Scottish veggie with a long way to go, need some friends :)

Hello and welcome to MFP. You are setting yourself quite a few challenges all at once so I hope that you get the help and support you need on this site.

Exercise is great for general health but please don't fall into the trap of relying on it for weight loss. The only way to lose weight is to consume less calories than you can burn in a day. And the only way to ensure this is to weigh/measure and log every single thing you eat or drink. When cooking, weigh and write down all the ingredients......never guess. And if you can keep your calorie intake below expenditure you WILL lose weight.

Once you start to lose weight, you will feel more energised and motivated to start exercising and of course this will bring its own benefits.

By cutting out meat you have already saved yourself a ton of calories but you will still need to get protein to stay healthy. This is not my area of expertise but I am sure you will get lots of other advice.

Good luck for your journey

Thanks for your reply and encouragement. I don't plan on relying on exercise but I do need to do it, I've been doing so little of late that now short walks are leaving me breathless - I have asthma and have went from having to take no medication to 1 inhalor and now 2 inhalors. Nobody should be like this, definitely not someone at my age! So I'm not doing huge quanitities of exercise at the moment but gradually building it up day by day. I have an exercise bike and some DVDs that I'll use for now along with general walking around.

With diet, I'm trying to stick to the suggested calories on here and I did slimming world for a while last year and feel like I'm sort of following a fair bit of that diet too. I know how to eat a balanced healthy diet, I even enjoy it - I could honestly write a book on nutrition and weight loss - I've done most diets in the past - Slimming World, Weight Watchers, VLCD, juice diets, calorie controlled etc I've been a vegan, vegetarian and a meat eater in the past too. I'm actually pretty good at losing weight when I put my mind to it. Usually I'm quite good at getting all motivated and I seem to manage to always lose around 3 stone and then I fall off the wagon and put it all back on again, and more!

My problem isn't knowing how to diet - it's binge eating and a lack of continued consistency when on a diet. My overeating has been related to depression leading to food binges leading to weight gain to depression to more binges - basically, a pretty rotten cycle to be in. I'm working on the depression side of things now with my doc and I'm using this site to help me monitor food and as a way to help me stay consistant.

What's different this time? I'm not sure if it will be but I have to try - maybe I feel like I've hit rock bottom and the only way is up from now on. I think now - my focus is more on fitness, health and general quality of life over a number on the scales which was always the big focus before so maybe that will help. I've also been reading about mindfulness and been trying to adopt the practice in my daily life - taking each day at a time and generally being aware of what I'm doing in a day. I was listening to a motivational speaker the other day on YouTube, Brian Tracy, and he was talking about writing down your goals as if you already have them, for example in my case:

I am a fit person
I am healthy.
I am the correct weight for my height.

and to always be aware of those goals and with everything you do to think "am I using my time in the best way possible to achieve my goals right now?" and it's only been a few days since I heard it but thinking of it that way has really made me think about what I'm eating/doing in general. Not sure if that all makes sense but it seems to be working so far lol.