All or Nothing
 

Hi everyone,

I'm new here but, unfortunately, not new to the challenges of weight loss. This time around I'm hoping to confront my biggest obstacle head on - my all or nothing approach - and make permanent sustainable changes to my lifestyle. In the past I've always made the mistake of taking my weight loss plan too seriously. I go overboard, lose patience (and my mind!) and then eventually give up.

Does anyone have any advice on tackling this issue? When I'm trying to lose weight it's nearly all I can think about. It consumes me and it brings a lot of negative self talk and negative energy into my life (shame about letting myself get this overweight, not having done this before etc.) What works for me is counting calories and weighing daily. It keeps me on task and I do well for about a week every time. Too well! Until I can't stand my life being all about weight loss anymore.

Help?

I'm in a similar boat, especially with balance and moderation. When I was a teen I struggled EDNOS where I was in 3 months cycles of starving, bingeing and purging, and then bingeing. This created a very unhealthy relationship with food. While I'm no longer quite that extreme I still have an issue with all-or-nothing thinking.

I'm trying to work on accepting what I consider to be failures. I'm allowed bad days, slip-ups, and mistakes. It's okay for me to miss a goal. Buuut.... these are a mindset goal and it's easy to say when I'm doing well. I'm not quite there yet. But I do know in the past that this forum has helped me to remember the bigger picture.

It really does help to get in the mind set of every second of every day is a chance to get back on track. It doesn't have to be "tomorrow" or "next week" or "January 1st"... One bad meal doesn't mean the rest of the day has to be bad.

That all or nothing can get dangerous right quick!

Like berryblondeboys said, treat every moment like a chance to get back up! I find it also helps to try and start with allowing a few treats. Keep one or two things around the house maybe you're allowed once I'm awhile? I get low fat reduced Oreo cookies. Taste like normal, and I eat three as a great trear once or twice a week.

I also don't weight when I calorie count. I eyeball... Maybe you should try that? It could make it way more stressful, or it could make things a little leas intense, who knows? I use this system to help me judge:
1 baseball = 1 cup
1 billard ball = 1/2 cup
1 egg = 1/4 cup
1 ping pong ball = 2 tbsp
1 deck of cards = 2-3 ounces
2 pairs of dice = 1 ounce

I've been able to lose weight consistently eyeballing. You could also just try focusing on finding and creating foods and meals you love for awhile instead of how much you're eating! I love baked green beans in garlic, Brussels sprouts, fish, pho soup, beef and lamb! Be picky, I eat less than I used to, but I love the food I eat more now cause I don't just eat to eat.

I have an All Or Nothing thing going on with treats, so I basically just cut them out and focus on eating healthier foods. That's not to say that everything I swallow is really super-good for me, but a lot of it is. And no junk food.

I cannot seem to eat one or two cookies. If there are 2, I'll eat two. If there are 22, I'll eat 22 - maybe not all at once, but in 2 days (3 tops), they'll be gone.

The cookies are yummy, but they're just not good enough to get in the way of my weight loss. I look at my thighs and I'm like, "No, I don't need freaking cookies!"

This is helpful for losing, but when I took a diet break, I went back to bad habits (worse, I went crazy) and gained fourteen pounds in like six months.

I'm thinking that after I've lost all my weight, I will be one of those people who gains five or ten pounds and then loses them again for life. That's not really what I want, so I'm thinking a lot about how to do all this so that it's more even in the end, so I won't yoyo with the same few pounds.

I can lose fine. It's the Keep It Off that has me puzzling.

Would you say this about a car that you bought? "The Saab works great and then a week later it crashes and burns, but I keep buying more Saabs because they supposedly work great!" Uhm, no. Would you take a medication if your doctor said "This medicine works about 10% of the time for your ailment, just keep taking it until it works." Would you take it? All I'm saying is that if calorie counting works so great for you then why do you crash and burn after a week or so and then end up hating it?

