I’m finding myself getting “food jealousy”

Whenever I see people eating in reality shows, or even with my roommate, I find myself feeling envious. My roommate: male, a little shorter than me, leads a very sedentary lifestyle; works remotely, hates leaving the house, etc. He eats at any time of the day, often after 11pm, plays video games, lives off of chips, white flour products, microwave meals and Safeway brownies. And he’s thin. On tv i see people eating pancakes or tacos and I just ache for them. But how tf does one even begin to track or calculate a meal like that?? Aside from going into the kitchen of a restaurant myself and manually measuring everything they do myself there’s no way to trust how much of what is actually on my plate. How do people manage?? Me: IF daily with eating window of 7:30am-3:30pm every day. I do Pilates everyday, hike to summit increases of 1,000ft 3-4 a week. I get my steps in. Track my calories. Weight loss feels like a double edge sword because when the scale goes down so does my calorie allowance. Also a thousand percent confused by my “basal calorie” need. Some sites say by calculation it’s 1400. Others say 1800…I’m so fucking confused. And I’m becoming more and more disillusioned with the American standard of “nutrition”. I’m learning there is a HUGE difference in measuring things by cups vs weight. Also how there seems to be zero standard in how foods are measured: I saw a serving of pretzels measured in cups…wtf? I am aware that this may sound disordered, but at the same time I feel it’s the system that I’m in as well. America’s approach to food is…bizarre.

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You’re getting what’s called analysis paralysis.

Take a step back, breathe, try to re simplify the process. You don’t want to get too overwhelmed by focusing too much on the data. As long as the scale is moving in the right direction at the end of the week your okay.

Don’t forget to be kind to yourself as well.

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I think there is A LOT we don’t understand about personal nutrition in general, not just in the US. There is no magic number, no perfect diet for everyone to eat and be in perfect health. We’re all different and that’s why some of us will always struggle with weight and others will never know what that feels like. IT SUCKS!

I completely get that feeling of frustration in not know exactly what you’re eating if you eat out, the discrepancies in weighing vs measuring, etc. I had to let that go and just do the best I can. I track the best I know and hope I did well. I will say it’s easier when you have 70 lbs to lose, there’s a lot of room for error (I started with 180lbs to lose). I’m not looking forward to every.single.calorie mattering, sigh. I think a lot of this is trial and error to figure out what works for you specifically.

Sorry, I don’t have much to say to make you feel better, just know you’re not alone.

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lol my husband bought home a large pizza and some Mozzarella sticks after my fasting time ended. Found myself so tempted. I mean REALLY tempted. I looked about 4 times and moved on. Lol the jealousy was real tho

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I must be evil because I sometimes get a weird schadenfreude when I see others eating during my fasts. Perhaps it is how my mind protects against the envy you refer to.

On a side note - YDY, but seems to me that people focusing on ‘base calories’ are the ones more likely to end up making posts along the lines of “Why is IF not working for me?” (I only counted since before may though)

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Someone I know who has been thin their whole life and eats lots of sugar and “junk” recently got some bad cardiac news. I used to feel so jealous about what they seemed able to consume and stay thin, but it wasn’t actually consequence free. They were less genetically blessed than they seemed to be. Everybody has their struggles.

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most thin people eat whatever but less amounts, they tend to go long periods without eating because “they forgot”

you can follow your plan 80% of the time and eat whatever tacos or pancakes you ache for 20% of the time and still make progress