Hi Anita,

I’m so pleased to hear from you. I’m sorry you’ve had bouts of anxiety but it’s so positive to hear you’ve been able to ease it through movement / exercise. It speaks volumes of your growth that you are able to resort to exercise as opposed to past behaviours to deal with your anxiety.

My typical eating in a day will be:

Breakfast:
Oats with semi-skimmed milk and a tiny bit of honey; with either blueberries or a banana or apple.

Lunch:
Salad (tomatoes, kale, spinach, peas, beans, carrots) with chicken cooked by my parents/ me in a dash of olive oil and spices

Dinner
fish with the above salad.

Sometimes I will have a snack – during the day like an orange or a handful of blueberries or a snack after dinner, like a small bowl of popcorn or ice cream, but I ensure it’s in a bowl instead of out of the packet/tub. Today I had a flapjack my mum and I made.

Hi Thomas and Anita,

Thank you both so much for your replies and Thomas, please never apologise for cutting in. I’m grateful you are here!

Yes, it is extreme, and it may not work, but I am going to just make small choices every day that future me will look ahead and be proud of and past me won’t ruminate on. So maybe it won’t always be T-total, but I have given up chocolate and cake for lent before, and that went okay. It is only temporary until I find myself to feel more comfortable around that kind of food. I will not, however, be punishing myself like I have done in the past. If I slip up or make a choice that isn’t fully aligned, I will smile, dust myself off, and tell myself don’t worry, the next one will be better. ☺️

I wish you both a wonderful year.

♥️Mollie

Anita, thank you so much for sharing. It’s so lovely to hear how you have progressed and you haven’t looked back. Of course, as with these things, there are moments of difficulty (like never liking to gain weight, I can relate to that).

I too would like to lose weight and for a long time put it off because I was scared of relapsing into restriction. But I trust myself more now. And I know that I can find the balance between being restrictive and indulgent : two ends of the spectrum that I have stood on and neither fully aligning with who I am. I think I have compared myself with how I was at school – which is hard to emulate given that I was not conscious of how much I was eating and moving, those things just seemed to flow. I one day hope to get back to that. I’ve faced the past five years of
1. Overindulgent
2. Fitting myself to my first boyfriend’s taste
3. Losing the weight due to break up grief
4. A non-focused weight year
5. Working a stressful job and using food as an emotional comfort, particularly living alone, and then living a binge-restrict cycle where I was my lowest weight ever and lost my period 🙁
6. Dabbling between the school of ‘eat what you want when you want’ but this not aligning with me and being reminiscent of year 1. I am determined not to repeat the cycle!

Why do you think these things happen to us? I wonder about that sometimes. I’ve sort of outlined my reasons, if you want to share I would love to hear.

And thank you for saying that about parental perfectionism. I am too hard on them sometimes and forget they are human too.

My intention today was be grateful and I feel very grateful that despite a tough, non-productive day, I experienced what I did; and turned to Tiny Buddha. I feel supported by you so I thank you.

Hi Anita,
I hope you are doing well and I hope you have enjoyed a peaceful festive season.

Yes, often a lot of they, which sits in tension between me and my own thoughts, i.e., did I do this to myself? Am I making the right choice?

I am feeling stuck, a bit low and sad to report that I have just binged on chocolate. I just am stuck in this loop of feeling tired > worrying about my weight, given a relatively sedentary lifestyle as a student even though I am trying to exercise and eat well > turning to poorer decisions with food > having moments of guilt after eating said food. It feels like a loop that I cannot see through until April 2026, when the exams will be over.
All of the advice: “go to bed early”, “Eat healthy”, “move often”, “don’t overthink it” is ringing in my ears and I am trying my best to live by it but moments like these make it hard. I relentlessly cry and although I speak to my Mum and therapist about it, and quitting is not what I want to do, I just am seeing the next few months down a barrel but desperately want to hold onto hope.

I’m really sorry for coming to you with a host of different problems. This sounds selfish but I have sort of had enough with the mental battles/adversity/difficult experiences and feel as if I have gone from one hard experience to another, but that through my own mind, I am making things worse than they are?

Peace,
Riya <3

Yes, I believe I was an anxious woman from a young age as much as that pains me to admit.

Whilst I was confident and outspoken, there was a lot going on at home. My parents were worried about my brother, there were arguments at home, to the extent that I would develop tension in my tummy (what I now know to be anxiety).

