I lost a ton of weight about eight years ago, and now I've gained it all back. I've been trying to lose it, but I'm fundamentally an impatient person who is not given to moderation. I don't like schedules, I don't like predictability, and it's really hard for me to do anything halfway. If I diet, I want to eat 800 calories a day and exercise it all off. But I also want to lose weight fast, and that just doesn't happen for me any more after all the crap I've put my metabolism through. It disappoints me when I work out and diet for two weeks and don't see much improvement, and I head right back to eating fast food for breakfast.
I feel like what I'm doing isn't working, and the fat on me grosses me out like it's a parasite that I want to get rid of RIGHT NOW. I'm starting to think of more and more extreme things like ketogenic diets (even though I know it would be bad for my heart and kidneys and I already have some unexplained chest pain/palpitations) and chewing nicotine gum. I feel like what I need to stick to a weight loss plan is some sort of "kick off" where I actually lose a lot of weight and feel better.
Apart from the previous rant, I just can't see a way to move forward from this . It's really stressful to be this disgusted with my own body all the time, and it's hard not to soothe that stress with further food. So I guess first of all, does anyone have anything that they've tried to produce fast, short term weight loss, at least to kick off a more long term plan? And second, if you've felt this way, how have you dealt with the disgust and impulse control issues and made piece with living a moderate lifestyle?
Feeling disgusted is a great place to start from.
You have a feeling, and you have identified it rather than numb the feeling with food.
I have been sick of myself and disgusted too. I gave up sugar, carbs, grains, chips,bread, roasted nuts, raisins, dry fruit, and ALL processed foods.
If a food has a list of ingredients I do not buy it. My life is better, cleaner and I am now thin!
I just joined 3FC, and your post is exactly how I feel. In 2009 I reached my goal weight, only to gain it all back in two years. I've fluctuated since then, but now I'm once again on the heavier side of the seesaw. I joined so that I could hopefully reach my goal with support from an online forum. I just want to feel good about myself again, and actually feel comfortable and not suffocated by my body.
Pattience: That's very helpful. I may check the first book out.
My plan as it stands now is to ask a doctor what's going on with my bloodsugar in general, since I've been having symptoms of it being a little bit wonky lately, and then ask if, given all that, it's dangerous at all for me to go on a low-carbohydrate diet. But if that clears I really think I will try low carb. I think it looks like it works, the restrictiveness of it might satisfy my desire for something different, and I don't really care for sugar and bread that much anyway. Most likely the biggest challenge is going to be trying to do all this healthily and on a budget, but that is what frozen broccoli is for.
I second Pattience with the lower carb approach.
Back the late 80s and 90s, when I started dieting, the "low fat high carb" diet was in. Diet yogurt sweetened with sugar, fear of eggs, the lot. I could never stick to it for more than a few days tops. I got fatter and fatter, as I binged myself to 101 kg at my fattest.
I've lost weight almost effortlessly on the lower carb, low calorie diet back in 2011, and now again.
Books such as "Sugarettes" (likening sugar and many carbs to cigarettes) were very helpful in shifting my diet behaviour.
"The End of Overeating" explains a lot about junk food's addictive qualities, and will help you overcome any self-loathing and blame you may have towards yourself.
I have to disagree, feeling disgusted is not a great place to start. Desperation is a poor motivation because it reaches for unrealistic unecessary goals. Hence why you're looking for fast temporary weight loss. I'm so confused by that, why do you want it fast and temporary? Doing that in the past has resulted in this - feeling disgusted and frustrated. If you need some chills and thrills why not go hand gliding or parachuting? Leave your metabolism out of it, it's already experienced enough damage don't you think? Research shows that yoyoing increases a person's risk for heart disease. It's not worth it.
So much self negativity, nothing good comes from that. You wouldn't that another person like that and expect them to do well, why do it to yourself? And remember that weightloss doesn't solve any problems. Lots of skinny people have low self esteem and suffer from unhappiness. Self love and respect is required at any weight, don't deprive yourself from it. Your goals sound misguided, unrealistic and even harmful.
Slow and steady, make better choices, learn to love moving your body and you'll get there and stay there.
Last edited by Palestrina; 06-25-2014 at 08:53 AM.
Agreed ^. You might have lost all the weight but a desire for immediate validation won't hold up in maintenance. You become a new normal and that's when we learn to live without daily results. Losing weight fast motivates a lot of people and then they are left dumbstruck at goal because they haven't learned long-term behavior that keeps them there, being content in your body is a big one. Hating yourself doesn't go away at goal, and as you've learned, it seems to bring people back to square 1.
