Pickes, I'm glad you found us. It's a good forum here, it's busy and knowledgeable and people offer lots of support. You sound stressed to bits and I am sending you lots of sympathy over the internet. I am really glad that you're responding to our posts here; even if it seems a bit strained, keep talking to us, hon.
Are you comfortable talking about the stressful event that set this off? My first suspicion was rape, as eating disorders are a very common reaction to rape and sexual assault, but then you said something about bad news, so I gather it's different. Whatever it is, it's evidently appalling. Is it something where there are dedicated support organisations out there, for instance bereavement helplines, domestic abuse, whatever is appropriate, and if so is that something you could use? What sort of support do you have for getting through it? Friends, family, a partner? Could you tell us a bit more about yourself, maybe? What sort of age are you, are you at school or working, do you live alone or with someone? Are you doing OK financially, can you afford food? Do you have any medical conditions? Do you drink or smoke, are you on any medication, prescribed or otherwise?
You also sound very panicked about taking control of your diet the only way you think will work. I know you're finding it hard to believe us, but do try to think a bit about why we're all saying that your approach gives the illusion of working short-term, but in the long term it doesn't work out. Lots of people here have "slow and steady wins the race" as a signature for a reason!
A lot of people here also ended up settling for slow weight loss after years or even decades of trying every single diet plan imaginable. The more you weigh, the easier it is to panic and think that you have so much to lose, it's unimaginable to try to lose it over several years, but as I said, ultra-fast weight loss is an illusion, there are lots of reasons why it doesn't work out.
There's a book a lot of people here recommend called
Thin for Life. I haven't bought it yet, although it's available quite cheaply. You can read the first 80 pages in a preview on Google Books
here. The book is about people who have successfully lost a large amount of weight and kept it off for a minimum of several years, and how they managed to do it. The one thing I always remember from reading that preview is when they say that if you have tried to lose weight a hundred times and put it back on again, you feel like a failure. Don't. You have actually amassed a huge amount of data on what does and doesn't work for you. You've become an expert in dieting. The hundred and first time *can* work, and it might not even be all that different from all the other methods you try. It certainly doesn't need to be something extreme.
I am unusual for this forum in being a first-time dieter. I was slim most of my life, then I developed ME/CFIDS when I was nineteen. The weight crept on over the years, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly. I felt absolutely powerless to stop it. I'm severely physically disabled, I'm often struggling to get enough to eat - and incidentally, in the years when I had minimal support and didn't get enough meals in the day, I actually put on weight despite this. My GP at the time said my metabolism was shot. A few friends of mine in the same situation have also ended up putting on weight despite not getting enough to eat. Anyway, a lot of my weight gain was due to chaotic routines (sleep disorders like you've never seen) and memory loss (couldn't remember whether I'd eaten or not), plus ME/CFIDS is known for messing up your metabolism. I was vaguely keeping track of how many meals and snacks I ate in a day, but I felt ravenously hungry all the time and couldn't see that I had any other options.
Then one day a strange thing happened. My GP put me on pain meds that reduced my appetite. (It's even stranger as low-dose amitriptyline more commonly causes weight gain! But then it's also used to help sleep and it gave me insomnia, so I'm just weird.) I finally felt that I had the chance to try. I started off with a basic regime of skipping obvious culprits such as packets of crisps (chips in American), and trying to stick to soup or salad for lunch. After a week I started calorie counting using FitDay, and after a month, once I could feel my clothes getting looser, I bought a scale. I'm eating at a calorie deficit of 500, I very rarely get hungry apart from before meals, I'm losing a pound a week, and I am absolutely thrilled to bits. Because I'm not starving myself and am including nice little treats in my diet, willpower isn't really an issue. If I tried to starve myself, it absolutely would be, and I'd end up feeling miserable and hungry and then bingeing and feeling guilty and generally being a complete mess. I actually expected that to be the norm for all dieting, that was why I'd been putting it off, because I thought it would be nightmarishly difficult and miserable.
You know what? Going for slow weight loss is much easier, and it's comfortable, and just because it's not miserable doesn't mean that it doesn't count! You don't actually need to be using superhuman willpower to stay on the diet, and that's OK!
I know that right now slow weight loss doesn't seem like an option for you. Could you at least think about why you've chosen the path you're on at the moment? Tell us about how you've tried to diet in the past, and why you think it didn't work out for you those times. There are lots of ways to approach this problem, don't worry.
:hugs:
