It just requires discipline, self-regulation, dedication, and motivation. While I didn’t mean to insult the intelligence level of dieters (and I apologize if that is how it came across when I exagerrated for effect), I myself am insulted (and they should be insulted too for that matter) that some people in this thread seem to think that very few can permanently achieve that level of dedication through willpower and a no-compromise attitude. You guys aren’t seriously suggesting that a pernicious kind of mental determinism is at work here, are you? [In which case this thread belongs in GD not here.]
All I know is that I’ve pulled off this kind of thing-uncompromising radical change-in a number of areas in my life in the past, and I don’t see how this will be any different. And even tho I don’t need any further motivation really, I am now determined (heh) to prove you all wrong. Frankly the idea of chowing down all evening on some of my old sins (Little Debbie cakes, a tub of Breyer’s ice cream, or even a whole package of Fig Newtons) isn’t tempting anymore, it actually makes me nauseous.
Why are you insulted by facts? The facts are that very few people will manage to maintain a major weight loss. There’s no value judgment inherent in that information.
I felt just like you did when I was tight and muscular at 225 lbs and very focused on being fit, but eventually enough life got in the way that maintaining my routines was almost impossible and things eventually went to shit.
Beyond this you need to understand that people with lifelong overeating issues (like me) are not wired the same way appetite-wise as people (like you) who got fat mainly via age slowing metabolism and a sedentary lifestyle but who have relatively normal eating habits and stop near satiation.
If we eat below what our metabolism set point wants it is subtly to overtly BANGING at us during most of our waking hours to get us to eat more. It does not stop. Your higher brain resolve will eventually fatigue, but it never does. It is relentless. Being fit and trim only forces it to be more clever at choosing your mental weak spots. The battle is never over. It is an endless war and eventually people get tired.
One major difference between quitting smoking and loosing weight is that you don’t need to smoke. I’m not trying to make light of quitting smoking here- I’m sure those trying to quit might feel like they need to!!!
However, you do need to eat, and our American environment has been carefully crafted to tempt you at every turn to buy delicious (and of course fattening) foods.
You are not just trying to maintain your own willpower… You are trying to fight against people trained and paid to tempt you to eat the food they are selling… advertisers! :eek:
I think, John DiFool, that many people agree that some outlying people can do it like you, and congrats to you, but the hard evidence says that the vast majority cannot.
Saying something like “why can’t everyone just suck it up like you did, they just don’t have the strength…” is the real insult.
There are some strong patterns. The National Weight Control Registry has, since 1994, been tracking people who have lost weight and kept it off. They have identified some common themes:
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
What I notice is that people who do these things are described as crazy, or obsessed, or, as the I article cited above puts it, “The people who successfully do it are the ones who become psychologically obsessive about it, like that weird guy who built an Eiffel Tower out of toothpicks.” Astro talks about how “life got in the way” and I will agree that this happens–but part of the reason this happens is that actively controlling your weight–not just bitching about it and adopting fad diets–is frowned on. The person that prioritizes an hour a day to exercise, who doesn’t join in community eating events, who fusses over portion size is marked as “freakish” and a poor sport.
Personally, I lost 130 lbs between July 2009 and September 2010. I put about 40 on with my pregnancy, and over half of that is still there, even though the baby is eight months old. I really had no interest in losing while I was nursing. I hope to lose the rest over the next six months or so: I am not in a hurry this time. I don’t know when it starts to count as “kept off”, or if the 100 I am still down is counterbalanced by the 30 I’ve gained back. I do think it can be done, and it’s not a lottery: clearly, some behaviors are correlated with success. But I think there is a lot we don’t understand, and the science of weight management is about where mental health was in the 60s. We just really don’t understand much, and we worry too much about blame.
I lost ~50 lbs or ~20% of my weight and have kept off 25-35 since then. The prequel is that I gained 50 lbs. Losing weight for me was more of a returning to a historical average. For all I know it really is impossible for a lifetime overweight person to slim down permanently.
Well the most obvious factor is that a crash diet can make you lose weight, but only changing your eating and exercise habits permanently can keep the weight off.
