Dreading my birthday
Replies
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OP, so many here have given you some great ways to help you combat your anxiety on overindulging. That is a community offering you support. Take a breath. Think about the info that's been offered and how you can apply it to your situation. It is not hopeless.2
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If you want to stick to your goals on your birthday then have a light breakfast in bed. Decide whether you want some light takeaway for the evening or you'd rather prepare a nice light dinner at home.
It's okay to make new normal habits. That's what a lifestyle change is, right?2 -
People here are problem solvers or we try to be. When we see a post with someone who seems upset or looking for help, we like to offer it.
In the future, I would suggest that if you don't want suggestions and you just want to rant, make that clear in your initial post. That way you won't have to worry about people trying to help you out.5 -
It sounds to me like you have the birthday blues/anxiety/depression.
I've gotten depressed around my birthday in past years too. I would feel like my birthday should be a happy time, but mentally, I just couldn't get myself there; and everything that I felt should make me happy just made me feel sad and miserable instead. I would get irrational and would get defensive with people who were just trying to help, just as I see you doing here. It's an awful feeling and it's horrible to go through to feel like no one understands and no one is on your side, even if they do really care and want to help.
I got birthday depression for a few consecutive years, and then I spent the new few birthdays trying to pretend like it was just any other day so I would stop associating it with either positive or negative feelings and just live it very neutrally so I wouldn't go into it with any expectations about what should happen or how I should feel. My birthday is coming up soon too and I am continuing not to allow myself to have any expectations for that day. I feel like that is the best way I know how to cope.
I hope you find your way through this difficult time.5 -
Just enjoy it. Calories don’t exist on your birthday or Christmas5
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I have the same realationship with food as a alcoholic does with alcohol I prepare all other meals so I know I can safely clean my plate and not go over came for support and to rant a little over my anxiety and only one person understood where I was coming from I wish there was a delete post button now
Click the flag button and report your own post asking the mods to delete it. You may have been just seeking to rant, but there are tons of options out there to make it so you don't have to deal with the food anxiety.
No, don't delete this post! It's helpful! There are more of us like you, and all these answers does one good.They wouldn't have written them down if you wouldn't have cried out for help.5 -
What is it that you want to hear? It seems to me you have a couple of options
1. Enjoy your birthday with abandon. Go way over on calories and either decide to get right back on track after your birthday or just fall off the wagon. Obviously getting back on track is the smart option
2. Enjoy your birthday with smaller portions of all the foods you normally enjoy. Get right back on track the next day.
3. Pretend it's not your birthday and restrict calories as normal but be miserable with your decision.
The problem is..once you hit goal you need to learn how to eat at maintenance. You need to learn how to moderate your food through special occasions. If you can't learn that, you will inevitably gain all the weight back. So. Learn it now, early in the process, to make the entire journey less painful.
But. As others have said. You don't seem interested in hearing advice, so I would just agonize over it until you inevitably binge because you are developing an all or nothing approach that usually leads to a binge. Your call though.9 -
That's the trick of losing weight/maintaining over special occasions. You treat them as one day, not like an extended period. So have a birthDAY, not a birthWEEK. Have a Christmas DAY, not a Christmas PERIOD.
Or don't. It's up to you how you want to approach it. This is just what some successful people have done.9 -
I guess another alternative is to suggest to your partner a new birthday tradition that does not revolve around food? Maybe get up and have your usual breakfast, then plan a fun day like hiking, biking, or visiting museums or other places you've been wanting to go to? Take a new class? Shop for clothes?
If you have a problematic relationship with food, maybe a therapist can help, if you're not seeing one already. I'm sorry, I don't have any additional ideas, but best of luck!4 -
You could ask your partner to not serve up so much food? He's an adult, you're an adult, have an adult conversation. I get wanting to vent but you've been given great ideas and suggestions from people who have lost or are losing weight.
Having a self narrative that you're basically an alcoholic (with food) is admonishing yourself of some responsibility. You are ultimately in charge of what you put in your mouth, it's not an addictive substance. Pleasurable, sure, addictive, no. Use the advice to develop new strategies and change your relationship with food. Or don't. It's up to you.2 -
goldthistime wrote: »I totally understand not being able to eat less ahead of a food filled event when you feel like your calories are already as low as you can tolerate. IMO, it's way easier (and more logical) to have the bigger calorie day and THEN increase your deficit to compensate.
I know there is argument that one day isn't long enough for a refeed, that it needs to be at least two days to reset your hunger hormones, but I can't help but wonder whether the amount of calories consumed has more meaning than the length of time. I say this because dieting has seemed like much less of a struggle for me after an overeating day. In other words, I think it's entirely possible that this day of overeating could make life easier for you in the weeks ahead. To me the only risk of a big eating day used to be that feeling of "I've blown it now. It's over. I don't have what it takes to start all over again." As long as you can avoid that thought process you'll be fine.
