NSV - I think I broke my addiction to fast food

I'm a 29M who has struggled with obesity and weight loss my entire adult life. I've had some success with weight loss - I am down 75lbs from my heaviest weight of 300 lbs in 2016 and I'm as motivated as ever to finally hit my next goal weight of 180 before I turn 30 in February.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a fast food and takeout addict. At one point, I couldn't leave the house without stopping for some kind of meal, snack, or treat from a restaurant - even if I wasn't all that hungry. Today I realized I am no longer addicted. My fiancee went to a doctor's appointment and was due back around lunch time. She knew I hadn't eaten yet, so on her way home she asked me if I wanted her to pick up lunch. The wheels began to spin in my head of all the possible options I could eat for lunch - shake shack, my favorite taco place, or maybe some wings from my favorite spot! After thinking about it, I decided none of these sounded appealing right now and that I don't need to eat such a heavy and unhealthy meal. I ultimately told my fiancee thanks but I'll make something at home. This is HUGE for me and I just wanted to post and celebrate this major win for myself as overcoming this will inevitably help me sustain my long term health goals.

I should add - I do not and will not deprive myself of the things I want. I am following CICO as a way of eating and I am still enjoying all my favorite foods in moderation when I feel like eating them, but today was not one of those days!

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I cured my sugar addiction by eating sugar

This will be a long post, TL;DR at the bottom. For the longest time I had been trying to lose my extra kilos while fighting my sugar addiction at the same time. I had some temporary success with keto diet several times but eventually lost my willpower. It was so frustrating because I would be on a diet for two weeks, feel great, I would even lose my cravings for sugar but then eat some sweets by thinking "it's only 50 grams of carbs, I don't even want it so bad, I must be cured, so everything will be fine if I eat it" and everything would go south from there on. Of course after some time I would regroup and having prior experience I would avoid sweets at all cost, but idea of never being able to eat sweets was so debilitating that I felt like simply building another layer of mental problems on top of unsolved ones - and of course I would fail again. I tried eating fruits when I wanted some desserts and while they would feel extra sweet even after only a week of diet, something was off and my brain knew it. When the pandemic started I decided to try getting in shape once more. This time I chose low carb diet, I felt like my brain could work a little bit better than with keto and weigh loss was almost as fast. And then after a couple of weeks I had a challenge. I was feeling great, but my brain again decided that I'm cured and I must test my body at 11pm. It had to be chocolate, my brain decided, however at that time all shops were already closed. As always I cleaned my home good before trying again but I managed to find some candy on one of the top shelves in my kitchen cupboard. My mind changed itself and said "that will do". I started devouring the candy and to my surprise it was extra sweet even despite my increased sensitivity to sweetness because of the low carb diet. To my even bigger surprise I very quickly felt full and maybe even slightly disgusted with it. It fascinated me as I could not remember the time I was full because of candy. Next day I successfully continued my diet. I spent whole month experimenting with different types of candy and testing my body, this time for real. It has been almost half a year since I began my diet and I can say that I finally overcome my sugar addiction. I had multiple chances (heck, I even experimented on purpose) to relapse, but I didn't. I would say I had a truly difficult addiction, but as soon as I find a cure it magically disappeared. So as you saw in the title the cure was sugar itself: every time I felt like eating sweets - I ate it and would quickly feel full and my cravings stop. Of course it sounds unreal, but by experimenting (very carefully this time as I knew that everything may go south again, but that magical candy in my cupboard gave me confidence as I already had a cure) I found out what triggers my downfalls and what simply fulfilled my cravings. As you all know everyone is different and your experience may and will differ but it turns out my body can tolerate sweets with super high sugar content (must be at least 75%) as well as sweets where there are much more fat than sugar (like dark chocolate at least 80%), however two should not be mixed. All other popular branded candy, milk chocolates, ice cream is a huge NO and a slippery slope downhill; basically so is everything that has about equal amount of fat and sugar. It was truly challenging to test those foods, but again success gave me composure to keep my balance. Now I'm even able to drink a can of coke when eating low fat foods (like salad), at the same time I must mention that diet soda somehow still triggers my cravings and if I try fulfilling them with more diet soda - I feel bloated and my weight loss stops for a few days even though I continue to eat healthy. I'm not a physician and I have no certain idea why zero calories drink stops weigh loss when I'm clearly just a day before was eating the same and had caloric deficit but I suspect diet soda caused my base metabolic rate to decrease sharply and I had to exercise more or eat even less in order to continue losing weight. So that is my story, I hope it might be helpful for fellow sugar addicts who are struggling to find a working solution.

