How to lose the "all or nothing" mentality

have you read the "in place of a road map" thread? That will help you to calculate how many calories you can eat each day and still lose weight, slowly and sustainbly. Understand how your body works, understand that if you were in a coma your body will still be burning calories, keeping your heart beating, keeping all your cells alive (every cell in your body needs energy to stay alive), keeping all your internal organs working right... those are your BMI calories. Most women have a BMI around 1200-1400 (it varies depending on your size so it could be more or less than this) - and these calories are used by your body just to keep all of you alive. So when you are tempted to not eat enough calories, try to remember this, and know that your body needs to be fed.

Then you have your activity calories, these are the calories your body uses moving around. The more active you are and the more you exercise, the more calories your body will use doing this. Your BMI plus your activity calories makes up your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). To lose fat the healthy way, you need to eat about 20% fewer calories than your TDEE number. As long as you're eating less than your TDEE number, you will lose weight, but if it's too much less you won't be feeding your body properly and you'll face problems, and your body won't let you starve it, it'll kick back with making you want to eat everything in sight. That's a normal survival response from eating too few calories, as is extreme hunger. If you are feeding your body properly you shouldn't get these problems, and TDEE - 20% is a good method to ensure you're feeding your body well, while still losing fat. Also pay attention to enough nutrition, i.e. plenty of protein, healthy fat, healthy carbs, fruit and veg, but if you have calories left over you can have whatever you want while you stay within your calorie goals, and still lose weight.

Aim for slow and steady fat loss, this method gives you that. It's a lot more sustainable that way, so you can maintain it in the long term.

you mentioned eating disorders, it sounds like IF is triggering that, so avoid IF. It works for a lot of people, but not for everyone.

Lovely, you are so worth not only a healthy body, but being HAPPY and living with VITALITY! *kitten* body image for awhile as best you can, and *kitten* what anyone else says to you that isn't 100% supportive, and just focus on figuring out how to get YOU happy.

Kelly Osborne, who has battled a lot with emotional eating, had an insightful comment that it wasn't until she figured out how to be happy, that she learned to treat her body well and could maintain a healthy weight.

There's a wonderful book I read that I think you might enjoy too, "Food: the good girl's drug...". It delves into why we use food to regulate our emotions -- either through restricting and/or bingeing, and has wonderful success stories of people who manage it, and best of all, tried and true techniques for how to address the underlying issues and redirect food-obsession behaviours with other strategies for managing the ups and downs and everydayness of life.

You're here and you're looking for solutions. You've already taken the first step. Now it's time to figure out how to rewire your brain and replace your current behaviours with new healthier ones to get happy. Life's too damn short to stay unhappy. You can do it!!!

I'm so sorry to hear about the difficulties you've been facing. If you choose to, you can use them as fuel for your fire to get happy!

x

I have the same problem in terms of having an all or nothing mentality and I agree with the previous poster's suggestion of therapy. It sounds like you attempt to control your emotions with food when in fact the only thing that can change the way you feel is by altering the way that you think. I went through a couple years of cognitive behavioral therapy and it improved my life dramatically. I used to binge and use laxatives to purge and go on multiple day fasts. It was so unhealthy!

I still have the occasional binge but I no longer purge. I also have a problem with overeating.at one meal and then deciding to say "f$!k it" and eat unhealthy for the rest of the day. But for the most part, I now have a healthy relationship with food.

Take care and best of luck!

I understand that completly. In high school and a litlle while after I was bulimic which turned to anorexia. I am recovered now but i gained a lot of weight afterwards. I went from not eating at all to eating everything. Now im learning a balance. I did infact talk to both a psychologist and nutrionist. Now im losing weight but im being a lot healthier about it. i recommened seekinng out help by atleast a nutrionist