Thanks for your replies
@Mary2020 and
@AliGal
@Mary2020 I suffer from a chronic binge eating disorder and I find it impossible to stay on plan for any length of time. I panic, get depressed and start thinking destructive, sabotaging binge thoughts. Sooner or later I end up binging, to the point of feeling that I’m going to have a heart attack. Then I spiral and regain any weight lost in the time I stayed on plan.
To combat this, I decided to use the idea of on plan and off plan days. I use the WW smartpoints system and I believe an on plan day is about 1200 calories. Then off plan days are where I have a nice family dinner like a full roast or chicken fajitas, little bits of what I fancy and maybe alcohol. Essentially I eat the foods I would normally binge on. I’ve been logging every single thing I’ve put in my mouth since Sept ‘13 so I know that generally, if I’m off plan 2 days per week I will loose, 3 days I’ll sts and 4 or more days off plan means I gain. I had my youngest child in 2017 and I really struggled after her birth, I had too many off plan days and ended up regaining a lot of the weight I had lost before I got pregnant.
I have it in my mind to do cognitive behavioural therapy to try to help with the binge eating disorder but my life is just too busy at the moment to do the work I will have to do with this.
@AliGal I used to be like you, very strict with only extremely occasional treats. For me, however, it always led to me going crazy with food when I got to my goal weight and I then regained the weight plus more. As another person who heartbreakingly knows what it’s like to be almost 23st, we also know that the only way we are ever going to be able to maintain a decent BMI is to develop habits that we will be able to fall back on when our bodies are, inevitably, doing everything they can to get us back to our highest weight. In order to reset that highest weight we have to trick our metabolism and bodies with long term consistent changes.
By the way I love Summer because there are so many things on and so much to do. Life is easier when it’s warmer too. I always want to follow on the good feelings with food.