I haven't gained or lost in months. I am just hanging out, trying to get my head space cleaned out. My biggest issue is in the evenings - I over eat to relieve anxiety, unwind from the day and also out of habit.

Clearing out my head space has been a lot more work than I thought it would be.

My food issues are exactly the same as they were before I changed my life. If I eat something sweet/carby/white floury...something as simple as a saltine cracker, I want MORE. That is hardwired into my body, it's how my body reacts to those foods. I might as well try to change the color of my eyes or go from 5'7" to 5'11".

For long term maintenance, I manage by significantly avoiding/limiting those foods. I try not to keep them in the house, I try not to eat them. If I do eat them, I try to make it a "controlled" experience. I wouldn't buy Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies, but I would share a dessert in a restaurant. I accept that those foods don't taste good enough, do not bring me enough pleasure, to have to experience the out of control feeling they inspire. So, I do without them as much as possible.

Amen to what Glory said. I don't think for me it's a huge emotional psycho therapy issue. It's pure and simple addiction to sugar. If I avoid it I'm fine, if I don't...there is **** to pay including all the mental baggage that addiction brings. Pleasure, guilt, weight gain, remorse, withdrawal and then back on the wagon. It can be a vicious circle if I don't pay attention.

Oh that is OHHHH so true! I am not sure what caused me to eat myself to as big as a house...but I'm dang sure going to figure it out so that it NEVER happens again.
I'd like to blame it all on getting hypothyroidism and have foot surgery that limited my activity for almost a year but lets be honest...those are nothing more than excuses to avoid dealing with the real issues.
I know that I tend to eat to self sooth...that I think is a learned habit from watching my Mom and sisters. Again, an excuse and one I am frankly not willing to live with. So you're right, come **** or high water I'm going to find a way to deal with the emotional issues that come with weight issues so that this will not ever be an issue for me again. And I might as well deal with it now while I'm losing the weight then try to deal with it after I've lost the weight and am trying to maintain that weight.
Thank you for the reminder that the emotional issues are just as important as the physical ones.

Sarah

I agree with Lori Bell and Glory. It is exactly the same for me. Keep them out of the house and out of my immediate reach, and I'm fine. Some may disagree, but I also don't think it's a "years of therapy" type situation for me. Not to say it's the same for everyone.

I would never overeat steak or veggies or fruit, but white carbs and sugar turn on a nasty switch for me. So, I avoid them like the plague. Plain and simple.

i also lost and gained. right after weight loss i started binging and gained almost everything back. Hamoco i know what you mean by not having any experiences as a small person. i did't either but when i became smaller i wan't satisfied with myself and i discovered that i feel more comfortable as big person. i want to quit college like one of you mentioned already, but that would make me even more as a failure because everyone in my fam. had high hopes for me and i don't want to let them down, even though i don't even know if i will ever get a job after graduation and i really hate my studies. so i console myself with food. i should have found professional help before losing but i kept postponing it. so now i'm thinking wheter to stay big and confident but wishing to be skinny, or to lose weight again and try to maintain but probably feeling unhappy but healthy...it's a never ending cycle...i've been also telling myself to wait a few more years untill i graduate because i won't be so much stressed but a part of me wants it now.

This thread is aptly timed, it seems like a lot of us are really struggling with control around this time.

Like mkendrick, my food "issues" were never apparent until after I had lost a considerable amount of weight. I suspect most of it is sugar addiction, which oddly was never an issue at all before I started consciously eating for weight loss. I am at a crossroads now where I have binged back more than 10 lbs from my lowest, and I have to choose one or the other. I can cut out junk and sweet sh!t altogether and lose weight, or I can keep eating chocolate covered nuts until I am back to square one. I am preparing for a bumpy ride but I really need to do this.

I've realized through a lot of research and soul-searching that my weight gain wasn't because of emotional issues (eating because I was sad or bored) but internal hunger. Because I'm insulin resistant, and have been overweight since adolescence (and probably had PCOS even then), when I ate the wrong things my body couldn't use them for fuel, so it would shove it into my fat cells and signal for more food. I was always hungry, so I always ate. I was over-feeding, but under-utilizing the food I ate. I ate "healthy" -- low fat, lots of whole grains and veggies and fruits, lean protein. And I was starving because my body couldn't deal with the starches and sugars in the food I was choosing.

When I started cutting back drastically on sweets and starches, that roller-coaster started leveling out. I am no longer in constant-ravenous-hunger mode, nor do my moods swing based on whether I've eaten in the last two hours or not. I have almost no cravings anymore. And I lost my first 50 pounds almost effortlessly.

Now, I'm changing it up a bit because I've been in the same 250-260 range since last September. And I'm seeing it slowly begin to drop again. Not as fast as the first 50, but I'm not in this as a race.

Sure, I have certain food items that are overly tempting to me (not true "binge" foods in the sense of a binge-purge cycle, but things that I have a hard time NOT overeating), and when I drink too much I find that I have no self-control to stop eating even when I can consciously say that I'm not at all hungry.

Those are the issues I'm working on as I lose weight, because those foods and alcohol will always be there no matter what size I am.