I appreciate the thoughts on seeing a therapist or something but it's just not an option for me financially, I can barely afford all the healthy foods I buy. I wish it was an option for me because I'm pretty sure it would help sometimes but I really live almost paycheck to paycheck. I can't afford that kind of expense, even if it is for my health. Not right now anyway.
I'm really looking for weight loss advise or tips. I've tried to come to terms with my size and be happy where I am but I'm just not. I can't handle it anymore and it literally depresses me on almost a daily basis and it's starting to affect my marriage. So please don't try to discourage my journey for weight loss. It's taken me a long time to really TRY and I can't stop again. Not until I'm healthy again.
the next average size town from me is over 2 hours away.
currently so I don't have much time to make a special trip.
Other than medical attention, does anyone have any other suggestions for me?
The Cliff's Notes of therapy would say, What is syntonic must be made dystonic.
What you are up against may be the challenge of your life and the stakes are higher than you seem to realize.
All I'm trying to do is lose a few pounds to get my cholesterol down and 60 days into this program I see what the tradeoffs are and I don't like any of them.
Reality Bites, really. . . That's why a lot of people don't live in it. I leave it at least 8 hours per night.
I'm not sure I understand what you are trying to say. Are you trying to imply that I want to be anorexic because I don't think it's bad? I went to your link and it says, "Many personality disorders are considered to be egosyntonic and are, therefore, difficult to treat. Anorexia nervosa, a difficult-to-treat Axis I disorder, is also considered egosyntonic because many of its sufferers deny that they have a problem." I am well aware that it isn't a healthy lifestyle. However, that doesn't make it easy to dismiss. It's an ongoing battle. That's why I'm asking for help or guidance, not criticism. I can't afford a new doctor or to miss work to make a day trip to the next city over. That does not mean I don't want to try and help myself.
If that's not what you were trying to say then please correct me because as of right now I don't know if I should feel insulted or not. I'm hoping I'm mistaken.
Are you trying to imply that I want to be anorexic
This is out of my field but I think what you're describing is called 'secondary gain.' IIRC this idea of Freud's has not yet been discredited. I don't know what percent of your problem can be fairly attributed to this, if any.
What I'm saying is Don't trust your own feelings.
Instead, ask others who know you well.
And ask them what sacrifices they would make to beat this thing if they were you.
But decide ahead of time what you will do with the answers you may get.
BTW, I am not "Doc Martin" but I am occasionally disturbed by the similarities I see between him and me. From my point of view, I am giving you the facts as I see them rather than criticizing you. That's one of many differences between me and a therapist; a therapist gives insights to people who are prepared to hear them.
And if you've read any of Deborah Tannen's work, men talking to women is really cross-cultural communication and full of pitfalls which neither is aware of.
I worked at an eating disorder clinic once and talked the patients quite a lot as well as doing lots of reading on the subject at the time. I'm just saying that so you know i am on your side. I wasn't a doctor or a dietician but i did learn quite a bit about eating disorders. I myself tend to binge when i get depressed.
Anyway this is my advice to you. Don't read the word DIET and think it always means forced and difficult eating patterns. The word diet when i use means "what you eat". Everyone has a diet. Being ON a diet does not necessarily mean a bad thing that causes more pain and distress. For me the word DIET is not a dirty word. Its just a word that describes an innocuous process of food consumption and it also preferably weight loss for those of us what are trying to do that. Its the adjective put before the "diet" that for me is key - fad diet, extreme diet, wonder diet, magical diet, starvation diet, low calorie diet, and so on. I am on a healthy diet to lose weight. So i just wanted to get that out there before you read on. Take away the word diet and you have to use the word eating which can sound sort of clumsy. What's the point of removing perfectly useful words from your lexicon. It just puts more load on the words you've got left.
I've been reading a book called the Don't go Hungry Diet by Dr Amanda Salisbury- Salis. She is an australian molecular food scientist and also helps people with eating disorders. Her book is particularly targeted towards people who have problems with food.
I have been reading her book for the last few days and just from the title alone, i knew that her program had a lot in common with what i'm doing to lose weight. Her way when followed to the letter is a lot slower than my way but it seems to help people get the weight off and keep it off. She herself was up in the 200 pounds area when young and the pictures on the back cover prove it. She writes quite a bit about her own experiences of tackling her weight. She is now slim of course. So you could follow her program precisely or do what i do which is take all her insights and use them but with a bit more deliberate calorie control. But i may find as i go on, having gotten over the worst of my weight issues, that i can slow it down to her pace. I'm in the midst of considering that.