It is crucial to get rid of the all-or-nothing mentality. Just take one day at a time and know that sometimes there will be good days and other times there will be bad days. That's a guarantee, do you think skinny people have all good days or something? No. What's important is that you don't judge yourself when you eat something your body might not have needed. Learn from it, have a laugh and then move on.

The one recurring problem that I see with any diet is that people tend to undereat to an extreme at the start of a diet. Especially with calorie counting because calorie counters tend to save and save and save calories all day and all week and that creates a primal type of hunger that your body will wage war on which is the primary reason for binging. Try to allocate your calories when you need them the most, like in the morning and at lunch. The American ideal of a dinner meal is a little counter intuitive imo, who needs a big huge meal at the end of the day? What are you going to do with all that nourishment right before you go to bed? So if you deprive yourself all day long then it's no wonder that most end up binging at night.

Well Future,
I think that you will get a lot of support on this site. It gives support motivation and accountability along with great advice and sometimes laughs from others. I think this site is the first step to making a sustainable change

Palestrina- I am in complete agreement about dinner. You have all day to work off what you ate for lunch and breakfast yet we tend to eat the most for dinner. I've switched to really light dinners because it makes sense that you don't load yourself up before you are inactive. There is a French saying that says "Eat like a king at breakfast, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper."

It doesn't seem like it's your all or nothing mentality that is the problem. All diets are hard to start. It's a fact. The first couple weeks/months are the worst. Especially if you have a lot to lose. It's overwhelming, especially when it doesn't come off as fast as you want. But, as we all know, it's not an overnight process. On the days I want to give up, I try to remind myself why I started in the first place. I think about the person I want to become and know that if I give into that binge, it's not going to help me. Try to make an inspiration board (notice I didn't say thinspiration, don't aspire for someone elses body. Aspire for you own version of healthy). And if you do give in, so what, tomorrow is another day. It all comes down to if you really want it, if you want it badly then you will fight for it. Even if that means fighting yourself.

Calorie counting has NOTHING to do with all or nothing mentality. They are completely separate. She's not saying it's the calorie counting that is the problem. She can try different foods or different calorie level and see if that helps with losing control or not. She just has to get to the mentality of one mistake is not the same as failure and does not mean to just give up.

Goes the same with your intuitive eating. You could be eating intuitively, but then have a day where you had a meal where you gave into stress and overate. The all or nothing mentality would say, "Screw it. Today I'm just going to eat as much as I want and not think about if I'm hungry for it or not."

All GOOD diet plans (and you are on a diet plan) should allow for intuitive eating so that the out of control eating doesn't happen. There are days I eat more than I planned to eat when I got up in the morning because I was just too hungry at the lower calorie count later in the day. There are days I eat way less than my calorie count because I simply wasn't hungry. I account for it all, but I still track calories. The all or nothing would say, "Well, if I'm hungrier than my allotted 1500 and give in and eat an ice cream cone thus feeling like a failure, then I can just say screw it and eat the entire container of ice cream." A more rational approach would be, "Ok, I ate the ice cream cone. I really wanted it. But now back to the plan."

There is no such thing as IE + diet plan. IE is the opposite of dieting, they can't coexist. For example you say "A more rational approach would be, "Ok, I ate the ice cream cone. I really wanted it. But now back to the plan." - with IE there is no "plan" so there's nothing to get back on plan with. The ice cream cone is just part of what you ate that day, it has no moral significance and doesn't fit into a category of "good" or "bad" or "right" or "wrong." Diets are about what you eat and how much you eat. IE is only about why you eat and how you eat.

Re
 

What you ate yesterday should never make a difference in what you eat today. Every day is a blank slate.

Some people need that all or nothing attitude. I've found personally that denying something for me has never worked. For example, if I want ice cream, I have it. I have 150 cal sandwich instead of most of a half gallon.

