Psst: here is the source for that data:
So almost a quarter of dieters don’t eat breakfast every day. Furthermore, I know quite a few successful losers who eat breakfast but eat it later, like 10:00. I think the important thing is not to fast from 8:00 PM to 1:00 P.M. and then overeat because you are ravenous.
Figures vary, but supposedly 10% of Americans skip breakfast vs 22% of successful dieters skipping breakfast. So eating breakfast is not necessarily a common characteristic of successful dieters. 31 Million Americans Skip Breakfast Each Day | HuffPost Food
Sorry.:smack:
OR
Hey, your study agrees with mine!
Manda Jo already answered this better than I could have, but I will chime in with my $0.02 based on my own experience.
The people in my Weight Watchers group (including me) are attached to decades of habits, behaviors, and cultural and social expectations that center on food. Getting over that shit is hard. And you have to be prepared for criticism and bullshit from other people who can’t accept that you’re doing something positive for yourself. There are now people I won’t eat with because I’m sick of hearing the stupid comments they make about what I’m eating (or not eating) and how much I’ve lost. Not everyone wants to accept that.
They do. They’re just a different kind of self-control and knowledge. Smoking isn’t essential to life, and the goal is to abstain completely from nicotine. As I was quitting, I had to learn to avoid places where people smoke, and I had to learn to identify situations that would trigger a craving so that I could get past them. Now that it’s been almost four months, I’m much more confident that I won’t relapse. In fact, I spent most of last week with my father, who still smokes. I stayed inside for the most part, but when we were out and about, I was able to stand next to him and not want one.
Food, on the other hand, is essential to life. I can’t avoid eating altogether, so I have to make good choices and practice enough self-discipline to stay away from the bad ones. Losing weight and keeping it off requires a great deal more self-discipline than quitting smoking did.
So, basically, it’s the same only different.
We all make these choices. It’s called opportunity cost. Your buddy just decided that the opportunity cost of eating lunch out is more than he’s willing to accept if it means that his diet is compromised. It’s no different from choosing which coffee you want at Starbucks or what route you want to take to work tomorrow.
That being said, I know where your buddy is coming from. I’ve been morbidly obese, and it’s not something I want to be again. If it takes more effort to keep the weight off, it’s worth it to me.
And one comes from dealing with an addiction while the other doesn’t?
Agree, as I said, making his diet a high priority necessarily results in lower priority to other issues. Making pretty much anything a high priority necessarily results in lower priority to other issues.
Thanks for breaking it down, Manda Jo. I was kind of worried when I posted the remark about laziness, because I really don’t want to come across as judgmental. Just trying to understand.
It’s so much easier to do “right” when you don’t have a kajillion people around you pressuring you to do “wrong”. Women who are loners (lacking friends or significant others) have higher rates of underweightedness than women who are social butterflies. This is not at all surprising to me. Social butterflies go to parties, restaurants, and love to cook for others. So not only do they have more opportunities for packing on pounds, they have much more to lose by changing their lifestyles.
Being overweight my entire life, and being obese entirely when I was in my 30’s…I did finally succeed in losing weight.
THE NATIONAL WEIGHT CONTROL REGISTRY
According to this study, 20% of people that achived a minimal of 10% total
body fat reduction kept the weight off longer than a year. If you can
keep the weight off for 5 years, you have only a 50% chance of gaining it back.
With each year that passes, this number gets lower and lower.
From the study, this is what they concluded.
Findings from the registry suggest six key strategies for long-term success at weight loss: 1) engaging in high levels of physical activity; 2) eating a diet that is low in calories and fat; 3) eating breakfast; 4) self-monitoring weight on a regular basis; 5) maintaining a consistent eating pattern; and 6) catching “slips” before they turn into larger regains. Initiating weight loss after a medical event may also help facilitate long-term weight control.
I pretty much fit into all of these. I weighed nearly 300 lbs at the end of 2006. My mom went in for triple bypass surgery (she was reletively young) and it freaked the hell out of me. After the surgery, I went back to the recovery area to visit my mom and there was a guy back there, roughy my age, albeit maybe 50 lbs heavier than I was, but he had JUST also gone through open heart surgery.
So, THAT was my “medical event”. I also kept a journal of all food and exercise and monitored my weight almost daily (still do) and the only exercise I did was WALK. But, I walked a lot. About 3-5 miles per day minumum 5 days per week.
I got down to 153lbs (mainly because when I reached my goal of 165lbs I couldn’t stop losing weight). Now I am at 170lbs and its been over 5 years. I keep walking and keep monitoring my calories. It CAN be done.