All the diet plans and recipes in the world aren't going to fix an inability to be content without instant reward. I respectfully believe that too much diet/food advice will distract you from the real issue here.
I feel for you and I know how it is to feel disgusted with my body. That's why I'm here really....for health reasons too, but really, I'm quite vain and wanna look good.
You might consider Intermittent Fasting. There's a great thread on it here and a lot of people like the (limited) freedom it provides.
I highly recommend figuring out which foods you can't eat in moderation. For me, it took a very long time to come to terms with the fact that I can't manage eating sugar and flour (including whole wheat). I thought a life without those items wouldn't be worth living, but now I'm so much more in control of my food and life has greatly improved, along with my body image. I do eat fruit but not too much and I avoid dried fruits because they make me want to binge.
I also think it's important to include healthy fats in a diet (avocado, raw olive oil, raw nuts/seeds).
I hope you find what works....I think most of us here have felt beyond frustrated and eager to shed the weight quickly. However, those crash diets aren't good long term. Just keep reminding yourself that in one year, you could make slow, steady progress and be in a much better place or you could keep going around in circles and stay where you are now or even at a higher weight. Slow and steady wins the race just about every time when it comes to weight loss.
As far as budget, right now I have about 25 dollars a week for food USUALLY, but I'm hoping that when I'm living off student loans instead of the fruits of my part time minimum wage labors I can spend a bit more.
I think I am feeling so desperate to lose weight primarily because it's been a long time now since I was able to make new friends except for my current boyfriend, and I feel frustrated since I have put a lot of effort in and people don't return it. At the same time, I see people that I think I am more interesting and fun to hang out with than surrounded by people, even when they rarely say anything. I feel like it's not a thing anybody wants to be true, but that people dislike me or at least ignore me because of my weight. I'm sick of hanging around with people who talk about how they won't date fat people etc. and who also won't talk to me when we're alone in a room together. There isn't meetup.com events anywhere near where I live, and while I'm a pretty nerdy person, most people in the small ton where I live are not. I think if I could be appealing on a first impression, it would give me an opening.
Secondarily, it is an issue that I am 23 and I feel like my lifelong obesity is starting to take a real toll on my health. I have a ton of symptoms that my doctor has not found a cause for, but that I think are likely related to the weight (occasional blurry vision, shaky hands, random fast heartbeat), and I'm getting real sick of having PCOS and being the hairiest, most potentially infertile woman I know.
Meanwhile, my boyfriend is frustrated with me because while he steadily lost weight and kept it off, I've gained a lot in the time we have known each other. We are very honest with each other, and I know that right now while he loves me as a person, my body isn't very attractive to him. That doesn't seem fair to him, since he takes such care to maintain his own weight and deal with all my anxiety and internal drama. He deserves to have a pretty girlfriend at least. And it makes me feel awful to realize that even the person who loves me more than anything doesn't like the way I look right now.
As far as my desire to do it quickly, I've never been able to eat moderately. I can restrict my food for today, but I'm happiest when I'm eating weirdly (3 cucumbers for lunch or something), and there is always the day when I just mess up and keep messing up and then I don't stop the next day. So I feel like I should lose as much weight as possible to minimize the impact of those days when they happen on my ultimate weight. I would love to be able to adopt a moderate lifestyle, but I really have never done that and I don't even have a clue how to begin.
I'm not saying my feelings are good feelings to have, but right now I realistically see no way out of where I am mentally and socially without losing some weight, and since I'm an impulsive person, I don't know if I can do that in a non-impulsive way.
Last edited by ImpalaHoarder; 06-25-2014 at 09:18 PM.
For me, taking as much emotion as possible out of the weight loss journey, and treating it as a science experiment, has helped me the most. Impulse control, and containing your own emotions, is vital to weight loss and maintenance, and having a successful life generally. I'd start with emotional healing, and treat orderly eating as an expression of that. "Constructive living" might be helpful. Fwiw I was highly neurotic until about 36, so I know how horrible painful emotions can be.
I respectfully disagree. It is not so hard to separate how we feel about our bodies and how we feel about ourselves. One does not have to be the mirror image of the other. I wasn't full of self loathing before i started my diet. IN fact i wasn't depressed at all. But i was disgusted with my size and my inability to just do the right thing until the day i made a decision to change all that. When i reach goal, i will just continue doing what i've been doing. It doesn't have to stop all of a sudden. In my case its only changes in life circumstances that caused the change and lack of preparation for such occasions.
