I’ll try one more time (undoubtedly failing anyway): I am not trying to insult anyone-exactly the opposite. What I am trying to say is pretty much what you said in that pentultimate quote: that you can keep it off, but you must not have any illusions or rationalizations and your discipline must not significantly waver. You are in control of your own destiny. I’m also coming to this from a Buddhist perspective, which is why I take a very dim view of such things as the quote upthread:
Keep in mind that I’ve been there before and I know how pernicious cravings and such can be. But with the right mindset and stern mental discipline the preceding quote most certainly is not destiny, even given the lower daily caloric intake balancing point. The people at the NWCR are living proof that it can be done.
You are the only person in this thread talking about “destiny.” If 5% of people manage to maintain long-term weight loss, then obviously it is not “destiny” that any particular person will regain weight. There is every possibility that an individual will be in the 5%. Maybe you will be. Maybe you won’t. Right now we don’t know. What we do know is that 95% of people will not, and that’s a significantly large number and likely has explanations beyond just, “People lack willpower and discipline.”
Right, but you keep using words like “lazy” to describe people that regain. That’s pretty pejorative, and suggests that you think regaining weight is a sign of poor character, not that maintaining weight is a sign of unusual strength and wisdom (and I’d argue it takes both in equal measure.
Laziness is certainly not the cause of the obesity epidemic in the U.S. But there are many many lazy people. And a lazy person who is obese will not, by definition, be able to lose weight and keep it off. Perhaps that’s what John DiFool is trying to say.
Don’t want to get all Bricker here, but I said we (as in all humans) tend to be lazy, not obese people specifically (and I took pains in my last post to move away from such language). I’m witnessing what my sister is going through trying to control her weight, and all I hear from her are rationalizations and excuses along with seeing her “cheat” each time we eat out together (my mom and I were discussing this earlier today)-just calling them as I see them. She has yet to try to pick my brain as to what I’ve done (which I’d be perfectly happy to do), which is odd when you think about it-if you are trying to lose the pounds and your brother has pulled it off, you’d think you’d be a bit interested in how he did it.
How much did you lose, and how long have you already kept it off? I find people who have accomplished something to be much more impressive than those who swear up and down that they will accomplish it, and I’d like to know which category you fall into.
Well, perhaps. But as I mentioned in my post above, I do not think laziness is the root cause of the obesity epidemic. In can be explained by the price and availability of food. Over the past 20 years food has gotten cheaper and cheaper, and availability has dramatically improved. It’s simple economics; as the price decreases and availability improves, demand increases. This is true for other animals as well. If you put food in front of your cat 24 hours a day, it will probably become obese.
If you want to reverse the obesity trend, make food more expensive and scarcer. Of course, no one wants to do that…
I’m not an expert, but I think this is a big part of the critical difference.
There’s a saying among former smokers that “you are always a puff away from a pack a day.”
i.e. if you are exposed to cigarettes there is a decent chance it will re-ignite your addiction.
If the psychological mechanism behind excessive eating operates the same way, then it follows that the need to constantly re-expose oneself to food is a big impediment to permanent weight loss.
I agree with this too. I have a buddy from work who is skinny but he mentioned to me that many years ago he used to be obese.
Many times I have invited him to lunch with me and he has always refused. It seemed odd at the time, but in hindsight, I realize that he needed to have total control over his eating. That even a slight deviation from his diet could easily lead to disaster, like an alcoholic who has just one drink.
Perhaps obesity needs to be seen as a symptom of a deeper problem of food addiction.
I disagree that obesity is generally a symptom of addiction or addictive behavior. Some people who have been successful at weight loss know that maintaining that loss requires a good bit of self control; they know what has worked for them and are willing to stick with it. As long as these behaviors work for your buddy and don’t cause him distress, don’t assume it’s a problem.
Based on my observations at Weight Watchers, of which I’ve been a member since January, 2011, what some people perceive as laziness may more accurately be described as “unwillingness to change”. We’ve all got habits and behaviors associated with food and eating, and those of us who are (or were) overweight/obese have to work harder to overcome those habits and behaviors. I’ve made a lot of changes myself over the past year and a half; some have been easier to make than others, and Lord knows I’m not perfect. But there are people in my group who don’t understand that they have to change what they eat and how much, and they can’t or won’t make the necessary changes to lose the weight. It’s not that they’re lazy or don’t know that they need to lose weight, it’s that they don’t want to change.
