1 year and 3 months, 146 pounds lost.

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  • JCFan3
    JCFan3 Posts: 146 Member
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    Congratulations, you are an inspiration. Your story is so relatable. However I feel myself tearing up because food is truly an addiction and I feel I am losing the battle.

    I struggle with binge eating and I can’t seem to get it under control. I have been diabetic for 10 years, And I have an auto immune disease, and other health issues. I take 10 pills a day to try to control these issues but it is not seeming to help.

    I want to change. I am around 50 pounds down from my highest weight but I have at least 60 more pounds to go to get to the overweight category. recently I have been on a big binge and have gained about 10 pounds back in the last couple of weeks.

    Your story has inspired me to get back up, start small, set reasonable goals, and do what will work for me and what will be sustainable.

    Thanks for sharing!!!
  • jeffreyeliot
    jeffreyeliot Posts: 5 Member
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    amazing ! congratulations..sorry if this has been answered (I didn't see it) but how tall are you?
    do you have an estimate of the calories you were eating when you started...say the first handful of months until you got below 300? how long did it take to get below 300? thanks 1
  • Goodgollygee
    Goodgollygee Posts: 102 Member
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    JcFan3 wrote: "I struggle with binge eating and I can’t seem to get it under control. I have been diabetic for 10 years, And I have an auto immune disease, and other health issues. I take 10 pills a day to try to control these issues but it is not seeming to help.

    I want to change. I am around 50 pounds down from my highest weight but I have at least 60 more pounds to go to get to the overweight category. recently I have been on a big binge and have gained about 10 pounds back in the last couple of weeks."

    You are doing some really good things right because you are down 50 pounds!!! And you are here reading, learning, being inspired, trying to focus and wanting to change. Those are all very good things. Keep going!

    I used to binge too. The thing that helped me most was to make my mind up about things. I decided that I wasn't going to binge on garbage any more. Sounds so simple eh? But honestly, I really think my brain belongs to me and I can decide what I want. So I don't want to binge and I decided I just wouldn't do it any more.

    Now don't get me wrong. There was no magical instant success. I had to keep deciding, if I slipped up, but..... I kept making the same decision, over and over.

    I was a terrible binger for years. I want to think of myself as an ex-binger now, but I really don't know if that is a thing and I always worry that I will start again. All I know is I haven't binged in the past maybe 3+? years. It's not like it happened over night either. Stalking the fridge/pantry with healthy food definitely helped me. Also.... I'd be driving along... and this still happens to this day... and I'd see fast food places or think of them... and really, really want fast food.....
    And then I started telling myself: I can have it next time. It's poison. I can have my favorite x food, when get home (usually berries or a pita pizza or doctored down nachos- with low fat cheese and a serving of unsalted tortilla chips or something far less calories, fat and salt -than fast food). Sometimes I gave in but more often this began to work.
    Or I'd tell myself: You don't want to gain back the weight you've lost. You will be hungry again, not very long after you eat that crap. Go home. Eat something delicious and healthy.... and I'd start mentally planning the meal that I would eat when I got home. It would be a healthy meal and I would tell myself how much better I will feel if I just get myself home and skip the junk.

    Then, other times, when I was just feeling the urge to binge, at home, I would tell myself: Wait 10 min. Drink water. Go do something else. Take a nap. and ask myself: What am I really hungry for? (meaning emotionally... and if I could figure it out... I would deal with it, usually by meditation - though I call it relaxation and visualization). Sometime by crying. I probably should have been journaling. I bet that would have helped. Sometimes I didn't discover anything but I kept my mind occupied long enough for the binge urge to pass.

    Sometimes.... I would just make a big bowl of popcorn and eat the whole thing. I still do this occasionally. I put a limited amount of butter on it and a bit of salt. I enjoy eating it and I tell myself that there is food value and much less sodium and fat in this bowl of popcorn than in eg. chips etc. So maybe I'm still a binger? Cuz I will eat that popcorn and usually... that would be my meal (popcorn for supper instead of whatever I had planned). But it doesn't usually cause me to retain water or gain weight, so I can live with being that kind of binger.

