I'm new here. Actually, I was a member probably 7 years ago! I am now bigger than ever. I just need someone to talk to. Someone to share with. Like today, I wanted ice cream. Bad. I didn't eat any. (last week made a special trip for it!)
I know we are different then other people. I asked my boyfriend if he wanted to try this sandwich yesterday (It was yummy) and he said "no..I'm full" WHAT!? Full!!?? Is anyone on here EVER too full to try something yummy? Rosie said one day that her girlfriend walked in one day on freshly baked cookies and she said she wasn't hungry! Rosie was like "HUH?!" I knew right then that I am not alone. That there are other people like me.
I know how to eat right. I know I need to get MOVING! I just need to get off my ***! but I need help. I need friends. I'm hoping to find them here.
Thanks
BTW: "IT" is food. (not sex for those of you with your minds in the gutter)

LOL I never even had my mind in the gutter until you put it there!

Welcome! You are SOOOOOO not alone. I have a passionate love affair with foods of all shapes, sizes, and colors **sigh** I am like a crack addict when it comes to food. It is just sooo good. But as I move along farther with this whole diet concept, I realize I can still eat the foos I love, just in smaller more rational portions, and just less frequently. It's going to take some hard work and determination, but you're worth it.

Kudos for trying again!

omg I AM IN THE SAME SAME BOAT!!

i really don't understand people who get "full". if i see a cookie, i will eat the said cookie. but i guess thats what brought us all to this website, huh?
i am just really striving to figure out how to control the constant need to eat something, anything. I just tend to eat and eat and eat...i guess that must mean i need a new hobby right?

we're getting there...we're learning

It isn't a figment of our imagination that we never feel full. There's an actual scientific explanation for it. People with food addictions produce less leptin (a hormone), which in turn doesn't send the signals to the brain that we are full. I, too, find myself in awe of people who wave food away. I doubt I ever said, "I'm saving room for dessert." With me, my brain always thinks there is room for dessert although I may be in physical pain from fullness. How do we fix it? I doubt we can, but we can control it -- I just have to remind myself every day that I'm okay without overeating. I literally have to tell myself out loud "I'm okay without (whatever delicious food is around at the moment), I will not die if I don't eat it." I really have to have an all-out battle with my head.

And a warm to you

Wow, this is so true. I read that and just thought, "that's exactly it." I'm not going to die (or have anything else bad happen to me) if I pass up a cookie...

But to answer the thread... I know how you feel. My boyfriend is exactly like that. I can offer him a taste of something delicious and he can pass it up because he's "too full." I am so in awe yet confused by that.
But after changing lifestyles, and practicing passing up food, we can all be in this stage of our lives where we pass up tastes of food.

Welcome!!!

wow - that is so true - its like - if I don't eat said food - it will be ok - there will still be food tomorrow.
But - its not just about eating the food - it's about thinking about the food at like all moments when we aren't completely occupied - and for occupied - generally sitting here and doing work doesn't work for me - I have to be like engaged in something physically so that my mind can't drift.

I wonder how much regular people who don't obsess about this stuff constantly must get so much work done - I mean their minds must be so uncluttered when they are not thinking about their next meal/snack food/drink whatever. It is ridiculous - how to stop myself!!! such a battle. I don't remember if I was this way in college - but I doubt I wasn't very far away from it.

arghsome.

any ideas?

WOW! I actually feel alittle better already! I feel like I'm amongst friends that understand! I'm gonna try and get on here every morning to start my day off right. And HarpoChico: WHAT an inspiration. You were beautiful before and even more beautiful now! I will borrow your mantra and see how it works. "I won't die w/o that peanutbutter chocolate ice cream!"

I do not ever remember having an off switch when it came to food. Even if painfully full, I still remember having always had a "drive" to eat. I started gaining weight at about five. Maybe it was going to school and not being able to burn it off, maybe it was being allowed to cross the street to go to grandma's house (and eating a second dinner). Maybe it was that first diet in kindergarten (not that I had much choice with that one - I didn't even get my promised reward of two painted box turtles, because our state banned them because of salmonella risks, when I'd lost only half the weight. As I remember it, I was inconsolable and went off my first diet, refusing any other reward.

Repeated dieting messes with hunger signals and the food drive. High School wrestlers (who often diet to reach the lower weight classes, so they can be the biggest wrestler in their class) also tend to have dieter's rebound making each successive diet less successful. Diet's not only don't work, they make us fatter.

The problem is relabeling a diet a "lifestyle change," doesn't magically break the cycle. Many weight loss strategies require that white knuckled determination that most people find nearly impossible to maintain. Diet research usually centers on just number crunching - how much weight is lost, during a relatively short period of time. There isn't even much research on the long-term effects of weight loss surgery, or on which programs people find easier to stick with, how they control hunger... We're all pretty much left to trial and error.