TL;DR: if you try to overcome sugar addiction but you keep failing - try eating high sugar sweets OR low sugar but high fat sweets. At all cost avoid sweets with 50% sugar and 50% fat combo. Avoid replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners if you feel like they are failing you.

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How I am beating Binge Eating Disorder

Sex: Female, Age: 20, 5 feet 4 inches, SW: 135, CW:124, desk job with swimming and walking as exercise.

Let me start of by saying that while I have never struggled with my weight (always have been healthy BMI), I relate SO MUCH to people on this thread and their struggles with binge eating. I love food, especially sugar, and when I binge I eat an insane amount of calories until I feel sick. I think the only reason I am not overweight is because I am an athlete and because my family is naturally very thin.

​

My binge eating has had its ups and downs. It was especially bad when I had mono in college, because I was too tired to walk to the dining hall and ended up just eating candy from the vending machine. I felt like I had tried EVERYTHING to get it to stop. I tried food journaling, distracting myself with other activities, and intuitive eating. Intuitive eating is great for some people, but since I have chronic constipation my body's signals were always messed up. If I hadn't had a bowel movement in a few days, I wouldn't be hungry at all and food would be difficult to get down. However, once I had a bowel movement I would eat everything in sight and most of the time it was unhealthy.

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I am finally at the point where my binge eating is under control, and I've unintentionally lost 10 pounds in the process. I recognize that everyone is different and for some people these tips may not work. However, they helped me so maybe they will help you. My tips are:

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1) Count calories if you can't eat intuitively. Don't see calories as "bad" or "good," but keep track of them

2) Make sure you are eating enough, whatever that may look like. Use TDEE calculators and don't try to cut an insane amount of calories, especially if you are an athlete like myself. (If you are trying to lose weight of course you will need to cut calories but don't go overboard). It might be tempting to always overestimate the calories you are eating or skip food now and then, but that will come back to haunt you. For me, it meant that I felt weak in the pool and could barely move around without exhaustion. It also made more prone to binge once my body finally rebelled and told me that it needed more food.

3) Limit added sugar intake, but you don't have to cut it out completely. By sugar, I mean white sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, etc. Anything that doesn't come from fruit. Sugar is a huge trigger for me, and I thought that if I stopped eating added sugar completely that my body would get used to it and stop craving it. If that works for you, great, but I was always craving cheesecake or cookies and eventually would binge. Now, I just make sure I stay under the 24g a day rule and allow myself a cookie after dinner.

4) Don't force yourself to eat foods you hate. Instead, find healthy or healthyish foods that you enjoy. I am a picky eater, and whenever I tried to force myself to eat veggies or other foods I hate I felt like I was punishing myself. It wasn't sustainable, I would always binge. Now, I make most of my own food so it is healthier, but I only eat foods I enjoy. For example, I love quiche, plain Cheerios, fruit, chicken, pasta, etc. so that is mostly what I eat.

5) If your body sends you poor signals, keep a regimented routine. Like I mentioned earlier, some days I feel stuffed even though I haven't eaten nearly enough calories, while other days I could eat everything in sight. Now, I eat almost exactly 2000 calories per day no matter how I feel. It feels so wrong to eat when I feel full, or to not eat when I feel hungry, but I know it is for the best. I keep my exercise consistent as well, and when college swim starts up I will add 200-300 calories to my daily intake because I will be working out 2-3 times a day.

6) The scale is not always an accurate reflection of your health. I don't weigh myself often, because I know that if I did I would become obsessed with every gain/loss. Adding muscle, of course, makes you gain weight. Additionally, my constipation means that my weight fluctuates based on whether I have had a bowel movement recently. Water weight/retention, bloating, menstrual cycles, etc. can also affect the scale numbers. If you really need the scale for your goals, I would focus more on the average weight you gain or lose over a period of months versus a day or so.

7) I know this might seem kind of hypocritical coming from someone who has never struggled with weight, but try to remind yourself that you are trying to stop binging for your physical and mental health instead of the weight. This way it makes it seem more positive, and the weight loss WILL FOLLOW if you burn more calories than you consume. I use a similar mentality with school: if you focus on learning as much as you can from a class instead of the grade, you will be more motivated and the good grades will follow naturally.

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Hopefully you can use one or more of these tips!

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16 y/o and 185lbs. Need some weight loss advice.

Hi everyone! I'm new here to r/loseit and honestly Reddit in general, but after watching LukeNarwhal on YouTube I decided to join and get some help here.

