“It’s not because I am blessed with “good genes” or have a fast metabolism. It’s because I am very careful about what I eat, and how much I eat. Like you, I am always a little bit hungry, and I never eat until my belly is stuffed.”
Have you considered that that ‘little bit hungry’ might feel different to you than someone else with a different physiology? For other people it might feel like a lot greater hunger to stay within the same calorie limits?
Ie it might be both will power and genes that means you’ve managed it where other people havent.
If someone is an alcoholic or a drug user or a gambler, they will at LEAST admit they have a mental problem where they “cannot” resist the booze or the meth or the lure of the dog track.
They WILL NOT claim booze or meth or gambling tickets MAGICALLY appear within their grasp or that someone forced them upon them or in them.
People who eat TOO MUCH on the other hand have a whole nother layer or three of excuses piled upon the REAL problem (which is they just eat too much), which is both intellectually insulting AND prevents them from actually adressing the fundamental problem. Apologies to the actual very TINY fraction out there that have a REAL “metabolism problem”.
If “fat people” would just ADMIT they fracking EAT TOO MUCH and can’t help it, I’d give em some credit. But this thread, like all the past ones, will be full of excuses other than that one.
Again, the layers of chocolate covered turtles start to make their appearance.
Actually there is quite a body of work on this subject. It is not 100% clear but there do indeed seem to be some factors other than return to old habits. They can be overcome, but it is swimming against a tide.
Ah but the experts here would prefer to ignore the actual science and especially that last bit, about how a nonblaming position makes for more effective interventions.
Oh, the first one I said “back” because it was old - since then bariatric surgery has come around as an effective treatment for morbid obesity and severe obesity with significant comorbidities. Again, part of how it works is that it limits how much goes in at a time, but a larger part of how it works is shaping up to be that getting the calories to the intestine faster causes a host of hormonal changes that both counter diabetes and the effects of weight change on ghrelin and leptin levels.
Have you ever watched one of those super-obese documentaries? Those changed my way of thinking about fatness completely. These are people who literally cannot think of anything except eating tens of thousands of calories in one sitting. Not eating is a clearly painful effort for them.
NOT eating six dozen cookies doesn’t require self-discipline for me any more than it requires self-discipline to not to drink a bottle of Drano, and I think that’s true of “normal” people. Yet, for those people, it’s clearly a herculean effort to stop in the middle of eating 6 dozen cookies. There’s clearly a spectrum of how much actual willpower is required to overcome the temptation of food here.
I don’t always assume a fat person sits around eating all day.
I was naturally thin for most of my life, then suddenly started gaining weight for no reason, without any change in my diet or lifestyle.
After several years a doctor finally told me I had a hormonal imbalance, NOT thyroid. Within a month I dropped 18 pounds with no effort. I have continued to lose weight simply from continuing hormone therapy.
I also have a sleep disorder, and apparently that can cause weight gain, high blood pressure and many other health problems if left unchecked.
Several doctors told me it was ‘normal’ for women ‘my age’ to gain weight and completely discounted all of my complaints about my health, when in fact I was very sick, and the weight gain was just one of many symptoms.
One doctor even accused me of lying when I gave her a list of what I ate during the week. She also prescribed a medication for me that had a known side effect of causing weight gain, the bitch, thinking I wouldn’t check the PDR and call her on it.
I would venture a guess many overweight people have experienced the same thing when they go to the doctor. The attitude I got was ‘you can’t expect to stay thin your whole life.’
I quit taking a couple of medicines over 2 years ago. Since then, I’ve lost about 33% of my total body weight. And the thing is, I am much less hungry now than when I was taking those particular medicines. When I was taking them, I was extremely hungry all the time. Now that I’ve quit taking them, sometimes I have to remind myself that I really do need at least two meals a day, because otherwise I’ll eat one small meal (and then pass out from low blood sugar).
There is an enormous difference in the sort of frenzied hunger that I felt when I was taking those meds, and the mild appetite I feel these days. I suppose that I could claim to be virtuous, and just say that I’m exerting more willpower these days, but the fact is that those meds stimulated my appetite while supressing my metabolism. It’s not my willpower that’s changed, it’s my physiology.
It might be in some cases. In some cases its because people eat until they are sated and think “a little bit hungry” is something that needs to be taken care of. And I suspect that in most cases, reading your bodies hunger signals as very urgent is learned - which is why overweight kids are such a sad thing.
But one huge difference with food is that you can completely give up alcohol, drugs or gambling but you can’t completely give up eating. What if someone with a drinking problem HAD to drink just a little alcohol every day but no more? For someone with a compulsion, whether psychological or physiological in origin, that’s an incredibly frustrating situation to be in.
It is not physically impossible (beside rare medical cases) . You don’t magically gain weight. Nobody is forcing you to eat.
Yes, SOME people have metabolisms that are marvels of medical science. SOME people cannot control their weight due to certain medicines (I know one). SOME people have an urge to eat that is so strong it probably ranks up there with the mental illnesses like hoarding and life destroying levels of OCD.
