My thoughts on overeating and weight loss

I was approaching my 40th birthday and morbidly obese.

I existed in a state of embarrassment and shame.

Common thoughts at the time were…

“How much more weight do I need to gain before the weight gain stops?”
”I hope I don’t die at this weight, the ultimate humiliation would be having the pallbearers struggle to lift my coffin at my funeral”
“How did I become such a failure?”

I had a lovely home, two amazing children, a solid marriage, a successful business – no traumatic childhood.

I also used to think…

“Anyone hearing about my life will think I am a success – anyone looking at me will think I am a disaster”

I felt so capable in so many areas of my life, work, and family, and yet so incompetent at something that, I thought, should be relatively straight forward.

Losing weight and keeping it off!

My weight had fluctuated since my teens. I grew up in a family...

My kids are almost no longer kids.

They go back to school today.

I’ve spent much of the last 8 weeks wishing they were in school, yesterday we had drinks in a café (the three of us together) and laughed and shared in a way that is all too rare.

I recognised that I hadn’t spent enough time appreciating them being home this summer. And I was reminded of these words of wisdom from Ryan Moran

‘When I was a kid all I wanted to be was a millionaire. Now that I am a millionaire, all I want is to be a carefree kid. There was a time in my life where I lost a lot of weight and I had abs for the first time in my life, but I felt too skinny and all I wanted was to add some muscle. Now that I’ve added some muscle, all I think about is how much I miss my abs.

Before I was a father all I wanted was kids. I wouldn’t trade my daughter for anything, but I sometimes miss the days when I was alone. When she was a baby and she was crying in the middle of the night,...

When I was struggling to lose weight, I was frequently self-sabotaging my diet. I would get frustrated and disappointed in myself, even though I felt powerless to stop. If this is familiar to you, I encourage you to get curious about what is happening in your brain and to learn how you can stop this negative behaviour by checking out this blog post.

What is self-sabotage?

It is the sabotaging, whether consciously or subconsciously, of oneself, or one’s own interests, plans, goals etc.

What are the ways in which we self-sabotage when we are trying to lose weight?

There are many ways in which we self-sabotage our own weight loss, most of them resulting in us eating something that does not support our weight loss goals, wehther we get some short term comfort and enjoyment from that eating or not. More specifically we:

• Make food choices that don’t support our long term diet goals such as snacking on sweet treats, eating more food that we need at meal times and...