Please Help Me!

[Taltots]

I started Atkins AGAIN a few months ago and was doing really well with a friend! It was great as he rents a cottage attached to our house and we all grew up together in Africa and share a great friendship and he really helped to give me the support and to say he bullied me into sticking to the diet is an understatement - it was great!! I lost 16lbs in 3 weeks. Unfortunately he travels with his work and he has been away for 4 weeks and I have fallen at the first hurdle......put all the weight back on due to all the bread, chocolate, pasta and sugar I am throwing down my throat!

I realise that I am a stress eater and at the moment my husband and I have dreadful money problems and are probably going to lose our business within the next month or so! I have ordered the Bach Flowers Emotional Eating Kit in the hope that some homoeopathic remedies might help me with the vicious circle I am caught in.

I am planning to re-start the diet tomorrow and Jeremy will be back in his cottage at the beginning of July so my support will be there for a while but he will be away again at the end of July so I need to be able to support myself and DO THIS! I am unhappy with how I look but just seem to hide more in my food which makes it worse!

I have my closest friend coming over to visit us in Spain - I haven't seen her for 6 years and since then I have gained 40lbs at least, another friend flies in to join us for a week and they all have lost weight and look great- the more I think of it the more I panic and the more I eat.

Does anyone have any advice they can give me? Please help!

Love Anna

[liv]

Anna,
We have a show here in North America called Dr. Phil. He helps people with problems. Dr. Phil would probably say that you are giving your fried Jeremy power over you. So when he is around you can succeed, when he is gone you can allow yourself to fail. It is all in you to change this cycle. You have to believe in yourself.

You can do it. It is not always easy but work at it again. Visit us every day and tell us what you do an how it is going. You can join the buddy thread.

[neihu]

I think a lot of us are stress eaters - that is why we are here.

I have had a very bad week, a family member I was very close to died and I thought i failed a very important exam ( I found out today that I didn't). I have been eating crap all week - it started with half a muffin at the hospital - and four days later i ate some cookies and a piece of toast with jam - not good! I decided yesterday that I had had enough of feeling sorry for myself - and am back on track. I have managed to work out every day throughout the stress- and I am really glad for it - I might not be doing any good, but at least I am minimizing the damage.

My point is, there are always things that will stress us out - there are a million excuses of why I ate this or that - but it doesn't matter - the point is that I did - and now I need to deal with it.

Are you working out? Can you find another buddy to support you while your good friend is gone? And what about your husband? Is he supportive?

You can do this!

[Taltots]

My hubby is around but he says he has given up cos I start then stop, start then stop! Plus I must admit as much as I love him I find him support not too constructive - he tends to be very critical if he sees me eating something he thinks I shouldn't be eating. Also he is very down on Atkins and does not agree with it at all so he is always very negative.

That makes sense about me giving Jeremy the power to help me succeed - time to take it back as you say. I will have a look at this Dr Phil guy, is he on Oprah a lot?

I have decided I am not going to make a song and dance about starting back on Atkins tomorrow just slide into it quietly, then my husband can't start the lectures etc and being down on the whole thing as it just gets me all wound up and I will fall at the first hurdle!

Thanks for your advice ladies and it is very nice to meet you both.......maybe I need to compete with Jeremy and not use him as my crutch! The bugger has lost about 2 and a half stone!!!

[chinadoll]

You need to make yourself succeed. It isn't about Jeremy or anyone else. Until you get serious about committing and doing this for yourself and looking at it as a positive change in your life, you'll keep slipping. There's no magic formula. You have to want to be healthy and thin more than you want a lousy piece of cake. Here's the thing--is it the last cake you will ever see? the last cookie? the last loaf of bread? Of course not. So pass it up until you get to your goal and by then you will have learned that eating well and being healthy is the real reward.