Achieving Balance (or Dieting vs. Disordered Eating)
I kind of don’t know where to start with this, so forgive me if I’m rambling and incoherant. I’m also not sure where exactly to put this post. I put in in here because I’m trying to ease into maintenance (or I think I should) and it seems like you guys have been at the lifestyle game for a long time and might have some kind of grasp on these ideas already.
I like to think I’ve lost weight in a safe and healthy way. I’ve lost about 70 pounds in 7 months. But the truth is, while I’ve done VERY well, I’m not sure that I’ve achieved this weight loss in the healthiest way.
Before my tipping point, I ate whatever I wanted. I lived alone, long distance from family and friends, was bored and lonely. To occupy my time and soothe myself, I ate. I ate things that tasted good to take my mind off my boring, lonely life. I loved food!
In the beginning stages of my lifestyle change it was “watching what I ate”, and writing down everything I ate, and cutting out a LOT of refined/processed carbs, and also a lot of complex carbs. Eventually my diet evolved into calorie counting, with a bit of carb counting thrown in when I felt like it. It made everything so much more orderly and organized. I liked how I had so much control over what I ate and how it affected my weight.
Towards the later stages of loss (about 165 and below) I have tended toward more restrictive habits. I have aimed for 1200 or less calories per day. It was never really about what foods I needed to fuel my body, more what can I eat to fill me up with the fewest calories. However, I’d never admit that to anyone I knew or even to myself sometimes.
Also towards these later stages, I have been getting very fatigued, and my hair is falling out. I thought it was an iron deficiency, but now I think I was just lying to myself and it is a result of the low calories I’ve been consuming for the last 7 months.
Exercise never used to be a big factor in the beginning. I did one step class per week and rode my horse whenever I felt like it. Now my thinking has changed, so that if I miss a workout or a ride in a day and take a rest day, it makes me feel guilty. The guilt makes it not worthwhile to take a rest day. I’d rather take a run than beat myself up all day about missing the run. I think “I don’t even run that fast/far, or lift heavy weights, what are you complaining about, how will you ever get to be the athlete you want?”
Meanwhile, I’ve surpassed my original and second goals. I keep lowering my goal whenever I reach a certain weight, from 150 to 145 to 135. I don’t even know why I want to get to 135. Other than it gives me more of a buffer from getting fat again. I actually am really proud of myself for being at 140 now, but it seems like such an in between number to try and maintain at.
I’ve often thought that I needed to take a break from the diet or try a “re-feed” to bring my energy levels back up and try and perk up my metabolism, but the thought of eating that much scares the crap out of me now. I’m not sure I could trust myself to eat that much and not start into destructive behaviour like purging.
I’m trying to ease myself into maintenance, but I’m struggling with reintroducing more calorie dense foods. I had half an english muffin with PB last week for breakfast each day to sub in for my regular hard boiled egg. Probably only in my mind, it threw my weight way out of whack and it seemed I was slowly gaining each day.
Along with trying to maintain, I’m trying to reintroduce indulgences when appropriate. My thoughts are so back and forth its like an internal battle in my head. “It’s ok to eat a piece of cake every once and awhile, it won’t undo anything, you deserve this after you came so far”, to “is this crappy piece of cake really worth not losing any more weight this week? it is going to take an hour of spin class just to burn it off”. I usually don’t bother indulging because when I do, I just end up beating myself up over it for the next few days, especially if the food wasn’t that good, or god forbid if I gain.
The last month I’ve read and been trying to follow the “Beck Diet Solution”. It’s helped me a lot for social situations, and planning and monitoring my eating, but I wonder if I’m taking it too far. And if it is really healthy to have these extreme habits where if I don’t follow them I just feel so guilty over failing.
I’ve also started to read a lot of healthy living blogs, like Oh She glows, Healthy Tipping Point, Kath Eats etc. Their perspectives have made me even more conflicted. I know what I am doing now is not healthy. It is disordered eating, my life revolves around my food intake and my weight. I’m not fueling my body in the most sustainable way. These girls in these blogs all praise intuitive eating and how it has helped them achieve their “happy weights”, but it just so happens that their happy weights are low! What if my happy weight is higher than I’d like? I’m not sure that intuitive eating would be right for me to maintain where I’d like.
I’m not sure why I wrote all this out, other than I really wanted to write it down somewhere for someone to read in case anyone out there might feel the same. I feel very alone right now, I never let anyone in on my disordered thoughts. I try to talk about it to my SO, but I end up talking in circles, and it sounds very odd, so I usually stop and let the topic drop.