THIS is what I'm worried about I got down to 11stone 4 then this happen and before I knew it I was back at 13 stone 6 I was originally 15stone but I seem to forget how far I've come and just see my slip ups
Been there. When I first lost weight with MFP (in 2013) I remember worrying about my upcoming birthday too. With good reason. I ate crazy amounts of cake and goodies that day and couldn't get myself back on track afterwards. I regained all my lost weight before I came back to MFP. I feel fortunate now that I have lost that "all or nothing" thinking, but I'm hard pressed to give you good advice as to how to beat it. I will say that I watched a couple of videos in recent days that said that the ability to be flexible is the biggest prediction of longterm success in dieting. So its worth it to try to get rid of that food anxiety and to start feeling confident in your ability to control your food input, even after a big calorie day.
Part of it, for me, might have been that I had been in too big of a rush to lose the weight in the first place. I made the process too extreme. No wonder I couldn't face going back to my diet. Btw, "too extreme" was just aiming for a loss of 2lbs/week. Doesn't sound extreme except that it felt extreme. I was always hungry. Maybe I would have been ok if I'd dropped my goal loss to 1lb/wk and then 0.5lb/wk as my weight dropped. When you say that you can't imagine building a deficit ahead of time it sounds like you are also finding it tough. Maybe you need to make it easier on yourself in general. You might consider going back with an easier calorie goal initially at least. Up it by 100/day. Or even try going back at maintenance for a week. You can always drop your deficit again later when you feel back in control.
I also have to say though that I was more anxious in general back then, including having food anxiety and binging tendencies. I could point to at least 10 things that might have made the difference for me, most of which are specific to me and only me, but two of others that I'll throw out there that could have been part of my solution were taking vitamin D regularly and eating meat (presumably getting the iron/B12/protein that I'd been lacking previously).
Best of luck OP. And happy birthday!2 -
If you don't want to have a full English breakfast you don't have to. You can eat it, and bank calories the day before, or you can eat something else.
Same goes for the restaurant if you want you can choose a healthier option, or you can eat from the calories you've banked from.
I've eaten so much before that I've gained weight from eating at the Cheesecake Factory getting an entree, appetizer, and desert almost 6k calories. . I know if I stick to eating better and within my calories I'll lose weight again. I've went from 188 pounds to 150, and went back all the way up to 160 pounds, and now I'm down to 143.
I went to Dubai a few weeks ago, and I ate at maintenance. Maybe you should try eating at maintenance on your birthday.
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What is it that you want to hear? It seems to me you have a couple of options
1. Enjoy your birthday with abandon. Go way over on calories and either decide to get right back on track after your birthday or just fall off the wagon. Obviously getting back on track is the smart option
2. Enjoy your birthday with smaller portions of all the foods you normally enjoy. Get right back on track the next day.
3. Pretend it's not your birthday and restrict calories as normal but be miserable with your decision.
OR
4. Celebrate your birthday while eating withing your calorie goals and enjoy!
The notion that sticking to goals on a birthday = miserable is all kinds of wrong.3 -
You ate an excess 105,000 calories above maintenance during the Christmas holidays?
Moderation is a thing. It's useful through life.0 -
Eat like you traditionally do and realize one high day/week doesn't doom you. You might gain a pound. Get back to normal next week.
Or
Have a maintenance day and mayne have one treat not everything you used to do.
Or
Choose lower calorie foods you enjoy. Be active.
A celebration doesn't have to be centered on food. Focus on non-food activities you would enjoy and start new traditions.
I dread my birthday because someone always seems to get sick or something. One year I found my cat dead on the morning of my birthday. My calorie goal is a small thing I don't stress about on special occasions.3 -
collectingblues wrote: »
You ate an excess 105,000 calories above maintenance during the Christmas holidays?
Moderation is a thing. It's useful through life.
Oh if only it were that easy. If it were, would there be 1000's of us here counting calories and weighing ourselves?
And I'm here to say that Christmas has set me back considerably year after year too. You're not alone OP. This year I gained the least in the 4 years I have been tracking it, and lost it quickly afterwards. Wasn't meant to be braggy, but to give you hope that it doesn't always have to be that way.1 -
I think first you need to consider your mindset that having one day of a bit of a blowout will undo all your hard work and get you back to square one. This is not the case and you need to stop using it as a reason to give up calorie counting because that will definitely mean you will gain all you have lost so far.
You can ask your partner to grill you sausage, bacon and tomato. Pick leaner bacon and sausages. Oven bake the hashbrown, mushrooms are only 16 kcal for 100g and ask for toast instead of fried bread, not too much butter, a full english is not that bad. Have a conversation about it with him, plan and log it in advance.
Again take away options can be lower calorie, plan and log in advance. Pick a light lunch, fresh made soups can be around the 100kcal range or less. Skip lunch if breakfast in bed and take away are important. Look at your preplanned day, if you are over, consider that this will only either slow or stall your loss rate for that week. Nothing more and is not a reason to quit sticking to your calories the next day
Pancake day is optional, I can have 2-3 pancakes with sugar (you can keep the lemon) for 300-400kcal i can participate and I will be happy with that amount. This is you basic pancake recipe, flour, egg, skimmed milk, fry in a little butter and they are the thin kind.
As for valentines day, well, I'm very much a scynic, that I will happily skip as there is very little sentiment in it and a lot of commercial rubbish. A meal out and some flowers on any other day of the year would be far more romantic. If you want to participate get a nice chicken salad or something when eating out preplanned and logged of course.0
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