Metabolism is a factor too though. The four hour body diet recommends one “cheat day” a week to fool your body into not going into starvation mode. I don’t know how supported it is by studies, but it’s been working pretty well for me so far.
Anecdote time. Until I was in my late 20s, I could eat and eat and not put on any weight. I was eating a 5-pack of Mars Bars a day, on top of 2 proper meals a day and not put on weight. After that I gradually put on weight, getting to about 16 stone and visibly fat. In 2008 depression kicked in and I went up to over 17 stone (110Kg). I then lost that and came down to a little under 15 stone, which is just above where I want to be - about 14 stone 7. Since last year I’ve been working shifts, which seems to have done a real number on my metabolism and I’m back up at just over 17 stone.
I guess (clarifying) that what I am trying to say is that biology is not destiny. I’m not about to put any limits on either myself or anyone else, be it in relation to addictions (food can certainly qualify), or personal growth and transformation in general (note that at one time I suffered from severe clinical depression, and I killed that off too). The sad truth is that we are lazy creatures and tend to want to take the easy way out and not change, but that most certainly isn’t carved in stone. I’m not about to sell anyone short.
So the studies say that 90-95% of those who pull off a bit diet gain most of it back-but is that a psychological issue, physiological, or (as in most things) a mixture of the two? I visited that registry website, and am examining their literature for studies of a more psychological bent.
I don’t really have any problem with your sentiments in general–I am the one that linked to the National Weight Control Registry, and I am in a very similar place to you. That said, the bolded sentiment is where I think you are wrong: that fact that so many people regain weight doesn’t show that so many people are lazy, pathetic, weak, incompetent wimps, but rather that it’s really difficult and takes more than just determination and strength of character. At the very least, it seems to take knowledge and strategy: something plenty of dedicated, strong-willed people may lack.
Right now you sound like a guy who finds strength by insulting all the people that lack it: “I’ll be tough because I am not a weak loser like them”. But that’s a dangerous technique: if you fall, a minor fall turns into utter self-loathing because you’ve revealed yourself to be “one of them”. I think a different well-spring of motivation: “It will be different for me because I’ve done the research, I’ve got XY and Z fail safes in place, because I will go through these procedures everyday, etc” is more productive in the long run. It helps keep a small fall from turning into a complete “well, fuck, I suck, it’s all over”.
I don’t have weight problems, so maybe I don’t belong in this discussion. But that’s never stopped me popping off before…
2300 calories is plenty. It’s not “hell”. It’s not a tortured existence. It’s not deprivation in any sense of the word. You can still pig out at McDonalds within this caloric allowance. You can still eat decadent desserts and eat pizza. Maybe it doesn’t sound a lot to someone who’s used to eating 3000 calories. But it’s not small in any objective sense of the measure.
The issue isn’t the calorie deficit. I think if you laid out 2300 calories in front of the average person, they wouldn’t freak out at “paltry” amount of food they’ve been allotted. What gets people is the hunger sensations that the body generates in response to the deficit. It’s hunger NOT greed that trips people up. Greediness can be combated through cerebral self-talk. Hunger is a physical drive that requires physical strategies to be overcome. I really do think overweight people must experience hunger in a more intense way than not-overweight people do.
I don’t understand your post. First you say "2300 calories is a lot of food, why is she complaining? " and then in the second you say “Overweight people experience more intense hunger on the same food allotment”. If X amount of food leaves you hungry all the time, it’s not a lot of food. There’s no “objective” sense. A teenage boy can eat 2300 calories in a sitting and be hungry in a few hours: an 80 year old woman could eat the same food over 2 days and never feel hungry.
And 2300 isn’t as much as you think it is, because that’s an average. If someone maintains on 2300 calories, it means that on most days they need to eat quite a bit less than that to make up for the one night a week they have dinner at the in-laws, the twice a month work happy hours, the once a month date night, etc. Most people use their “typical” day to estimate their caloric intake, but maybe 75% of days are typical, and the 25% that are atypical skew towards eating more, often a lot more, not eating less.
