Dieting with obstacles

Janellew86

Hey, so I ditched the alcohol July 1st. I'm overeating. I'm also on mental health meds that I cannot do without.... I do not buy my own food all the time. Mom bought groceries this week. It's about what's cheapest. I do, however, buy from the vending machine at work sometimes and once a week on payday at the gas station. I tend to have some food in the middle of the night after being asleep for a few hours. I'm 37, 5'8 female 260 pounds. Need to drop 100 pounds.

PAV8888

The alcohol is an awesome step.

It's one of the hardest things to figure out. But a long term or permanent step at a time can work wonders.

Next step could be just trying to not overeat the things you do eat.

If I hear vending machine and gas station on pay day.... maybe, with a bit of a modification in shopping destination, there's scope for a bag of apples? Or bag of carrots?🤷‍♂️

When I was moving my weight from where you're at today down to normal weight back in 2014 to 2016 there were at least a few days when I would be driving (normally associated with candy bars for me).... and I consciously made the decision to have a 2lb bag of baby carrots during the drive instead 🤷‍♂️🤔

You can reduce weight by reducing calories by reducing quantity, by reducing caloric density even to the point of increasing volume, you can increase caloric expenditure, or hit it with a combination of all of the above.

I tend to believe in hitting problems from all available angles!

cmriverside

Have you asked your medical/psyche team for help with weight loss? There may be counseling or group therapy or even a regular Dietician appointment to get you on track.

If you live at home, can you start fixing your own meals? If you do that you can leave out the extra butter and cheeses and cut back on things that are high calorie like hamburger. You don't have to eat what everyone else is eating, and you don't have to eat large portions. How about springing $15 for a food scale? Best money I ever spent.

You will figure this out, just keep working at it.

kshama2001

Janellew86 wrote: »

Hey, so I ditched the alcohol July 1st. I'm overeating. I'm also on mental health meds that I cannot do without.... I do not buy my own food all the time. Mom bought groceries this week. It's about what's cheapest. I do, however, buy from the vending machine at work sometimes and once a week on payday at the gas station. I tend to have some food in the middle of the night after being asleep for a few hours. I'm 37, 5'8 female 260 pounds. Need to drop 100 pounds.

I struggled for years with wanting to eat in the middle of the night. When I started taking buspirone for anxiety at bedtime, this urge went away. Cognitive behavioral therapy was somewhat helpful, but the anti-anxiety med made the biggest difference.

The mental health meds I'm most familiar with are antidepressants. Many increase appetite. Wellbutrin XL is appetite neutral for me, and I've just gone back to Wellbutrin SR which suppresses my appetite slightly. I had a bad three years with a prescriber that kept giving me ADs associated with appetite increase and am relieved to have finally dialed this in, with a new provider.

Contrave is a weight loss med. One pill contains 90 mg of Wellbutrin/Bupropion and 8 mg Naltrexone, which helps with cravings. You're supposed to work up to 4 pills, which seems like an awfully high dose of Bupropion to me, but clearly it works for some people. I was not able to work up to two pills, as I had lots of GI issues while taking two.

I'm going to start one Contrave and one 100 mg Wellbutrin SR. (I don't have GI issues with Wellbutrin.) This is an off-label use, and I get my health care through the VA, so it was a struggle to get this approved and prescribed, but I persisted and the Contrave is in the mail.

Anyway, discuss your meds and weight loss needs with your provider

My brother takes other mental health meds and goes through periods where they need a lot of tweaking. His are associated with appetite increase, but he gets tons of exercise and eats lots of high volume/low calorie foods so is able to balance this.