Not really complaining, as this isn't only true for weight loss, but other medical issues also. I have fibromyalgia and an autoimmune disorder, both are poorly understood (though I hear a lot of new research is coming out soon) so basically each patient is left experimenting to find what works for them. And the problem with self-experimenting is that it can take a really long time to find out what works, with a lot of detours, false starts, and bad consequences.

It's taken me 35 years of dieting to finally just discover about a month ago that reducing carbs overall, and high glycemic carbs specifically, gives me more control, and even brings my appetite/hunger levels down closer to what "normals" must feel.

While this discovery has been a breakthrough, it isn't a miracle. I lost weight really well the first three weeks, and then a relapse of a respiratory and ear infection sent me to bed most of this past week, and left my husband in charge of meals for us. Without adult supervision, he tends towards convenience foods, fast food, and whatever can be delivered. Not absolving myself of responsibility because I certainly chose to eat it, justifying it using the prednisone made me do it, and illness requires comfort food theories.

Now that I'm feeling better, I've begun purging the house once again of all the foods my husband and I both have control issues with, so there hasn't been too much damage done. I probably will never be able to act or think like a naturally thin person, but I've at least found a tool that helps more than I'd ever thought possible.

I know how you feel! I used to be a junk aholic! What really helped me was I cut sugars out of my diet for about 6 weeks and now (Believe it or not, even through easter when my husband was scarfing candy) I dont crave it so much anymore. GL!

Right--- I have spent so much time and energy obessing and thinking and ruminating over and over about food, eating, not eating and weight that I probably could have earned 15 doctorates and sailed single-handedly around the world for all of that effort!

It is a tough cycle to break------ but I am going to try because it isn't normal or healthy to be doing all of that obessing.

Ugh, that's me to a T. I've always kind of wondered if I was a starving person (refugee, model, etc) in a former life which is why I'm always hungry, always up for food. I'll eat a meal, a big nutritious meal with protein, that would be more than enough for a normal person, and then 20 minutes later, I'm hungry again!

I wonder if there is a hormone supplement, etc for leptin that would help people in our situation?

Hee! Not to mention finding a cure for AIDS & cancer, as well as ending world hunger and negotiating peace in the Middle East.

I know cutting carbs helps me lose and it does help stop the cravings. I also know that if you can make it through the first 2 weeks it becomes MUCH easier to say no to those nasty carbs. But I also know I need to learn how to eat healthy carbs and allow myself a "fun" carb every now and then w/o losing total control.
I know all this way to well because ...this is embarrassing...I used to own 3 Curves For Women! I taught women how to lose!! I only got down to about 190 the whole 3 years I was an owner. It's so easy to tell others what to do!
First I am going to eat what's healthy. THEN I'll work on not eating enough for 6.

It really does help. That was my goal originally too. I gave myself allowance to eat as much healthy stuff as I wanted to. I'm to the point in my journey that I've plateaued and I need to eat the healthy food for 1.

Everyday I try to work on that.

i have to agree that the first 2-6 weeks of giving anything up is pure t ****. It sucks. It really does work though. GL with that and I *know* you can succeed, all you have to do is want to

I hear what you're all saying. sometimes it just seems SO hard and SO impossible to break this vicious cycle you're stuck in. i mean, if eating did solve problems - maybe that would be another discussion - but it gets to this horrible point where it just multiplies and complicates everything else and becomes an emotional, obsessive thing.

i kept going round and round, in this emotional black hole, trying so hard to eat good and do good and get myself out of these bad habits/thinking patterns/tendencies, but then a few days later i would just binge again as if it was nothing.

it was really odd though. around easter i had this kind of epiphany. i had just dropped a friend off somewhere on my way home, and in the car was a chocolate bunny someone had given me as a present. i had tried to refuse, but you know how it is. anyway that night i was feeling vague and down, and i was thinking while i was driving about eating it. and told myself 'tomorrow ill start again...' but i realized then and there, ive said this a hundred times, and if i didnt do it right THEN and THERE then god knows where im heading ...

and i managed. something snapped in my brain that night. i left the bunny in the kitchen for days until someone else ate it. i wasnt even tempted to eat it anymore. just thinking about having the strenght to make that decision that night in the days that followed gave me courage to continue and make good choices, for myself, finally - and this has kind of an avalanche effect

and shockingly, its been over two weeks and im still doing very, very good.

so courage to everyone out there! keep your heads up and keep trying! you have it inside of yourself to take control again!