The interesting thing isn’t the total number of calories allotted; the interesting thing is that the caloric maintenance level is significantly different between those who have dieted and those who haven’t, even for people of the same weight.
And nobody said that 2300 calories was “hell” or a “tortured existence,” so I don’t even know where that came from.
It might not be the only issue, but it’s not helping. There’s also the fact that not many people know that they’ll have to increase their dieting efforts once they lose weight.
At 3,000 calories to maintain weight a person can eat around 2,400 calories a day and lose weight. Once that same person gets to 2,300 calories in order to maintain weight, his 2,400 calorie a day diet won’t cut it anymore. He’ll start to gain weight doing everything he’s done before to lose weight and will probably end up thinking it was a person failure of willpower rather than a lack of knowledge.
But that 2,300 number isn’t for everyone. One woman profiled in the article will only maintain her weight of 195 only if she eats around 2,000 calories a day and burns 500 more while exercising.
My point is that hunger isn’t rational or irrational. It just is. 2300 IS plenty of calories for the average sedentary American woman. But whether it is or it isn’t…if hunger is there, it doesn’t matter. A person can intellectually know that they’ve eaten “more than enough”, but try telling that to a grumbling stomach. The stomach argues bettter than the brain does.
I’ve been counting calories for almost 15 years. I know very well what 2300 calories is. I also know that I don’t eat anything close to that, and I am able to maintain a very active lifestyle. I don’t feel weak or deprived. I am at a healthy BMI of 20.
Thing is, I don’t feel hunger very intensely. If I did, I most certainly would eat more and I would no doubt be overweight like most of my family is. I don’t think I’m thin because I’m rational or strong-willed or because my body is more/less efficient than other people’s. I just don’t have a strong “FEED ME!” drive. That, based on what I’ve been reading from all these articles, seems to be the thing that is keeping me from being fat.
I guess what I’m saying is that the excerpt from the article that I posted–about 2300 calories being a deficit–doesn’t really convey the challenge. 2300 calories is still higher than the daily recommended allowance. The challenge that folks face is the mounting hunger that comes with weight loss, irrespective of the specific calorie figures. I don’t think this is readily understandable to people who aren’t privy to the weight loss experience (such as myself).
The article itself contradicts you. It says the “average” woman of that height and weight would need to eat 2600 to maintain. For her, 2300 would not be “more than enough”, it would be a 300 calorie deficit and probably leave her feeling vaguely hungry.
Caloric requirements are like accents: there is no neutral, no baseline. It’s individual, based on a hundred different variables, many of which may change throughout a person’s life. Getting hung up on what “should” be the right number is a good way to mess up your weight one way or another: people shouldn’t model how much they “should be able to eat” after other people’s experiences. All you can do is determine your own maintenance level through experimentation and work with that.
I feel pretty strongly about this because I think a lot of people waste time either being angry that they can’t eat like they think other people eat, or feeling like they must be greedy pigs because they eat more than their peers. Metabolism just is, and it really varies.
Good. That doesn’t mean that someone else of the same height, weight, and age eating the same amount wouldn’t be losing or gaining weight. If they were losing, it would suggest that the feelings of weakness and deprivation they were feeling were accurate biological signals.
Quite probably. But that doesn’t mean that the “feed me” signals other people are getting are biologically inaccurate if they happen to be eating more than what you consider to be “plenty” of food.
I guess what I’m saying is that the excerpt from the article that I posted–about 2300 calories being a deficit–doesn’t really convey the challenge. 2300 calories is still higher than the daily recommended allowance. The challenge that folks face is the mounting hunger that comes with weight loss, irrespective of the specific calorie figures. I don’t think this is readily understandable to people who aren’t privy to the weight loss experience (such as myself).
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I quit smoking 30 years ago. A couple times I’ve tried a puff and it was awful, but when someone is smoking a menthol cigarette near me I want one badly.
The reason that individual results don’t generalize is that everyone gets a different deal of the genetic/environmental hand. And they assume everyone else gets the same hand in spite of the fact that that assumption is ridiculous on face value.