I’m so proud of myself for changing my life, I’m finally at a place I never thought was possible. But at the same time my thoughts are just getting messier and messier.
All I wish for is balance. Balance between indulging and limiting, between rest and exercise. I wish my body and mind would balance. I wish it wasn’t such a struggle to let myself balance.
I went through, (heck, still sometimes go through) some of the thoughts you have. If 140 is good, 135 is great...I can eat my way back to 140. I think what helped me more than anything though is shopping. I began building a new wardrobe...of nice and (sometimes very expensive) clothes and shoes. I cannot afford to ditch all these clothes for smaller ones. A size 6 is a perfect size for me at 5'7". My face looks terrible at a lower weight, (verified by pictures). I have to be done. I am normal, and I am fine. The work now is to stay normal and fine....
I don't know if anyone who has lost a significant amount of weight ever really has a perfect relationship with food. Just like an alcoholic, or an ex-smoker or drug addict... there is a fine line between an active and a non active user. A slippery slope that always needs to be monitored. Food is very powerful.
If it's too much to handle, maybe a counselor? Talking to a professional might really help.
I did the same, I kept lowering my goal weight as I surpassed it. My thought also was to have a cushion. But I also set a weight I don't want to fall below, once i hit that weight(105lbs.) I started gradually eating more calories, very slowly. 103lbs is considered underweight for me, I didn't want to be underweight. I lost 68lbs in 10 mo. eating 900 to 1050 cal. My hair didn't fall out, I felt great, but I ate tons of veggies and fruits. My hair got fuller and curlier, my nails are really strong and both grow like crazy. Your taller.,so you do need more calories than me, just make sure they are the healthy calories. That will insure that your getting all the nutrients you need. I'm now up to 1500 cal to maintain w/ 40min of jogging/walking a day and am still weighing between 105 and 110. Fear of gaining can be your enemy, don't let it.
I wish I had some good advice for you. I freaked out a little when I hit maintenance, but once you just kind of accept and move forward I felt calm. I too have changed my mind about my goal. I'm just not comfortable at this weight, it doesn't feel right. But this new weight loss phase is going to ne different. I'm going to eat the maintenance cals for my new goal weight and however long it takes is how long it takes. That way there's no transition and there's no re-introduction of indulgences, that seemed to trigger binging for me.
I think it's a step in the right direction that you can identify all these things on your own. I would say that is a positive. Like Lori said if it's too much, seek help. You're not alone.
I think you've gotten some great advice already. I just want to echo the fact that you're not alone. I have felt many of the things you describe at one time or another-- particularly the deprivation of treats and the need to exercise. I know I "can" indulge, but I RARELY choose to.
I have gone up a few pounds recently from where I want to be and I am experimenting with eating EXTRA and in particular, more protein. I think I may not have been eating enough and not enough fuel for my body considering my workouts.
It is so hard mentally. I hear you. I do think a counselor might be a good idea for you as well. Take care and keep posting!
I am struggling with exactly this issue right now. There's always a weight that could be more perfect, you know? Part of it is that I honestly can't seem to grasp how tall I am, and that 168ish, which is what I weighed this morning, is in not really a high weight for somebody of my height, but it just SOUNDS high to me. Even though I'm mostly wearing a US size 8. At six feet tall. Except I'm old enough to remember when the size 8s were quite a bit smaller than they are now, and oh, the whole thing is kind of maddening.
The bigger part is, I think, that I'm just afraid to quit losing, because hey, I can do that. The choices I need to make to lose weight are second nature to me right now, and actually deliberately adding more food in scares the **** out of me. But I also know I really should not lose much more weight.
So I'm doing something much like Lori did: investing in my permanent wardrobe. I will be GUTTED if I can't wear my beautiful new clothes because they just don't fit anymore. (Not as gutted as I'd be if they don't fit because they're too tight, mind you, but it would be pretty disappointing.) The way my clothes fit me now suggests that I can lose another few pounds and everything will be fine, so this is pretty much it: I'm calling 165 my red line, and letting myself go on until I get below that, and then I just have to suck it up and try to figure out the whole maintenance thing. I understand that I emotionally need that buffer before I can really get stuck in with figuring out maintenance, but I also know that at some point I HAVE TO STOP losing weight.
Good luck to you, and thanks for starting this topic. I've been brooding quietly over it for a while now, and it's good to talk about it.
I couldn't stop thinking of your post last night after logging off.
I continue to struggle with the same issues you're dealing with. My big questions for myself remain:
Will keeping off more than 100 pounds for the rest of my life require that I maintain behaviors & thinking that are commonly perceived as indicative of an eating disorder?
