If it were that simple, I wouldn't be the enormous person that I am today. Tough love really doesn't work on the internet, it just makes you seem like an insensitive prat.

I've been working out consistently still, I just can't seem to get my eating under control. Although, my definition of 'crap' really might differ. I don't eat junk or snacks and what not. I just eat a lot of the stuff that's o the no-no list. i.e white flour, lots of potatoes etc. Not like pizza and crisps or anything like that. Hence, the non-simplicity of the situation. I'm eating badly, but just under terrible so I can sort of get away with it... the problem is, I've been letting myself get away with it too much and it's stalling my weight loss.

Only you can fix this dudebro.

You could have your family and friends duct tape you to a wall and feed you nothing but chicken and vegetables until you get to goal weight? Other than that, you just gotta get to the point where enough is enough and cut off the junk supply.

My fiance is reading over my shoulder and he had two comments:

1) Want me to go get the duct tape?
2) innuendo about activities other than feeding that he'd need to do if I were duct taped to a wall.

But it is that simple (though not easy, mind you). It comes down to a choice. We choose to eat when we're not hungry, or eat food that isn't nutritious and too much of it, to boot. You're talking about the ways you rationalize it to 'get away with it'. Who is in control of your brain - you or a bag of flour?

In the end you are an intelligent, capable, sentient human being. You are in the driver's seat. You are capable of analyzing what is going on in your brain and then making choices in response to the feedback being given. You can choose to eat or not eat, but your poor body's only defense against too much food is converting it to fat (or having organ damage).

So yes, my heart goes out to you and I've been there, too, but it really is straightforward and YOU are the only one who can feel your body's feedback and choose to control your feeding behavior. It is entirely possible that you may not be ready to shelve emotional and social gluttony, and that the choice of junky food in large quantities is more compelling than exercising self control. Maybe you aren't ready to fight that yet. But the solution to weight problems isn't magic - it is dedication and consistency, choices that add up to either lighter or heavier bodies. Some things, like the type of diet you choose, can make this much easier or much harder (I maintain almost effortlessly on low-ish carbs and whole food, I constantly feel hunger and cravings when I eat junk), but the choices remain the same.

You pick your response - Joss may have been indelicate in how she stated it but she is 100% right. You have a choices you're in control, and if your choices don't line up with your goals then the struggle will persist and all the love and kindness in the world isn't going to help. Sorry

wahahahahahaha.

It's definitely NOT easy to eat "well" all day every day. If it were, there'd be no diet industry, few gyms, and Little Debbie would be flat broke.

Yup, simple does NOT mean easy, and this isn't the only area of life where this is true. It has taken me four years to get to this point. Oy!

You phrased it much more eloquently than I did... It was early and I was still working on my coffee...

I struggled with binge eating for a long time, and though I know I am not "cured" of it, I do feel that for the most part I have it under control. Those urges do not strike me nearly as often as they used to, but when they do, I remind myself that ultimately I am the one who decides what the outcome is going to be that day.

I may come off as an insensitive Prat which is probably the military woman in me, but I DO understand what it's like.

Mmmm Little Debbie... that *****.

This is a really interesting thread, with some great points. The discussion about choice is particularly interesting to me. This idea of you can choose to eat or not eat - I think it is true to say eating such and such is always a type of choice because you are the person actively doing it and no-one else is forcing you at any point. However, I do feel there is a difference somewhere (certainly with me) in a choice that has a logical root and one that doesn't seem to. So, for example, there are plenty of times where I have been out with friends, on holiday etc etc and thought, "To **** with it, I'm having what they're having, I deserve it, I want to have that" and so on. Leaving aside willpower, I can see this is a choice I make because at that moment in time I want a certain type of food, experience, more than the end goal I'm working towards.

However, I can't believe this is the same type of active choice as when I've tried to quit binging. I get an urge to binge, I spend hours going back and forth on the decision and getting very mentally worked up, saying to myself, "I don't want to binge, I don't want to give up the end goal, but I feel a need to binge, I don't know if I can stop myself." Sometimes I manage to talk myself down, not always. That isn't about having a certain type of food but lots of food, all at once. It is still a choice, in the sense that no-one else made me do it, but it feels a TOTALLY different type of choice to the previous example. (And involves a lot more complex emotional to-and-fro-ing.)

