I have become completely addicted to food and I feel so hopeless.

I started my weight loss journey around 5 years ago now. I lost almost half my body weight and was only 10-20lbs away from my goal weight. Things were amazing - I could shop anywhere I wanted, I was calorie counting and didn't feel restricted by my eating choices, I was exercising and going out constantly, and even though I was self-conscious about my loose skin, I looked great with the help of a good bra and clothing that covered my stomach.

But life changed for me a little too fast and depression hit me like a freight train. I half-heartedly maintained for a few months, then spent the next two years slowly gaining more and more weight. After about 9 months of depression I sought out a therapist. After 2 months of pretty unhelpful therapy I sought out medication. Eventually I quit therapy, but kept on the medication as it did help tremendously with the depression.

Last year I developed binge eating disorder and found that every time I restricted my calories for more than about 2 weeks, I start binging. After my third attempt to lose weight killed by binges and shame, I sought out an eating disorder therapist. I've been seeing her for around 8 months now but nothing has changed. It's my fault, not hers, but I just feel so hopeless.

I feel like I can only think straight when I'm disgustingly full. After I've eaten a big (trashy) meal, everything seems to clear: my guilt, my shame, my desire to lose weight. I can plan out meals, shopping lists, exercise routines... But 3 hours later I begin to get hungry again and it all disappears. Suddenly I no longer care about any of it and all I want is to eat: the trashier the better. My therapist made several recommendations early on for ways to combat this, but the problem is when it happens I just don't care. The only thing I care about is eating.

I'm trapped in this horrific cycle where I gain weight, feel depressed, don't want to work out... Then just want to eat. And the cycle continues on and on and on. My mother just got gastric sleeve surgery and I feel so ashamed when I think about all the progress I ruined and she tells me that she lost 17lbs this month (she was in a similar situation to me). I spent hours today looking at local weight loss clinics but the truth is I really don't want surgery. I want weight loss to be easy like it was the first time, but it's not. It's so much harder.

And on top of the constant cravings for food, I've gradually eaten more and more so I can eat a lot of food before I'm even full... Probably 3x as much as I could even 3-4 months ago. I order out several times a week and typically when I buy food with good intentions to eat it, it goes bad because when given the option to order out or cook... I order out. Homemade food doesn't excite me anymore because all I want is garbage and sweets. I've even tried meal plans, but it was the same thing: I ate the premade meals for a 4-5 days before they just seemed so boring and I ordered out again.

I'm in a war against myself and I am not winning. It doesn't matter how much I think about the bad parts of being fat or the good parts of being thin, it doesn't matter that my body aches and I hurt walking up the stairs, it doesn't matter that I go to therapy, it doesn't matter what I buy to eat. I've even tried blocking the fast food websites with our home firewall, but I'll just binge the healthy food I've bought with good intentions for a week then give up and use my phone to order out until I fix the firewall.

I just feel so hopeless and I don't know what to do. I want to shop at stores I love again. I want to feel comfortable no matter what chair I sit in. I want my ass to not hang over the sides of the toilet. I want to feel light when I take steps. I hate living this way and I want to feel happy, energetic, and successful again.

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Finally going to take weight loss seriously with the help of this community!

Hi everyone! I joined this community a bit ago when I started to lose weight around October 2020. I originally was doing well, eating a bit healthier and working out several nights a week. Around December of 2020 I had lost about 18 pounds. I was excited to finally be below 250 and maintaining that. I struggled with mental health and was a bit more depressed and the job I started in December 2020 was super stressful and I would work 12+ hour days, often leaving me to buy fast food or only cook quick foods at home like frozen pizza or something due to being super tired and stressed and depressed. Well I finally quit that job and now have landed my dream job! That dream job has a gym at the facility! I want to start actually being serious about losing weight like I was in October 2020. In January 2020 I started half heartedly working towards losing weight again and got on the proper medication for my medical concerns (that make it easy to gain weight and hard to lose weight sadly). I want to now try to get back into losing weight and eating healthier!

Right now I am 5'3" and my starting weight is 235 and my goal weight is 145. Just knowing the difference in those numbers scares me and makes it feel super daunting especially since I have always been overweight ever since I was elementary school..

Any tips on how to maintain eating healthy and maintain an exercise routine for when the newness and excitement wear off and it starts to feel arduous? Thank you all!!!

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Set an “Oh $hit!” Weight for yourself. Even if you start gaining again, it helps you from gaining too much back.

41/F. 5’4” HW: 167, CW 159 GW: 135

A long time ago when I first started my weight loss process, I weighed 166. I decided right then that I was NEVER going to weigh more than that again. I made it my OH $HIT! weight. In the following 15 years, I have dieted, exercised, fallen off the wagon for a variety of reasons, started over, fallen off, rinse and repeat. But since I made that rule for myself, I have been able to catch myself and DO something before spiraling out of control. It has been a good wake up call for me over the years that I’m sliding too deeply back into bad habits.

