Again

nitestar7580
nitestar7580 Posts: 23 Member
in Introduce Yourself
I know it’s not going to be easy. Starting over never is...There are so many unhealthy things I want to eat... one bit here or there won’t hurt right? Then it turns in to two and then is gone in one day. I have to find my willpower! I know it’s there... no starting over is never easy.

Replies

  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,890 Member
    I think that if you decide in advance that something is going to be difficult, it will be. You can think about every new day as starting over, each day having a set of challenges to be solved, and what decisions you make over time, determines the result. One important thing, that I have learned late in life, is that no foods are in themselves healthy or unhealthy, it's the overeating, of anything, that is unhealthy. Calling things we desire, unhealthy, doesn't make us want them less, surprisingly enough, it makes us crave them like crazy, and then we get mad at ourselves for "failing ourselves" when we can't take the pressure anymore, and that confimrs not only that we are weak, greedy and don't care about our health, it confirmes that the food is evil and has power over us, which in turn makes us feel unhappy, and we turn to food, the same foods we have deemed evil, to feel better, which we do for a short while, until we feel worse. And the cycle repeats, with restrictions, berating, overeating, weight gain.

    Relying solely on wllpower for something you have to do every day for the rest of your life, and something that is highly pleasureable, is not a particularly good idea. So people generally recommend building better habits. MFP is a great set of tools for that - your food diary to log your food and learn about how you respond to what you eat, and the boards to get information and unlearn misinformation and bounce ideas.
  • Millicent3015
    Millicent3015 Posts: 374 Member
    One bite won't hurt unless you know it's a food that will cause a binge/crave/binge cycle. If there are any foods that trigger overeating, avoid them until you're at a place where you can have them in moderation and feel satisfied with one or two portions. You can make this journey as hard or easy as you like. If you're relying on willpower to get you through I'm afraid you'll just return to your previous unhelpful eating patterns, because none of us has that in a steady supply. What's more effective is weighing and logging what you eat, sticking to a calorie deficit most of the time, and going straight back to eating at a deficit when you've overeaten.

    It sounds like you're being a bit down on yourself. There's no need for that if you are. You're just on a learning curve right now, where you're learning how to eat differently. That takes time and can be difficult, but as long as you keep going, using the tools MFP gives you, and not giving up because you overate or you didn't lose as much as you were expecting as fast as you were expecting, your eating habits will gradually change and you'll lose weight.

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