[XLMuffnTop]

I apologize for the length in advance. It's as much a self reflection for myself as an introduction to this sub forum...

Like so many, I didn't have an ideal childhood and to put it simply, my father was a master at ruining everyone's self-esteem, mine included. Looking back, I realize I coped a lot with food. I would hide food and not eat in front on my family to appear as if I wasn't eating, probably for attention. I would overeat just about everything but I mostly stayed active until I reached my teenage years. Then it was 5-10 pounds every year it seemed.

It seems as if there's always a reason I gained weight other than looking inward for the cause. Some reasons may be true contributing factors such as getting a desk job, pregnancies, quitting smoking, yadda yadda, but after those changes evened out, I've continued to gain and continue to eat. Last night ,I made countless trip to the fridge/pantry for no reason than just to eat, and eat and eat. I don't have a trigger food, but food is my trigger. Though I will admit certain things are worse than others but nights like last night... nothing is off limits when it comes to the hand-to-mouth action.

I tried calorie counting and got so frustrated because I'd go to enter my calories mid day and realized I'd eaten way more across the morning/lunch than I thought, or can't even remember everything I ate! Then I'd see the calorie count and feel compelled to not eat the rest of the day which would make be eat everything in sight. Then there's South Beach Diet, which I still think is good fundamentally, but I just can't stay on it! I eat properly for a while then LIFE happens and I eat stuff that makes me feel physically like crap and/or too much, then more and more and more.

And that brings me to today. Having gained back much of my losses, I feel embarrassed, I feel alone, humiliated, overwhelmed and just about every negative feeling I can think of. I don't even know where to go from here or my next move but this is basically saying I'm here and I know I can't go on like this.

Thanks for listening.

[BellaLucia]

God bless u. My childhood wasn't idyllic either. I wish u well. U can do this.

[one small bowl]

The good news is that you are amongst people who have gone through this time and time again and so we all can relate.

I know I certainly can. The worst is when one feels overwhelmed by it all and like nothing seems to work and when we feel anger and resentment over our behaviours. Then there is the physical side to gorging, feeling unwell on top of it from the stuff we ate contributes to a sense of hopelessness. I am coming off a month long binge, it went through hard core withdrawals!

What is the ONLY thing that works for me to get on track is to take the time to be ultra gentle with myself. It's a way of thinking, not a way of allowing myself to behave badly with food. I "parent" myself with love and understanding. Picture a child sitting on the floor with a container of ice cream and a bag of cookies....strewn all over in a huge mess and the child is sick with a stomach ache from eating with abandon. As a parent, we would remove the child from the mess, help them with the tummy ache (certainly not the time to suggest eating more) and then go clean up the mess. We need to help ourselves to clean up the mess we are creating with uncontrolled eating. Yelling and anger doesn't solve the problem, care and understanding does.

So I soothed my anger down about the recent weight gain by accepting as a consequence of my eating behaviors. I thought through it as rationally as I could. Seemed I could make other choices if I really wanted to. I did, in fact have options. I could continue down the destructive path I have been following or change direction. Until I had this part figured out, no diet would have worked. We have to get our mind in alignment with our needs and desires before we can put a plan of action in place.

When you feel a bit more optimistic and want to change, move into choosing a plan for yourself and stick to it. A plan that has phases is often more realistic than ultra strict plans that do not allow for changing during the weight loss phase or a plan for maintenance.

When I first started my diet, I made only one rule to follow, and that was, to enter everything I ate into a nutritional software. Whether I over ate, binged, dieted, through every eating situation (even on the meals I had to guess at the contents) I did my best by entering it. This provided me with the best tools I could possibly imagine, because I could see the cause and effects. See, since there were no set limits, I could not fail. Instead, I watched the trends and adjusted the amounts until I lost weight. I soon discovered what my body could handle and what food ended up being difficult to control.

The software became my guide, not any prescribed diet or set of diet rules. I used all the bells and whistle reports, watched the graphs, it all became a very easy way to see the trends. When I grew tired of logging, I found I soon justified bingeing. My mood changed from positive to negative. My body felt the changes with weight piling back on. It's a cycle I am learning about that is helping make decisions to follow all the way to goal by parenting myself, by accepting that I have to do certain things each day to ensure I stay on plan and within a target range to make it to my goal weight.

You may want to drop all the usual negatives like blaming the past, or the parents, or even yourself. Blame, anger, resentments, all these things bring nothing but distress. YOU have the ability to make YOUR life better by being gentle and kind with yourself and working towards a goal, no matter how long it takes.