I'm here to lose 3-4 stones AGAIN!

INeedANewFace

I'm back to lose weight yet again. I have lost weight 4 times now but keep putting it back on. I think I'm an emotional eater.
I'm 47, married and have an almost 4 year old daughter.
I have a lung and heart condition, so exercise is limited to just walking.

Good luck everyone!

AnnPT77

Hi, and welcome (back?)!

Sounds like you're an old hand at weight loss, but have struggled to maintain the loss? That's true for a lot of us here.

It can help to think about past attempts, and understand what didn't work. That's very useful learning! By saying you think you're an emotional eater, you already have a start on that, sounds like. If the problem is emotional eating, it will be key to find other ways of handling the emotional ups and downs other than food, as I'm sure you realize.

Others here will have better ideas than I, but one common recommendation is to see if your library has the book The Beck Diet Solution. It's not a diet, but a sort of do-it-yourself cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for eating-related issues. For many, accessing real life therapy has been a game-changer, too . . . and there should be no stigma about that, any more than there would be if we consult a registered dietitian for help with nutrition, or a personal trainer for help with exercise. Therapists/counselors are the professionals that help us with thought patterns. (Yes, I've used a psychologist myself, though for a non-eating-related issue.)

Walking is a great exercise, and other forms of mild exercise are good, too. IME, weight loss is more about balancing eating with activity level, as much as possible using filling foods I enjoy eating, find practical and affordable. Extreme forms of exercise are totally optional, though of course some type of exercise is good for a body.

For me, it helped to think of weight loss not as an extreme project with an end date (i.e., fast loss), but more like a time to experiment, find new relatively happy habits that were more in line with my weight/health goals, then practice them until they could continue almost on autopilot.

I see that you used the vegetarian hash tag, so I'm assuming you either are vegetarian or want to be? Speaking as someone who's been vegetarian for 48+ years (ovo-lacto, in my case), thin to obese and back again, I know it's not a guarantee of weight loss: More like a tangent. It can be a little more difficult to get some of our key nutrients on lowered calories (especially but not exclusively protein), but it absolutely is achievable. It doesn't have to happen overnight, either: I'm a believer in gradually tweaking eating habits in a positive direction (aiming at those happy habits again!). If we don't start out diagnosed with some nutritional deficiency, we have some time to dial that all in where we want it. Humans are adaptive omnivores!

Wishing you much success here, both with weight loss as well as finding the new habits that keep you at a healthy weight and in general good health long term!

melissaaridgeway

Welcome!

Perhaps this time around you should stay on this app and keep tracking. Unfortunately tracking for some of us, myself included, is a lifelong chore because if we get out of tracking, we will gain it all back. When you reach goal weight, you can stay in maintenance mode and eat more calories but honestly if you don't want to do this again, you have to incorporate calorie counting and tracking into your lifestyle.

I know you can do it, you've done it before. But this time around, make it the last time you have to start again.

INeedANewFace

I'm so sorry i didn't respond to these comments, I didn't get any notifications.

Thanks so much for the advice. I guess I will be calorie counting for life!

Anyway 13.8lbs down so far