I can’t seem to keep at a healthy weight. I’m almost back at the heaviest weight I ever was. Last time I weighed myself a few days ago I was 171 and the heaviest I ever was was 175. I’m fairly tall, so the upper range of my healthy weight is 164 putting me 7 lbs overweight. Keep in mind I was 135 out of high school and 145 until Risperidone in college so even 164 to me feels like I am horribly fat.
The main issue is I have I guess an addiction to unhealthy foods. I love love love fast foods and sweets and all manner of junk and comfort food. It takes soooo much self discipline on my part to avoid eating these things, especially when I have money and can buy them for myself. I had no self control as a kid either and I think probably would have been obese if my mom hadn’t been a health nut and just not given us access to those sorts of foods. When I get depressed it’s especially bad and I lose control. On top of this, seroquel makes me go on eating binges every night, but it is the only sleep aid I’ve ever been on that consistently works for me, and it also helps with my bladder troubles and lowers my libido which are much appreciated unexpected benefits.
Then there is the issue that I do not like most healthy foods. I have a lot of sensory issues. I can not tolerate the textures of a wide variety of foods, and hate different kinds of foods being mixed together. I’m generally just told to “get over it” and “eat it anyways” and I try but it makes me actually sick to do so, I’ll be gagging, I’ll get headaches, stomach churning, just awful it’s horrible to deal with. So that advice doesn’t help. I basically only eat kid foods. This causes me to be malnourished, as well as overweight.
I follow this woman on YouTube who makes videos about life with her young son with autism just because I like those sorts of things for learning purposes, and saw that he had many of the same issues with eating different foods as I did. They actually did a sort of food therapy with him?! And it helped massively expand the foods he could eat. I am very interested in what this is and if it would benefit me, though I do not have autism, just sensory problems. (Sensory problems can also come hand in hand with psychotic disorders)
I’m also reading a fascinating book now called “Deep Nutrition” that I hope will help teach me how to build a healthier diet. I definitely recommend it I can’t put it down.
Anyhow if anyone has similar issues feel free to comment & say what your strategy has been.
summary: I have an addiction I guess to super unhealthy foods and I constantly fight it and lose. On top of that I have sensory issues that make eating a wide variety of healthy “adult” foods extremely difficult and unpleasant. My sleep med also causes me to zombie binge eat at night. Due to this I am overweight and malnourished. I want to fix this but am having so much trouble. If anyone has similar struggles and has made progress feel free to share. Advice like “get over it and just eat right” is not helpful, and will be ignored. If I could do that, I would have done so already.
You know that reminds me when I was in high school, I gave up sweets for lent. I was pretty solid at it, though I did cheat with muffins sometimes. The cravings did eventually go away and I remember being surprised about that because I guess I didn’t even realize I had cravings. Still I kept a cookie by my bed and ate it at literally midnight the day my lent ended. Yeesh.
I’m learning now that sugar is massively bad for you too, toxic even, and is a top cause for cancer, among a wide number of other health conditions. Ugh…
And it’s highly highly addictive. Jeeeezzz. I feel like processed sugars are one of those things that 100 years from now are going to be completely banned and people are going to be like wow I can’t believe they let that stuff be in every food, what a backwards time.
This is not going to be popular but I’m just gonna say. Cutting out wheat is currently helping me. That stuff makes me wanna eat n eat n eat n eat… Like there’s no tomorrow
I dunno if it’s me partly being brainwashed by all those celebs going on gluten free diets and books coming out about it, but I really do feel some kind of difference wen I don’t eat it. It calms my appetite down for a bit longer than usual
@Anna I also am not aware of how the condition n medicine may have affected ur ability to exercise,
I personally find that regular exercise helps to stabilise the appetite a bit.
But I’m still in challenging situation myself, still fighting off unwanted excessive hunger.
I seem to eat crappier foods when I don’t get enough sleep and feel stressed. I use a Fitbit to track my sleep and I think it is helping.
I am finding that at 50 and schizoaffective that I should try to take more naps and not feel guilty about it. I have never had a nap I didn’t like! Seems to work great for our cat too.
I’m right there with you. I think I’m the same height as you (5’8?) and I recently lost 10 pounds to go from 170 to 160. I have to eat practically nothing to lose weight. It feels impossible sometimes. I still feel very fat.