Completely off track after illness.

[ThePHD]

I am a 5'10 170lb male.

I'll try to keep this short. A month and a half ago I was very ill for about two weeks. I probably lost around five pounds during that time. Before I got ill I was doing a good job. I had gone from 214 lbs to 160 since last December. My goal is 150. I had no issue with discipline or cravings. Since being sick I have gained FIFTEEN pounds in only a few weeks. The problem is I set myself up for a major binge fest after barely having anything to eat for two weeks I just feel like I have no self control anymore. It's almost like I subconsciously think I am going to starve if I don't eat everything in sight. Now I am technically still at a normal weight but if I keep this up I will gain back all of the weight ive lost. Every day I tell myself that this will be the day I get back on track and it always ends the same. I just lose myself halfway through the day and say to myself "Well i'm not that fat and there's always tomorrow" Does anyone have any advice for getting back the discipline I used to have?

 

[Daveyt]

Hi,

Welcome to the forums.

Firstly, it sucks when you are doing so well and life takes a turn and sets you back like this. Been there many a time! But you can get back into it.

A lot of what you describe sounds as though you may have burnt yourself out and hit your mental fatigue wall. That's why you lose the willpower later in the day to resist temptation.

Don't worry, you can get past this wall. There's two quick things you can do that I can think of which may help.

Firstly, make the decision to eat healthy whilst your willpower is still high. By this I mean, if you are binging later in the day, then in the morning when you are strong, remove that temptation. So, get rid of any binge food, prep your lunch and dinner (if possible) there and then and refrigerate. Or prepare the ingredients ready for cooking later. Anything you can do so that when you hit a point of low willpower later in the day, you've already done most of the work and made that decision to eat healthy. You've done all of the mental work in the morning, that's 90% of the effort needed. That leaves you with just 10% of effort needed to actually do it.

Secondly, in terms of resisting temptation, you may be telling yourself not to eat certain things to try and keep on track. This is actually a big no no. If you tell yourself "Don't eat that" then in effect your brain doesn't process the word "don't". So you're actually telling yourself to "eat that". Now that is all you can think about. I call this the Pink Elephant conundrum.

Let me explain. If I say "Don't think of Pink Elephants" then in all likelihood you are now thinking of pink elephants, despite me telling you not to. It's the same with food. Tell yourself not to eat a piece of cake and now all you can think about is eating cake.

So, instead of trying to resist temptation next time you feel like you need to binge, what you need to do is distract yourself. Think of your goal you are trying to achieve. Binging brings you a moment of pleasure but getting to your goal is far more powerful for your happiness. You need to remind yourself of that.

It's worth taking a bit of time and just writing down the reasons why you want to get to this weight. It sounds cheesy, but it does work. Then when you feel low and want to binge again, just simply remind yourself what you are trying to achieve and how happy that will make you feel when you hit that goal!

Combine these two and you will remove most of the temptation by making the decisions earlier in the day and what temptation is left you can distract your brain by thinking of your goals.

And if any point you do fail, that's fine. Just set that as your new goal. There's no such thing as failure, just a new goal. It may be that you need to divide up the final leg of your weight loss into stages now and get to each stage at a time. Each time you hit one of these "mini goals" you will start to feel better about yourself and regain a lot of motivation very quickly. This in turn will help keep you on track as you aim for your overall goal.

Hope this helps and let me know how you get on.

 

[Butterfly88]

Hi,

Welcome! That really stinks. I can relate to having weight gain due to medical issues. Try to think that it is only temporary and you can get back down to a lower weight.