    For sweet cravings I freeze fat free pudding. It is something I can eat slowly, for a reasonable amount of calories and by the time I finish, I feel satisfied and that ends the urge to binge. Or sometimes...I will have dark chocolate... but a measured, specific, reasonable amount and I will let it melt in my mouth and take a long time to consume it. All the while, I'm telling myself how delicious it is, how much healthier it is, etc. than whatever much worse thing I would have eaten a whole bag of.
    Then after all of this, I mentally praise myself. Good for me for not stopping for fast food. For eating a healthy meal. For making an intelligent, healthy choice. For not eating a bag of cookies (which I no longer have in my house and no longer crave or enjoy... believe it or not.... they're too sweet!). I tell myself I can do this.

    For me, 3/4s of it is an argument in my head. If I can just talk myself into something reasonable, I can adjust my thinking after that. I understand that I won't die if I don't give in. But it's an ongoing struggle that I may never beat. I don't know.

    Don't get me wrong. I still have a lot of weight to lose but at least, for the most part, I've stopped binging.

    Dear Wallingdusk: I am so sorry to have high-jacked your thread. I did it for JcFan3's sake. I realize my food choices are not as you described but it is what worked for me, in the binge department and I know I asked about how you dealt with sweet cravings (thankyou for answering) and my way is much different.
  • lucyricky2
    lucyricky2 Posts: 438 Member
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    amazing Great job and motivation
  • jeffreyeliot
    jeffreyeliot Posts: 5 Member
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    A few of you mentioned brain over binge book, but there are 2 books w that title.
    which one please...

    https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brain+over+binge&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
  • RedRobed
    RedRobed Posts: 7 Member
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    This is absolutely incredible, well done mate. What a gift to give to yourself.
  • JustRamona
    JustRamona Posts: 398 Member
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    CONGRATULATIONS!!! AWESOME STORY....Didn't get through the comments yet..........I hope everyone picked up on this statement
    "because if I have to cheat, then I'm not eating a diet is sustainable" ---awesome statement
  • always4my2kids
    always4my2kids Posts: 23 Member
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    Very inspiring and sensible advice! I have done low carb for a long time and lost over 100 pounds in 2017. Have kept about 60 off but found the other 40!! I'm back on track but I have been doing some real soul search is low carb is the way to go and higher protein may not be for me. Thank you for sharing your journey. You gave me a lot to consider.
  • WailingDusk
    WailingDusk Posts: 58 Member
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    JCFan3 wrote: »
    Congratulations, you are an inspiration. Your story is so relatable. However I feel myself tearing up because food is truly an addiction and I feel I am losing the battle.

    I struggle with binge eating and I can’t seem to get it under control. I have been diabetic for 10 years, And I have an auto immune disease, and other health issues. I take 10 pills a day to try to control these issues but it is not seeming to help.

    I want to change. I am around 50 pounds down from my highest weight but I have at least 60 more pounds to go to get to the overweight category. recently I have been on a big binge and have gained about 10 pounds back in the last couple of weeks.

    Your story has inspired me to get back up, start small, set reasonable goals, and do what will work for me and what will be sustainable.

    Thanks for sharing!!!

    Man this really hit me, because I know this struggle very well. People are addicted to all sorts of things, many of them we can live without. A smoker doesn't have to smoke to live. An alcoholic doesn't have to drink alcohole to live. A person with a food addiction still has to eat to live. Not only that, we're inundated with ads for junk food, fast food, holidays are all about food. Get-togethers with friends always include food. Food is everywhere. We have more Golden Arches on every street corner than gas stations it seems.

    It's hard to avoid something that 1) you can't actually survive without and 2) it's perfectly legal to advertise junk food to children despite it being just as deadly as any other drug. Seeing pictures of what this kind of food did to me, seeing that blood test, remembering how miserable I felt despite that temporary high I got from delicious food, it keeps me centered. All I have to do is remember what I felt like when I could barely get out of bed, to now where I just feel physically good most of the time.