As a person that successfully lost almost 50% of my body weight, I can tell you that breakfast IS a key factor. Breakfast sets the tone for the rest of the day and starts your metabolism off in the right direction. Your metabolism is what controls how much calories you burn. You need to jump start your metabolism in the morning. Skipping breakfast also leads to lower blood surgar levels which can lead to over-eating later in the day. Trust me, breakfast IS the most important meal of the day. Do NOT skip it.
Breakfast was a key factor for you. This does not mean it has to be a key factor for everyone else. No matter how well it worked for you the evidence is still against it being a key factor for everyone.
It’s been a bit less than a year, but I’d be interested to hear an update. Would you mind sharing your current weight and diet experiences?
I only see lots of fat people in America and Western Samoa. Esplain that.
Ignorance? Although the US does lead the obesity charts, it is hardly uncommon in other developed nations–26.5% in New Zealand, 24.6% in Australia, etc.
Someone up-thread mentioned that perhaps obese people have more hunger than thin people. I know that for me personally, that was the case. I’ve also talked with others who said the same thing.
I use the past tense because my hunger has changed dramatically since having weight-loss surgery a little over 9 years ago. Pre-op, my hunger was a constant, grinding need. Post-op, I have what I think of as ‘normal’ hunger, and I get satisfied—something that rarely EVER happened pre-op—by ‘normal’ portions. Many of my fellows report the same thing.
The form of weight-loss surgery I chose is called the Duodenal Switch,and it’s considered to be truly metabolic surgery. It reduces the size of the stomach via a vertical sleeve gastrectomy, which removes from the body much of the tissue that produces ghrelin, the so-called ‘hunger hormone’. It also involves rearranging the small intestine in a way that significantly changes gut chemistry. This has proven to be very effective in treating diabetes—better than 98% of diabetics who get this surgery achieve total remission of symptoms. It also causes a high degree of malabsorption of fat, which means that most people with the DS have total cholesterol numbers around 100, even though most of us eat quite a bit of fat.
Pre-op, I was part of the 95% of the population who could not maintain significant weight loss long-term. I’d lose 20, gain 30. Lose 30, gain 40—which is how I dieted my way to morbid obesity.
My life is SO much better since I chose to have the DS. I’m living a far more ‘normal’ life than since around age 9, when I went on my first doctor-supervised diet. (Yep, I said NINE. And I had my first round of diet drugs at ELEVEN.)
Pre-op, I could only lose weight if I kept my calories below 1000, closer to 800. Now, I eat between 2500-3000 calories a day, and am effortlessly maintaining a loss of 170 pounds. Life is good. (grin)
You’ve only been to two countries.
skimming through the thread since it’s a zombie to ask: does that mean most every contestant in the Biggest Loser got it all back?
If I had to bet, I would guess that well over 90% of Biggest Loser contestants gain most of the weight back within a year or two. However, I did a Google search and found a couple “Biggest Loser follow-up” articles which seemed more optimistic than my guess. So either I am overly pessimistic or the articles are not covering a representative sample.
And by the way, I understand that this is a confounding variable in weight loss research, i.e. people who “fall off the wagon” are more likely to disappear from weight loss studies.
Counter-example here. In 2002, at my annual checkup, I weighed 281. Got read the riot act by doctor. Over the ensuing two years, I lost 30 lb, then gained 10. Finally, in 2005, my pre-diabetes became the real thing, blood sugar of 8.1 mmol/l (multiply by 18 to get US measure in mg.dl). Immediately started on metformin, and lost 20 lb, without further dieting. Down to the neighborhood of 240, maintained until 2 1/2 years ago (Oct. 2010), when, without changing my meals, I cut out all snacking. By the following March (month of annual checkup) I was down to around 225 and the doctor started to worry and send for an abdominal ultrasound, which was negative. In March 3012, I was something like 202 and worried again an ordered a new ultrasound (which I ignored and he doesn’t seem to have remembered, since it was never mentioned again). In response, I started snacking but only in the afternoon, never in the evening. Three weeks ago, I was 197 and he stayed calm. I have been staying in a 5 lb window (195-200) since last June.
I neither work out nor run. I do try to walk at least three miles every day. During the winter, my wife and I walk 6 turns around the covered mall every day.
For how long did you weigh 281 before 2002? If it was short term then you’re not a good counter example, but you’re still awesome for losing all that weight.
It’s been a bit more than a year . . . and I really would like to know!
Well?
Well^2?