I had my annual with my Gyno doc yesterday and I am ONE POUND less than I was at last year's visit. (Hey, at least it's LESS and not MORE... )

Granted... I was down to 153 (see ticker) which I reached in May. I've steadily gained/lost/gained/lost/gained a couple pounds here, 3 lb there, since May & this morning weighed in at 159. ACK! - I have NOT met my goal of 140, and even toyed with the idea of re-setting my goal to 135, but I'm just really in a bad place right now. LOTS of life stressing (car trouble, $$$$ trouble, blahblahblah) but I'm trying to keep the chin up & soldier on.

I've been BINGE EATING like crazy lately. I need to re-prioritize my eating habits & get off the sugar roller coaster again. But I just seem STUCK. I mean, I am a very healthy eater... MOST of the time! - I eat a protein healthy breakfast with veggies and low carb (or no carb) totaling 250-400 calories, and lunch is always super veggie time with a side of protein (I enjoy raw tomatoes, cucumbers, & peppers and some sliced turkey breast with some seedless grapes to top it off) and then dinner is usually baked chicken & more veggies or sometimes either lazy or whatever & will have a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with skim milk - still, that's not bad-bad. But then suddenly my sweet tooth strikes & I go on a crazy gobbly-goop binge.

Last night I had FOUR fudge bars. Fat free, 80 calories each, but still.... FOUR. And then half a Hershey chocolate bar. ... it's like, I just COULDN'T get enough. I hate me when I get like that. I know that's what stalls or prevents my weight loss and I know what to do about it (don't do it!!! -don't even bring it in the house!!!) but yet, I do it.

I really don't get the mental head f*** of that. WHY? Just.... why???? I DO want to lose more weight; I DO want to meet my goal. I DO not want to continue the binge-eating, the lose/gain/lose/gain mentality that I've done for 25+ years, and I DO want to BE HEALTHY.

It's so hard! I struggle with binging sometimes also. Candy is something I love WAY too much. The thought of Halloween is literally "scary" due to the candy monster in me. Hang in there. Look at the bright side -- no real gain in a year, so that means you are maintaining - which is very difficult to do!

Are you getting enough sleep with all that stress? That is the KEY for me. Enough sleep - despite stressors, and I can find off the sweet tooth. Lack of sleep? I can't fight them off almost ever.

I had the exact same thing happen at my annual OB-GYN appointment last week - in a year, I was only down 2 pounds. I've had year with lots of ups and downs (vacations, business trips, parties, etc.) - but honestly, I'm still down almost 80 lbs since my highest weight and I've maintained all of this for almost 2 years, so I considered it a victory!

I was just posting on another thread that I have moved myself, consciously, into maintenance mode. I don't weigh in every week anymore and instead concentrate on eating well and exercise rather than on those last 10-15 pounds. They are coming off, sloooooowly, but they are dropping. I was really beating myself up for a few months - I'd go on binge-rampages (my worst moment had me going to the grocery store and buying two packs of those bakery cookies, because it was BOGO...and proceeding to eat ALL the cookies...24 of them...in under an hour) - my mind was just rebelling against "dieting" completely. Now, my daily goal is to stay within my points (I do WW online) and exercise - that's how I measure success.

I had to laugh when I got that weigh in at the doctor, though! She and I spoke about it and she congratulated me on my maintenance, which really is the end goal anyway, right?

Hey - like you said, it's one pound less, not one or who knows how many more. That's a good thing. Yes, there have been ups and downs and problems, but we all have them.

Don't take this as a failure. Yes, the scale didn't move down as much as you hoped, but it also didn't move UP. So pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on. You know you can do this

Just to make you feel better - I went to the endo in June. I weighed (fully dressed, late afternoon) 173. 3 months later, I went back and weighed 184, same conditions. yep... she noticed. Told her we were just back from vacation and I gained. She understood that. Next time I go in 6 months I sure hope to be below where I was in June! I better be!

I agree with you about the sleep - I think it's the most important thing next to eating properly you can do for your health. And coincidentally, I feel like I NEVER get enough sleep. Especially the past couple years (menopause) with all the hot flashes & night sweats, etc. I wake up in the middle of the night & can't get back to sleep, until it's almost time to get up & then of course I'm all grogged-out because I was in the middle of REM deep sleep when the stupid alarm goes off... So yeah, dragging.... every morning.

And YET... I am a "morning" person. I go to bed around 9-9:30 each night. Usually wake up around 12:30 ... then again around 3:30... it's soooo aggravating. I've tried going to bed later, but that doesn't really work. I keep the bedroom VERY dark & cool. I take sleep inhibitors (natural remedy kind of stuff) - I've been on doctor prescribed sleeping meds in the past, and they WORK, but I wake up feeling "drugged" & walk around in a fog for hourssssss after rising - so that didn't really "work" for me.

I don't know what else to do on the sleeping issue. But I think you could be right in that it plays a big part of my binge-eating issues.

Beach, have you seen this article?

I am and have always been a bad sleeper. I struggle to get to sleep, I wake up all the time, and I either wake up too early or sleep through my alarm. Lifelong problem. But the ideas in that article were kind of reassurinig to me and helped to eliminate some of the anxiety and stress that accompanies my 4am wake up.

DietVet, thanks for that link - that was a really interesting article.

I've had trouble sleeping all my life and am also a compulsive overeater. I wonder if there's some chemical link between the two.

Beach, I too often wonder why I overeat. Sometimes, it's easy to figure out - I'm tired, or I'm upset, or I'm stressed about something. Other times, it seems to be just because cookies taste good. Those are the times that I get so annoyed at myself and so discouraged, since I don't foresee a day when that won't be a problem for me. I'm 54 years old and have been overeating since I was a child, so I'm pretty sure the compulsion is going to just go away. I just keep telling myself that it's better than being a heroin addict.

And, as others have said, maintaining is a good thing, so congrats on that!