winter, moving away from home and chocolate - HELP!
 

In the past I've been a very self motivated and steady loser (in the good sense!) and have enjoyed a healthy relationship with food and exercise, and was making slow but sure progress.

Unfortunately, two things happened - one, I moved to Manchester for university and live in student accommodation in the heart of the city. Two, winter came. I have clinical depression and things like big changes and winter can trigger bad depressive phases, which is what's happened. I missed my home, my beautiful little city of Chester, my cats, my mum, and of course I had to freeze my gym membership because I'd moved away. I moved to Manchester because I'd gotten a place at its very prestigious university, which I wasn't going to pass over because I hated the city (which I do).

So, for those reasons and probably others, I started to use chocolate and things like cheese as a comfort blanket. This was three months ago - I've arrived home and my mum admitted today that she noticed I've put on weight. I really don't know how to get a lid on this - I feel like my solid grasp has slipped and I've lost control and motivation. I have no idea what I weigh now as my scale battery has died and I keep forgetting to get a new one, but I'm not expecting that number to be pretty. I did join a cheap gym in Manchester and I kept up my running for a while, I listed heavier than ever and beat my personal record on the treadmill - but it was useless as I was eating it back on again in the evenings, watching movies with my friends and eating chocolates and biscuits. I feel so awful and now that I've got space to breathe from my studies in the christmas break, I've realised what's happened to me. I really, really want to make this work again and lose the weight. When I think back to how I was in the summer, motivated, gong to the gym, losing 1-2 lbs every week and with a will of iron.. how can I get it back?

That's a really hard question to answer for anyone else! As far as my experience you have to make the committment to the change and make tons of decisions every day to bring you closer to your goal! And you have to forgive yourself for any backslides and just move on. You've lost weight before so you totally know what to do! Start running again maybe, turn down some of the chocolate and cookies. Is there a counselor on campus you can chat with when you are feeling depressed? Remember, you have control over everything you put in your mouth! Even if they don't offer the most fabulously healthy foods at school, you always have the option of eating LESS of it!

Best of luck to you!

I can't give you better advice than Lockitup but I can say I know what it is to be depressed and it is hard to add diet and exercise to that mix. But it can be done. And you have already started! Your exercise may not have balanced what you were eating but it didn't do nothing--it kept you from gaining more weight than you did so that is good!