Hi everyone. Great site with great people. I just failed maybe my 1,000th diet today. i am sick of it. Its like food is all I have and my brain hates it when I take it away. Junk food that is. I am hooked on the poison. I do not have enough money this week to go grocery shopping but will next week. I nearly ruined my 20s with eating and hibernating I would like to make my 30s better. Any advice on what works for them would be great and any advice on how to get until i go to the store.\

Thank you

For me, what has worked is:

-accepting that using food to cope with life is no more viable than using drugs, smoking cigarettes, or drinking.

-accepting that in order to change permanently, I can't fool myself into believing I can use excuses to fall back into old habits and expect that these excuses will keep me from regaining.

-using mistakes as data, not a reason to beat myself up or give up.

The specifics of what I eat and how much I exercise are far less important than what my mindset is. Because my food plan and exercise will change over time. My commitment to myself is what is most important.

Having said all that, let me give you a couple of specifics that could help you. First, I know what it's like to have to stretch your paycheck to the point where you have to wait until you get paid again to grocery shop. In this case, I would focus on measuring and portioning out whatever you happen to have on hand. Even if it isn't the most healthful fare, you can still reduce how much you eat of it. There are plenty of websites that will tell you the calorie counts of what you eat. There are also apps like My Fitness Pal for your phone.

You could use the internet to figure out how many calories a person of your height and weight burns per day, then starting cutting 250-500 calories per day by reduced portions and/or exercise. This will get you started, then you can tailor your program to fit your needs as you figure out what those are.

Finally, I can recommend a book that changed my way of thinking about weight loss. The Beck Diet Solution. I'm sure others could and will recommend good books you could get from the library.

Good luck! It doesn't matter if you've failed 1000 times if you try 1001.

So far calorie counting has worked very well for me. Simply figure out how many calories you need to lose the desired amount of weight, then experiment to find out which foods fill you up most (guaranteed they'll be MUCH healthier than what you're already eating) within your calorie limit. A lot of folks around here use a website/app called MyFitnessPal and find it super effective. I just keep a personal journal as I'm a bit "old school". For me it's been the easiest and healthiest way to lose weight. Another method might be best for you, I can only attest to what's working for me.

Best of luck, you'll figure it out.

Learn to enjoy food that is good for you, aides your weightloss and fits your budget. This will require a lot of trial and error and is highly personal. There is no one-size-fits-all. Trust me, I love what I eat. And you would hate it. For example, after 18 months of constantly tweaking my diet I ate today:
oats
Flaxseed milk
dried apricot
honey
Coffee
Wild Planet Sardines
Ekone lemon pepper oysters
quails eggs
Baby squid in olive oil
Ocean harvest Dungeness crab
Ekone original oysters
Salted cod
Wild Planet White anchovies in water
Honey
Tomato
Mushroom
Red onion
Hummus
Kimchi

Yummy. But most of that would probably make you puke.

Find the healthy foods you like and run with them. Experiment to find what works for you.

If food is all you have then being overweight is the least of your problems. Are you saying you have no friends and you sit on your couch all day? Do you have a job?

If you just failed your 1,000 diet today I'm not really sure what food you have in the house to make it through next week? What diets have you tried? Where did you get your information? How long did a typical diet last before you "failed"?

I'm very happy to help but your post doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I'm at the beginning too and I guess we have to take it a day at a time.

Regards to food I'll leave that to the others with more experience, but in terms of living your life why not just start now? No need to hibernate. Try and do something small that makes you feel good and get out there. It doesn't have to cost anything, have picnic in the park with a friend you haven't seen in a while or join a free meetup group and do something that interests you. Or simply go for a walk on a nice day.

Maybe aim for one thing a week you do to get out of hibernation?

Hope that helps, just remember it's always hardest to start. But just make a start and it'll be easier, and hopefully soon it will be less anxious and you'll be able to just enjoy it!

You'll see everyone is different, what worked for me to get started was to start some regular exercise, walking, and then really working on the food.

We made a chart with blocks for 12 weeks and just tried to lose 1 lb. a week, we had (still have) a weigh in day where we would mark on the chart, weight, how much lost and next goal.

I'd recommend starting out keeping track of what you're doing, that way you can see what works and what doesn't and make adjustments.

Don't quit maybe the 1,003rd time is the time that clicks for you!

As you look around you'll see there are a lot of people on here who fall down, dust themselves off and keep trying, keep trying.

Best of luck to you

Welcome and please don't be discouraged. There is lots of support here, everyone does different things as far as diets go and maybe you'll find the thing that works for you. I know I found what worked for me here at 3fc.

I'm sorry you've had such little success with dieting. I did too. The reality is that any diet will work as long as you can maintain it forever. That's where I got stuck. I lost weight with calorie counting, but I didn't want to have to count calories forever. I lost weight with low carb but I didn't want to swear off carbs forever. I lost weight with intermittent fasting but I didn't want to skip meals forever either. Whatever diet I was on there came a day that I was so sick of it I went back to my old ways and gain that weight back... and then some. This is a very typical pattern for most dieters, falling off the wagon, getting back on the wagon, this time it will be different, and of course with all this effort comes the intolerable guilt of feeling like there is something wrong with you that you can't stick with it!

I grew sick of all that and decided to find a long term solution of mending my volatile relationship with food. I thought really hard about who I want to be when I look into the future and I knew I didn't want to be a dieter who gave up certain foods who counts and measures everything I eat. In my future I see a normal person who eats everything in moderation, doesn't have to think about calories and restrictions and leads a happy and stress free eating style.

So I stopped the cycle of dieting and binging and tried intuitive eating. I eat based on my hunger signals, employ mindful eating practices and tackle my emotional eating patterns. So instead of turning to food in times of stress I developing other coping mechanisms instead of turning to food. There is no diet that will fix disordered eating if you're an emotional eater like me. Diets exacerbate disordered eating and can escalate it into full blown eatin disorders (it did for me).

So it's something to think about. 1000 diets is a lot. How many more do you need to try before realizing that you are not the one failing on a diet, maybe your diets are failing you?

For now I'm focusing on balancing nutrient density with restricting calories. Dipping down to 1300-1400 made me tired and miserable; I'm aiming for 1600-1700 now.

Some forms of healthy food are cheaper than others - check out the stats on websites such as "nutrition data", and if all else fails, a multivitamin should cover you, even if your nutrition isn't optimum. (Healthy food isn't cheap!)

Taking a long term view, to banish most sugar from your diet, and feed your body what it needs, is the best IMO.

Walk around the block.

Every day walk a little further. Do it at 5am if you don't want to be seen.

Start getting out and moving around. Turn off the TV and the computer.
Clean out a closet. Clean out the kitchen cabinets. Throw stuff away.

Organize your life and make a little plan to do certain things each day.
Try eating mostly protein and veg/fruit, less carbs.
Whichever ones you like best, if it's squid or chicken!
Fill half your plate with a veg you like instead of a small helping. (skip potatoes!)
Use smaller 10" plates instead of a full size dinner plate.
Looks full with less.

Start small and work up to harder things one week at a time.

Good Luck! Oh, and come back on here and talk to people.

Hi. I think you need to figure out how not to be a hermit first and the weight loss will follow. I'm a Kinder teacher so I know my responses sometimes sound simplistic, I can't help it.

Having online friends is fine, but you need to have contact with humanity in some way. A weight loss support group where you meet face to face might be a way to meet friends. Over Eaters Anonymous, Weight Watchers, TOPS are just a few that come to mind.