Since I've been morbidly obese, do I get an exemption from that diagnosis, and is this actually healthy?
If we're in a toxic food culture, as some writers believe, is deviance from that norm perhaps a sign of health & sanity, rather than its opposite? I wonder about that, too.
Have I ever NOT had an eating disorder, since my way of eating got me up to over 250 pounds & nearly made me a Type II diabetic? So what would normal eating be like for me -- since I may never have experienced it within my adult memory?
Another problem unique to me: I lost a lot of weight years ago, and ended up with an eating disorder -- first anorexia, then binge eating & bulimia with purging through overexercising. My hair wasn't falling out & I didn't feel weak, but my period did stop for nearly two years. I sought counseling. I returned to something like intuitive eating. I read Susan Kano & everything. And I ended up gaining 130 pounds, because my efforts in therapy were focused on loosening the brakes, not dealing with the gas pedal.
(The brakes & the gas pedal were the metaphor I've used to understand my own guilt over any indulgence after a long period of restriction -- I felt as if I had pulled the emergency brake when I began losing weight, but once the weight came off, and I realized I shouldn't be riding on the brakes, the lever was so sticky that I wasn't strong enough to get the brake off again.)
This time around, when losing more than 100 pounds for a second time, I let the weight come off more gradually & slowly, and I didn't calorie count, though I chose very carefully & stopped eating certain foods & tried to maintain some semblance of portion control. I do exercise a great deal, but I think of it also as serving the purpose of relieving stress, as opposed to my old habit of eating when tense or anxious. Also, I have settled for a higher weight than I did years ago.
I don't think I'm balanced. But other parts of my life aren't particularly balanced either. I think my relationship with food will always be fraught & charged with anxiety. My job is to challenge my irrational thoughts & feelings & to push my comfort level. Like, not to say no to invitations because there will be food or drink, or because they'll interrupt my exercise time. That's what I can manage, for now. I think I'm headed in the right direction. I think that, over time, I will become more relaxed, rather than more rigid. But I wonder if I'll have to settle for my own definition of "normal" in my relationship with food, and if that normal will contain more checks & balances than many people's.
All this is just to tell you that you're not alone in puzzling over your situation.
Wow - I feel like I could have written 90% of your post myself. No advice from this mess up individual. I am, however, sending you a ton of support & letting you know (like the others) that you are not alone.
Reading over it all, I seem so dramatic. I am trying my best to use the Beck method of Oh Well, this is what it is, try not to make such a big deal over it. It's not like I'm underweight after all. The guilt is the worst though.
My SO thinks I am neurotic, but he knew that from the beginning . I can literally have an outloud argument with myself over food.
Congratulations, Cally Callahan, for that remarkable weight loss.
I really like your notion, "I wish my body and mind would balance." I also feel that desire to make it all balance - and put the pressure on myself to do it without it being so difficult. My take is that balancing our lives is difficult. I like Beck's statement that from her practice that thin people also work at their eating - perhaps we just don't notice it.
Good luck chasing down that balance. Sending supportive thoughts that you can find it without the Sabotaging Thoughts that make it a burden. If you feel inclined, drop by the Beck Diet Solution Forum - there's a bunch of folks looking for their path using the Beck strategies.
OMG I have had and still have absolutely the same issues and frustrations like you!
My biggest worry is hair loss, I wash them only once a week, rarely 2x a week cause I've lost almost 50% of my hair and been also lying to myself that it's because of iron defficiency while in reality it was my low food intake. I was also lowering calories till I reached my goal, talking to myself and arguing with myself when I crave some cake or simply bread that my mom makes an it's so tasty, I feel like I'm missing so much and that I will never be able to eat and live like normal people do. everytime I see a skinny girl I wonder in my head what does she do for maintaing that weight, what does she eat, what is her lifestyle like, and that only makes me jealous and angry cause to me it takes so much energy. My life now is practically all about food, counting calories, making sure not to make any mistakes that I would later regret.
I also started following different blogs, especially Oh she glows is my favourite and her story and recipes are so inspiring. I only want my life to go back where it was in terms of socializing and relationship with others. right now I don't have energy even to talk to people, I become nervous and sometimes I wonder if all this was worth it, should I just stay owerweight and be happy but there is no way going back. I lost a study year because of my dieting, I can't study cause all I think is what will I eat today, tommorow, how will I keep up with my maintainig,...
I wish you a lot of luck and support. I'm sure that one day we'll wake up and discover that "hey, after all it's not that bad as it looks."
