Hello all,

I am just writing to vent. I weigh the most I weighed in my whole life. I feel horrible. I have my friends wedding in a few weeks and I promised myself last year I would lose weight for it. I actually gained weight for it. Just so down. I have been working at this for fifteen years. I always fail. I do not know what it is. I just cannot eat healthy. As much as food has hurt my life it is still the only thing I love to do. Whenever I am stressed I eat. It is my release. I never drank alcohol or did any drugs. But I put away my share of food. I did a juice cleanse for four days once and I remember feeling so miserable from the lack of junk food in my life. Felt like drug withdrawals. I went to the Dr. the other day for a cold and he recommended the weight loss surgery. I do not want to do this because yous till have to monitor what you eat anyway. People recommended Overeaters Anonymous but that stuff is not for me. I don't know what to do. I cannot waste another year of my life. But I get so upset when I eat healthy. Take care everyone.

Hi true85,

Have you tried going slow? Like, only get what I call "vegan junk food" at the health food store? Or finding healthy-ish dessert recipes you can make by scratch? Or have anything you want, but only two things at the end of the day?

Then (a month later) work up to no snacks, but cook and eat any Comfort Food you want (i.e. Shepherds Pie)?

Then a month later have a Green Juice every morning for breakfast?

Instead of All or Nothing (guilty of this myself!!) just slowly replace things.

Like, there are four "Eating Stations" in my day. Six if you count "desserts". Breakfast, Lunch (and Dessert), Snack, and Dinner (and Dessert). So six eating opportunities, six months. Every month just replace one with something Healthy. Then work on turning the Healthy to Weight Loss (anther six months).

What do you think?

The reason that laying off junk food felt like withdrawal is that it IS withdrawal. What worked for me was figuring out my biggest blood sugar triggers (in my case that was Diet Coke). I quit Diet Coke cold turkey and it took several months for my body to adjust. But I had to break my Diet Coke addiction - I was actually having dreams about Diet Coke for weeks. I didn't worry about how many cookies I was eating (they were giving me my blood sugar fix I'd formerly gotten from DC) at that point nor did I lose any weight. But after giving up the Diet Coke I could very easily see that eating sugar made me hungry for more sugar. So then (months later) I gave up the sugar. That was quick in comparison to the Diet Coke. And that's when the weight loss began. I let myself eat as much bread and potato chips as I wanted during that time. Anytime I had a major sugar craving, I ate an apple. Within a week those physical sugar cravings were gone. The mental cravings took probably another week. At that point, I began to eat healthily.

A couple of weeks ago I went from a brief maintenance period back into weight loss mode (I still have a good bit to lose). I cold turkey'd into healthy eating (lots of veggies, no sugar, very little refined carbs) and I felt like garbage for 3 full days and truth be told I hadn't been eating all that badly. Right now you say that you are eating a lot of crap. You either need to give your body lots of time to adjust via withdrawal or maybe give your body time to adjust via tapering off the junk the way I did it for the first 30 pounds.

Cutting out the crap one thing at a time (Diet Coke, then sugar, then most refined carbs) was what worked for me when I was trying to make a big change. You'll have to find what works for you, but that did the trick for me for the first part of my weight loss. If lazy old Diet Coke swigging, veggie hating me me can do this, you definitely can. Good luck! And keep coming back. There's lots of support here.

Wow Treasa, I found your post really inspiring! It's specially helpful at this time of year when every little treat is training my taste buds to want more & more salty or sugary treats. Thank-you!

True85 I hope you are also encouraged by Treasa's post. Withdrawal is very real. You absolutely can do it!