I have struggled with my weight for a long time, but it really began to get out of control around the ages of 10-12. I started around 215 pounds at 13-14 years old, after my mother forced me to weigh myself. I felt ashamed and honestly shocked.

Since then, I have now lost around 30-35 pounds by exercising on the treadmill and bike for about an hour every now and then, and track my food/calories and try to stick to a 1200-1500 calorie diet (I am around 5'2, or 162cm). I've been on a stump lately, but I have not gained any new weight, nor have I lost any more. I can't really change the food coming into my home much, but I do try to limit myself and portion things out as much as I can and track it into my MyPlate to help me stay on target for my goal weight (115-120lb).

I do emotionally eat, and I believe this is the reason why I ballooned up past 200 pounds at just 13/14. I'm trying to work on that as well as I cannot go to a therapist due to having parents that do not understand mental illness (I believe I may have depression, as I do have suicidal thoughts and have self harmed on multiple occasions) along with having not enough funds to afford a therapist.

Does anyone know what I can do to help with my eating or exercise? I recently got a dog for my 16th birthday, so he has been taking up a good majority of my time, leaving me less time to exercise (3 month old puppy).

Thanks to anyone who reads and/or gives advice! :)

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CICO =/= Calorie Counting

I see a lot of threads/comments on here and all over that conflate CICO with Calorie Counting. Most of the time it really isn't an issue but I thought maybe it would be useful to help give people a little clearer perspective.

CICO, short for "Calories In Calories Out" is a thermodynamic principle based on the 1st Law of Thermodynamics. You may also know it as The Law of Conservation of Energy.

This isn't a physics lesson but applied to weight loss, it simply means that in order to lose mass over time, you must consume less energy (Calories In) than you expend (Calories Out), over time.

Calorie Counting is simply a diet strategy. It is the simplest and most direct strategy to control the CI portion of the equation. You find your target intake, you can eat "whatever" you want, as long as you don't eat more than that in terms of calories. If you don't lose weight, reduce the target. Simple. That doesn't make it easy. It doesn't account for macros, hunger, fatigue, intolerances, or any of that.

A few other items of note:

-Every diet strategy utilizes the principle of CICO for weight loss. Keto, IIFYM, Paleo, Atkins, all of them.

-Diet strategies above are different in how they will affect your body composition, hormone (and thus, hunger/satiety) levels, and other bodily processes, but when it comes to weight loss, they all work the same. Some people can control themselves on 1200 cal of Twinkies and beer a day. I can't.

-Every person (and everything, for that matter) is bound by the laws of CICO.

-Don't let small nuances corrupt your understanding of thermodynamics. For example, water has energy in the atomic sense, but it doesn't get extracted by your body so we don't say it has dietary calories. Just because you gained 2 lbs of water today doesn't mean you didn't lose fat or that CICO doesn't apply to you. Respiration, Perspiration, Defecation, and Urination all contribute to mass leaving your body.

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If you believe you are exempt from the above laws, please contact the world's leading theoretical physicists immediately, because your body is likely the key to limitless energy for the world, and based on some information about relativity, likely a key to unlocking gravity-defying flight, faster-than-light travel, and time-travel.

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I lost 5 lbs, but I feel like my body gross

A rant. I’m not asking for pity.

I weighed myself in this morning. I lost 5 pounds. I’m going to weigh myself again when I get home from work. Holy crap. I had been dreaming about when I would get under 170 for so long. But I don’t feel great, like I don’t even love my body right now. I know it’s a mixed of coming down my period hormone high and thoughts in my head.

I know my PCP and nutritionist would be proud - we are working on my weight loss actively. I know my mom would ask if I could lose some more because ‘how am I SO big when she had 6 kids and I have none myself’? (Lol it sucks being in this family). My boyfriend wouldn’t compliment - he acknowledges that I’ve gain weight, it that I lost any (I don’t think the physical part of losing weight has shown up yet).

I’ve been gaining weight since my second year of college. I went from 125 to 170, like that scary fast. I know I can feel it in my knees when I use the treadmill. Stretch marks are literally all over my belly. And my thighs, oh my goodness, my thighs. I thought they were huge in high school. I thought they were gross in college. Like now, they are gross huge. Parts of me are gross, but working out helps combat that, kind of.

I acknowledge I have body image issues (doesn’t help that my SO has thinner features than I do and I compare us on a daily basis).

But I lost 5 pounds and to this page and everyone who has been passively helping me on this weight loss journey, thank you. I like reading your stories and journey to a healthier, happy you.

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My first weight loss checkpoint! -10 Lbs! [SV & NSV]

Hi r/loseit community!! This is a (long) personal victory post as well as a thank you post!

