Hi Nicola Anne, I spent about 10 years struggling with weight and not knowing what to do (and thinking reducing carbs was an impossibility)... Only in the last 6 months have I really changed my habits and way of thinking and I'll tell you one thing- it's nothing to do with committing to eating less and exercising more, if it was that easy I'd have done it years ago. My problem was my thought processes- a) I felt like it was just not possible to eat a low carb diet, that I was incapable of it because I wasn't strong enough (depression and low self-esteem played a big part in this) and b) I didn't even WANT to go low carb. This didn't mean I didn't want to be healthy, of course I did! But I was so angry and upset about being diabetic (as someone who doesn't drink or smoke or rebel in any way in life, it felt like doing everything you're supposed to do and getting punished for it anyway), that the idea of having to give up the one good thing I really appreciated as a form of comfort- my love of food like bread, pasta, cakes, chocolate, sweets etc etc just seemed unimaginable to me. It sounds dramatic but I literally felt like "well what is there left to live for?!" (Again, depression was a huge part of the problem here)... Anyway the best thing you can do to help yourself is to get some therapy. It might take a bit of trial and error to find the kind that works for you, I feel like I've tried a bit of everything haha but eventually hypnotherapy is what helped me. It made me WANT to eat healthier food, and once I stopped seeing high carb food as treats I wished I could have, but really shouldn't, the will power came naturally. I now see high carb food as food that makes me feel like ****, and that's enough to keep me from wishing I could eat it.
Another thing I did that really helped was to keep a mood mapping diary, and start adding what I was eating in to it. This basically involved plotting on a graph, my energy level and mood level on a scale of 1-10, 1 being no energy or negative mood, 10 being high energy or positive mood, at the same time everyday. Say for example 9am everyday for a week. Then changing the time to say 12pm and doing that for a week too. You didn't have to overthink it and specify whether you were angry or sad or whatever, just work out the feeling you have, no matter how silly you might feel it is, or why you think it is. I started plotting pre, post and 2hours post high carb foods (particularly sugary foods) and found that there was a VERY clear pattern of bad moods following the high carb foods, and my cravings for comfort food actually followed the post high carb low mood, not life stresses. It seemed that my moods were CAUSED by the food, not that I was treating moods caused by life with food if that makes sense. Anyway, seeing all of this in black and white also helped me to alter the way I thought about high carb food- I really began to believe that I could change it so that really helped.
If you'd like any more info, or just someone to have a moan to when you're struggling, pm me if you like
Good luck with everything,
Sarah
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