So many of us work so hard to lose weight and then something happens and it starts creeping back on and then next thing you know, you’ve gained all your weight back and then some. Set a point for yourself, not your current weight or goal weight but a realistic weight that you just can’t go over again. Give yourself some room for when you are overwhelmed and stressed but set a ceiling for yourself.

I know some people see this as planning to fail. I see it as mitigating bad points in my life.

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My Weight loss app is suggesting a calorie budget of 800 a day. Is that a safe amount?

It was originally 1300 which I can easily stay under but I checked the settings and it had me down as highly active. I'm not active in the slightest. I scaled it down to not active - and it suggested around 700 and something calories/day. It gave me a lot of warnings about minimum calories being 1200, which makes sense, but eventually said minimum w/o supervision from a doctor is 800 (still over the recommendation but oh well - I set it to that).

​

I know for a fact I can consume 800 calories a day because yesterday I was at 760 total and not hungry (but I ate more because I was concerned I was too under budget - currently regretting that, but oh well).

I'm 5'6", weigh 145lbs, want to go down to 120lbs (a healthy weight for my body - I used to weight 115 naturally). I really am not active at all. I'm trying to go on daily walks but while I'm still in classes that's hard - will be starting it frequently in two weeks though. I want to lose 2lbs a week, ideally. However, I want to avoid going into "starvation mode" because I know that hampers weight loss. I'd really like to lose the weight through dieting if it's possible, just until I have more time to exercise. And even then - light exercise ideally. But I want to lose it safely and actually stay that lower weight.

​

If I'm truly not active at all, is 800 calories too low of a budget? Can I avoid starvation mode and still do 800 calories a day? I just want to accurately and safely lose weight! With the pandemic and classes, dieting has to be my go-to method, at least for the first two weeks.

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I’m finally under 200lbs!

I started my weight loss journey at 205 lbs, went down to 200, and now I’m at 198! It’s the first time since I’ve been under 200 since last year I believe. I’m 5’4 so I really need to lose more lol but it’s a start!

What I’ve been doing is watching what I’m eating and having some fruit and cheese for breakfast (usually grapes or watermelon and string cheese). Sometimes I don’t eat lunch, sometimes I do. For exercise I’ll do fifteen minutes of the elliptical and fifteen minutes of Just Dance on days I don’t work, and when I work (I work at a movie theater where I’m walking around for at least four hours) I take how many miles I’ve walked and put that into MyFitnessPal.

I’m going to keep working at this all summer and hopefully carry it into the school year.

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I struggle with exercising every day, especially in COVID. Can I still make progress with a diet and exercising when I can?

So I guess additional context is also that I’m a university student and this week and in two weeks I have my final exams for my third quarter of classes, so it’s difficult to find the time to exercise. However, I’m still committed to wanting to start losing weight now, but it feels like it might have to be through a diet.

So, for most of my life I was very thin. My parents made very healthy meals and we didn’t really have any unhealthy snacks. I was fairly active, but honesty not that active. I’ve always been a bit of a couch potato. But I was still thin. I gained around 10lbs at age 16. I went from 115lbs to 125lbs (I’m 5’6” for reference). However a lot of that was my boobs getting bigger, and I’d still consider myself very healthy. Flash forward to the pandemic. It started right after I turned 18 and I basically did no exercise (previously was walking to school every day which was 20mins there, 20 mins back, lugging a heavy backpack). I went from 128lbs to 138lbs!! I went on a diet over summer 2020 and went down to 132lbs, but kind of gave up. I was around 135lbs until I moved in with my boyfriend in December.

Then I went up to 147lbs at my heaviest. Why? Because he does a lot of the manual labor chores and he would also be happy to go buy snacks for us (I’ve always been pretty lazy physically, but to a point where I wouldn’t eat lunch because I couldn’t bring myself to make it- also am a very picky eater to be fair- and I definitely wouldn’t go out and buy snacks. I’m not lazy overall, I’ve always worked really hard in school and I also struggled with my mental health for a while and have put a lot of effort into improving that and improving my relationship. But for some reason physical stuff can give me that feeling like a rock crushing my chest that depression sometimes gives people. It's hard). We've decided he won't do that anymore, and if I want snacks I'll have to go and get them or we go together. I also gained the weight by eating more takeout and it being unhealthy. I was shocked to see how many calories a chipotle burrito has (I thought they were healthy! I'm not sure I'll ever eat one again! it's like 1,200-1,300 jesus christ).

I've also started on a calorie deficit diet. I was actually inspired by noticing that by passively trying to cut down on unhealthy takeout and snacks, I was down to 143. I've been committed to it for a week now, which I know is not long in the slightest, but I'm feeling more motivated now and I think it's more likely to stick because my previous diet was accompanied by INTENSE cardio daily and I think when I gave up on the cardio the diet slipped.