Anyway if you can't get hold of the book, look at her website and write to her. Just google it.
The book is jam-packed with what i consider solid information about food, and how to live with it in a healthy way. Its also got a lot of insightful information which you may not know about how the body (without your awareness) responds to food and affects your appetite. It will make very clear to you why you put on so much weight so quickly when you recovered from Anorexia. And i think it will clarify for you why you are having some difficulties now.
I suspect you haven't got an adrenal problem or a thyroid problem or any other thing of that kind. But you do say you have some vitamin deficiencies which you use supplements for. According to Dr Amanda, not all supplements are equal. She explains why most do nothing but why you must take them if you are recommended by your doctor.
She also explains what happens in our bodies when we don't eat a sufficiently varied diet. She says we should be eating from at least 30 food groups to get the whole gamut of nutrients that keep us operating at peak condition. there are many nutrients that a deficiency of will not give rise to an obvious illness but they can make it harder for us to lose weight. For instance a bit of depression, a bit of fatigue when there's no reason for it, a bit of a whole string of other symptoms that many people seem so quick to put down to Chronic fatigue syndrome or some other mythical medical condition that most doctors deny the existence of. It could just be a limited diet that causes their problems. Certainly my reading of the hormones and their interactions on the nutrition wonderland website, confirms this.
Her program seems to be short periods of controlled calorie eating and until you get a famine reaction (symptoms that make you want to eat or a plateau) and then more relaxed periods where you recover from the famine reaction by eating to satiety. She teaches you how to judge your true hunger and encourages you to eat when your hunger is based on biological need not other reasons. In the book all is explained very clearly with tools to help you get skilled in area of judging your appetite correctly.
It is largely an intuitive eating style but it comes from a background grounded in a practice of science not psychology. I mean she worked as a scientist and understands these processes very well and first hand. Her theories are based largely around the goings on of the Leptin hormone again you can read a lot about that on the nutrition wonderland website.
I find it uncanny how her book and what i am doing are so much in synch, though when i started out my diet three months ago, i had never heard of her and knew almost nothing about most of what she writes about. My own diet is just what i have discovered over the years works for me through reading up on things, trying things and tweaking what i do. You can read my diet thread in the link below. It sounds like you don't eat much meat. Neither do i because i try to be a vegetarian. But the key reason why we are coming from the same angle is because of the hormone leptin and what i read about it a few years ago in an in-depth article on one of our respected national newspapers about why people fail to lose weight.
But unless you are fine eating lots of official type vegetarian foods such as tempeh and tofu (the latter i like) and beans day win and day out it can be hard to make sure one is taking in enough protein. I think from what you've posted that you may not be eating enough protein. I have had to increase my protein intake about half way through since i began when i realised i was eating less than the recommended daily amount of protein which should be about 35% of your daily food intake (I think - easy to find out). As dr Amanda explains we all need a wide variety of proteins too. So eating a varied diet is the best way to get that.
So if you are not eating protein at every meal, try to do that. Also you need to include enough fats in your daily intake. I haven't got the book right now with me but last night i read that there is a compound in the intestine that detects fat and if it doesn't detect enough dietary fat coming in, it sends messages about the body that more food is needed and that will delay the triggering of the satiety message. I can't remember how much she said is appropriate but she did say that [I]2-3 tsp of butter, oils or whatever else per day is INSUFFICIENT to trigger a positive response from this compound.
there are so many little things going on in the body all the time that we know nothing about consciously but eating a varied diet is the way to keep your bases covered. Scientists make it their business and pass on their findings so we dieters, can only know this stuff secondhand.
With all that i've learnt now i include more seeds and nuts in my diet. I've always used olive oil anyway and eat whole dairy. I eat beans for lunch as often as possible and lentils again at night if i can. I eat more fish now though i'd rather not for the sake of the oceans but i find the alternatives too difficult. As you no doubt know, industrial produced vegetable oils are not healthy so one needs to pay attention to the sources of the foods we eat and that's why she recommends that most of what we eat is whole foods. She also discusses things like soy proteins (a problem unless fermented), coconut (their oils being the latest fad food) saturated fats.