I think it can be dangerous to focus on this too much - it can be too easy to think, "This is the way I'm made, I can't help it, etc" (which I've done) and then I absolutely agree you need to start trying to hold yourself to account a bit more. But... Sometimes it can feel like an unstoppable force. And yes, simple is not the same as easy, but stopping that binging train of thought and emotion doesn't feel particularly simple to me either.

Apologies if this is a little less than coherent - it's 2am where I am.

In a couple months I'll be my own person again, and all that you lovely ladies are saying will indeed be true. I'll be buying my own groceries, in charge of my own finances again, and I won't have to be dependent on other people to decide what my meal for the evening will be. But until then, no, for me, it isn't that simple. And of course I know this'll seem like another excuse, maybe it is, but it's just my situation right now. It sucks, and I get really frustrated about it, but we're always able to start out the month well, but by mid month the $'s run out, and we're back to making unhealthy choices, cause there are so many mouths to feed in my house.
When I lived alone before, I would only ever buy the good stuff, then I was never tempted or I'd go to sleep hungry if all I was craving was junk. But, you know, everyone's situation is different, and I think we ought to take that into account. Perhaps?
But I guess this is what Kaplods was saying earlier, what with the idea that something is unequicovally wrong with me and that I need tough love in order to buck up, that I'm weak or making excuses, lazy etc etc.. these things are automacaly assumed because I admit that I'm having a hard time with my diet. When maybe the truth is, I'm having a hard time with my diet and I need time to sort out myself and my situation.

IDK I'm still mulling over the responses in this thread.

ETA:
Although, this is sort of pulling me out of the food funk. I can go back to trying to make the best choices I can in my situation, instead of throwing my hands up.. so there's that. I feel good about myself if I eat well, and I feel terribly if I eat rubbish food; like I'm just a horrible person or something. I just have to keep fighing, you know? Keep fighting.

You are 5'9" and just slightly over 200 lbs. that's hardly "enormous" IMO.

Oy, you may have misunderstood me.

I wasn't giving you tough love, I was being as diplomatic and logical with this as possible, in an attempt to help you. As I said, if you're not ready to confront the real issues, you can't force it through diet. A diet can only ever fix food, it can't fix our minds, hearts, self image, relationships, or anything that isn't FOOD related. And very little of most weight problems is actually strictly food. If you don't get to and deal with the root, the difficulties will keep popping back up and it will be a battle. It becomes a bit like dietary whack-a-mole.

So you're not ready to deal with the root, from all you've indicated. Okay. If you just want a shoulder to cry on say so, and we won't try to give constructive advice to help you find solutions when you aren't ready or able to implement them.

A couple key points really suck out to me in this thread:

Following a healthy plan is simple, not easy (once you figure out the right plan, of course).
Every choice you make is your own. Sometimes those healthy choices are incredibly hard to make–when you're being pressured, when money's tight, when food options are limited by your location, when you're mentally down, when you're PMSing, etc–but this choice is still yours.

The most empathetic thing I can say to other people who have stopped controlling their choices, like I have recently, is to start thinking about why you've stopped controlling your choices. Once you find out why you've slipped then you can go about the business of not slipping any more.

Absolutely. I can see now that I used the wrong word. I did mean easy, not simple. Weight loss is simple. But so not easy.

When you're 5'9 and all your friends are 5'5 you kind of always feel enourmous.

I wasn't directing my response to you, I tend to respond to things, and think about things in a really broad sense, so I wasn't directing what I said to you or even JossFit. I was merely contemplating what Kaplods said, and trying to assimilate some of the responses I was reading. If that makes any sense at all.



And as I'm mulling things over even further, I wonder (this isn't directed at anybody!) do we really deal with the root in this weightloss thing? The real root to our problems? I don't know if I'll be doing that...it seems to big, too impossible a thing to do. Is that perhaps the path to failure? Trying to scratch at the surface problems but not really connecting to the network of thoughts/issues that got me there in the first place? Maybe I should make a new thread about this... but I wonder how many people who achieve weightloss success really deal with all their issues with food. Maybe they put it away or cope with it, or try to ignore it all together, but I wonder how many people really solve it, (for lack of a better word).

Reading over this thread was great as I have been hungry since I reached my calorie limit but the thread clarified that I do have a choice and I am going to hang tough and keep the nice cal number for today.

We always have choices.