Have you ever stepped on your bathroom scale and heard yourself yell, “I can’t take it anymore!” or maybe it was more like “Oh I just cannot go on another diet!” or “How can that number be right? My scale must be broken.” Or maybe it was the all-time classic, “The dryer shrank my clothes again.”

Are you a diet professional? Have you been on so many diets hoping and knowing this time will be different? Have you ever lost weight only to have it creep back on before you even knew that you had lost it? If this sounds familiar, you are not alone.

I have been on my weight loss journey for what seems like my entire life. Years ago I weighed in at over 300 pounds. I had to learn that dieting the way I was dieting did not work. Dieting made me more preoccupied with food, the number on the scale, and feelings of guilt and shame. Eating too few calories slowed down my metabolism and made it hard to lose weight. Eating too many calories added weight. I kept telling myself, “Just eat less and move more, and you will lose weight.” That did not really work well for me, so I eventually started making wishes on birthday cakes, mine and the birthday cakes of everyone else. Needless to say, that did not work well either.

I had knowledge of calories, carbohydrates, and fat grams, and I could count calories like I was a human abacus. However, this knowledge did not guarantee a weight loss for me. As a matter of fact, all that knowledge often caused me more stress and more guilt. I would say things to myself like, “I know what to do, so just do it.” “I’m a smart person and can do this once I put my mind to it.” “I would have lost weight by now if I had money for proper diet food or a diet program.” Basically, I used what I now like to call poison words: woulda, coulda, shoulda. I had intense feelings of guilt, disappointment, and self-disgust.

It really hurts to not succeed when trying to do everything right. The harder I tried, the more trapped, frustrated, and hopeless I felt. So what do you do when feelings of shame, guilt, and hopelessness make you want to give up and throw in the towel for good?

FIRST: It is important to explore what fuels your overeating. Ask the hard questions, do you eat when you are happy, sad, stressed, hurt, bored, scared, mad, overspending or over scheduled? Perhaps you overeat out of habit because there is Halloween candy or free party food at your fingertips. Identify what and when you overeat and make note of the feelings as you are trying to submerge them. For me, each feeling was attached to either salty, sweet, or savory flavors, and I knew what foods I wanted to keep me from feeling something hurtful or painful.

SECOND: Agree diets do not work. Behavioral life changes that can last a lifetime are what works. Reject the diet mentality. Learn when your body is actually hungry. You may not remember what being physically hungry really feels like and may need to relearn this feeling. Make peace with food because food is your friend and needs to be used wisely.

THIRD: Eat enough calories! According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, a relatively inactive female weighing 200 pounds should eat between 2,000 and 2,300 calories to maintain this weight. However, a moderately active woman weighing 200 pounds needs 2,400 to 2,700 calories daily to maintain this weight. The rule of thumb is approximately 10 calories per pound per day when inactive and 12 calories per pound per day for people who are moderately active to maintain their current weight. A pound of fat contains roughly 3,500 calories, so provided your weight is currently stable, you should aim to reduce your calorie intake by 500 calories per day to lose one pound per week.

FOURTH: Listen to your body and learn what it feels like to be physically hungry. You may have forgotten what true physical hunger feels like. Before you eat anything ask yourself, “Is this physical hunger or emotional hunger?” When you are physically hungry you will be eating to fill a physical need. Emotional hunger is an attempt to satisfy an emotional need and unfortunately too much emotional eating can lead to serious weight problems. When you want food and your body is not physically hungry, it is important to stop what you are doing, look at what you are eating, and listen to what your body is telling you. You might be thirsty, anxious, sad, scared, angry, bored or even tired. Identify the emotion, and then allow yourself to feel it. Compulsive overeating only fills emotional voids for a short time, and then the compulsive overeating cycle begins again. To break the cycle, invest time in yourself to learn the difference between physical and emotional hunger. Learn how to identify your feelings, and then allow yourself to actually feel the feelings so you can make healthy changes. The goal is to learn how to eat when you are physically hungry and stop when you are comfortably full.

FIFTH: Anger, guilt, fear, shame, anxiety, boredom, stress, embarrassment, and loneliness are true emotions and are present for a reason. Many people reach for food to ease emotional hunger. But of course emotional eating does not work for the long haul. It is good to take the time to figure out what emotions you are trying to deal with and learn how to cope with them without overeating. I know this is much easier said than done because my own weight loss journey has been long, and sometimes it has been confusing and painful. But I am here to tell you the journey was worth it because I am worth it and so are you.