She recommends (and second her) getting most of the bulk of our food from vegetables and fruits and to make them core at each meal. Elsewhere i've read we should aim for 2.5 cups of vegetables and 2 pieces of fruit per day. 2-3 serves of diary for bone health (1 cup milk is a serve, 30 grams cheese is a serve and i can't remember the rest).
So a good day on my diet looks like this:
breakfast:
1 fried egg on wholegrain toast
1/2 cup stewed or a piece of fresh fruit with 1/2 cup natural/greek yoghurt
Lunch:
big bean salad which includes one cup of beans/lentils (either canned or dried and then soaked and cooked)
2-3 types of salad vegetables
1-2 tsp of olive oil and same of balsamic vinegar because these i find to have the best flavour of any style of dressing.
a little bit of strong flavoured cheese like fetta or parmesan or aged cheddar because the latter two have the highest protein content but all have strong flavour
5 walnut halves.
this is an extremely tasty salad. See examples in my link.
an alternative might be a sardine sandwich. and a piece of fruit
5pm a glass of wine
Dinner:
it varies a lot but usually its a hot dish. Sometimes pasta, sometimes lentil soup, sometimes some sort of vegetable bake or roast vegetables using olive oil.
the food has to taste good. In the past i was more stingy with oil but now i make it essential to use what is required to make the food taste good.
I drink coffee with whole milk all day long and water as much as possible.
I eat fruit for snacks usually but if hungry i eat something more substantial. I try to keep my meals fairly close together and have dinner as early as possible.
This diet has been working really well for me since January. I am just now stopping at this weight for a while because a) i feel very good here and b) i've learnt from my reading that losing weight too fast or too much weight in one hit can cause a famine reaction (meaning trigger the bodies weight gain mechanisms).
I haven't built exercise into this diet but i do work in my garden a bit. I should do more especially now that my weight is getting into the lower end. Dno't get me wrong, exercise is recommended but not too much to make it unsustainable in the long term. You need to find the amount that makes you feel good. I reigned this back in because at some point i'd stop exercising and then the weight would come back.
I also don't eat sweets at all. They trigger binges and bad food choices. I need all my calories for maximum nutrition.
So this is very long and i know a lot of people here hate that i write such detailed advice but its working for me and i believe that it will work for anyone else as well. They also hate what i write because some it seems to contradict their pet theories and food habits of for example, low carb, processed food is ok, or they don't want to learn more about the function of the bodies and just think chicken breast and steamed vege will win out. Anyway yes we are all different so take what you think works for you until it doesn't work anymore and then at least consider other options.
(Can you tell i'm getting a bit frustrated … ) anyway good luck. We all want the same thing. We all want to lose weight and be healthy. I hope you find something in all that i've written resonates with you.
Pattience, that was perfect. I love detailed responses! That sounds a lot like what I'm trying to work myself in to. Once I figure out what foods work for me I will slowly add different variations until I know what all I can eat. I am a science person, I love it. So I prefer looking at the reason we need food rather than the reason we want food when I look at my diet. This past week I've done really well food wise, not a single cheat. Something happened this morning that triggered my emotions a bit and it all escalated from there to the point where I was very distressed. The fact that I started to consider skipping meals again made me stop in my tracks and seek advise because that is not a road I want to go down again. It ruined my body. So thank you. Everyone today has been a big help in calming me down and making me realize that I may just be wanting results too fast. I know it takes time. I'm hoping to try and lose about 1-2 lbs per week which will add up as the months go by. I just need a push in the right direction.
For what it is worth, I began with Dr. Amanda's diet as well and it is wonderful. I highly recommend the book and it shouldn't be triggering to your disorder, as it avoids the perfection issues and counting that could set off the compulsions.
For me, though, to lose any significant weight required going and staying low carb. It sounds like your diet is on the right track but I'd make sure you're not going overly lean on your protein. Don't shirk servings of fat with your veggies and fattier cuts of meat. If you're balling deficiencies, low fat can impair absorption, not to mention satiety.
Arctic i can't express how much your post means to me right now. Thank you so much. (obviously i'm referring especially to the first part).
I don't follow amanda to the letter either and my carbs and calories are in check. But i think we can all tailor what she says to fit the personal preferences to any one of us.
