Anybody want to create a new diet with me? Preferably one that involves biscuits, crisps, chips and burgers! Ok, I know that is not gonna work, but I'm at the end of my tether. I can't stick to anything at all. I hate exercise, I hate cooking and I hate healthy food, i love TV, I love take-away and I especially love chocolate biscuits. I am doomed to be fat for the rest of my life.

It's a week for new things. New fridge, new working hours (well that's in April), but I am dreading trying to add new me or new diet to that list. I want to try, I really do, but something always pushes me off the weight-loss wagon, whether it's the new chippie down the road or the neighbour asking if I want anything from Tescos (yes please, chocolate digestives and OH would like a bar of galaxy) or 'I think this diet is impractical for my lifestyle.' which translates into english as 'I would rather starve than have another ****ing salad.'

My OH is fat too, fatter than me and always has this wonderful idea for filling the fridge with healthy things and i agree, but Sainsbury's calls me on the way home from work (it's the opposite of out of my way so don't tell me to avoid it) and if i fall off the wagon so does he and then blames it on me. The big difference is he can resist buying stuff, but not eating it if its there whereas i can't resist buying the stuff but i can moderate my eating of it. For example, he won't buy chocolate, but if i buy chocolate he will eat all of it at once whereas i can make it last a few days.

I am also a really fussy eater, there a quite a few things I don't like. I won't touch any sea food or eggs or anything too hot or spicy. Cheese and butter I can only have small amount of due to mild lactose intolerance. I am fussy about meat, visible fat is a huge problem and i often miss out on a lot of meat trying to cut it away from the fat. I will eat most veg but OH will only happily eat leeks, will tolerate others but won't like it. I love variety, I get really grumpy having to eat the same things over and over again, and I get equally grumpy if what I have to eat is really bland. I drink alot of fizz, mainly Irn Bru and Diet Coke, will take squash to work but don't ever drink water unless made to by OH.

Sorry its so long, well done for reading this far. Am I a lost cause, can anyone help me?

Do you mind being fat? It sounds like you like your life and your habits as they are. Nothing that you wrote indicates that there is any desire for you to change, which is fine. Why diet?

I would like to be thin and part of me really wants to lose weight but another part of me really can't be bothered. The part that really wants to, is connected to my desire to be beautiful and sexy and also the incentive to try and make OH lose weight for health reasons. The bit that can't be bothered is fighting back at my mum (and Dad) for constantly telling me how fat I am and nagging me to lose weight ever since I started uni which is when I started gaining.

My weight doesn't make me feel bad cos I don't tend to really notice it unless I have my photo taken in something that makes it noticeable.

Tbh my weight probably wouldn't be a problem for most people it's not classed as obese and probably wouldn't even be that overweight on someone tall, but I am short with a small frame so it looks huge on me, plus I have too many people telling me the exact opposite from my mum, that I am gorgeous and I don't need to lose weight (they lie).

Please dont; tell me to not bother trying until i'm commited, commitment isn't my strong point and people who keep telling me that are more of a hinderance than anything else.

You can certainly try before you are committed (or have reached the stage of change where you are beyond contemplation and ready to take committed action) but it will be like it has been in the past - wide swings of the pendulum from biscuits to salad and then quickly back to biscuits.

Maybe just introduce small changes. A walk after dinner. Counting calories, without reducing them yet. Cutting back on a certain treat to once a week.

Hi there, the only thing i can suggest is that u cut down your portion size and swap all ur meal choices for the low fat versions, also not drinking water means u feel hungrier as u can confuse thirst for hunger, so i would say (even though u dont really like it) to down 1/2 or even a full pint of water before eating that way ur body is getting something that its needs to survive and u feel fuller quicker, i was a total diet coke monster i could easily drink 3 litres a day of the stuff and now ive trained myself to only drink water, of which i probably drink 8-9 pints a day hope that helps! oh and if u must have chocolate, switch from galaxy to dairy milk, galaxy chocolate is the most fatting chocolate on the british market!

hope that helps a bit hun good luck

I'm so with you roobear! I was perfectly ok being chubby for most of my life except for patches here and there, and then in the last 2 or so years I began to adjust my attitude as I saw some friends losing weight without having salads, salads, and more salads. I can also sympathize about the significant other issues - he hates most veggies and always needs to have candies around but has little control!

