[lewith]

Hi guys. I'm new to posting about this subject so forgive me if I've posted this in the wrong place or have approached this the wrong way, but here goes!

I'm a 23 year old male who has suffered with clinical depression for half of my life and have developed an extremely unhealthy relationship with food. Been through the usual up and down weight gain (currently now the heaviest I've ever been) and get involved stress eating / comfort eating / emotional eating bouts. It's now got to the point where I get no true enjoyment out of food because I see it as such an enemy and my body is completely suffering for my bad choices.

I'm so completely in the headspace to lose the extra weight and tackle this for good (I've already tackled a lot of my depression and anxiety issues and this is one of the last things) but I feel like everytime I do go into more structured and proper eating habits my body responds negatively with terrible headaches and fatigue which ends up leading me back into old habits so I don't think I'm getting the balance right. Does anyone have any experience in how you go from an extreme unhealthy diet with binging and bad overeating to eating well without the withdrawals (or even how to deal with the withdrawals)? I'm struggling to find the balance and I don't know where to begin, help!!!

Thanks for reading : )

[EMERALDberry]

You may want to see a nutritionist.

[Ameline]

I personally had great success with intuitive eating to fix my relationship with food before I went for weight loss - I finally started treating them as separate issues. It was more of a gentle maintenance program for me, though some have lost weight with it. It's all about being in tune with the body. There are a couple of threads on it here, although I didn't really have a look around them. I gained some weight while I was trying to figure it out, but it went away just as fast and then it basically stayed the same, but I was feeling better, my fitness improved and I even started to enjoy multiple types of exercise for the first time in my life. I'm really drawing on what I've learned now that I'm losing weight. Might be useful to you as well.

I think you could benefit from an expert opinion because of your symptoms, though.

[Pang]

Lewith are you still there?

Try dieting intermittently . For a few months try eating the meals you will be eating when calorie restriction starts. Also stay Hydra Ted . For most of us when we're dieting we tend to drink less too.
Being dehydrated can slow our metabolism as much as 17%. So drink healthy low calorie drinks or just plain water. My personal choice is green tea with lemon. Sometime a packet of stevia for a natural sweetener. My path is intermittent fasting. It's very slow . Not for everyone, but I always start to gradually shift to health foods on the feed days. If I do binge , which is be one less frequent. I'm mindful to practice calorie restriction every other day for at least a week.

One more homerun to pitch at you.

Obese people that exercise can live into their 90s.
Please try walking for an hour after your last meal any day you've had more fat to eat than you should.