Quote (carteblanche @ May 30 2012 09:32pm)
tldr when you're depressed and dont care about your health, the diet is one of the first things to go to hell :/
my dad's side of the family has been obese with diabetes for many generations. during middle/high school when i was old enough to understand diabetes, i got pretty paranoid about it, so i was somewhat skinny. i was careful to avoid eating sweets and i never added sugar to anything. my diet was mostly rice + soy sauce + cheese (weird, i know), spaghetti + cheese, and occassionally eat pizza, fast food, etc. when i started college, dad started swimming and watching his diet more carefully. he lost around 40 lbs in a year, which was a significant chunk. about halfway through college, my dad had gall bladder stones. my understanding is his body was over-producing bile because it's used to a high fat diet, but i'm sure you'd know more about it. so he had gall bladder removal surgery, and actually died from complications (which is extremely rare from what i'm told). since i saw he died despite trying to eat healthier, i just kinda said fuck it and ate all the sweets i've missed out on. i decided to replace sugar with splenda if it was easy, otherwise stick with sugar. i never heard of stevia at this time, it was just aspartame vs splenda. i started off with fewer packs, but then i guess my taste buds started adapting so i needed more and more. 20-30 packs per cup of coffee (3-4 per day), 5 per 8oz cup of diet mountain dew (poured from a 2L bottle, so 6-8 of these a day), sprinkle a few over ice cream/cookies/brownies, and of course i'd eat some straight from the packets throughout the day. back then 80+% of my calories were nothing but sweets (chocolate, cakes, ice cream, etc).
that went on for about two years. that's when i first posted here (sept 2010ish) to get healthier. i tried to transition away from sweets and towards pasta/meat, but it's been hard. and as you can imagine, going from super-sweet drinks to plain water isn't fun either. today i'm managing about 1-2L of plain water and 2L of diet soda (without extra sweeteners). i am improving the water:nonwater ratio over time, which is good. i stopped adding extra sweeteners to most things. i eliminated coffee from my diet also. instead of buying sweets, i'm baking with stevia (1:3sugar ratio) as a healthier alternative. i have a lot of room for improvement, but i'm slowly getting there.
I'm sorry to hear about your father.
However, you know that he would want you to be healthy and avoid going down the same path that he did as a young man.
Your goal now is to be as healthy as possible.
With regard to sweets....hearing that you were adding splenda to already sweet items shows that your taste buds were severely diminished with regard to sweetness.
You have the power to control this, and first order of business is cold turkey. Go 2 weeks with nothing even remotely sweet. Eat high fiber foods, meats, complex carbs, and veggies. Even stay away from fruit. Drink only water or unsweet tea.
It will suck, you will hate it, but just DO IT. Force yourself to do it. After two weeks, your body will have recovered enough to start being able to taste sweetness properly. You can reintroduce fruits and lightly sweet foods (stevia only).
I would sharply advise willpower here. The long term effects of sucralose and aspartame is carcinogenic when taken in high enough doses. It's safe to say that your doses were beyond high for a normal person.