Sorry - this is a LONG post!
Does anyone else feel like they aren't eating THAT bad, but still can't lose (or maintain) their weight?
Maybe it's just me fooling myself, but I thought I'd start this thread to see if there's anyone else like me out there.
Here's my typical routine - and I am not saying this is healthy, just when I read what others eat it doesn't seem so horrible:
Breakfast: typically either a bowl of honey-nut cheerios w/2% milk, a mini-bagel (130 cals) with 2 tbsp low-fat cream cheese, or if I'm in a weird mood sometimes I'll have a weight watchers frozen meal around 300-400 calories.
Snack: I don't snack, its hard for me. When I force myself to snack, I eat maybe 1/2 of an apple and a handful of honey-roasted peanuts. The reason I choose honey-roasted instead of regular is because I feel like it helps me to not go get peanut M&Ms from our company's vending machine - which I used to love to do!
Lunch: Here's where I can go bad. If I'm being good, I'll bring a sandwich of some sort from home, and have a mini-can of diet pepsi and maybe a pickle. It fills me up. Sometimes I'll bring a couple cookies or a fat-free brownie that I made at home. If I'm being bad, I'll usually turn to the ol' standby of a quarter pounder w/med. fries & med. diet coke. I never "large" size.
Dinner: My fiance and I get lazy, but some of the time we do cook well. When things get stressful, we'll go get deli sandwiches. When things get REALLY stressful, we wind up with cheeseburgers or pizza. Again, I don't supersize anything, and with pizza I probably have 4 slices. And always with water or diet soda. However my one admission is this: I definitely keep eating even after I know I'm full. I *love* the taste of food and I love the act of eating.
Dessert: very rarely. Sometimes when I'm PMSing I'll mix up about 1/2 cup of melted chocolate with peanut butter, but that's maybe 3 times a month if that.
Exercise: I hit the gym 1-2 times a week (cardio and weights), and when weather permits, I also do intervals of walking and jogging on Sundays. Unfortunately I have a very sedentary desk job so during the day I don't do much but sit.
Weight: I was thin my entire life. When I hit 19/20, my metabolism started slowing down but my fast-food cravings did not. I graduated high school at 125 lbs and a size 6. By 23 I was a size 8. By 25 a size 10. I'm now a size 16 and it makes me cry every time I have to look at that stupid number. I was a size 14 last year, and I've been trying to LOSE weight, yet somehow gained!
Diets: The only diets I've truly tried are Fat Smash, South Beach and just counting calories & exercising. Fat Smash sucked for me - I can't eat brown rice and beans 24/7. I hate eating the same thing two days in a row, I'm weird like that. If I don't have variety in my diet and try to force myself to eat the same things, I wind up freaking out and going to McDonalds. South Beach had a good variety for me, and the first time I tried it I lost 12 lbs in 3 weeks - without exercise. It wasn't just water weight, I slid off the diet, ate my normal level of food, and it still took a year to gain it back. I tried to go back to South Beach, but that whole food repetition freak-out kicked back in.. South Beach made me hate salads and scrambled eggs. I have to force myself to eat either, now. When I did the counting calories, I ate between 1200-1500 calories a day, and worked out 2-3x a week for at least 30 mins. I barely saw any weight loss.
The result: In the past year I put on 15 lbs, 5 of which just happened in the last 2 months. I'm quite distraught and I don't know what the heck I'm doing wrong. I feel like going and getting my jaw wired shut. I'm at the highest weight I've ever been in my life and ready to just lose it, mentally. I've never had poor self esteem before but I feel really crappy about myself lately.
So... any kindred spirits out there??