Tired of Dieting and Trying to Lose Weight

by Barbara
(SW Florida)

"I'm tired of losing the Diet Battle, I just want to enjoy food and be healthy"

I started life as an extremely fat baby. So fat that I was unable to walk until I was about 15 months old according to my Mom. But then once I started walking I lost the baby fat and was slim. I was very active in my youth, ate whatever I wanted to and was actually skinny. I tended to have curves but the bones in my neck and shoulders stuck out and I actually hated that. Oh what I would give to be able to see those bones again.

In my mid 20s my metabolism began to change, slowly but surely. For the first time in my life, I had to watch what I ate and my body actually had the nerve to gain weight. At first I must admit I didn't really mind too much, those curves just got a little more curvier and I still felt beautiful. And those dreaded bones were no longer quite so prominent.

Then in my early 30's I started to move from curvy to chubby and now I really had to find a way to exercise to keep the pounds off. I no longer had my super active lifestyle but I still loved to eat. I think I tried every fad diet and trick with mixed success.

A weight watchers plan that was called One on One was a favorite. They actually designed a diet around foods you liked and it was just a matter of quantity control and balancing choices and of course the dreaded exercising. But I found I was losing the weight, slowly but steadily and it was staying off. Then the program folded and once again the pounds started to pile on again.

After a few years I tried Oprah's Optimum diet I think it was called. It was a fasting diet (she carried out her lost 67 pounds of fat in a red wagon while wearing a tight turtleneck and Calvin Klein jeans, I will never forget that visual). This was a tough one but once again, it worked and I lost all the weight I wanted and once again was my old curvy self. I kept it off for about 4 years when life's stresses once again interfered and I stopped watching what I ate carefully and wasn't as active.

It seems as if my body always seeks to find its fat state. I remember being taught that from birth once you have a fat cell you will always have that fat cell and it will always want to be filled.

I do believe my weight is a combination of an eating addiction/disorder and that when under stress or unhappy I do eat, even though intellectually I know that this is not really a good way of "treating myself special".

I also believe that my genes play a role in my weight. My Mom and Dad and all my siblings were all skinny like me until they hit their 30's and then piled the weight on. My Mom didn't pile it on until her 50's but after that we are all overweight, love our food and just can't seem to get and keep the weight off.

My problem now is that after years of dieting, where I could lose the weight (even though I gained it all back and then some), now I can't even lose the weight. I have tried to get back to exercising again, even hired a personal trainer who worked out with me 4 times a week for 6 months, I starved myself and all I lost was 30 pounds.

I just don't know what to do but do know I would love to drop the weight and be healthier and feel better.