Hey all, 21F here

I've been obese all my life. I was 120 by the time I started 2nd grade and 300 by high school. My parents gave me adult-size portions and unlimited access to junk food. I'd get picked on every day at school, so I'd go home and just eat all night. Now that I'm in college, I'm tipping dangerously close to 400 and my dependency on food has only gotten worse.

I started calorie-counting at 16, but I have never been able to stick to healthy eating for longer than 6 months. At some point during every attempt at weight-loss, I completely give up and revert back to bad habits, gaining all the weight back. Over and over, I keep doing this, and it has really demotivated me.

I worry that I'll be obese forever. At this rate, I'm headed straight for diabetes and heart disease, just like every overweight adult in my family. I just want to feel what it's like to be healthy for once, not worry about how others perceive me, and to feel desirable. I've lost all self-esteem.

Sorry for the rant; my emotions came pouring out. Any advice is appreciated.

Hello and welcome

Firstly you are making an important step posting here, hopefully it can be the place you find a support network to help you set realistic goals, make good choices and see results. It will also be the place that will help you bounce back when things go wrong and inspire you with stories of people who really get it and have come out the other side, and those still struggling along but doing it all the same.

How about posting in here and just thinking about what you eat for a week or two? When you feel ready, challenge yourself to just one change a week or a day. Cut out that one snack, downsize one meal, make one drink a diet one.... for example. If that works out okay think about making a more long term plan. Throughout it share how you are doing on here and you will receive plenty of support in return.

Good luck and keep posting

Welcome!

to be honest, you've already made a massive break through by knowing what's going wrong and what needs to be changed, so congrats

I agree with takingcontrol, posting in here and thinking about food you're eating can really help. You may start to notice that you lean more towards a certain type of food when you binge eat and can sub it with something else i.e if you notice that you talk about chocolate and sweet food a lot, it can be replaced with fruits which have natural sugars as opposed to processed.

Please keep posting as being part of a community is better than going alone. We're all here to support you and will help as much as we can

Good luck!

Hi Like others said, welcome. Its okay that your "emotions came pouring out". Binge eating can be profoundly painful. Trying to deal with the pain of the relentless need to eat can be exhausting. I know.

Twice in one week i heard, unsolicited, that there is a neurochemistry link to food cravings. One woman was taking a new course. She learned from the instructor that trauma of any sort, even small trauma (if the brain registers it as a threat) can change the neurochemistry. The neurotransmitters are thrown off balance. Some people try to then get it all back in balance through food. one example that was used by the second person who told me of a course she took, said the teacher, perhaps a MD, talked about a young child who could not stop eating cheese. It was compulsive. When she researched the correlation between cheese and the biochemistry of the brain, she found the culprit. Perhaps dopamine?? I do not remember exactly. Anyway when the dr dealt with that, the child's enormous need for cheese resolved.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. And because I heard it twice in one week, having nothing to do with me, I thought that perhaps this is a model of treatment that will soon be available to people. I hope so. Because the pain of food craving can be overwhelming.

I hope you find the answer for you. I ended up working with a reflex kinesioligist naturopath who muscle tested for foods I should not eat. I worked with her to get on track with my eating. One of the things for me was Candida. A microbe in the body that feeds off of sugar in foods. It screams feed me. Because its very survival is dependent on carbs/sugars. The only way to deal with that is to starve them. until they are either gone or dormant. The way to do that is with very low carb diet. But I do not think many people including myself can do that on their own. and the Candida was just one of the things with food. It can be daunting. (the naturopath moved away 4 years ago. I am slowly gaining again. The cravings overwhelming again. So it is an ongoing challenge. I think the whole neurochemistry thing sounds very interesting. I wish I knew practitioners who practice this way.

Anyway, sorry for writing so much. I hope you find what works for you. AND I hope this website/community can offer some support for you.