Hey there, I hope I don't just annoy everyone, but I'm feeling low for about months…
The year before last year I gave myself the goal to loose a bit weight. I also reached that goal and loosed about more than 7 kilos what I think is for my hight and my age pretty good. By the way: My weight was 57kilo at a hight of 171cm and then about 50kilo. I was really satisfied and wanted to stay at that weight but I become more and more anorectic without realizing it… at the end of the year I reached the 46 kilo mark so my bmi was round about 16… my mom said she's gonna take me into a clinic if I don't do anything against it. So my goal for last year was to gain weight till I'm gonna feel good… That I'm gonna like my body… I started with eating chocolate and things again, but after a while I couldn't hold my self and eated although I was neither hungry or had any appetite. In summer I wasn't satisfied with my weight again and wanted to start a zero diet. It also worked until I nearly had a collapse, because I weighted about 51 first and then a bit more than 48… My mom was angry again and I ate again… a lot… for example two glass nutella just so… after just a month or so I weighted about 53 and I said to my mother I'm starting to hate my body and she said she's now aware of that I have to be happy with my body, so I can weight whatever I want. She also wanted to help me now and bought a diet powder… after just a week or two I still weighted nearly 53 (but I lost a few hundred grams) and my mom started again to say "oh but don't become to skinny! you already look again skinny!" (after a week?!?) I broke up… I ate… more and more… I didn't exactly wanted to but I couldn't help myself… when she's saying something like this, it is like a program is activated that force me to. Now gained so much weight that also my old clothes don't fit anymore. Nearly 60 kilo… I started a diet but after a day I or so I just start again eating without reason and I can't stop it. My boyfriend is saying to me I look good and aren't to fat and my mom is saying I can do a diet, well more she is saying: i have to… but now I can't.. I tried also a few things to motivate me, but it is psychological. Anytime I look in the mirror or put my clothes on I hate myself more and more. Then I forget it and eat again. But not normal: the things with the most calories….
Have anybody an Idea how I can solve that problem? And please don't say anything like "it's normal weight and you can be proud of it" or anything like this.. It isn't helping my soul...

As a fellow girl who has had weight problems before (and will in the future, undoubtedly) and also has a mom who can be an asshole about it, I would suggest, flat out, to not diet. However, you shouldn't be eating obscene amounts of Nutella every day (regardless of how amazing it tastes). Neither being overweight nor underweight is good, but the bigger problem here is that it's extremely unhealthy to be gaining and losing weight so quickly. Not only is it bad for your insides in that it puts your body under a great deal of stress, but it's also bad for your outside appearances, too. If you have stretch marks, it's not because of slowly gaining weight over time; it's because of your sudden shifts in weight both lower and higher and will only get worse if you continue. And if you don't have stretch marks, you're going to get them at this rate, and they're a bitch to get rid of. You can also get back and arm fat which for some people can't be removed through exercise, as well as excess skin that will need surgery to tighten up. So right off the bat, stop.

Instead of dieting, just don't snack. The only food you should be eating is a breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you don't usually eat breakfast or lunch, then have a couple pieces of toast or cookies at the times when you should be having those meals and eat at no time inbetween (unless there is a party or something). You want to focus on stabilizing your metabolism right now by having set times to eat and not varying the amount you eat at those times too much. By doing this, you will slowly reach the weight that your body is naturally healthy at without crashing it.

If you find that you're not at the weight you want after a few months of this, instead of fad dieting, just slowly lower the amount you eat during each session. Instead of having two pieces of toast, have one with some extra toppings on it. Instead of having a full bowl of dinner, make it 3/4. This will help you lose weight without completely crashing your metabolism.

The problem with crashing your metabolism is that, yes, you lose the weight faster, but it also makes your metabolism slow down automatically throughout the diet. Unless you very slowly work your metabolism back up to the speed it was at before afterwards, you will gain that weight back immediately, sometimes even just by a week of eating regular portions. This is exactly why fad diets usually only work for one season. They're too dangerous to maintain because you continually lose weight, and they're too frustrating to stop because you suddenly gain the weight back. So just don't do diets that have a fast turn around time when you're in a situation where you don't know the physical consequences and/or your emotional health may be at risk; they screw with both of them.

