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Hi all! I'm new to this forum but I'm hearing all the things I've been saying and I've heard many of my friends say for years. KREdwards mentioned antidepressants and JackJill mentioned hypnotherapy... the answer is there somewhere!
My wife is a counselor and has been using hypnotherapy for a few years for various problems including weight gain. I have listened to all the things she has been saying about life and the problems we all have. She often talks about how our life experiences, especially at a young age, shape the person that we are. This is key to understanding weight gain and why we have trouble, firstly getting it off and secondly keeping it off. Someone mentioned lack of will power, I think that could be a bit of denial. Will power implies that we are fighting against temptation - will power and temptation are two states of mind but they are in the same head. It's not lack of will power its just that we are setting ourselves different priorities and it just so happens that we consider eating things to make ourselves feel better NOW is more important than how much better we would feel in a few weeks time when we could be 10lbs lighter.
I now firmly believe that the only way we can all attack our weight problem is to try and understand why we are eating too much in the first place. I don't care what anybody says about hormones or genes or whatever else, those of us who are fat are fat because we eat too much! Why do we eat too much? that is down to each individual. My reasons, I think, are primarily lack of self esteem and the need to reward myself to make myself feel better. Perhaps when my mother used to give me treats (sweets, cakes and biscuits) for doing something right, she was unwittingly teaching me that eating those bad things was a good way of making me feel better, feel loved and successful. I also think that my Mother dying when I was seven, along with many other things, set behavioral patterns in my life that I am still struggling to deal with.
Psychology and human behavior is nothing new and I am sure, to the people who know, what I am saying is well understood if a little over simplified but I do believe we cannot hope to loose weight unless we understand why it is we are having this problem in the first place.
The antidepressants that KREdwards mentioned won't help the weight problem but they are an indication of what could be causing the weight problem. Counseling isn't cheap but a good counselor should be able to help you find out about yourself and help you understand what makes you tick - but you have to be willing to go through some serious soul searching. Good hypnotherapy is even better - but I don't mean the type of hypnosis you see at the theater. Good hypnotherapy, coupled with some counseling is about getting you into a "place" where you can explore some of the things in your subconscious mind that you have switched off or forgotten and it can help unblock some of the patterns and habits that make you do some of the seemingly stupid things you do. Hypnotherapy can also set up new behavioral patterns that can change the way you do things almost overnight.
I am setting up a website at the moment because I feel quite passionately about the whole subject of weight gain and I am learning more and more as I go (no links please) . The site isn't finished as I'm doing it in my spare time but it would be good get some feed back.
I hear and see comments on forums and websites about how people are struggling with the nitty gritty of their diets, which are often so wacky it's laughable, and I just want to shout from the rooftops "Just stop eating more than you need and get some exercise". But I know we are all complicated human beings (all very different) and it is clear that the problem is much deeper than will power and it is clearly a common problem to most of us.
Despite (or in spite of?) all the billions of pounds being spent in the slimming industry nobody has found a solution that really works. Its about our minds - we can't buy ourselves slim. I think it's ironic that the one group of people who are the most successful slimmers (anorexic - bulimic) are, with respect, amongst the most psychologically disturbed (if that's the correct terminology) and it often kills them.
We must aim for a healthier mind before we can hope to fix our weight problem. I know this doesn't help anybody's immediate problem but I hope you all have a little rethink and question if it is the detail that you are getting wrong or is it the whole approach. It is never going to be easy, you certainly can't fix it with a pill. So if you look at all the problems people are having here and about your own problems, see if you can see a pattern.
Counseling, hypnotherapy or something else? you should ask the question why? rather than how? Don't find clever ways of eating less, it's only temporary - ask yourself why you eat too much in the first place. It could be habit, lifestyle, comfort eating or something else - seek help - understand that and you may have the key to unlock your own weight gain problem.
Good Luck, Chubbyalan