Hi all, this is my first post. I've joined the community as I'm tired of dieting. As you can see from my stats, I haven't got far to go, but it's proving to be the hardest thing to avoid the sweets, carbs and other rubbish that is just so readily available!
It's hard (seemingly impossible at the moment) doing it on my own, so I thought I'd join the community and talk it out with other people who are in the same boat!
Really struggling today - I've literally just eaten close to 1000 calories in the form of chocolate and sweets. I feel like I have some sort of sugar addiction!
Being33, first of all, congrats on all the progress you've made so far! 30 lbs is impressive!
How about a shake-up? Gather a bunch of new healthy recipes to try, so you have new, more interesting food to eat. Or create a challenge for yourself -- 1 day without sugar/treats, then 2 days, then a week? Like a sugar detox? For me, it's hard to say, "That's it, I have to give up chocolate forever." But how about, "I'm going to give up chocolate for a week, or until I've completed 4 Bodypump classes, etc."
I guess this is a bit of a confessional for me really.
Having spent some considerable time thinking over why I can't stick to a diet (at the moment), even just eating moderately healthily, or indeed stick to any positive change which requires willpower or effort, it comes back to the psychological in several ways.
1) I'm frustrated with my career at the moment. I do earn reasonably well, but if you'd asked me 5 years ago where I'd be today, I'm short of the mark. In darker moments, I've failed horribly (of course in moment of clear-headed thinking I haven't). So, I comfort eat.
2) I've got several little things that I want to do and I just can't seem to keep on track with them. To alleviate my money worries alluded to in point 1, I'd like to get an affiliate website up and running. I have the skills, but not a lot of time and decreasing motivation. I scratch and pick my head when I'm stressed, and as I'm losing my hair albeit slowly, it's starting to show red marks and I want to stop doing that too! I want to get into a routine of playing squash and going to the gym once a week - squash I love, but the gym is harder to get enthused about. So, when I fail at any of the above, I comfort eat.
3) When I fail at sticking to eating healthily because I'm comfort eating, I comfort eat some more.
I'm trying hard not to make this sound like a moan, as looking at my life from the outside, I'd get little sympathy. I have a nice house, nice enough car, a beautiful wife and an adorable baby son. However, my mind is capable of giving me an extremely good kicking at times, more frequently at the moment than ever. The result is comfort eating, so I figured the best thing to do is join a forum and get some of this out in the open.
I suppose I'm approaching this forum a bit like an alcoholic would go to AA, so starting today, I'm going to try and make some positive changes on the things above. I know Tim Ferriss and many other would advise to change one thing at a time, but somehow that just doesn't compute for me.
I feel better already.
All those things you said apply to me too. I am super frustrated with my life, government employee here. But I am not cheating at the moment. Is it possible it is something physical? First, it is well known that after dieting your level of a hormone called leptin changes ... causing you to want to eat more.
Also, I found when I binged on candy or sweets I wanted more. So much more. Eventually I concluded there could be something physical to it. There are some studies on gut bacteria that say that foods such as high sugar ones and not natural ones can wipe you gut flora. Destroying whatever good bacteria you have in there and replacing it with bacteria that seeks out high sugar.
So don't look at sticking to a diet as "sticking to a diet" look at it as fighting the bad bacteria you have in your gut.
I went back to my diet plan and have eaten clean for 6 weeks. The craving is finally gone. Last week I had two bite size Twix... and literally I struggled for the rest of the day. But I feel I recovered.
Maybe it isn't in your head.
