Just wanted to share this experience because I've seen a lot of people here chat about restrictive eating - naturally - but I found heavily restrictive eating really damaging for my mental health and ineffective for weight loss, and so tried an alternative tactic.
TW: some of this post might be triggering for people who have suffered/are suffering from eating disorders.
My weight gain was the result of binge eating. I would eat normally all day and then at night I'd often devour thousands of calories in one sitting. Due to a relatively active lifestyle I've never been very overweight, but I had a good 1.5 stone that I wanted to lose which was really affecting my confidence.
I've tried to lose weight in the past, and found that restrictive eating wasn't sustainable for me. My goal was always 1,200 calories per day and I would feel proud if I came in under it. So the goal slipped lower and lower. If I went out for a meal or binged, I would feel I had to punish myself for "over eating" and would eat hardly anything for a few days. At which point I would cave and over-eat... And so the cycle continues... I never gained or lost much weight during this 3.5ish year period. I would just fluctuate between the same 4 pounds.
For unrelated reasons, I began to see a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist about seven months ago. In February we were speaking about my coping strategies and naturally I brought up binge eating and restrictive eating. I told her I had tried to move away from calorie counting because I became obsessive.
After talking it through with her, she actually recommended that I stop trying to lose weight, but that I continue to track my food with the goal of maintaining my weight to discourage binge eating. This added a significant amount of calories back into my daily budget (about 500), which admittedly scared me at first.
What amazed me is that once I started actually feeding my body properly, and eating good hearty meals three times a day, a lot of the binging tenancies went away. I didn't always hit my daily calorie budget (sometimes I went over, sometimes I stayed under), but I always made sure I left the table satisfied. Because most of my weight gain came from binging and not my meals, in May I was completely surprised to realise I had dropped 8 pounds. More than I had ever lost before since putting the weight on.
I've since continued to eat a maintenance diet and increased my exercising and today I'm officially down 1.5 stone. It's not the fastest weight loss story, but it feels sustainable. My body, but more importantly my mental health, has never felt better.
I applaud people who successfully can maintain and manage restrictive diets, but it's not necessarily the best route for everyone. For me, it was disordered eating that was feeding into a really bad relationship with food and with my body, and changing the goal from 1,200 is plenty to just giving my body consistent meals with minimal binging really worked.
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