Food and weight gain

[Roxy]

I've always been a very fussy eater. When I was young there were times when my mother just seemed to give up on trying to find something for me to eat, which resulted in me becoming very hungry. If I wasn't prepared to eat what everyone else ate, I went without or snacked on stuff that's really not good for me.

I've always gone through stages where a particular food is my current favourite and I'll eat it a couple of times a week or more, but then after a few months I'll get fed up with it.

It's not that I don't like things, it's more the anxiety that surrounds me trying new foods. Even if I do find a new food I like, doesn't mean I can eat it. I usually find, the very thought of having it inside me makes me feel nauseous.

The result is that I eat food that's really not good for me. I have a very limited diet, consisting of a lot of high fat, high sugar food. I've always been big but now it's way out of control.

I was put on Quetiapine a couple of years ago after 10 years of severe depression. It's helped a lot. Around the same time I was diagnosed with AS, which also helped a lot. The Quetiapine makes me feel hungry, something I fear (probably as a result of feeling so hungry as a child).

I don't know how to overcome all this. I need the Quetiapine (this is the happiest I've felt in years). I want to have a more varied and healthy diet but I don't know how to achieve this.

 

[wyverary]

I am on quetiapine myself, and while initially it did cause an increase in appetite, there are now in my own situation a number of mitigating factors that have come into play.

My advice? Just go out and buy a good cookbook! Preferably one that has a big variety of meals, ingredients, and styles. Variation is absolutely key to make sure you're getting all the nutrients and proteins you need to be healthy, even if you don't eat all of them every day (which would be impossible anyway). There are even some web sites and apps that you can get that let you plug in whatever food/ingredient you think suits your nutritional needs and it'll pop up with a plethora of recipes involving that ingredient. Remember, just because you don't like one particular thing, there can be many different ways of preparing it, some of which can be much tastier than others.

When you grocery shop, have a list, but also be open to new things. Spend as much time as you can in the meat and produce aisles, and if you run into something--anything--you don't recognize, look it up (either on the spot, or write it down when you get home). If you're lucky, your shop will also have a good selection of various grains--quinoa, flax, barley, and others, all have excellent nutritional value.

And, perhaps this goes without saying....exercise. Nutrition is variable, but when it comes to weight, it pretty much comes down to "calories in, calories out." I have the luxury of going on long, hilly hikes, but find something that you enjoy, that gets you worked up at least three times a week.

I hope this helps a little. Perhaps others will have more/better input than mine, heh.

wyv

 

[Marmot]

There's no such thing as an overweight marathon runner, so the way I see it: You can calculate it from the consumption side and forcefully ration what you eat, or from the metabolic side and forcefully ration your calorie burn. I once went so far as to correlate the number of calories that were in my favorite beer to the number of miles I had to run (at a given weight & muscle mass because those change as you get in better & better shape), to be able to consume a certain number of beers that evening with a net zero calorie gain.

Personally, I'd rather geek it out and push myself physically and have that extra strip of bacon & another beer than be sedentary and eat low calorie stuff with my stomach growling.....