Comment by woutr_be | Hacker News Reader

Comment by woutr_be | Hacker News Reader

I've been really struggling with my weight for the past few years. It has gotten to a point where it's affecting my social life and my mental health. I've always been fairly introverted and shy, but nowadays I find myself sitting at home wishing I was out with friends, or wishing someone would text me.

I'm a fairly active gym-goer, but I have incredibly bad eating habits, so instead of losing, or just maintaining weight, I've been slowly gaining it. This combined with my general shyness and low confidence, has caused me to just cancel social events, and stay home. And of course eat fast food to compensate. I'm struggling with sleep, and I'm at a point where I don't care much for work anymore (I've been arriving late, and leaving early for the past few months). I realize I'm borderline depressed, and my best guess is that my weight is the major cause of this.

Try to stay positive, looks like you have a good idea what the issues are which means you can plan to make it better. Ideally you should do your best to find someone who can help by simply talking these issues though, ideally face to face. It looks to me that it's food that's the problem rather than your weight, so why not look at that first. With a longer term view; try to reverse that trend of weight slowly going on, to weight slowly going off. Things that worked for me are intermittent fasting (mostly because it's easier to follow than diets), and some rules around processed food. Try to go with foods with under 5 ingredients, prioritising foods that are low in sugars or flours (wheat, cornflour, etc). If you slip, don't sweat it, just get back to it as soon as you can.

Thanks, my weight is the aftermath of the unhealthy food, and I do consider it my biggest problem. I constantly feel embarrassed when doing things, I feel shy when meeting new people, constantly wondering whether they're judging me on my weight or not. I've been trying for years to eat healthier, tried intermittent fasting as well. Usually it works for a few days, and then I screw it up over the weekend. I think that constant failure is having a negative impact on everything else too.

I do IF weekdays only, as I know I'll screw it up weekends. It's not as effective as if I did it every day obviously, but it's still better than not doing it at all!

How old are you? Check for Low T

I'm nearing 30 soon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com