Why is it so difficult to stick to a new habit for longer
I feel like it's just me and I'm too weak. I was doing really well, didn't think about food at all, had only a tea after dinner and no other snacks and shed 3kg in the past 6 weeks. But now I'm starting to go back to the old habits, I crave snacks even during the day and after dinner, it gets worse. I've been having snacks after dinner for the past 2 weeks and now the scale shows it too. I haven't gained any weight but I'm stuck and have no progress.
I know that until I get back to my previous mindset of no snacking and not thinking about food all the time nothing can be done and there's no point in forcing myself to lose weight like I've done many times before and gained it all back.
Do you have any suggestions what to do now? I'm so sad because I thought I had it all figured out and shouldn't be worrying about food again, but no... I was just lying to myself.
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YesICan13
Healthy BMI
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If you deprive your body of nutrition, it will protest. You are almost certainly either (a) not eating enough or (b) not eating enough fat.
Weightloss has absolutely nothing to do with willpower or lack of it, and it drives me mad that nutritionists blame overweight people for being "weak". Once the content of your diet is correct, your appetite will start working again, and you'll lose weight, without pain or any need for willpower.
Can you give some examples of what you eat in a typical day?
Hi, I don't think that's the problem. My BMR is 1300kcal I aim for 1200kcal but always end up around 1400-1600kcal which is my TDEE and that's why I stop losing weight and maintain.
I eat 300kcal at breakfast - quark with banana, linseed, chia and fruit
Lunch and dinner are 350-450kcal, usually meat with salad but sometimes I eat a slice of pizza or a small slice of lasagne (450kcal). I eat salmon salad, gnocchi with pesto, broccoli & chipolatas and so on. After dinner I usually eat some raw honey with quark or fruit, sweets etc. When I stop snacking I start losing weight immediately, I just can't do it for longer periods. And I don't think I'm really hungry because I've had days when I ate 1200kcal and didn't even think of snacking or felt hungry. But when I'm stressed or sad I ten dot start eating a lot of snacks
Your meals don't sound too bad, but you have a few ingredients there that (I suspect) are throwing a spanner in the works ... and your meals do sound a bit on the small side for anyone older than, say, 10. For example honey might be seen as "healthy" and "natural", by the time it gets to your small intestine it looks the same as a Mars bar.
It's indisputable that, if you're losing weight, then you must be eating less than you're burning. The nutritionist's mistake is to imagine that the converse applies: if you eat less then you'll lose weight. There is no scientific reason to believe that this might be true, and abundant experience (including yours) to suggest that it's false.
Your body must first decide to lose bodyfat, and you will then start to eat less.
I would dump the pizza, lasagna and gnocchi. The meat, salad, quark, broccoli, chipolatas etc are fine. Fill up your plate with veg instead of stodge, don't be afraid of fat (butter, meat fat, etc), and eat until you're full. This probably won't cure your snacking overnight, but it'll help enormously. If you feel the need to snack, try some full-fat Greek yoghurt, some nuts, or some cheese. If you have junk snacks in the house, get rid of them, and then you can't eat them
After you've been losing weight for a while, you'll find that your body is much more able to cope with (say) pizza, and you'll be able to reintroduce these things occasionally. But for now, they're best avoided.
Honey and fruit are sugar, and sugar spikes blood glucose which spikes insulin, which brings down your blood glucose too quickly, and so you get hungry.
I eat some carbs (as fruit and muesli) for breakfast, and it makes me hungry for lunch - and I can then fast till breakfast.
When I got to my target weight I added a litre of full-fat yoghurt a week to my breakfast. I have a higher BMR than you, but I eat nearly 1,500 calories for breakfast. See:
YesICan13 - I am sure if you think about it, your bad eating habits / snacking wasn't something that happened overnight - it is behaviour that developed over time.
If you want this to work for the longer term, you need to think about it as a lifestyle change rather than a diet. It's not going to be something that you do for a short time and then stop again. I can assure you as someone who's been on my weight loss journey for nearly 8 years that the losing weight and getting to gold it is just the start.
Your lifestyle change will need to happen a bit at a time and will involve many things : changing your behaviour around food, portion control, identifying emotional eating triggers, increasing your activity levels, trying new foods, making healthy food swaps, etc.
Commitment to diet/lifestyle change and resistance to temptation doesn't just happen! It has to be worked at.
The only way I have succeeded this time is to change how I approach food and eating it. I have learned to resist temptation! BUT please believe that this has taken a LOT of hard work and practice.
It's about "normalising" or "modifying" behaviour around food... and I think that with enough "practice" it becomes more and more easy until you get to the point where a behaviour is modified to the point of it becoming the only way.
I am sure that even some people who are not over weight do sometimes over indulge - but the fact is they don't do it very often...
