hi.

yesterday i weighed myself and i had gained two lbs, putting myself at my highest weight ever. i am overweight and it's something that's always on my mind, but i guess yesterday was the straw that broke the camel's back, and combined with the depression that i just seem to chronically experience, i felt so bad about myself it was almost unbearable.

so last night i signed up for an online diet program. i guess i was feeling a little nuts at the time, because i have done ediets and ww online before and cancelled them both after a month. but for some reason i felt like i just had to, and now here i am this morning feeling sick to my stomach because i regret it so much. first of all, i just quit my job two weeks ago so our money is really tight and we just don't have the cash to spend on stupid whims like this, and i feel really guilty about blowing the 20 bucks.

second, today i have been looking at the program and it is just crap. it's the webmd diet clinic, if anyone is curious. i don't think i would even be able to follow it for a month. it just seems totally unworkable for me. they didn't really explain how the program worked before signup, and i was just so crazy that i went ahead and joined anyway. i have lost weight before (even though i started feeling bad and gained it all back) so i know how to do it if i can motivate myself. so i don't know why i did this.

i just emailed their customer service asking for a refund but i don't think they are going to give it to me because it looks like there's something in the agreement about how you can't cancel during the first month. so now i'm feeling fat and really ashamed of wasting the little money we actually have.

First of all, :hug: You sound a lot like me. I have joined(and cancelled) e diets several times. I have joined the shape online program, the South Beach online program and I always cancel right away because when I think about it with a clear head, I know it isn't right for me. I have joined Weight Watchers literally 15-20 times in the past two years but I never go more than 3 weeks. For me, weight loss programs are like a purge after a binge. I would always sign up for those programs after I have eaten a lot of food. Right now I am trying to stop this behavior. I have to talk myself out of rejoining weight watchers on a weekly basis. I don't really have any answers for you but I can recomend a book that has helped me enormously. It is called Eating In The Light Of The Moon. I forget the author. I think I even heard about it on VB. It would be pretty crappy if they don't give you your money back. I hope they do and I hope you feel better soon!

thanks for responding. i forgot that i joined the ishape program because i cancelled it the next day, and i'll admit that i have joined ediets and ww online more than once. i always feel like the only way i can get back on track is to pour my money into this crap. the only thing i haven't regretted paying for is the fitday software, and it is a great help when i can actually motivate myself.

thank you so much for recommending that book. i work with myths in a lot of areas of my life so it looks like something i could really get a lot out of. maybe it will even help me figure out what my problem with food is, because i really don't know. i think about food almost all the time, and i'm ashamed of how much i overeat, but i don't seem to fit any of the usual examples of disordered eating because i don't necessarily eat when i'm sad or anything.

i didn't know that anyone else had this problem with diet programs. i thought i must be so weird and crazy.

Why don't you try focusing more on exercise? That's the best way to lose weight. In my experience, regardless of how I eat, if I don't exericise, I don't lose much. But once I start exercising regularily, it comes off! Try doing half an hour 5 days a week.

The only way I lost the weight and kept it off (2 years now) is by forgetting about dieting and focusing on healthy eating and moderate exercise. Some of my dietary changes seem extreme to some (no refined sugar or flour in addition to being vegan), but when I stopped worrying so much about how much I was eating and when, the what became very doable for me. Of course you don't have to be as extreme as me, but my point is that the worrying about losing weight makes actually losing weight so much harder! Let yourself think about food all the time, but try to shift your focus to healthful foods you like and physical activities that you enjoy. Don't weigh yourself for a while. I didn't weigh myself for almost a year, and when I finally did, I found that I'd lost 35 pounds just because my lifestyle was so much healthier. Hope this helps...

I have 2 book recommendations for you.The Author is Jean Antonello.The first book is titled "How To Become Naturally Thin By Eating More" and the other book is titled "Breaking Out Of Food Jail".
I cannot recommend these two books enough.
Basically Jean explains why we should not diet and to eat when we are hungry until we are not hungry.
Please check these books out.You can try your local library to see if they have them.I bought my 2 copies off of half.com for a really cheap price. :)
Good luck!

VM