I suggest that instead of making a rigid assumption of 'I have to be on diet X', do small swaps to ease your way in. For the few months before I started calorie counting, I read labels and began to wean off of the things I felt weren't worth the calories. Instead of having some glasses of juice or soda, I figured out I could eat a filling snack or even almost an entire meal! While I do miss those things occasionally, I would miss having pasta or chicken or crackers more. Look for a few easy swaps to incorporate on a weekly or monthly basis, because if you try to change too much at once that's surely a recipe for unhappiness.

As far as which diet plans I suggest, I personally like calorie counting and this is why - it's about making judgments about which food/drink/etc you would rather have in your diet. For example, I calculated that with absolutely no movement whatsoever my body needs about 2,400 calories to sustain my current weight. If I can cut out 3,500 per week through eating less that translates into about 1 lb lost per week. I allow myself 1,800 calories per day - creating a calorie deficit of 4,200 calories per week. 1,800 calories (most days) is more than enough to allow me to have a good 3 meals and 3 snacks where I could opt to work in some treat like chocolate or two cookies. I tend to have extra calories left at day's end that I put into an 'emergency bank' every week in case I REALLY crave some ice cream or cake or cheese etc.

It's still not perfect and there are many days when I'm frustrated, but food - the taste, the comfort, etc - is temporary whereas me having to buy clothes, take photos, live as a 245 lb woman lowers my self esteem and that's for life. That's how my attitude towards dieting is, but I encourage you to really examine your life and your motives for wanting to lose weight and decide what your approach will be and if you do really want to lose the weight. I hope I could help!

I get what you're saying about wanting to feel beautiful and sexy, but there are two ways to go about that. One is to lose weight...the other is to realize that "beautiful and sexy" is not a reading on the scale.

If it helps to know, I've had terrific success with calorie counting. My weight loss isn't the fastest, but I haven't strayed from my plan since I started in early November. Today I've eaten a homemade egg "McMuffin," a couple of pieces of fruit, a chicken and spinach pizza (yes, the whole thing), and an ice cream bar. I'm just over 1000 calories and have room for another 500 before bedtime.

So it's all "real food," stuff that my husband or I cook ourselves for the most part, in smaller portions and rounded out with a lot of low-calorie vegetables. (The pizza, for instance, was six ounces of whole wheat dough topped with a lot of vegetables and one ounce of mozzarella cheese). I do like salad sometimes, but it's rare that I eat it; I certainly don't feel constrained to, and if I feel like, "If I eat a ******' salad, I will vomit!" then I eat something that isn't a ******' salad.

There's no such thing as a food that has the flavor profile of a burger with the nutritional profile of a few leaves of lettuce. If there were, no one would be fat. You can compromise, though, and eat a smaller burger on half a bun. Or you can eat a whole lot of something that tastes less like a burger, but is low-calorie and fills your stomach. Or you can eat half a full-sized burger with a side of steamed vegetables. You can eat the whole burger once a month as a "free meal."

You just can't eat the whole burger, day in and day out, and not expect to gain.

But I'm sure you know that already; you're just frustrated, as I was, with the possibility that to lose weight, you have to make changes. I'm living proof, though, that the changes can be really good. You can eat well while eating well--that is, eat tasty stuff while eating healthy stuff. It just takes some digging in recipe sites, practicing in the kitchen, and keeping an open mind about stuff that initially sounds not-so-tasty (spinach and carrot shreds in meatballs, for instance).

Or, as I mentioned earlier, you can embrace the fact that "beautiful and sexy" is completely within your reach without dropping an ounce. I weigh more than you currently do and when I look in the mirror, I see someone totally freakin' hot. My husband concurs.

One thing to keep in mind, though: losing weight isn't just about looks past a certain point. You know you better than I know you, and you probably haven't reached that point yet, but enough extra pounds are physically uncomfortable, restrictive, and even painful as they accumulate. If you're happy staying where you are, more power to you--you look great, from what your profile pic shows. If you decide to lose, that's also great.

But if you decide to eat whatever and wind up gaining, at some point you may do what I did after years of unconscious eating--look down and say, "Wow, there are things my fat body can no longer do." It was sobering to realize I couldn't just walk two miles to a sporting event because I felt like it. It wasn't about looks, it was about health.