Those of us who are over weight have been used to "treating" ourselves, eating portions that are too large, eating the things that we know are calorific because we can!
It's been a combination of changing all of those aspects of how I behave around food that has meant I have been successful this time.
I have developed a respect for the food I eat. Not everyone has the ability to eat as well as we in the western world eat. We should not abuse the privilege.
I rarely eat "on the hoof" any more, I rarely eat between meals. I take time to sit at a table and present my meals nicely. I take a moment or two to really look at my plate of food before I pick up my knife and fork.
Almost daily I say to hubbie "Aren't we lucky to be able to enjoy such lovely food". I really mean that too, I am not saying it for anyones benefit but his and mine. We should never take for granted having easy access to delicious food stuffs and our ability and love of cooking!
If you log your food - keep track of how many calories some of those "treats" contain, after a while they kind of stay in your head (medium egg = 70 cals, slice of white bread 100 cals, meringue nest 57 cals, 30g (matchbox size) of cheddar, 122 cals)
I do have sweet treats, but I buy my own choice, so things like 2 finger Kitkat, single finger Twix, Club biscuit... these are all around 100 calories. I keep them in a tin and I can have one whenever I want to, but I limit it to no more than one a day and usually with my afternoon cup of tea. That's not to say I eat one on a daily basis (usually about 2-3 times a week). They are always logged into my diary.
If you don't keep a log of what you are eating and the calories foods contain, then it's a bit like trying to travel from one place to another without a map! You might get there eventually BUT it's likely to take you much longer than if you planned the route and used a map PLUS you might take a few wrong turnings and end up going back on yourself!
I have also learned not to plan each trip out of the house to include food. Once upon a time, I'd have included lunch with a trip into town, coffee and cake with a visit to the garden centre.
I now plan or even prepare a meal BEFORE I go out (usually a salad) so that I know exactly what I can eat as soon as I walk into the door... and don't turn to "what I fancy" (usually high calorie carbs that don't keep you full for very long...)
Make a list of the reasons WHY you want to lose weight. Keep it somewhere safe (stuck to the inside of a kitchen cupboard door?) and look at it from time to time, especially when you are raiding the kitchen for treats!
I always ask myself before eating something really calorific "Do I really want to eat this thing more than I want to lose weight this week?". It's called "mindful eating" - being aware of why you are considering eating - real hunger? Boredom? Temptation? Feeling fed up?
Have a glass of water, wait 5 minutes and consider whether you still want the food. Once it's been snaffled down, it's too late and you may end up feeling cross and angry with yourself....
....and that feeling (guilt, failure) lasts for a long time, much longer than the temporary enjoyment of whatever treat you ate....
Oh, and I always remind myself how good the feeling is of seeing a loss on the scales at my weekly weigh in! That wonderful feeling lasts for days! Don't forget how that feels - you need to remind yourself of that feeling next time temptation strikes!
I’m healthier and fitter now at the age of 57 than I was 20 years ago…..
I am writing this as someone who had struggled all of my life (since the age of 9) to lose weight. I have a significant disability that affects my mobility - use a wheelchair outside of the house. I am also very short (4ft 8”). It wasn't until the age of 49 when I started to log everything and kept track of the calories I was consuming that the truth hit me between the eyes. I was eating FAR TOO MUCH for a short sedentary person. I changed my whole approach to food and eating it that everything else clicked into place
Just wished I’d found what worked for me years ago.
Hi, I'm really happy it worked for you. I absolutely support mindful eating and all the things you mentioned and try to practise them every day. I actually did log my food for a year and a half and stopped now because I eat almost the same type and amount of food every week (we meal prep). But you're right, I probably have to start logging my food again, this should help me get back to the right mindset.
There's a fierce battle inside of me, for a few weeks I'm super strict and don't need food, and then for the next 2 weeks, I'm constantly craving sweets and more food. I don't think that's normal. Thanks for giving me the strength to continue the battle.
Maybe part of the problem is wanting what you've told yourself you can't have? If you factor in occupational treats to your calorie allowance, it might make you feel less deprived. Like instead of being SUPER strict just be regular strict 😀
Wishing you all the best figuring out what's gonna work for you longterm!
You are not weak, you are human!! Temptation is all around us and I for one am not a Saint. Have a snack or a treat now and then and log it. Helps you to understand how your body works.
Such good advice above. So sympathise too because I started cramming sweets on the quiet when I was a schoolchild and that's decades of bad habit to combat, as is drinking wine every day. Did that from my late twenties, you understand, not when I was a sprog...
My strange experience is that if you can do without a Real Naughty Food for several weeks, preferably months, then somehow one loses a taste for it. I have found this with milk chocolate and that for me was nothing less than an addiction. Now I find it cloying, which is great, though I still like a bit from time to time. Same with wine; it's ok but most evenings I drink water or vegetable juice, and feel all the better for it.
