Women only trans inclusive This is an inclusive community for all things women. Whether you're here for make up tips, feminism or just friendly chit chat, we've got you covered.
Rules…
I’m facing a similar situation. I’ve been getting intense hunger cravings and it’s hard.
I’ve been trying my best to space out when I eat meals. I’ve been told from friends to eat small meals throughout the day rather than big meals.
I have yet to try this for myself and I’m not sure if it will be helpful.
I've done that and it can definitely help! It's so freaking hot out that I haven't exercised much today and yesterday... I might just have to suck it up and do some indoor exercise today instead of my daily walk.
Same the heat is so brutal. I haven’t been able to go out either without my head spinning and feeling like I’m going to collapse.
I’m glad to hear that it does help! I’ll have to give that a try and thank you for letting me know that it was helpful!
I hope you get to do some indoor exercises.
oh god it sucks. I bought a bunch of clothes and then gained 15lbs and now everything looks like shit and i am having a devil of a time taking the weight back off again!!!
I do fine for a day or two and then one day i go off the diet and lose all my gains.
I have been reading to distract myself but it isn't working very well I just ate a huge 700+ calorie salad with protein mix ins 2 hours ago and i'm ravenous. I don't even know what i want, not salad and not oatmeal though
and we are going on vacation soon ughhhh
solidarity
edit: made some tofu in the air fryer. 250 calories of protein and olive oil and fried, happy
I hate that because I'm 'short' I gotta eat less. Not fair at all when I see all these tall guys eating how I wanna eat.
I can't eat less when I do, so I do what the kids call intermintent fasting I think.
Otherwise known as I just don't eat a meal and drink a room filled with water instead.
Yeah I'm 5'0" and my husband is 6'4". I envy his ability to just order a burger at a restaurant and know it'll fit into his calories for the day.
Any tips on taking my mind off of food would be greatly appreciated.
High-protein breakfast (a few eggs or a protein shake). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/02/240215113604.htm
Chia seeds. Salba-chia appears to ... affect satiety to a greater extent than flax
+1 for increasing protein and fiber intake to help reduce hunger (e.g. 2 tbsp / 35 mL of ground flax seed in water once a day)
eating "whole" foods helps with this - fiber is naturally occurring in the peels of potatoes, in whole grain foodstuffs, and so on, so the key is to replace refined foods with their unrefined alternatives to get the fiber back in your diet
id say #1 if the food is in the house. you WILL eat it. it will chip away at your willpower until your too mentally weak and suddenly whoops the chocolate i was saving for cheat day is gone.
#2 werthers are your friend. little caramel candy that has sweetness and are a little saltly so hits both cravings. and they take a while to suck on(5mins) so by the time you've got to the end of one, hopefully you are well into your next flow state. and they are 22kcal each so in theory you could do 5 a day pending on your buffer size.
3# try to be active in the evening. i usually eat dinner infront of a show, but if i go another episode i start craving for chips. but if i go play guitar or fiddle with things i do t crave foe it.
good luck. dont be too hard on yourself. try to bot diet but change your eating habit long term. if you need 2500kcal to sustain yourself aim for 2000 a day so youve got a 500kcal buffer. which is.... 25 werthers. absolute madness! it'll drop slow over time, but it wont mentally drain on you too hard.
hi phonics - thank you for your comment, but this community is women-only and there is rule that only women are permitted to comment or post, so please don't comment any further here. Hope you understand 💛
#1 is important. I don't have any snacks at home. Only sweet stuffs are fruits.
I eat spoonful of natural peanut butter to suppress hunger. I have to admit I do get sick of it sometimes
Less carbs (pasta, noodle, rice)
Grapes are a really good snack tho? Why not eat a small bowl as a treat.
grapes are around 70 - 80 kcal / 100 g (source), so they're not too bad calorie-wise (a cup of grapes is like 90ish grams?), you can eat a lot of grapes and not ruin your calorie budget, so to speak
EDIT: that said, this community has a rule that only women are permitted to comment or post, so please refrain from commenting further, thanks!
I may have already had grapes with breakfast and a very large lunch lol... I did not plan out my calories very well today
My weight loss wins have all been tied to various medications for various reasons.
For context have been overweight my entire life, went from 85lbs in 5th grade to 250 in 7th, puberty hit my metabolism like a freight train. I also had a highly food addictive culture in my home growing up, food was comfort and love and attention and a bandaid and fun. To this day when we get together to do something it's ALWAYS food centered, never activity centered. Doesn't help that we were all unmedicated for depression and we're all now discovering we're ADHD and autistic so food was one of the few reliable sources of dopamine.
