Actually, it is.
No, it really isn’t. On the right plan–moderate calorie restriction, moderate exercise, and whatever combination of macronutrients and fiber works for you–it doesn’t have to be an unending hell of fighting temptation. Diets are not penance.
Right. And every single fat person I’ve ever known simply refuses to discipline themselves to do those things. They make every excuse in the book, claim that they have “fat genes”, then sneak off to stuff their faces with donuts.
Of course you are right. The solutions are also multifold and like many medical issues there is no one right way. Just as hypertension (or nearly any other condition) patients may need to try different drugs to find the one that works (along with a change in diet), so must the obese patient.
Naturally as your body mass decreases as will your BMR. That is supposed to happen. Naturally someone who is morbidly obese wouldn’t be smart to go from eating 4000 calories a day to 1500 as that is too drastic of a change and allows little room for adjusting downward. Making smarter choices to reduce the caloric intake daily while also incorporating exercise regularly (at least 4x a week) move the patient toward weight loss in a sensible yet sustainable habit.
If the patient is exercising while decreasing calories the chance that muscle will be lost before and at a greater rate than fat is highly improbable.
Yes, the body will start to try to hold on to the calories you give it if you go from 3000 calories a day to 1500, but a steady decrease over weeks (sometimes months) allows the body to adapt and as stamina increases so should exercise to help increase the metabolic rate as the BMR starts to decrease along with body mass.
In 2000 the rate of morbid obesity was 2%. In 2005 it was 3%. The last CDC report I saw was 4.7%. I’d have to dig it through for a direct cite, but American Obesity Society reports it here. That rate of increase is significant. Also, keep in mind these are self reporting numbers so they are most likely low. You seem to be indicating (it seems to me, maybe you’re not) that co-morbitities like diabetes are only found in the morbid obese and that’s simply untrue.
What scary to me is that among the patients I’ve worked with there are many who are 80+ pounds overweight who believe that because they’re not “super obese” they are somehow not at risk. Obesity is fairly progressive and although not all reach a 40+ BMI it isn’t something that generally stops over time. Also, I see many people who are quite young and quite overweight who almost brag “I don’t have high blood pressure (diabetes, joint pain, etc)!” Well, you’re 31 and you’re not supposed to but you will shortly in all likelihood.
Many fat acceptance websites (and I’ve seen the BS on livejournal that Una has) tell these lies to people who are desperate, fed up, and feeling hopeless. Many of them find comfort in believing that they cannot help their genetics and accept the “reports” that are often as close to science as Frankenstein’s monster simply because it allows them to say “See, there isn’t anything that I can or could have done about it!” Absolute bullshit.
Now unlike the ignorance above (Surgery is for the weak!) I do not for a minute believe that it is easy or just plain simple for those who are obese. I’m not trying to blame anyone or say “Bad weak fattie!” or anything else. What enrages me about the fat acceptance idea that nothing can be done is that you are not giving these people peace of mind and comfort in the long term, you’re taking away their hope. You’re taking away the idea that they CAN do something about it. They absolutely can do something about it.
It isn’t about being thin or being a certain size. We’re not all meant to be the same size. It’s about being healthier. I don’t know ANYONE who couldn’t be a bit healthier and nothing I’ve said here has anything to do with bullying.
No one tells you how to do those things. Those things are complicated and individual. What the hell is a moderate calorie restriction? What is moderate exercise? What sorts of macronutrients should you get? No one can tell you this. I’ve never had a doctor that had any sort of answer to any of those questions. It’s really and truly ignorance, not a lack of discipline.
Really? No one learns basic addition in 3rd grade?
Glancing at a food’s label and seeing that it contains 400 calories is “complicated and individual”?
Defining “moderate calorie restriction” as eating 1500 calories instead of 2000 is incomprehensible?
:rolleyes:
Ignorance has nothing to do with it. Losing weight is not rocket science.
On a number of occasions friends and coworkers have asked me for advice on how to lose weight. (I have a slow metabolism, yet have successfully kept my weight in check for over 15 years. In other words, I “should” be fat, but I am not.) I gave them good, sound advice. None of them took my advice. Today they are still fat, not surprisingly. As far as I can tell, most are now *fatter *since I gave them the advice.
You can educate fat people until you’re blue in the face. Very very very few of them will practice the advice you give them. “Educating” them on how to lose weight is a waste of time.
The bottom line is that obese people are weak. They have no discipline. The vast majority are also in denial on the reasons they’re fat. As stated by Una, they are delusional.
I am now convinced most cannot be helped.
Actually, yes. If you weigh 300 lbs, 1500 calories is likely unsustainable. You need to be eating 2000 or more a day, and will probably drop 2 lbs a week on that. But everyone tells you to eat 1200-1500 and mocks you when you can’t. So you try, fail, and give up.
And finding new foods that sate you is complicated. Most of us develop eating habits in kindergarten: we go to the grocery store and don’t even see 90% of the things there, they aren’t the sort of thing we eat. There are thousands of different choices. Nutrition labels are complicated. I do better when I eat 40-50% protein and over 40 grams of fiber a day. It took me years to discover that, because so many people will tell you “a calorie is a calorie”–or “All carbs are teh evil”. Other people have found different systems that work better for them. It’s a process of experimentation, but no one gives you the tools or even tells you that experimentation is a good idea–they just say that YOU are the problem, your character. No one suggests that they way you are trying to solve the problem may be flawed.