Just do the best you can. The goal is to have a diet you can be both happy and healthy with.

Re
 

I forgot to add...the obsessiveness over weight loss is very common from the comments I've read on here. The only solution ive ever found is sleeping (ha) and doing something I enjoy so much that I forget about it for a few minutes.

Any way you eat is a diet. Eating what you want is a diet. It is how you decide to eat.

What is IE?

It's sounding like, "I eat whatever I want, whenever is want it." Obviously, this is not something those of us who would love to eat nothing but donuts, cakes and cookies all the time could do and still lose weight.

So, what is it?

Technically I do eat whatever I want whenever I want it, we all do. I'll just cite what wiki says about IE "Intuitive eating is a nutrition philosophy based on the premise that becoming more attuned to the body's natural hunger signals is a more effective way to attain a healthy weight, rather than keeping track of the amounts of energy and fats in foods. It's a process that is intended to create a healthy relationship with food, mind and body, making it a popular treatment for disordered eating and eating disorders. Intuitive eating, just like many other dieting philosophies, goes by many names, including non-dieting or the non-diet approach, normal eating, wisdom eating, conscious eating and more"

And for the record, all I ever wanted to eat was fast food, donuts, chips, cheetos, and cake for my entire adulthood. And with IE I'm past that, eating a healthy and varied diet and not binging. So no, it's not "obviously" something that would hurt someone who likes junk food. More people eat intuitively than you think, all people who are normal around food eat this way. Unfortunately the diet industry discredits normal eaters by calling them "lucky" and claiming that they have fast metabolisms.

How many people do you think I consider to be intuitive eaters?

This is not a plan that would work for me right now. I had to stop myself from pigging out at dinner and that's regular food, not even sweets. If I ate anything I wanted to eat, I'd have had 2/3 of a meatloaf for dinner and about a dozen cookies or half a cake every single day. No joke.

It's hard for me. I have to keep reinforcing good habits until they're my thing. I'm there now. I'm not making cakes and cookies every day or two. But I still think about it and have to tell myself, "No," so it's not a done deal.

I were more like you and had it all figured out, no problems, no trouble, no worries that I might screw it up.

Did you ever have to struggle with it?

I don't have it all figured out, I don't think anyone really has it all figured out. I've struggled a lot and for many years. I was a binger for 20yrs. I'd make up excuses to pop out of the house before dinner and use it as an opportunity to go through the drive thru and order enough food to feed a small family just for myself. Then I'd eat it secretly in my car and drive to remote parking lots to get rid of the evidence and then drive home and eat dinner with my family. If I had to be around people on a daily basis and could not escape to binge I would feel shaky and end up crying. Nobody knew what was wrong with me. I would pick a fight with my husband or roommate just so that I could storm out of the house and go eat. So yea, I've lived with out of control binging for over 20yrs of my life and I know what it feels like to be crazy around food. I may not be skinny now and I may not be losing weight fast enough to win any contests but IE saved my life in a way that is hard to explain. It's just pure heaven now not having to struggle with binging anymore. My weight problem seems manageable now, being around food is effortless and all my fears are gone. It's nice to not be in constant fear around eating and food.

I've struggled with this all my life. IE saved me from it. That's why I'm passionate about it. Nobody should have to feel crazy around food.

To above- the IE approach wod have you asking yourself WHY would you eat they much meatloaf? And why would you eat all those cookies. Is it to feed stress? Then you need to work on different coping methods for stress which do not involve food. Or were you just extra hungry? Perhaps you didn't eat enough for lunch and shod try better next day.

For me IE is part of my plan, but only the asking why and learning new coping skills. I also over eat because I simply love food and have no self control if something tastes delicious. I'm an instant gratification kind of person, so I have to temper it by putting a cap on my eating as I can feel hungry even if eating 3000 calories a day because sugary/carb heavy foods make me crave more and make me hungry too.

Well, you certainly seem like you've found all your answers and have it all figured out.