I just am tired of feeling lost, Anita. I’m tired of my brain going into overdrive when I am tired. I wish I could just hug my inner child and make her feel safe and that there was no rush. One thing about this course is that it’s jam-packed, full of classes and exams, with no breathing space. And I feel that with London too. And with OCD mindset, there is the B/W thinking. Which I am getting much better at exiting and embracing the grey and messiness of life.

I suppose days like today, where you wake up and don’t feel like it, and don’t achieve what you hope to, don’t make us failures, but make us human. I don’t necessarily need to jeopardise the idea of being a lawyer. But I want it to come from my own heart. And, because I was achieving all the time and trying to achieve the best at school, my parents (as much as I love them) perpetuate the cycle of this is the profession for you, because it’s the best one and you are the best. as much as they say they’ll always support me, I don’t know whether it’s always true.

Peace 💚

Hi Anita,

Thank you so much for your message and I’m sorry to reappear on the forum in a time of need.

That ex I’ve spoken about. We rekindled in the summer and had a lovely time but mutually decided it was best to end things at this stage in our lives. It was amicable and there were no hard feelings.

There was a gift sent to me by him yesterday as he had alluded to sending me something and wanted to keep his promise. It was a lovely thoughtful gesture and I loved it. It opened up a dialogue where I thanked him and asked how he was doing and he said badly, and we called for 3 hours where he told me about two terrible misfortunes that he has been through in the past few months which have caused him to be depressed. He said some troubling things which have only truly sunk in with me a day after. I’m concerned for his wellbeing and his being on the other side of the world is not helping. I’ve told him to keep talking to me and sending messages.

I’m facing two difficulties here. Firstly, a concern for his wellbeing. He doesn’t open up to others and I know will be facing a lot alone so I just want to know he’s alright. Again, someone can tell you they’re fine but not be fine you know? Secondly, I’m concerned for myself. I want to support him without being dragged into his problems and whilst maintaining the sort of ‘no contact’. It’s hard when someone you care about is suffering – I now know what my mother went through when watching me go through a breakup, you feel helpless. But I guess I want to Keep focus on my studies but keep the hand to him open.

Ps if you see that one of the messages I sent to this forum is reported, it was by me by accident ! I’m so sorry!

Dear Anita and Alessa,

Thank you both for your compassionate and thoughtful responses. I really do appreciate it so much!

Anita – black-or-white thinking is exactly how my brain has been engineered, and it, combined with perfectionism, is probably my biggest struggle. I have days filled with hope and others, like today, where I am bored and struggle to get through the day. And then I don’t know how I can unwind or feel fulfilled after a day like this – do I see friends/read/watch a film? It’s like my capacity to make decisions is impaired by this job. That said, come July 2025 when I leave, I don’t want to believe that all my problems (of which there are few, as like I said, I have good health, a happy family and a home with food in the fridge) will dissipate. For example, I struggle with grey weather, and now the sun is shining in the city, and today I am just feeling…unfulfilled. So was it the weather at all? I think I am in need of a break perhaps? I just want to restore my hope and find my purpose, which I think has been significantly impaired by my job, as it can be characterised as being stressful and boring on most days. I think that when working in an environment like this since November, it naturally will take its toll. What do you think? I have always been an optimist, glass-half-full, confident person, and I don’t like feeling like this!

Alessa – thank you for your response. I do think that I have ‘survived’ the past few years and struggled through them, as opposed to being in school where I loved every day (although I’m sure there are days where I struggled, but it wasn’t to the same degree). I do like to plan and have things to look forward to, but as I mentioned to Anita, my decision-making feels off at the moment, and I’ve lost a level of satisfaction in what I tend to plan. Indeed, things have massively improved with my family as a result of my decision to no longer speak to this guy, although he returns in June and I will see him. He didn’t do anything wrong per se but I am pondering what to say to him when he returns.

I know I have made progress over the past few months, and I guess what I am looking for is some level of reassurance that, I won’t necessarily ‘go back’ to how I felt in the summer, but find joy consistently again, as opposed to having moods or feelings that change on a regular basis (which I know is normal given the complexity of humans, but it’s unlike me as I am a rather happy-go-lucky, positive, half-glass-full girl). I’m hoping that I can attribute a lot of my feelings and ‘messy’ headspace to this job.