And I'm not going to tell you to be happy with the body you're at because I know it won't help. I will say, though, that asking friends and family for advice about your weight or ranting to them is the worst thing you can do for your self-esteem. They will undoubtedly bring it up later, and seeing as they care about you, you know you can never trust their opinions. If you really want help with your weight, join weight loss or self-help or figure friendly forums that will let you talk and give the advice of an outsider, kind of like what you're doing here (assuming you don't get the answer you want here).

All in all, just take care of yourself, and try to be confident. Take the clothes you look bad in and put them in a box; do not open it unless every other outfit you have is dirty or unavailable. Chances are, those clothes weren't made for your body type to begin with and look bad on you for that reason. The worst thing you can do to your self-esteem is to wear clothes that weren't made for someone who looks like you, but luckily, it's one of the easiest things to avoid.

The other really bad thing is mirrors. I suggest that you just stand in front of the mirror for a good half hour or so and accept that what you look like is what you look like what now. No amount of wishing is going to make that go away. There's a chance that you could lose that fat or gain that weight with this method or that method, but don't think about that - just think about accepting yourself. Even if you have to cry and hit yourself while you're doing it because you hate who you are, you still need to know that -that is who you are-. That is the first step to getting past a body image problem. Don't look at anyone else. Just look at yourself and know your body better than anyone else. You might not be prepared to turn around and rock that body, and maybe it's not a body worthy of being rocked, but it's your own, and it's the only thing that will stay with you for the entirety of your life. Even after surgery, the scars of it will stay with you. Your body is you, yours, now and forever, no matter how it looks, and no matter how much you hate it, or no matter how much you cover it up, it's yours, and there will be people who love it and people who hate it. Your body is you, and you are your life, but your life affects so many things that lose you when you get caught up in hating yourself. You may not be able to control the hatred, but know that it's not worth it and that it needs to be contained, little by little, through your effort and understanding of who you are.

Good luck o:

>>3 For the most part this. However, I disagree with lowering the amount you eat. Please note that I am NOT a dietician and I am assuming a pretty average metabolism. i.e. I'm assuming your weight concerns are behavioral and not genetic. If this is not the case, feel free to disregard the rest of this post.

I find that eating less is just exhausting and will cause you to give up quickly. The trick is not to eat less, but to eat right. Stop drinking sodas, stop eating things that are obviously unhealthy (like cake, candy, etc).

Replace them with healthy or semi-healthy alternatives. AIM FOR BETTER, NOT FOR PERFECT. Some people will probably argue that lemonade or fruit juices still have too much sugar (more than 0), but those choices are undeniably better than Coke and they are still pretty delicious. When I wanted to lose weight I found Cascade Ice drinks would fulfill my sweetness cravings without any calories (yes, there's plenty of other things wrong with those. They are not PERFECT, but they are BETTER).

Pretzels or nuts are an excellent alternative to candy/ice cream/cake/etc. They might not be the healthiest thing in the world, but they are BETTER than that chocolate-frosted chocolate cake.

It will be hard at first, but pretty soon your cravings for the taste of junk food will pass. I used to drink like...6 cans of coke a day. Then I stopped drinking it entirely. I'd get strong cravings when I has the opportunity to have some, but I didn't give in and soon I didn't care for it anymore. Now, I can drink it if there's nothing else, but I'm not worried about falling into my old habits.

Finally, exercise. Find some activity you enjoy doing, whether it's a sport, dance, running, swimming, or even just walking. All the dieting in the world won't help you if you don't exercise. You'll try eating less than you need, get frustrated and give up. Remember, you can eat as much as you like as long as you work it off later.

TL;DR
Eat as much as you need to but eat healthier. Aim for 'better', not 'perfect'. Exercise enough to burn off what you eat. This is the healthiest way to lose weight and the most likely to succeed.