But, IMO and personal experience, MOST people do NOT fall into those categories. They just eat too much, don’t try particularly hard or smartly or keep it up, and just plain lie to themselves and everyone else about how much they actually eat. Its in their head that they want and need to eat too much. THATS what they need to ADMIT and THATS what they need to FIX. All this other stuff is irrelevant to solving the problem.
I guess only yourself and God know if you have a legimate excuse or not. But, IMO these exceptions to the rule and all this handwaving about how hard or complicated or unfair it is that get trotted out everytime a weight thread comes up just does more harm than good and perpetuates the problem.
No. At least not for me, so not necessarily for everybody.
When I eat what I need to eat, I move to a lower weight, I enjoy food more and I generally feel better; whenever I find myself thinking “gee, I could use a snack” I look at the watch and it’s actually time to start preparing the next real meal, no snacks. Right now, I’m in a new job where we have to eat at work 4 days/week; it is forbidden to bring your own food into the building. The food from the cantina is already having a similar effect as my mother’s: I’m gaining weight, it’s either overcooked or drowned in sauces or both, it leaves me sluggish and I’m hungry again within one hour of having finished.
The plan for the next trip to the big supermarket involves buying a small fridge-bag and some of those plastic things you freeze to help keep things cold. Work is not allowed to mess up my health, damnit!
Finding out what kind of meals have that effect on me took a lot of trial and error, though. Most of the recipes and rules I’ve seen wouldn’t work, because they make assumptions which are not true in my case; for example, assuming that people love pastries, potatoes or bread - I’d be perfectly happy in a world with neither of the first two and only miss the third with my sunny-side-up eggs.
Hi, I’m digs, and I’m a Carbo-holic.* (“Hi, digs!”)*
Reading this post was an eye-opener.
• “Dense carbohydrates?” check.
• “Trigger a pleasure-addiction mechanism”? Oh, yeaaaah.
• “Highly similar to how alcohol effects some people?” Well, possibly more so.
So I’m going to put away the Frosted Flakes (yes, literally–I’m eating them for lunch) and get out on my bike.
And think about getting tough on myself because I. Have. An, Addiction.
To make things even more complicated, your satiety response is not immediate - it takes about a half an hour to feel full. Most people, thin or overweight, don’t eat a particular size of meal, wait half an hour to see if they really are full, and then eat a bit more if they truly are still hungry.
But again, if you’re really serious about losing weight, you do do this. Every one of the people I know who has taken personal responsibility for their weight does exactly this.
Thats exactly what I do. I do it mostly because I feel like shit if I overeat. But, if instead, I was trying to keep from getting fat, I’d do the same thing.
I generally don’t eat breakfast, besides a cup or two of coffee with a little sugar and milk. If I know its going to be hard day I might force down an apple or bannana or some oatmeal. Lunch will be something like a can of soup or small sandwich or a salad. Dinner will be a portion thats about half of what most people eat. A few daily SMALL snacks and drinks round out my day.
For your typical eat out meal, I typically eat about half and take the other half home to serve for lunch the next day. I eat out about once a week.
I may not eat healthy (though I am starting to begin addressing that). But I dont eat much. It aint my miracle metabolism that keeps me thin. Its portion control. And yes, I am vaguely hungry most of the time.
I can’t believe these threads still get so much action.
My penny:
It is a simple fact that everyone needs food to maintain life and the flesh on their bodies. Everyone will have less flesh on their bodies if the reduce their intake enough.
Where we all crash into each other and it turns into a mess is in discussing what “enough” means, and the scientifically established fact that for many people, “enough” means something far more difficult and extreme than it means for others.
The amount of food required to sustain some obese bodies is often far less than you’d ever imagine, and there’s reasons why that is so. But first please recognize that it is definitely so.
Which should not be taken to mean that I am claiming that all fat people eat lightly and get fat anyway, I’m not and that’s not true. But the widely held belief that all fat people are out of control gluttons isn’t true either.
Well it seems that any thread about obesity is an excuse for some to derail into their rants about “fatties” are just lazy sacks without will power, not like how great they are.
Is there any other segment of our population that still has to tolerate that kind of open and tolerated hateful speech? That is bullied as pervasively?
Every jerkwad believes that if they are not fat they are an “expert” … if only the lazy weak idiots would listen to them.
The science is clear and excerpts from (and links to) cites documenting the biology involved that make it very difficult for an obese individual to lose weight and to keep it off, and that make it mildly difficult for a normal weight individual to put it on and easy for them to lose it again, have been provided. A summary of just some of the evidence regarding the huge role that genetic predisposition plays when coupled with an obesogenic environment has also been provided.
But even the more intelligent posters here cannot seem to be bothered to read it:
Suspect all you want, in most case it seems that genetics is more primary, given living a modern Western society.
There is a lot of interesting work going on in obesity right now, recognizing how the prenatal environment sets the stage for obesity to develop later in childhood, how an early “adiposity rebound” presages later obesity, and how intervention in childhood is critical. But people already “know” what they need to know and for those less intelligent than others that means it’s open season to insult the obese.