SusanneUK

Thanks for the welcome, Bob! I'm the same, I quit smoking in 1999 with the help of a message board like this - it was the hardest thing I'd ever done, but that community pulled me through. So I know the power of these, and have never found this in social media! (This makes me sound very old... I'm not THAT old, I just quit smoking at 19 after a pack-a-day habit from age 13)

Oh goodness, same!! I actually did IF for five years, with a five hour eating window. Five years, and it NEVER got easier. I'm a breakfast person, I wake up hungry, so I ended up miserable all morning - around my kids. Not good. Plus, I can eat volume, so when I was finally able to eat I would have a healthy meal and then all bets were off - I couldn't stop, I couldn't control what I was eating, so I basically binged my way through five hours until I could physically eat no more, and I was GAINING weight towards the end. Starving AND fat. Misery! Like you, I'm so glad to be here and to feel so peaceful around food. My entire life I've never felt this way.

Welcome Bev, I'm just across from Wales, in Bristol! I'm new here too, and haven't lost any weight either (carnivore since 1 Feb '24) but feeling so at peace around food is worth it, even if I never lose any! That said, I do hope it happens for you (and me) soon

It's Friday and I try to avoid eating meat on Fridays (I'm Catholic) so - B - 3 egg yolks and 1 whole egg, scrambled & 1 cup of Kefir (home made with raw milk) L - can of salmon and can of tuna, mixed, butter added (that was a true penance - not eating that again!) D - fried salmon I hate fish. Might need to do egg days on Fridays. Victory of the day: my son (7) asked for eggs for breakfast instead of porridge, and after having them, he said he'd want eggs again tomorrow!

Hi everyone, I'm new here and wanted to introduce myself. Is this forum new? It's so awesome to find this - in my continued quest to minimise my Facebook use, and to find a message board that is actually easy to navigate by topic, this here is a Godsend! I was a member of ZIOH back in 2009, and did this for a short time. But I was hopelessly stuck in my food addiction and mental obsession, so did not stay. Before and after my short stint into ZIOH, I was vegan; 1999ish to 2020. What can I say about that time - I think my body coped better than many, at least I didn't develop any major conditions apart from polycystic ovaries; but I was fat, tired, and in very bad shape. Mentally, things were desperate. In 2004, I found a 12-Step programme for food addiction where I had to plan my meals for the next day in advance, commit them to my sponsor every day, and eat exactly what I had committed. That was three meals a day, weighed and measured precisely. This was a low-carb programme in that it elimiated sugars, grains and starches; but I was using soya as my protein, so it still wasn't all that healthy. It did get me out of the mental obsession, however. I left that programme in 2008/9, and that's when I went totally off the rails and then tried to pull myself out of that haze by going zero carb. But I did not stay. Today, looking back, I'm really unable to say why I didn't stick with it for the long term - maybe I hadn't suffered enough yet? I left, went vegan again, and things went out of control really fast. Bingeing and fasting, sugar fog, madness. So eventually I went back into that 12-Step programme, and stuck with that for four years. In late 2023 though, it began to chafe. I was less and less willing to go to these lengths, to prepare all my meals and weigh and measure them, to spend so much time on preparing and still not having mental freedom. I remembered ZC. On 1st February I took the plunge, and it took a lot of courage - would I lose all control again? I did not. The four years of recovery, away from sugars and grains and starches, had given me a basis to stand on. Now I'm able to think long-term, not worry about what the scale says this week. My weight has gone up since the switch (as the previous diet was rather restrictive) but I can trust that meat won't make me obese, and I'm here for my health and for the long haul. But also, for peace with food, which I finally and for the first time in my life truly feel. That right there is the greatest thing for me right now. Good to be here. I hope to meet some companions on this road, get involved, really find community here - which is so hard to do on FB. Please do say hi if you've read this. All the best!