My struggle towards self control.

O

olorime

New member
Hello all. This is going to be my diary as I attempt to lose weight.

I'm female, 5'3", 215 lbs. I was 130 lbs before starting college, 230 lbs when I graduated 2 years ago. Since then, I've managed to make a tiny bit of progress losing weight, but I can never seem to keep at it. My lowest recently was 210 lbs, but I gained 5 lbs or so over the last few months.

My biggest problems are self control and emotional eating.

When I'm bored, I always want to snack on something. I know that it's not good to do so, but it consumes my mind. This is really a problem at work when I have some tedious task to do. The best way I've found to deal with this is to not pack any extra food, but there's still some free snacks in the break room...

Likewise, when I feel like I'm having a bad day, I always find myself wanting a 'treat'. I end up getting some donuts, or a slice of pizza, etc. This is especially hard to deal with as I have a long commute that involves me going through a big train station that has a food court full of delicious smells that I need to in to catch my train....

I also don't exercise as much as I should. It's mostly a matter of motivating myself to do it, although it would help if I had some more convenient times to do it. I have a very long day at work, so I never feel like there's a good time to do it (not that I don't have time -- just that the times are 'bad', such as right before bed, or right after eating...). Still, I need to find a way to work exercise into my schedule somehow.

So, those are the big problems I need to struggle to overcome. A lot of it is simply self-control, but that's just never as easy as it sounds.

I've started tracking my weight and calorie intake this morning; hopefully this diary will help me keep motivated so that it's easier to keep myself in control.
 
Well, yesterday went alright. I think I went over my goal calorie intake (1800), but I definitely didn't go over my maintenance calories (2500). If my calorie-counting is correct (and it's really hard to get accurate with home-made meals...), I had about 2000 calories yesterday. Progress, at least, if less than hoped for.

Now I'm sitting at work, and it's 2:30, and I'm *hungry*. Between breakfast and lunch, I've already had about 1000 calories today. Lunch should have been relatively filling -- it was meat chili, with lots of beans and veggies and stuff in it, and a 100 calorie pack of popcorn. Maybe it's psychological hunger? It's so hard to tell. I'm trying to deal with it by keeping busy, but work is just so tedious it's not getting my mind off of it...

Blah. I hope I start getting used to eating less or something, so that it stops being so unpleasant.
 
Hi, and welcome :)

Have you tried a recipe calorie calculator? This is the one I use- it's not perfect, but it's a lot better than having no idea:
 
Well, I've been behaving pretty well. I'm hitting my daily calorie goals (which is about 1800 calories). I'm still feeling awfully hungry sometimes, but I think it's getting a little better, maybe?

I often have to wait for my train when I'm coming home from work, so I decided to force myself to walk laps around the train station. I usually get 15 minutes of walking in that way...which is something, at least. I need to add in some more exercise than that, but doing anything at all is an improvement over what I was doing before.

My weight was 213 this morning. I know it's probably just water weight and less food sitting around inside me, but it's still encouraging to see that number go down. My short-term goal is to hit 210 by the end of May.

I also have a medium-term goal of getting below 200 this summer. I haven't been under 200 lbs in 4 years. It feels like a big milestone. If I reach hat, I'm going to get myself a new t-shirt I've been wanting.
 
It is so hard to not be hungry when you start eating less food then you normally have! I ate all the time in December and it was mostly carbs like cookies, ice cream and we also have a break room with super delicious treats at work that are free. I love love love anything with cream cheese filling.

Good job on adding the walking! Sometimes I get off at the stop before I need to just to add in a bit more if its a nice outside. I like your goals they seem very healthy :)
 
It's a real bugger, being hungry and knowing that you shouldn't have any more. I do my best to think of it like this: Food is nothing but fuel, in the long run. Having too much sitting around causes bad things, but having just enough brings benefits.

It takes a lot of fun out of food, but the health benefits are worth it, I believe
 
@tally - I'm glad you like my goals! I'm trying to be realistic with them, because I know if I'm too ambitious I'll just be miserable :p Just 1800 calories/day is hard enough as it is right now. I figured if I didn't pick something that I could actually tolerate sticking with, I'd never actually lose weight.

@Birdcage - I know on some level that it's best to just think of food as fuel, but it's so hard to think that way! Food is just so good...

For a treat, I've been getting some different kinds of teas from teavana. To sweeten them, I add a little bit of honey (20-30 calories worth). They really help when what I'm looking for is comfort food, because they are so warm and comforting and taste relatively sweet with only a little honey. They even have teas that taste chocolate-y and vanilla-y, or things like chai that are full of lots of delicious flavors like cinnamon and ginger. Having something that feels like a treat but which doesn't ruin my calorie budget for the day really helps!
 
Ooof

Didn't do so good this week.

We had friends over this weekend, so I didn't pay much attention to how I was eating. Then the week rolled round, and my self-control was *very* weak. I ended up eating more than I wanted, and things which aren't good to eat (like Pizza...).

Oh well. Back to behaving. Hopefully I can do better this time.

I have such a hard time dealing with the fact that when I'm coming home from work, food just makes me feel so good. Otherwise I have to wait until I get home, and I'm tired, and don't want to cook. Unless I'm feel *extremely* motivated to lose weight, I really quickly succumb to the 'just this once' mentality...only it happens more than 'just this once'. I really just don't know how to deal with it. Does anyone have suggestions on how to stay movitated? Or dealing with emotional eating?
 
One of the things I do to keep myself motivated and deal with emotional eatings/ cravings is finding a low cal substitute. I've had some pizza cravings and so made a variation of this: (my variation was Weight Watchers pita bread, tomato puree, 30g reduced fat cheese, ham, olives, sundried tomato, fresh basil, onion, and mushroom. About 245 calories the way I made it, quite small but very good), and I've been craving chips since last night so I made roast potato for lunch today (I adapted from: I used 199g potato, 6g olive oil, 1/2 tsp thyme, 1/2 teaspoon rosemary, a little pepper, a little salt, tossed together then in the oven for 20 min. Excluding the veg I had on the side, 176 calories) I've also made low cal ice cream:

I can't eat this sort of stuff all the time (while it's ok it's not brilliant nutritionally), but it's a great way to get rid of the cravings and to still enjoy my food. I also enjoy changing up my food a lot to keep it interesting (I probably have more time/ energy to cook than you do, but I cook in bulk- I live on my own and most of the time cook to serve 4-6, then stick it in the fridge over 4-6 days. Cooking for 4 is probably 1.5-twice the effort of cooking for one, but I only have to do it a quarter of the time).

Do you have a slow cooker? Hearty low cal meals coming out of that could be a solution to cooking and getting the hit from food. There are recipes out there where you do little more than chop up the stuff, chuck it in the slow cooker, and then get it out at the end.
 
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