This is just a reminder that taking care of mental illness is important if you have goals for weight loss.
I had been seeing my therapist for over a year for PTSD before she brought up the diagnosis of moderate to severe ADHD from talking about other members in my family having it. And it all made sense -- never being able to meal plan because I'd forget to make a plan, forget to go to the grocery store, too distracted too cook so I order out, impatient with tracking, loss of interest without direct and extreme motivation, etc. Whatever it was, it was really, really hard on me, and it cost a lot of self doubt and self esteem issues, and constantly "giving up" on healthy changes and gaining weight back and more didn't help.
In January I started working with my therapist on very small goals related to this and managing my life. I started following the advice of the quick start guide posted here, with some adjustments that fit better with my ADHD. So I thought I'd do a mind dump here in case anyone else finds this useful. Sorry if it's just rambling.
For the first week I tracked what I was eating without judgement. This was SO hard. My ADHD me was ready to jump head first and buy all the groceries and sign up for a new gym and plan out how I was suddenly going to work out for an hour 5x a week (while being morbidly obese lol so you know that's gonna work). I can't tell you how excruciating it was to solely do that -- just tracking and nothing else. I was resisting urges to eat healthier. I was resisting urges to eat less. I just tracked what I ate, and I tried to eat as normally as possible. No exercise, either.
My husband now does all the grocery shopping. I'm more likely to impulse buy, forget to buy stuff, impulsively strike things off my list, not want to look at the meat section because it takes so much effort to think about the cut choice, the best by date, the price, the weight, and just on top of the super stimulating environment. I have on multiple occasions left full grocery carts and just left the store because being in there was too much to handle. Sorry grocery store people, I'm really trying not to be a pain in the bum. Or the people at Michaels, or at the register at Target telling the people never mind, I forgot I don't want this. Grocery delivery I guess works well if you don't have a Chris to grocery shop for them. He is my rock.
So he does the shopping, the hubs, and I don't plan meal plan. It uses too much of my executive functioning to meal plan which could be used for making good and difficult decisions to cook (because cooking just takes soooo long and I don't wanna when I don't wanna, it feels like pulling teeth just to get myself to do it). I just put on the list all the ingredients I like to make food with (black beans, chickpeas, spinach, mushrooms, hummus, chicken breasts, rice, pasta, pasta sauce, eggs, pretzels) and told him not to get any of my "trigger" foods, i.e. foods that I find I can't resist like family sized cans of ravioli or ice cream. So, when I cook, I just kinda throw stuff together. Hummus fried rice with mushrooms, cheesy black bean rice, spicy mushrooms and pasta with chicken, ketchup and rice with chicken. Random weird foods that sound good. I cook for one serving because mixing ingredients and then having "serving sizes" is super confusing, like making beef stew or casseroles. I also don't make more than one serving because I zone out when I eat and I forget that I'm eating until all of the servings are gone (not binge eating, just distracted, like that Spongebob episode where it's free balloon day but Spongebob and Patrick steal a balloon and then run away from the police, and all they have to eat is a chocolate bar and Patrick goes "I think I'll eat it now!" and he does and then five seconds later he says it again and bites his... hand? and then blames Spongebob because he doesn't remember eating the first one). I don't have the patience to figure it out. So I manage with eating this way and I'm so happy right now with it.
Week 2 I added in to have a 1 lb weight loss, which put me at about 2,000 calories. Same in week 3, doing above. I didn't lose weight the first week obviously, but these next 2 weeks I lost 12 lbs with staying within 100 calories on either end of the 2000 calories allotted. I even went out to eat followed by junk food at a Bruins game. Still winning.
With me, who knows how long this will last, and by now I'm used to sudden changes in what my goals are. OH, also, I watched a youtube video about how you should plan out everything that would need to change in order to make a change in your life (like waking up at a certain time) and then waiting 24 hours AT LEAST before making any decisions. Which is what I did here. But I'm hopeful that this sticks. Or, if it doesn't, I'll find something that does. So far, so good.
TL;DR: I have no idea what I just wrote, but I hope it's helpful anyway! And get treated for your mental illness first. Yes.
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