I never snuck around or had a fear of food, but I'd still love to hear your story.

If you ever want to share how you went from overeating to being so controlled and sensible, I'd love to hear it.

I want more meatloaf because it tastes good. I love meatloaf. Most non-sweets I just eat until I'm full and quit. But there are some things I have to say, "No more!" to and force myself to slow down.

I make something I call Edamame Succotash (I made it up and it has no name.). I love it and can stuff myself full for very few calories. So, that's easy. I don't have to say, "No more!"

But meatloaf and a few other things are a struggle. After half an hour, I'm good and all proud of me for stopping. But it's still a struggle in the moment, when the food on my plate is gone and there's still hot meatloaf sitting on the rack. It's hard.

It's not stress. I wish I had an excuse. I just like meatloaf and want seconds. Well, my period is due. I do tend to want more food around this time. It might be playing a part. But I always want more meatloaf, lol.

It's not like with white pasta, though. It's not a craving.

I just have some bad habits that need breaking. I think.

I don't know. I just focus on mostly healthy foods and try not to eat too much of them. That's enough for now.

Can we get back on topic of all-or-nothing thinking? There are other places for such a debate but it's no longer relevant to this thread.

Future Do you find that you struggle with all-or-nothing thinking in other areas of your life too or that you tend to be a perfectionist? Or maybe label things in a black or white fashion such as good or bad? My therapist keeps pushing me to look at the world in tones of gray rather than just black or white. She's asked me to challenge thoughts that over simplify a situation. I'll give an example: good day vs bad day. They aren't opposites since they both are days. A day is 24-hours so chances are there was a mixture of good and bad in that time. So if there were good moments during the day is it fair to label it a bad day? Even good days have disappointments. Either way it was just a day, how you choose to label is how to choose to feel about it.

Same goes with food. There aren't good foods or bad foods. They are just fuel for our body with pros and cons.

I know I like things to be really simple which is why I like to simplify the world in one-or-the-other, black-or-white, good-or-bad, all-or-nothing. They make the world less complicated and easier to process. But it's very easy to get out of hand because this view doesn't reflect the world we live in where everything is gray.

Future I struggle with the all-or-nothing, becoming obsessive about food the first week and then wanting to quit, thing. I have done both calorie counting and counting weight watcher points, and I find (for me, this isn't the case for everyone) that the calorie counting makes this mindset worse for me than the WW points. I am not sure why, but I think some of it has to do with the fact that most fruits and veggies are "free" on WW. With calorie counting, I feel bad if I go over my daily amount even if I'm legitimately hungry (no cravings) and eat a piece of fruit which I know is GOOD for me. But if I go over, even by 50 calories, I feel like I've failed and then I just say, screw it, I'm eating ice cream. There's definitely opportunity for this mindset too in WW, but it doesn't seem to affect me the same way. I'm not saying that WW is better than calorie counting, some people (both of my sisters included) are really successful with it. But there are other options for counting food that could work for you too, and might be worth looking into.

It's also important though to figure out why you have this mentality in the first place. I get in this mindset because I am a perfectionist who hates disappointing people. And instead of talking about the problems in my life I tend to binge watch netflix and eat everything in my pantry, which led to the weight gain. Knowing that I have these tendencies and that I am a major stress eater is helping me to have a better relationship with food. If you can have a tough conversation with yourself and figure out why you feel this way about food and dieting, you will be much more successful in the long run. It's not easy to figure these things about, but definitely worth it!

GordonGirl I get that. My mom typically does WW for this reason but I've always been a calorie counter. That's why I've always preferred Spark People over My Fitness Pal. With SP I'm able to set a caloric range for the day (mine is 1300-1600). This allows me a 300 calorie breathing room to still lose weight but not feel like I'm a failure. With MFP just 1 calorie over the goal it would turn red and I felt so awful I'd do anything (include massively undereat) to avoid it.