My calorie budget is 1300. I'm actually doing well staying under that. I've still been getting a sushi lunch combo takeout for lunch a fair amount of days of the week (it's 10$ so it's a good deal and it only adds up to around 450 calories max). I've been having tea in the morning which has totally cut any food cravings! And my boyfriend works at a meal prep place (part-time - we are both in university) and they given us 2 free meals a week, plus he works the Tuesday shift which gives us first pick of the extra dinners so that's usually around another 3 days of free dinner until it feels less fresh. Which is amazing because they're always really healthy meals, good quality food (so my picky self will eat it), and they list the calories per serving and a way to have a low-calorie version as well. They range from 350-650 calories on average. highest I've seen was 960 calories due to cheesy sweet potatoes as a side, but it had a low-calorie version where you had 2/3rds of the sweet potatoes that was only 626 calories. So, they're super useful. The other two days we usually have chicken breast and veggies (sometimes w/rice as well) and occasionally takeout. I haven't really been having any snacks and it's been keeping my calories low. I actually had to eat some ice cream last night because even though I wasn't hungry - I could feel that I was pretty weak and I'd only had around 760 calories for the entire day and I don't want to eat too few calories and have it be unsustainable or put me in starvation mode to prevent weight loss (I know intermittent fasting is a thing, but I think It'll be easier for me just to diet).

The thing is, the exercise I want to do is go on at least 1 walk daily for 1-2 hours. I've done that twice, but it's hard on the days that I have classes, and hard when I'm so busy with school. Once it's the summer I can do it daily, and we are going to have in-person classes for university in the fall and because I'll still be living off campus, and am a 20 minute bike-ride from campus, I think a great way to keep that cardio going is to just bike to and from campus for school. I hate driving when not necessary because street parking is a nightmare to find and I get anxious, and buses make me motion sick. I might have to switch to buses/driving in the winter because it gets below 0F where I live, and snows a lot, but it should be useful in the Fall. Biking and Walking are the two forms of exercise I don't absolutely hate (I don't like feeling in pain, exercise always hurts. It's hard). I'm also going to try to add at-home things like situps and curl-ups once I have a bit more time. And my boyfriend wants a work-out buddy once he can go back to the gym, so I might try and accompany him to that.

But while I'm great at dieting, It's a lot harder for me to exercise. So I guess I'm just asking - if I can't exercise daily, it's still better to try and sometimes exercise right? And if I'm dieting, and a relatively healthy diet at that, that should still help me lose weight? I'm a bit sad today since I'm 145lbs, but I know weight fluctuates and iirc you go through water retention at the start of a diet - that's what happened on my last diet as well, went up 3lbs in the first few days, then I started losing weight.

Also, if anyone has any healthier snack recommendations than ice cream that work for them, I'd love to know? (I will also look it up online of course). It sucked having to eat ice cream when I wasn't even really hungry. But I felt faint and weak and measured it out so it was only around 240 calories extra - wanted to have at least 1,000 calories so the diet could be more long-term sustainable.

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NSV and Bathtubs

I am down roughly 55 lbs since January and I’m hoping to lose another 55. So I’m roughly halfway through my weight loss plan. I follow intermittent fasting with a roughly 20/4 schedule although sometimes my window is a bit longer and sometimes I do one meal a day. I started to exercise consistently in February first by trying to run but it was really hard on my knees and ankles because of my weight. So I started using an off brand spin bike with the Peloton app and moved from cardio only to strength classes about six weeks ago, which is a nice challenge. I have a few friends trying to get fit too so we have a group thread going where we text each other workout selfies and challenge each other with daily or weekly challenges. I feel thinner but also stronger and I think exercise is the key to my success this time around. I lost 30 lbs a couple years ago and then gained it a year later. I didn’t exercise much at all and found IF unsustainable with drinking and socializing. I basically don’t drink anymore and I feel a lot better - I drink my feelings the same way I eat my feelings, so I was misusing alcohol for sure as a separate issue from my weight. With consistent exercise I have something to focus on besides the scale moving or not moving, more NSVs related to movement and activity, and it feels manageable to keep up the workouts because it will help me manage my weight in the long term. It also gives me something to do instead of eat. My mom lost a lost of weight a few years ago and kept it up which she attributes to her daily walk which she is militant about.

Anyway that’s my weight loss story - here is my NSV. I love baths, but I have two kids and I’m busy so I don’t get much chance to have them. I was really surprised last night at how much more of my body was actually covered by the bath water. I can’t remember the last time my stomach wasn’t mostly out of the water. But my real NSV was at the end of the bath. I always let the water drain while I stay in the tub waiting for it to empty. The size of my body would kind of suction to the tub and then when I'd finally stand up, a big cascade of water would flood out from behind my back/butt.

That didn't happen last night! I went to stand up and the tub was completely dry. No water. My body doesn't suction to the tub anymore and all the water could flow around me.

Such a weird unexpected victory, especially because I just had a nearly one month plateau where I wasn't losing weight at all.

Bathtub gains?! Is that a thing?

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