Funny, after temporarily "coming to terms" with the fact I'd like to get down to 135 before seriously eating in maintenance mode, I had another mini panic attack last night over the same idea of balance.
This time I got the notion of Happy Weight stuck in my head. Maybe it was all the buckling down this past week and eating lots of freezer chicken (the joys of moving house).
I guess I am frightened that I will get to 135 and not be able to enjoy simple healthy normal food in larger (than dieting mode) quantities without gaining weight. I'm not talking 4 cups of pasta binges, but more like having a baked potato at dinner with my veg and protein. Is it worth it to lose another 5 pounds if I know that it may require lifelong sacrifices?
How did the rest of you choose between lowest maintainable weight (Happy Weight) and lowest achievable weight (Unsustainable low)? Was it a hard decision?
Lowest maintable weight is a challenge, but no more so than a day full of errands and meetings at work and assignments to hand in. I feel that I can do this. I'm not saying it's easy. Sometimes it's much harder than other times. But for a little while, anyway, I feel I can just fly on automatic pilot, making good choices.
Lowest achievable weight makes me crazy. Because I can never do enough. (How do I know it's the very lowest?) I second-guess myself. It brings out the perfectionist in me. It's not being on plan 90% of the time, it's being ALWAYS on plan, no matter what. I'm constantly thinking I could be better at this -- I could be eating less, exercising more.
Let me put it this way: Do I want to be a beauty, and have a life in which that's where most of my effort goes, and that is what defines me? I mean, like a professional beauty (an Edwardian term that I'll revive to encompass models, actresses, celebutantes, singers, dancers, whatever, women who make a living primarily through their appearance or physical attributes). Or do I want to be a fairly attractive ordinary woman, whose body is not constantly first & foremost the No. 1 priority? For me, there's about 20 pounds difference between the two, give or take a few.
As I got older, my priorities shifted a bit. I became just slightly less vain about my appearance. Maybe because I've accepted that age is going to change me anyway. That made the decision easier.
I make no moral judgments on professional beauties. They are very powerful women. Always have been, in all cultures.
"What is disordered eating"?
I recently saw the following definition:
Quote:
"eating almost nothing for significant periods of time;
eating 500+ calories in one snack;
eating until you feel sick and nauesated;
feeling guilty about everything you eat;
analyzing how to burn off the calories;
excessive calorie counting;
often accompanied by low self-esteem and body image, and convinced that you are fat.
It's basically any form or a combination of forms of eating."
Another:
Quote:
An Eating Disorder, is defined as
any of various psychological disorders...that involve insufficient or excessive food intake.
And:
Quote:
Disordered means you are eating in a way that harms you psychologically and/or physically
"Disordered" eating.
Oh, Boy...you got me started......
It is A LABEL to help Insurance Companies and Therapists.
and like all Labels, it is frequently misused.
Yes, there are people who actually have Anexoria and Bullemia,
and need to be treated for that...
...and then there are the rest of us.
My take is that if we our eating wasn't "disordered",
we wouldn't have become fat.
If it wasn't "disordered",
we wouldn't have lost weight.
If it doesn't stay "disordered",
we won't maintain our weight-loss.
"Normal" people don't have to WORK to eat "normally".
Their bodies make it natural for them.
Becoming "normal" weight
doesn't give us the ability to eat "normally".
Even with almost 5 years at goal-weight,
MY body still naturally wants "disordered" OVER-eating,
and continually drives me toward regaining my weight-loss.
which requires me to be constantly viligent over my food-intake.
All of my considerable experience, education, and research tells me "Intuitive Eating"
...which is the standard treatment for "disordered eating"...
is an absolute crock, and merely wishful thinking.
I don't believe the majority of fat people have a MENTAL (psychological) problem with food.
I believe we have a PHYSICAL problem with food.
That physical problem sometimes LEADS TO mental problems.
There is a big difference between those philosophies,
primarily physical? or primarily mental?
These differences involve behavior choices one needs to make to deal with the problem.
I have Accepted that my eating will always be "disordered",
in that I will never be able to rely on my body's eating inclinations
and remain anywhere near normal weight.
......And That's okay..... .
Achieving Balance (or Dieting vs. Disordered Eating)
. I can literally have an outloud argument with myself over food.
and her story and recipes are so inspiring. I only want my life to go back where it was in terms of socializing and relationship with others. right now I don't have energy even to talk to people, I become nervous and sometimes I wonder if all this was worth it, should I just stay owerweight and be happy but there is no way going back. I lost a study year because of my dieting, I can't study cause all I think is what will I eat today, tommorow, how will I keep up with my maintainig,...
