About me:
Female, 28, Vegan (i.e. eat no meat, fish, dairy or eggs – been this way most of my adult life). Fairly sedentary office worker. Never had any problems with extra weight until recently.
Exercise = yoga 1-2 times a week plus walking in the woods pretending to be a Lothlorien Elf
(about 3-4 times a week).My weight has always been fairly healthy (BMI of 20-21), apart from being a little underweight in my early twenties. However, during the last year I put on 4kgs (approx 8 pounds), despite no obvious change to my eating / exercise habits. It may not seem like a significant amount of weight, but I’d like to loose a little to get back to what I feel is my “normal†size (and fit into my clothes again instead of having to buy a whole new wardrobe!).
Bad habits:
Overeating at meal times – friends and family have noted my large appetite and ability to eat a lot (people mistakenly assume that as a vegan I live on lettuce leaves or something) – my husband says that I can “eat him under the tableâ€
Grazing and snacking (nuts, dried fruit, crackers - nothing unhealthy but still has an impact)
Comfort eating, even if not hungry.
How I’ve found the S diet so far:
Very logical and not too extreme (being a vegan means my food choices are restricted anyway, so restricting whole food groups as suggested in other diets won’t work for me at all, and would probably mean I’d risk health issues, deficiencies etc.). I don’t feel deprived either which is great.
Not having sweets is easy, as I avoid sugar anyway and have for years.
Very much to my surprise it only took about 3 days to get used to not having seconds, and that was my biggest issue (I’d sometimes eat a plate of food, and then the same amount again!).
Not having snacks has been the hardest bit and I’ve not stuck to that very well. I’ve taken the very helpful advice from the people on here about how to ditch snacks, I’ve started eating larger meals (especially breakfast), which definitely helps.
I was interested in the recent posts which discussed how hunger and appetite has a strong psychological element. As mentioned I was underweight in my early twenties (mostly due to being a poor student taking dance training daily, plus a period of illness around the same time). After this phase I developed the mentality that I can and should eat as much as I can / want in order to build up and maintain a healthy weight. This mentality became quite engrained, but I’ve now realise that as I’ve become a fairly sedentary adult I need to change my mentality and re-evaluate my relationship with eating.
I look forward to reading more of the interesting posts on here. Thanks for listening
