Last few pounds: really struggling, overeating, obsessing over food (long post)

Hi everyone,

I have been using mfp for over a year now, but this is my first post here and that's because I have really started to struggle lately and I don't know what to do.

My journey started last March; I hurt my ankle and my physical therapist did a body composition analysis as part of the first exam. At the time, my weight was 76kg/167lbs with a 28.4 BMI. My BMR was estimated at 1583kcal. I decided that I should finally lose some weight, so I bought a food scale and started eating at 1200 calories a day and since I wasn't exercising at the time, it was relatively manageable. Around June, according to the same machine as above, I weighed at 62.4kg/137.5lbs, my BMI was 23.2 and my BMR at 1421kcal. By the end of the summer I was 60kg/132lbs. During those months, I took a few breaks here and there, when I was on vacation etc. and I also started walking a lot (difficult trails too), which was a fairly easy change, as I was always doing sports a lot in previous years.

Since then, while trying to lose the rest of the weight, as I still have fat that bothers me in places, I have lost and gained the same 10lbs about 3 times and I am generally really tired with this. Food, thinking about food, worrying about food, planning meals, researching prices and shopping for food has taken over my life and I have lost the ability to just eat, without counting and measuring everything, and adjusting my diary 100 times. I stress so much when I have to eat out (for work etc) or when I take time off and I depart from my routine and I end up either underrating or overeating.

Right now, I am about the same weight (130lbs), 23 years old and my height is 5'4''. I prep all my breakfasts (cinnamon oats) and lunches, which include a lot of vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, green beans, peas), chicken or fish and quinoa or potatoes. I have an issue about never really feeling full, so I try to focus on foods with volume. I also eat 2-3 pieces of fruit and usually oatmeal again for dinner, and often a hard-boiled egg. Since I eat a lot of fruits, vegetables and oats, my carb intake is rather high (55-60%) and my fats a bit low (~15%), and I take in about 35-40gr of fiber daily. In total, 1200 calories. Everything weighed and logged.

So, why I have gained back these 10lbs 3 times: currently, I work out 3 times a week on average and I do 40' cardio on the treadmill (10' for warm up and 30' to run a 5K) and then I do 1 hour of weight training (dumbbell lunges & bulgarian split squats, leg & calf press, barbell glute bridges, weighted back extension, dumbbell chest press, triceps pushdowns, push-ups, planks, hanging leg raises, and sometimes squats on the smith machine). I generally do 3 sets of 15 and I go as heavy as I can. I feel like complete garbage throughout and after this and I really have to force myself to go every single time, so sometimes I don't make it. I don't eat back exercise calories. As you might expect, I am always tired, dizzy, lethargic, weak, and hungry. I took breaks during Christmas and for 2 other occasions and each time it was incredibly difficult to get back to this, because I go SO overboard when I let go. During Christmas, I was uncomfortably full for 2 weeks straight and the thing is, I really can eat a lot; 4000 calories at a time is perfectly manageable for me.

The past two weeks, I haven't been able to stop myself from overeating again and again. Some days I will eat 7000 calories, others 3000, others 5000 and I just feel terribly awful, both physically and emotionally. Before this, I stuck to the aforementioned diet for a good 7 weeks following Christmas, during which time I went off added sugars as well, just to see if my MAJOR sweet tooth would go away. It did not. I also tried upping my calories to 1300 for 3 weeks, but I was losing SO slowly or not at all, so I went back to 1200 and then the overeating cycle began.

www.sailrabbit.com says my BMR is ~1300 calories and my sedentary TDEE ~1600 and I know that since I feel this bad at 1200 calories, it probably means I should eat more, but I have a difficult time sticking to that. Instead I go to the other extreme for a while and then back again. I don't know what to do. I obsess over everything, all the foods I don't eat, measuring each gram correctly and planning all my meals a week ahead and I just want to be able to think about other things at some point.

I guess I was just wondering if anyone had experienced something similar.
Thanks for listening, I know this was rather long.