That said of course, if you can't put any of the advice into action, then you've got a big problem. But anyone ready to take action will be able to do it. If not straight away later. And it may not even be work on their self esteem that's required.
You are completely entitled to your opinion. But not everybody thinks the way you do or must do what you do in order to be successful, i find your posts to be quite preachy. Perhaps loving herself first will work better, who knows? She already knows how to lose weight, maybe its an issue of keeping herself at goal through other motivations as immediate scale reward stops at goal.
If you have $25/week, then I'd focus on eating things like legumes, eggs, cabbage, oats, etc.
It costs about $5 to make a great frittata and cut it into 6 servings so you have daily breakfast. Oats are super cheap and can be another breakfast option.
A big pot of soup - I love curry lentil and split pea - sets me back around $3 and gives me 8-10 servings. Tomato soup and carrot soup are another two very cheap options, but also black bean soup, white bean soup, and broccoli cheese soup. I freeze them in 1-cup servings so I don't get bored and can pull out a healthy meal anytime I want.
Stretch your meat. For example, I'll use shredded zucchini/squash mixed into my meatloaf, burgers, chicken nuggets, meatballs and more. This stretches the meat so that we use 1lb for many meals, but also it cuts calories because we're eating more vegetables.
If you can shop at places like Aldi, Pricerite, Asian grocery stores, and any discount market, you can really stretch your budget even further.
We have a forum Shoestring meals that has plenty of ideas on how to eat on a budget, but you should also check out budgetbytes.com.
Imapala, I have been where you are on both sides of the coin. In high school one of my best friends was tall and, well, beefy, for a lack of a better term. Clearly she was overweight by a good margin. Yet people, and boys especially, flocked to her. She had a radiant personality. She was always genuinely smiling at people and she had a genuine zest for life. She never "chose" her friends. She would befriend anybody without even trying. She had goals and ambitions. Here I was half her height and weight and I was the nobody in the room. I was very, very jealous. I bet you would be surprised at the number of people who would like to approach you for a friendship but are as afraid as you are, that you might reject them.
Flash forward to adult hood. I have lost touch with my high school friend. Made others. When I moved in with my husband, then boyfriend, I made friends with one of the girls in the building. We were both thin, cute, with boyfriends. We even got pregnant within a year of one another. I thought I had it made. Then I started to gain weight after my son was born. And that old jealousy came roaring back as my friend lost her baby weight and I kept gaining. People would call her beautiful and all but ignore me where as once I had drawn my own fair share of admiring glances.
Anyway my point is it doesn't matter what your weight is. You can still make friends and be popular without having to make a mockery of yourself, if you are overweight. My friend in high school did so. When I was skinny it didn't matter a lick if I was skinny. In fact in school, even though I would say I was fairly attractive, people still ignored me or bullied me.
If I may be so bold I think that you are trying to make friends with the wrong sorts of people (if they are ignoring you). Also, you may unknowingly be projecting an "I dare you to get close to me" kind of vibe. If you don't feel worthy of yourself people pick up on it and will respect your unthinking "keep away" vibe. I may be rambling a bit but my point is that it doesn't matter if you are overweight or skinny.
That being said a great many of us here are struggling with similar feelings to you. Myself included. It is easy to dish out advice and not follow it ourselves. I tend to agree with the people who say slow and steady wins the race. Unfortunately I take it so slow that I find it hard to start. LOL If these feelings you are having motivate you to start your weight loss, so be it, but as others have pointed out it is NOT sustainable. Especially since your stated goals for losing weight may be a bit out of whack.
As to physical manifistations of your weight. I wonder if you might not be having panic or anxiety attacks? That would account for a number of your symptoms?
You are completely entitled to your opinion. But not everybody thinks the way you do or must do what you do in order to be successful, i find your posts to be quite preachy. Perhaps loving herself first will work better, who knows? She already knows how to lose weight, maybe its an issue of keeping herself at goal through other motivations as immediate scale reward stops at goal.
I think right now Impala is thinking too far ahead. It is great to have ultimate goals, i.e. things to motivate you when nothing else seems to work. I think she would be better served, though, with a one day at a time approach and build her self confidence from her daily achievements. She's already thinking ahead, and focusing on, maintenance which is why she wants to rush the process. Learning the process, and coming to terms with her feelings and motivations during that time, is critical for successful maintenance later on.
Feeling disgusted and frustrated