To sum up, depressed, unbalanced hormones, addictive personality and undiagnosed mental health issues combined with the worst environment for healthy living imaginable, paved the way for me being 345 lbs by 27. The most frustrating thing was I was active. I have a physically demanding job and would have solid chunks where I was actually going to the gym 3-4 times a week for months on end, but I NEVER lost anything significant. Maybe 10 lbs over the course of 2-3 months if I was lucky. But even going to the gym and eating strictly the weight would fluctuate all over the place. no matter what diet I was on, no matter how active I was there seemed to be no measurable tie between my behavior with food and exercise, to progress on the scale.
A combination of life events had me talking to my doctors about my mental health and I started taking low dose birth control non stop to halt my cycle because of pmdd, taking Wellbutrin and for mood, focus, and a more controlled sleep schedule, and naltrexone for addiction suppression. I wasn't addicted to drugs or alcohol, just food.
With the halting of my cycle I stopped having the waves of uncontrollable anger, pain, or sadness that would make me seek comfort in food, but I still had the non-stop metronome of food noise in my brain at all times. When I added Wellbutrin and naltrexone to the birth control the RELIEF I felt when the base sound floor of food noise in my brain dropped to almost nothing was euphoric and also immensely validating. I finally understood that my brain had been actively sabotaging me for my entire life and that other people don't have to deal with their brains screaming at them that they need food 24/7, and wouldn't you fucking know it, when the addictive drill sergeant of snacks shuts the fuck up in your brain, you stop thinking about food all the time!
For the first time in my life I could think about literally anything else without intrusive thoughts about food cutting into my mind regularly. The shame of never being able to control my thoughts about food was instantly gone. That combo of Wellbutrin, naltrexone and non-stop birth control helped me lose 75 lbs and finally feel like I had some modicum of control over my body and mind, but then I got stuck again. Not being focused on eating all the time and not having a cycle that would sabotage any hope of keeping to an effective diet was immensely helpful but my body was still programmed to hold on to every single excess bit of fat it had with tooth and claw. Damn the genetics that survived the potato famine!
I won't be surprised if people come out of the woodwork to tell me that none of my success is real because of the next medication I used but it worked and it's been working for the past 3 years. My doctor gave me a sample of ozempic to try and I lost another 20 lbs in 6 weeks. To be fair I reacted very strongly to that medication, I was sick and tired and felt god-awful on the smallest possible dose for the first few months but every time I would get on the scale at the end of the week before I took the next shot I would be down a few more pounds. So I weighed the cost of the symptoms with the benefit of the weight loss and I decided the symptoms were worth it. That was 3.5 years ago ish and I've been on semaglutide (ozempic/wegovy are the name brands but I've been using a compounded version for the majority of that), or more recently tirzepatide, ever since. I still take the Wellbutrin and naltrexone and birth control, but adding the semaglutide/ tirzepatide has brought me down below 200lbs for the first time in my adult life. I'm very tall and quite strong so my healthy weight should be around 175 but we'll see. I've never been there so I have no idea what it'll look or feel like.
I know nobody likes to hear that medications are the way to go. "You should just be able to be strong enough to not need the help" but I tried my entire conscious life to not be overweight and was never able to accomplish it on my own. I always felt worthless because of it. The instant I had the help that my brain and body needed to be regulated, to be HEALTHY, I dropped almost all the excess weight I'd hated carrying my entire life and I finally feel unashamed about my eating habits and my body.
Like I said, I won't be surprised if people jump down my throat for using medication as help with my mental health and weight loss. But you know what? If other people think I'm a weak fake POS for needing help, they're welcome to think that. I could not give less of a fuck. They can go be miserable toxic human beings somewhere fucking else and take that purity testing bullshit with them because I'm finally happy with who I am and how I live and I will not be sorry for using medication to get there.
Chewing gum helps me sometimes. It gives me something tasty that has a lot of the same muscle memory of eating. Almost like a fidget toy for the mouth lol.
Also I think drinking water might help to an extent but I haven't specifically tried it. As in drink a glass of water then chew gum. That way your belly feels "full" too.
I read that brushing your teeth can help with cravings, like the cocolate one. The strong taste of the toothpaste acts as a deterrent so to speak.
maybe food wouldn't take up so much space in your head if you weren't hungry all the time? almost like your body is trying to tell you something?
When someone says that they are overweight from overeating and that they are trying to eat less to be less overweight, and that food noise in their brain is making that difficult, maybe telling them to eat whatever they want whenever they want is not good advice.
Maybe one post to vent my frustrations isn't representative of my daily experience, but thanks for assuming I'm starving myself or being unhealthy.
dieting is unhealthy. most people who go on a diet end up heavier than when they started because you're fucking up your metabolism. i didn't need to make any assumptions, was just sharing the scientific consensus
just a gentle reminder of rule 2: be nice, please
L take