to give yourself a fresh start, sounds very positive to me. I was told a long time ago that life is often 'two steps forward, one step back'---definitely not a straight line! If I'm dealing with emotional stress, and I think of it, I find that journaling about what's going on/what I'm feeling is helpful. Getting my thoughts & feelings out on paper seems to release some of the 'emotional charge' which I might otherwise eat over. Of course, the journaling isn't a guarantee of success either. But it often helps. Oh, and meditating/praying are helpful for me too.
Bread - any kind of bread including rye - can be a binge food for me. Those carbs just call my name sometimes! Hang in there, I know you won't give up.
When I have the hunger cravings that just don't seem to go away, I drink a cup of Swiss Miss hot cocoa. It's the low-cal kind with only 25 calories per serving. I've found that the combination of it being hot and sweet tricks my hypothalamus into thinking I've just eaten or something. It definitely helps to curb my hunger, and at 25 calories I can have several a day if I want.
Anyone else have this bad habit?
thanks