    Getting to this point is the hard part, but once you do it, and you're off a lot of your meds and feel energetic, you'll see junk food in a totally different way. You'll see it as the poison it really is and you just won't want to eat it, no matter how much you crave it. I'm at that point now.
  • WailingDusk
    WailingDusk Posts: 58 Member
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    jeffreyeliot wrote: »
    amazing ! congratulations..sorry if this has been answered (I didn't see it) but how tall are you?
    do you have an estimate of the calories you were eating when you started...say the first handful of months until you got below 300? how long did it take to get below 300? thanks 1

    I am 5'11. I started at 372 pounds (I may have weighed more at one point, but I didn't have a scale that went up that high when I started).

    I started by eating around 2000-2300 calories a day. When I started eating more plant-based, it was easier to get full with less calories. I think that's what helped me stay on track. I was eating around 4,000 or more calories a day before that and just steadily gaining weight. Once I cut it down to around the 2,000 calorie mark at 372, the weight REALLY came off fast. It takes A LOT of energy to maintain that weight, and when you cut your calorie consumption in half, your BMR is still going to be around 3500 or so calories JUST to live (sitting still, doing nothing else). Add on any additional exercise, even just walking for 5-10 minutes is going to be absolutely huge.

    That's why people who are morbidly obese can lose so much weight at the start, but it will start to slow down as your BMR comes down. Then you have to do more adjustments to your calorie intake and exercise.

    And here's the thing, you don't even have to go as extreme as I did. Finding your BMR and cutting out 1/4 of the calories you consume a day will still cause you to lose 1-2 pounds a week depending on how overweight you are. A lot of people think they have to start big to lose weight, when really, even the smallest changes will have big effects, and it will allow you to make those larger changes later on when you can handle them.
  • WailingDusk
    WailingDusk Posts: 58 Member
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    Goodgollygee wrote: »
    JcFan3 wrote:

    Sometimes.... I would just make a big bowl of popcorn and eat the whole thing. I still do this occasionally. I put a limited amount of butter on it and a bit of salt. I enjoy eating it and I tell myself that there is food value and much less sodium and fat in this bowl of popcorn than in eg. chips etc. So maybe I'm still a binger? Cuz I will eat that popcorn and usually... that would be my meal (popcorn for supper instead of whatever I had planned). But it doesn't usually cause me to retain water or gain weight, so I can live with being that kind of binger.

    This is actually what I do. Popcorn is AMAZING, and it's recommended by dieticians and body builders alike because it's so filling and high in fiber. When I want something savory, I just make airpopped popcorn, spray a bit of avocado oil on it and salt it up. I tend to stay away from microwavable popcorn. Though there are microwavable popcorn bags out there that don't have quite as much stuff in them.

    If it comes down to chips or popcorn, I'll pick popcorn every time.
  • Yiche912
    Yiche912 Posts: 6,325 Member
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    Your story is truly inspirational. Keep up the great work because it surely is working for you.
  • melbpsych
    melbpsych Posts: 11 Member
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    Inspirational Sir! I relate to the dress sizes bit you wrote about. 5 months ago, I started at 98.7 kgs and am down to 82.9 kgs now (er, 217 to 182 lbs). I am a frugal person and have good quality size 34" trousers from 20 years ago still with me. However, the last 3 -4 years, I have been living on 3 x 38" trousers as nothing less would fit me and my ego wouldn't allow me to buy more 38" trousers. Yesterday, I trepidatiously pulled out my 34" and each one of them fitted me! It is a heavenly feeling, so much so that I treated myself to a brownie today!
  • EileenL2015
    EileenL2015 Posts: 26 Member
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    CONGRATS on your determination to lose and the BIG loss you have had....Great decision to take better care of yourself and you did it. Keep it up......

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