The Before Times:
My (27F) whole life, I've been overweight. Through grade school and college, I did the many different all-or-nothing weight loss plans and believe it or not, failed every time. After college (the past five years or so), I honestly just stopped caring. "If it didn't work before, why would it work now? What's the point? etc.etc.etc." This ballooned my overweight status to 'mildly obese' on BMI standards (just for context, not personally using as a health marker).

The Quarantimes:
Quarantine hits and with it came the binge eating, the <500 steps a day, the horrible feelings of self-loathing/feeling stuck, straight up depression, tbh. As the months went on, without 'regular life' distractions, it was increasingly difficult to ignore myself and how I felt emotionally and physically.

Taking a week off of work around Fourth of July, I spent a lot of time outdoors with the few family and friends in my Quaran-team (sorry not sorry for the puns). That week of hard reset away from my couch, away from screens, outside in the sun with loved ones, I felt a sense of clarity or determination or mindfulness, whatever you want to call it.

As I came back to my 'regular' at home schedule, I turned to this lovely community for resources, self-education, and mainly for all of your wonderful personal stories. Every evening before bed, I would scroll through to read your personal victories, nutrition resources, different approaches to weight loss. It became so less daunting knowing that 1. so many others had done it and 2. it didn't have to be as hard as I was making it.

Time to Quaran-shine
A month ago I started logging in MyFitnessPal, got a scale, took my measurements, took 'starting progress pics' (honestly the hardest part of all this so far), and got some sneakers. From then, I've gone about business as usual, but incorporating small changes here and there.
I found the two biggest influences on my daily/weekly progress were/are:

• As soon as I wake up, I get dressed with sneakers on. (No Pajamas all day!) Starting the day with sneakers on helped me push past all the excuses against walking or chores.
• Every Saturday or Sunday, I physically write out a meal plan chart for the upcoming week and stick to my fridge. Starting the week with a meal plan gave me a sense of security and direction throughout the week. I didn't 100% adhere to the plans, but having it laid out was a huge relief when it came time to prepare a meal.

Starting at 243.4 lbs on July 22^nd - I'm now officially at 10.4 lbs down at 233 lbs even! That's about 2.3 lbs/week, which I know is just above the recommended 2 lbs/week, but have also read the starting loss can be at a higher rate than the rest of your journey.

I still can't believe it, but finally seeing a benchmark met, it's so energizing! Not to mention I feel so much better! Less sluggish, my mood is improved, I'm more alert and willing to engage with the world. These same approaches I've taken for weight loss have greatly improved my mental health, with my depression subsiding bit by bit.

Something that started with a bit of mindfulness, some reading, and a realization that it may take awhile, but the time will pass either way, has blossomed into a new perspective, self-kindness, and wellness. I'm so looking forward to the next benchmark and just want to thank all of you for sharing, as it helped me feel WAYYYY less alone in this still very personal journey. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your vulnerability and your wisdom. It's helped me so greatly and I'm so happy to be a part of this community!

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Data Deets

27F 5'2"
SW: 243.3; CW: 233; GW: ??
Haven't set an end goal, just working towards feeling better at the moment.

CICO approach, while being mindful but not hard on myself about Macros (Carbs 50%, Fats 30%, Protein 20%). Calorie Intake cap at 1730. (Binging puts me at 3000 on particularly bad day.)

Due to work stress, my appetite is normally suppressed during the day, so an inadvertent IF approach on most week days. Which looks like water and maybe a small coffee for breakfast, then a big meal (home-cooked, veggie based) around 6 after clocking out.

Exercise: Weekly walks, which have increased over time in frequency, distance, and speed. And poi (super fun and a great arm workout) 2/3 times a week.

Weekly small incorporations:

• No takeout/delivery for a week - has turned into three weeks straight now!
• 1 walk a week > 3 walks a week
• As little processed food as possible (no freezer food, no pantry box meals). Going for home cooked, veggie heavy, low sodium meals on the daily.
• Have healthy snacks at the ready (Fruits, dried fruits, nuts, cucumber slices with a touch of cheese)
• Have desert! Within reason! - A snickers bar was ok, but not worth the calories. Noticing this, I switched to homemade sweets/chocolates that incorporate fresh berries as well. Still decadent, still sweet, but more volume/flavor than a quick candy bar.
• Opening up about my new journey with a close friend who also went through the same a few years back. This was tough!! But saying these things out loud to another human helped make it real and her kind response helped me feel supported.

If you made it this far, thanks again and I wish you the best on your journey as well!

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