Unfortunately, it seems to be a basic principle of human nature that when we are “100% determined” to do something, the actual probability that it will happen is a lot lower.
I’m about to hit -60, tho I did that in stages-lost 20 2 years ago, and kept it there for a year, have lost the rest since April of 2011 (by my reckoning I’ll be able to join that website 9 months from now). I’ll chime in a year from now if you really want to know; at first I loathed exercising but now I’m actually warming up to it-just did a ride-along with the 50 minute Tour de France time trial this morning, and (ulp) loved it.
Not really. I changed habits and behaviors there, too, but most of them just come down to avoiding places where people are smoking. Considering that these places are mostly outside, they’re not that hard to avoid. It helped a lot that I had surgery scheduled for about a week after I’d quit, so I couldn’t get up easily to smoke, and that I used a formal program that had a lot of support. And, of course, nicotine patches.
Lower priority according to who? It’s his deal, let him set his own priorities.
Why don’t they want to change? Are they are afraid of change just because it’s change, or because they don’t want hassle in their life? If it’s the latter, I don’t really see how that’s NOT laziness, MandaJo.
I don’t think fat/overweight/obese people need to be beaten over the head with this mess. But tortured tip-toeing doesn’t help either.
I’m not sure what your point is. You seem to be saying that losing weight is not like dealing with an addiction, since it’s just a matter of self-control and knowledge. But it seems that quitting smoking also entails self-control and knowledge.
According to anyone.
If losing weight and staying in shape is a priority in one’s life, then other issues will necessarily take a lower priority than they otherwise would have taken.
I’m certainly not trying to control the guy. I’m simply observing that his obsession with his diet comes with a price.
In this non-scholarly article, people who have lost 66+ lbs and kept it off for 5.5 years or more, the most common habits from the people studied include
1- Eating breakfast daily
2- Watching 10 hours or less of TV each week
3- Weighing regularly
4- Exercise
Habit and activity over actual diet.
I have never been a breakfast eater; my family didn’t eat breakfast. This is a change I have to make, and you’d be surprised how difficult it is; I’m almost repulsed by the thought of food early in the morning.
I don’t think it’s fear or laziness. It’s just difficult. One of the coping mechanisms we adopt to deal with the literally thousands of options we face each day is to reject huge chunks of them as a group, to have patterns we follow. When faced with a menu with 150 choices, few people seriously consider every option: we gravitate toward the 4-6 things that are the type of thing we consider, and we make a choice out of those. For many overweight people, there are tons of little assumptions and patterns about how you do things that you have to reassess, and it’s harder than it sounds. All these were terrifying and humiliating. I expected to be denounced from the rafters by my own superego.
The closest analogy I can come up with is moving. When you move to a new city in a new state, you have to redo your whole life: where you shop, where you eat, where you bank, where you pay your bills, where you socialize, where you park, how you dress, where you worship, where you hang out . . .every single thing get redefined. It’s hard, but you do it because you kind of have to. Totally remaking your way of eating/exercising is just as dramatic, but without the pressure to do it–in fact, lots of people are pressuring you not to do it.
So imagine just deciding one day to reassess every single norm in your life, but not actually moving. Just changing where you eat, shop, worship, study, work, your clothes, your manners, your bed time, your wake-up time, all your patterns. Imagine this makes everyone else around you vaguely uncomfortable (what is happening to the person we love? Why are you changing everything?) and imagine keeping those changes up forever, never falling back into your old habits. It’s really, really hard. It’s not laziness. It really runs counter to the human psyche.
The first time I ordered chicken tortilla soup, no chips or cheese, I felt like a fraud, a poser, like I was being untrue to my “real” self, who orders fajitas or enchiladas. The first time I left work on time, despite having more to do, to exercise I felt the same way. I’m a person who puts my students first, after all. The first time I skipped free pizza and just watched everyone else eat, the first time I stepped into a “regular” clothes store, the first time I bought running shoes.
Do you happen to be a pants-only or skirts-only person? If you are, imagine switching entirely to the other extreme; how weird it would feel, how untrue to yourself. Imagine the subtle pressure from people that are weirded out by your change. It’s just not easy.
I’m certainly not trying to control the guy. I’m simply observing that his obsession with his diet comes with a price.