I can't really add significantly to all the wonderful ideas and observations here except to say start by substituting crisps, if you eat them, for nuts. However, I'm a salt addict so l need to be careful not to fall into that trap too. So in order to stick with nuts every day I have nine parts plain nuts to one part naughty salted ones. This is SO much better for you than carpy crisps. Yes, I love crisps but now they are the occasional treat, and my palate has adjusted so I now find many of them over-flavoured.
Take one bad habit at a time and change that with something healthier. It's slow but effective and it works. These are old ingrained habits - don't I know it - and they need to be addressed organically, not cataclysmically, to be effective. You learned them slowly so the most effective way is to lose them slowly.
Also tell yourself you're likely to live longer, and to live better, without all the carpy snacks and processes stuff we are encouraged to get down us to the profitable advantage of others. None of us wants an early stroke, or early-onset diabetes. Good old healthy fear of disability is a great motive!
Hi, thanks for this I never really ate too much unhealthy food and especially junk food, but my diet now is really refined. I only eat natural wholefoods and eat store-bought sweets veery rarely. So here's where my frustration comes from, I already gave up everything and still can't get to where I want to be... But I know that the quantity also matters, so I will stick to my calories and try to be stronger than the snacks.
Thank you YesICan13 . I know what this is like, I really do, when you feel you're being virtuous and the pay-off just isn't what you'd hoped for. Just keep in mind that you need to burn off what you eat with exercise. Trouble is that when we want to lose weight that means burning off more MORE than we eat daily and that's tough. Calorie-counting is important but as some suggest above, if your three meals aren't satisfying then the snacking habit kicks in. It really is daily habit too, isn't it? When I was at work, bickies and cake appeared twice a day as an accompaniment to our coffee and tea, also toast, jam etc, and that felt like such a treat in break times between high-octane sessions of stressful work. I had colleagues who countered that with running or going to the gym. I was just too darned knackered after 60 to do that as well as my work.
All good luck with your challenges and ambitions. I had to lose the mid-meal snacking and frankly, get off my backside more. You'll know in your heart what will work for you. BB x
You're so right. A lot of eating and drinking is emotional. I still go to a cup of tea when I'm upset or a bit low, although thank gawd that doesn't involve calories!
They say, don't they, that the biggest battles we have to fight in life are within ourselves...
That's why a forum like this is so helpful and supportive. We all battle on together. We'll all stay strong together, and when we have off days, we know we're not alone.
Your posts I've read before are usually very upbeat and positive, so I really feel for you even more, reading this.
I do know what it's like to feel like you've finally got it all figured out, then suddenly realise the old cravings or some 'bad' eating habits have come back. Try not to panic about it, but remember this is all a long slow journey to learn healthy new habits, and you'll get there even if you have a few detours along the way!
I don't know where you're based, but with myself in the UK, and the days suddenly seeming drastically shorter and darker, I've been wondering if my change in mental attitude has anything to do with that. The past few weeks I've also returned to snacking.. and not just the healthy ones. I've tried not to be too upset, but instead trying to find what is the trigger, and get back on the right track again. For me, I think I've not been eating enough healthy fats, so not feeling satiated.. and looking for comfort snacks instead to help with stress. A slippery slope I thought I was past! 😰
So today I made sure I stocked the cupboards with all the good stuff and have eaten a really hearty lunch with lots of olive oil, vegetables and chicken. Feeling much more positive now.
Wishing you a very positive week ahead too. You'll get to the bottom of it, and figure out the way forwards!
You've got a really supportive community here with everyone cheering you along the way.
Hey, thank you so much for the kind words 🤗 they really help :). I live in Scotland so the days are super short and dark. I started taking vitamin D every day to help with the overall mental distress of it, hopefully it will help.
I realise now it really was a phase, just 2 bad weeks and I'm grateful that I didn't gain weight I just maintained. I feel a bit better now and don't have so much appetite, we even had a big Scottish takeaway dinner yesterday and I barely have eaten because it looked too unhealthy haha :D.
Wish you good luck with not snacking too, I know you're stronger than that! I will try to have only have tea with raw honey after dinner and if not I might have an apple or some quark as a healthy snack.
Sounds like you're feeling more positive again! that's great! Good idea about the Vit D. I take it now too. A good strong dosage really helps.
Don't forget that if you do need a little something in the evening, try to reach for something with a low sugar/carb content, otherwise your insulin will spike and you'll start to feel hunger/cravings again in a short while. Even natural healthy things with high sugar content have the same effect, like honey and fruit. Try a high protein snack or healthy fats snack like nuts or cold meats. The difference is amazing!
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Tips and advice welcome I have lots of questions too
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