>>3 I would have suggested a variable of this, but I find that it's much more difficult to do this unless you have someone living in your house who is going to purchase the right food for you. Considering she even had multiple jars of Nutella, I doubt her house is one which will support completely changing her diet style. Not all parents buy vegetables and bottled water or pretzels. (And by the way, most nuts are extremely fatty and shouldn't be used to substitute junk food unless eaten in very small doses.)

Plus, it's also not good for you to suddenly change the style of your diet; if you tend to eat a lot of chocolate, suddenly stopping eating chocolate will have a negative effect on your body, sometimes worse than the reverse. On the same note, if you usually drink water, suddenly drinking obscene amounts of soda will also negatively affect you. Ex- I used to eat a lot of chips, but I got worried when I was warned that they're not good for you, so I stopped. However, I immediately after started to get acne; if it was because of the chips, I would have gotten it before hand. Rather, it was because of the dietary change. My body was used to what I was eating and took a while to understand that I wasn't going to have any more of it. That's a stupid example, but the effects can be different, as well as better/worse, depending on the person. I frankly believe you should never spontaneously change the style of your diet without slowly working towards it. Changing the amount and time is healthier (in small doses) than doing such.

Again, any changes should be worked towards over time.

As for physical activities, remember that Ao isn't comfortable with her body. It's really, truly hard to exercise or take on a physical sport, especially one that has teams, when you can barely look at yourself. You feel ridiculous and can't appreciate any good that it might be doing. People often say that exercising will make you feel better because of what it releases, but sometimes your own emotional state can completely block that out, and you will only feel worse and worse if you try to do that before you're ready.

And even if you do exercise, you should never tell someone in this state that they can eat however much they want so long as they do; it's too difficult to judge, and it's very easy to get caught in that hole where you do ten jumping jacks and then eat eight bowls of cereal and lie to yourself, pretending that you exercised enough to get what you want. It just doesn't fit here.

What you're suggesting is like "chapter two" advice - it's for someone who has gotten past Ao's image problems and are now looking for the next step. We're not there yet.

Keep in mind that the method I gave in >>2 is not the best weight loss method per se, nor is it a detailed explanation of a healthy lifestyle, but I believe it is the path that will best emotionally and physically help Ao in the long run.

You need to work yourself up a little bit at a time; sometimes you just can't handle doing it all. It's 50/50 when you go all out and completely change your lifestyle and habits - you'll either feel amazing or will completely destroy your self-esteem beyond where it is already, and I don't believe that risk should be taken just yet.

Ai*

Mispelled her name a few times in that haha

Thank you you two for your responses, I really really appreciate that you want to help me and responded so accurately. I'll keep both your advices in mind and will try to find my best way out of all that trouble. I already do exercise so my physical stage itself isn't the real problem. I do both endurance sports and muscle training, at my house I have a treadmill and weights. The only problem is really just the food thing… so I realize that my body is trained, but with a certain fat layer on it which grows.. I started a while ago just to drink water after I drank every day nearly 3 to 4 liter of coke zero (that's not exaggerated). My teethes didn't like that, so I stopped, although it was hard. Unfortunately I compensated that with more chocolate. It's a kind of trap, because I started to drink more coke to stop chewing chewing gum (between one to three packs a day of wrigley's).

>>6 I'm really glad to hear that you do keep physically active regardless ^^ That's something you should never lose haha

I think that chewing gum is a better way to compensate for food than anything else, honestly. It's just important to stick to sugar-free gum so that it doesn't affect your teeth as badly. It's really good for your jaw, too, and I've heard (though not officially or anything) that it can help you get rid of neck fat, too, because it tightens up the skin around your jaw as it gets stronger. I don't know that for sure.

I can see where having so many packs a day is a problem, though. It kind of sounds like you have a particularly addictive personality but haven't found anything healthy enough to be worth being addicted to. Did you think of trying sugar free gum instead, or was that what you were already chewing? And have you ever thought about buying it in bulk to save your mom some money?

Just some thoughts in case you ever roll back to that.

It was already sugar-free gum and my mom was buying extra large packs, so I could live with one package in a month or so…
But either way thanks for your advice ^.^