Lovely, with regard to what happened this morning, one thing i have prioritised this diet is mental health. So whether you have depression, stress, anxiety, or a food disorder such as anorexia, monitoring your mental wellbeing and addressing things really fast or compensating will help enormously. I have already seen that with my diet this time when i had a stress period (which when left unaddressed leads to depression for me and of course weight gain). So it sounds like you have already started this type of strategy too. Even if without conscious knowledge. Its the type of natural check our bodies do and which Amanda talks about at length i.e. the way our bodies and minds (i know its all one) try to push us back to stability and health and working with our bodies rather than against it. Its another example of homeostasis.
The problem is for many of us, we're not literate with the signs and we often misinterpret them and so things get worse and worse until they get so bad help comes to get us (e.g. in the form of a hospitalisation or worse case scenario prison, (which i know is not always really helpful but…) or ill. But as you get better at reading the signs, as i have found, be it around mental health or weight or anything else, the sooner we tend to seek help for our mental stress and issues and take effective action .
Its a beautiful system. OUr bodies are indeed miraculous. Its just a pity that we are not more intuitive by nature and too often have to find out the hard way how to read these signals properly.
Thanks for the great reminder - I have gotten away from the satiety scale and that is to my detriment. I'm thinking I need to reread the book with fresh eyes, having learned I do best on low carb, and see if putting the two approaches together (Atkins and The Don't Go Hungry Diet) is a good maintenance combo for me. I tend to ignore hunger cues and it's been worse in recent months, so re-assessing from that perspective might be really helpful.
Pattience - I never quit that particular plan. I tweaked it and it morphed, as needed, when my weight loss stalled, but it was where I began when I was 265-270 pounds and gave me such a solid platform to build my diet as I needed. I'm eternally grateful that I came across that plan and not some other, because the principles and and endocrinology is as solid as they come. I firmly believe it to be one of the best plans out there and that's become more obvious the longer I've been around the diet sphere. It's just a little too high carb for me and I do well with some intuitive eating principles she espouses, but I really need to measure serving sizes and track macros instead of just hunger signals, because those don't work well for someone as leptin deficient and weight reduced as I am.
But yeah, as a firm low carber now and diet veteran I can firmly and without reservation say that anyone looking for a plan not involving the rigors of true low carb would benefit immensely from Dr. Amanda's work.
Last edited by Arctic Mama; 04-18-2014 at 02:12 AM.
I'm not even really recommending it as a plan to follow strictly but as a way to get insight into the workings of the body and its interactions with food.
I think the difficulty is with the fat brake - its just not as strong a function in the body as the famine reaction - and for good evolutionary reasons.
But i like the ideas themselves and knowing how they interact with our actual weight or fat levels via the leptin hormone.
Incidentally, i read a really good article this arvo on the webmd site about leptin. It confirms everything she says but adds an extra element which she doesn't talk about directly but which i think is pertinent since diabetes is such an issue these days. She's clearly been able to avoid getting diabetes but had gone that far with her own weight, she might have arrived at this sort of idea as well.
That articles talks (among other factors) explicitly about how to recover from leptin resistance. It says leptin resistance is very linked with insulin resistance and to cure leptin resistance, you need to work on insulin resistance which is a solution that would no doubt gain a cheer from the low carb camp. And i can see how that all goes together as well. So yes, i think you will find the book well worth revisiting. What the article doesn't say is that the body can recover from leptin resistance but i can't remember if the body can recover from insulin resistance. I think not but can't quite remember now - ill check.
I can see why you have shifted your focus. But the information is so good in her book that i think everyone can benefit from its insights.
I don't recall her telling anyone to eat high carb though. She just advocates a complete varied diet and doesn't tell you what to eat.
My reservation is that one has to be quite assiduous about monitoring your the source of appetite all the time. I think if you are starting out on a diet fresh and getting weary from all the monitoring as i am doing now, it would be easier because i think you do need that level of attention to get the habits going naturally. (the habits of assessing your appetite properly). I find i am not willing to do the full diary thing she recommends but i am more aware of whether i'm hungry because i need food or hungry because of some other reason. And so on.
I think her approach can work very well with low carb if that's the route you want to take to get your weight loss started but hopefully everyone will be able to revert to a full diet at some point. Certainly she seems to think its essential. And i do too based on what i know so far about the whole business.
I also measure serving sizes but i don't bother with counting macros. I just try to get enough of them all and don't go over board with the complex carbs.
