Binge eating recovery and weight plateau

[PriscilaMix]

Hi, everyone!

For those who experienced binge eating without purging, how was your weight loss journey after trying to reach a balanced diet? I suffer from this and have been getting counseling help for my depression. For the last 9 days or so I have been eating as normally as I can, but not dieting. I can't track any foods due to this psychological issue, but I can tell I am eating less, and I am also more active. I am currently mildly overweight at 141 lbs for 5"2' height, and since I did these changes, I have not lost one single pound and I am getting discouraged. I do not want to "diet" again as this had been harmful to me in the past, but if there are any dietitians or nutritionists here, could you please tell me what could be happening and why I am not losing? Is this normal?

Thanks!

[Heybales]

You can't lose fat if you aren't eating less than you burn. Simple fact.

You can gain/lose water weight for all kinds of reasons.

Which do you think you need to lose?

And 9 days is WAY too brief - you need to reset your expectations.

You should not be attempting to lose so fast if you were expecting something big.

Give it a full 2 weeks at least. Confirm the weigh-in days.

Morning after restday from workouts, not sore from prior workout, and normal eating level of sodium.

If you are eating less, and being more active - you could be causing extra stress by creating too much diet.

Or more likely - you have no idea how much you are eating and how much you are burning, so couldn't know and may not be in a diet as desired.

Have you been in a diet for awhile and just got to this place of needing to stop, so you got down to 141 lbs from a higher weight?

If so how much weight lost and rate of loss when you were?

Binge eating many times follows an extreme diet being attempted. Along with that is body slowing down in many ways to conserve calories so not so extreme, like not warming up, not growing hair as fast, or nails, or dry skin not being replaced as frequently, to more extreme metabolism dropping, spontaneous movements stopping, ect.

Body has a way to adapt to extremes.

[PriscilaMix]

Hi, Heybales!! 

I have gotten down to 132 lbs after a period of tracking my eating and cardio alternated with strength training 4 times a week. This system did not work out. I lost weight, but was obsessed with food, depressed, and binging often. I had to put all the tracking aside, and I was honestly tired and afraid of exercising or eating healthy, so my weight went up to 141 lbs.

For my body it was common to lose at least one or two pounds of water weight as soon as I started dieting again. But right now, I am not dieting. I am eating less, especially sweets, and committed to start eating only until I am full, eat if I am hungry and not eat if I am not hungry. I also started exercising a little more and I am staying more active since abandoning my social media addiction. So, certainly eating somewhat less and exercising somewhat more than what I was when I got my weight up to 141 lbs. I want to learn how to eat like a healthy person l, but just do not want to diet anymore. 

After posting this, a couple days later the scale seems to have shown the first discreet downward variation and I went down one single.pound. Could be fluctuation, I know, but at least it is the lowest one so far.

My goal is not to get to a very specific weight, but I would say I can probably get rid of 5 pounds and stay happily on the higher side of a healthy BMI. 

Thank you for taking your time to support me. 

Stay well

Priscila

[emili]

Here are my two cents and please take it with a grain of salt. From what I read, you are an emotional eater where regardless of the emotion it is snack time. And then the other emotion sets in after snack time of guilt and the cycle goes round and round. In my uneducated opinion, maybe break up with the scale and do your thing to figure out emotional release without food. Once you have it figured out, work out nutritional goals - not diets. When you are happy and strong get on the scale and figure out where to go from there. Maybe you will be pleasantly surprised and if you are not, you may be in a better place to deal with it. I developed really bad habits during the past 2 years that I excused until I would get on the scale and then the "that's it" speeches would start in my head until the next weekend rolled around and it all started again. I broke up with my scale. Since June of 2020. I couldn't take the number and I wasn't ready to face the habits. This past December, enough was enough. Bad habits went. I still haven't made up with my scale, I am not ready yet, but the mirror says by the end of this month, we can be in a mutually satisfying relationship once more. The key though, is the break of habits. If I can do it for one month, I can do it for two, three, four.. etc. Somewhere in this ramble, maybe you can find something worthwhile.. wish you well on your journey..