They don’t need advice from some guy at their job who has found a system that works for him. They need advice from medical professionals that understand the body, the metabolism, nutrition, and exercise, but this is really hard to find–there is no medical specialty for this stuff: there are family doctors, who know what they read in woman’s mags; endocrinologists, who know about disorders, surgeons, who see only one solution; dieticians, who have an undergraduate degree; and personal trainers, who may or may not know a thing. Oh, and therapists, who are about at potluck as the personal trainers.
Oh fer crying out loud. What were you doing in 3rd grade when all the other kids were learning “which number is less than this number”?
Are you really claiming that most fat adults are incapable of understanding that 1500 calories is moderately less than 1800 calories?
Glancing at a label and seeing that this package of food contains 2 500-calorie items is “complicated”.
I give up.
1200-1500 calories for a 300 lb person, as you say, is likely unsustainable. I lost about 2 lbs a week on an 1800 calorie diet, and I was only 200 lb. I don’t agree that “everyone tells you to eat 1200-1500” calories. Most advice I’ve seen, at least when I was trying to lose weight, involved finding your basic daily calorie needs, then subtracting 500-1000 calories off that. (My estimated daily needs, for instance, was 2800 calories, factoring in my exercise [running 5 miles daily]. So an 1800 calorie diet should net me about 2 pounds of weight loss a week, and it did. Of course, as you get skinnier, your BMR declines, so you gradually do have to take fewer and fewer calories in to maintain the same rate of weight loss.)
No, I am saying that a person who weighs 300 lbs and is told that “moderate calorie restriction” is 1200-1500 calories a day (the numbers you see most often) will fail when they try to eat that, over and over and over again. They will then attribute that failure to weakness of their own character and decide it’s impossible for them to lose weight, when in fact they could have lost weight successfully on 2200 calories a day.
You need to see more than the calorie count. Again, a person who knows nothing about nutrition and tries only to count their calories will have trouble sustaining it. It matters how much protein and fat and carbs and fiber you eat. It matters when you eat things. These things affect the sustainability of a diet, but no professionals exist that will help you work through all the options regarding all these things and find a system that works for you.
The details matter, and what information exists about those details is buried in fad diet BS.
Sleeps With Butterflies,
I defer to more recent numbers but, no I did not mean to imply that only the morbidly obese have diabetes from obesity. What I meant to state, and thought I did, was the issue of bariatric surgery was applying to the morbidly obese (over 40 BMI) or the severely obese (over 35 BMI) with comorbidities such as diabetes, who have failed supervised attempts at lifestyle changes designed to foster fat loss.
The op was asking about a billboard that was claiming, “outrageously”, that a third of the severely overweight will never lose weight on diets and that bariatric surgery will work for them. That “outrageous” claim is true, and for that population bariatric surgery may even be lifesaving.
As far as “fat acceptance”, my personal take on it is that BMI, and more accurately percent body fat, is not the be all and end all, it is instead a marker of the lifestyle choices that are the real target to shoot for. I feel better about the health prospects of a child who is in the 95%ile for BMI and who eats healthy foods most of the time and who exercises regularly than a child who is at the 50%ile but who lives off of junk and sits around playing video games all day. Being 95% or above is a flag for being more likely to have unhealthy habits, but to me it is the habits themselves that matter much more than what the scale says.
Funny thing, most people who are under a BMI of 25 do not count calories to do it. They do not need to, for every day of their lives, consciously control their portion sizes. They eat, they stop eating when satisfied, and go along with their lives. Yet so many of them claim character superiority to those who do have to do so, on the basis of their BMI, and call those who need to do what they do not, “weak”. And arrogantly believe that they are “experts” because they have never been morbidly obese.
Few who have managed to lose substantial weight would claim that someone who has failed to do so was “weak”, nor does calling someone that help in any way. It isn’t “tough love”. It is merely self-serving patting oneself on the back by belittling someone else.
On preview: I do not mean that you are one of those people Sleeps
The calorie counters are pretty recent, and only something you see if you think of the internet as your number one source of information, which many people still do not. Women’s magazines and the back of a can of slimfast are where most people learn about diets, or in books, and those tend to give a one-size-fits-all number.
There are a few challenges to losing weight, which I consider as valid. One of my friends have a gastric problem and frequently has to graze to prevent the pains, and it has become a habit such that he’ll eat more than usual (over a period of time).
The second is when your lifestyle doesn’t allow you to cook your own meals and it’s hard for you to find alternatives. I was tracking calories onlines when one of my friends comment that not all steak meals are created equal; I did admit that the calories count there is just a best guess, and I shouldn’t skim too close to the line.
Finding healthy food outside, if you have to eat out, could be a challenge. So I stick to reduced proportions and rely more on execrise. This dual approach works well for me; I have no idea how much dieting alone would help me though.
Those are but challenges. But I guess medicial problems could be more tricky to tackle.
No, that’s where lazy people who can’t be bothered to educate themselves get their information.
Interestingly enough, teens who do calorie count are at a greater risk long term for both obesity and eating disorders, than kids who do not, even though they are not likely to have higher than normal BMIs as teens.
Failure to calorie count is not how the obese got that way, even if for some counting is part of getting not that way.
What has worked for me will work for anyone.
So not true. Losing weight does not require hours of instruction from medical specialists. I can teach someone how to permanently lose weight in 10 minutes, and my advice would be 100% valid.
To be honest, much of the problem is due to people like you. There are many folks who want to find every and any excuse for obesity. “It’s not *their *fault they’re fat… they don’t have access to medical specialists.” Your apologetic stance is doing obese people a great disservice.
Heck I can teach them with only five small words.
Eat. Less. Than. You. Burn.
I have to ask, where on earth are you getting this idea?