Just wanted to ask, do you weigh your food? Last year I had a very long plateau despite working out and eating healthy and I was so frustrated I went and bought a food scale to measure every ounce of what I was eating, and I was definitely eating at maintenance instead of at a deficit. It really bothered me because I felt like something was really wrong with me!
Also, are you weight lifting or anything? I've seen some people here mention gaining water weight from muscles when they repair? I'm not too sure about that but just thought I would throw it out there.
If you're meticulous with counting and exercise, though I would look into finding a nutritionist or someone with more experience!!
if at this time you just want diet/exercise advice. Go low carb, it helps with high/low and do moderate exercise everyday, like walking & gentle stretching, maybe add some light weights 2x/week. good luck to you & keep posting, that helps alot
Thank you everyone And I do have a food scale. I typically use it to weigh my meats like chicken and fish. I struggled a lot yesterday. I guess I can be honest here about it so here goes...
The day started with my mom going into surgery to get rid of some scar tissue. She's been a large woman all my life but after a few diets worked for her she's gotten down to a better size. She has a huge chest (that I inherited. lol), a teeny waist, and a large booty! But she looks amazing for her size. However, she mentioned her weight and it hit me like a ton of bricks, she only weighs about 10 pounds more than me.
Now I know muscle "weight more than fat" and I am very muscular. It may have padding, but my legs are hard as rocks as are my stomach and arms. But just knowing that we basically weighed the same really hurt. My mother is beautiful and I wouldn't have her change for anything because, though she is bigger, she's healthy and happy, but knowing that I used to be a size 3 and now I'm almost her weight literally made me want to crawl in a hole and think about how I wrecked my body. So, silly as it sounds, that was the breaking point for my meltdown.
I spent my whole day crying, doing internet searches, riding my bike until I wanted to pass out, and I even hosted a practice for my team. I had not eaten, at all (and this was by 5pm). However, at practice I got so lightheaded that I did a toss and I really hurt myself. It was like a slap in the face back to reality. So I canceled practice early and came home to my loving husband and just broke down and told him what was bothering me.
I ended up eating dinner and had to fight to keep it down because once my stomach is empty it's like it remembers the feeling of starving all day and once I finally eat it wants to reject the food. I also talked to a dear friend that is finally out of her rehab for bulimia and she really helped me realize that it was all in my head. I'm not stupid, I know not eating actually hurts weight loss goals by putting my body into starvation mode. I know this, but for some reason it's like I ignore that fact even though I know better.
So, I know this was long, but I felt like I needed to be honest. I'm better today. I went on about a 2 hour hike in the mountains and had a blast with my dad and husband. I drank tons of water, started my day with protein, I actually forgot about lunch until just now... whoops ( I was hiking and lost all track of time), and for dinner I had tons of veggies and protein and I'm about to snack on some yummy fruit.
I did, however, step on the scale and have a 2 lb loss OFFICIALLY for this week. Which is awesome! Other than yesterday I ate very well and stayed at my caloric goal and lost just as much as it said I would. I just need words of encouragement from lovely people like yourselves sometimes So thank you. You have no idea how much you all helped me yesterday. I can never express how much I appreciated all of your kind words and tips. Keep em coming!
Last edited by LovelyDisaster; 04-19-2014 at 12:33 AM.
People who have been anorexics tend to have a much different process with food (different thoughts and feelings about it all) than those of us who don't as far as i've been able to observe.
I am so glad to read your second last paragraph. But like any mental health issue, its always lurking ready to jump out when we are not prepared, so be careful. Keep doing what you've been taught/learnt to keep yourself healthy. Its great you have a such a caring supportive husband.
Anyway i suppose in the same way a bipolar person needs to make sure they get enough sleep every night, people like you need to make sure you get enough good healthy food in to keep yourself on an even keel. But whenever you get stuck again, please don't hesitate to ask for support.
Yea. It's something I really need to work on. It's an all or nothing kind of thing in my brain. It's either I want to eat whatever I want which is normally healthy but the occasional cookie binge or I want to eat nothing at all. It's like my brain still craves that empty stomach feeling which is just so bizarre. I'm trying to cope. It just takes time I guess. It's funny how you think you're over things until suddenly you're not anymore.
That's why a lot of people don't live in it. 
I leave it at least 8 hours per night.
