After all this, was there any weight loss or are you just talking about entertainment?
Originally Posted by Sampiro View Post
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 too am sick at the thought of eating anything for breakfast. I perform far better without that load in my system. As a matter of fact, if I don’t start eating after a sleep-fast then I am not inclined to do so. Once I start, there is no satisfaction. It is like the AA mantra: 100 drinks are not enough but 1 drop is too many."
One thing I have not heard here is any actual discussion about what controls food intake. All I see is all this persiflage about “Diet and Exercise”.
I never feel hunger nor satiation. I can go a full day, if not more, without eating anything and feeling no effects. During that time, food is actually a turn off. Cravings drop to very low. However, as I said, once I start, there is no turning it off. My body, not my ego, demands food but unfortunately it is not capable of letting me know what will satisfy that command.
Obesity has been on the increase since the 50s. Congress pressed the medical profession for a meal plan when the “balanced diet” was invented. Coincidence?
Other countries that adopt this “Balanced Diet” join is on the obesity train. Coincidence
In the late 60s and 70s when congress subsidized wheat, corn, and beef, obesity rates sky rocketed. Coincidence?
The recent success rates for weight loss have taken a nose dive as the professions continue to take the easy way out and blame the patient as being stubborn, lazy, rather than figure out that what they are saying is so wrong. They see the few that are actually losing weight as a mark of success while ignoring those that stop attending clinics, paying for expensive tests, do not kill themselves at Gyms, and simply fall off the charts. It is the same psychology in how unemployment figures are calculated. Only those on the list are considered and of course, the professions brag on being highly successful. It has become a self preserving industry. Conspiracy? Maybe but if the shoe fits…
As I see it, there is only one solution and if you are old enough to read this, it is too late for you.
Crosby, Stills, and Nash said it" Teach your Children"
- Don’t feed your a new born anything with any kind of sweetener in it. As soon as possible, stop giving any juice of any kind. Reward with vegetables and not snacks if needed. The child will develop a taste only for that which is good for the body.
It will take 15 years to stop the obesity epidemic and as I said, it is too late for you and what you are being told will scarcely mitigate your situation.
There are other ways though.
Obesity has been on the increase since the 50s. Congress pressed the medical profession for a meal plan when the “balanced diet” was invented. Coincidence?
Other countries that adopt this “Balanced Diet” join is on the obesity train. Coincidence
In the late 60s and 70s when congress subsidized wheat, corn, and beef, obesity rates sky rocketed. Coincidence?
The recent success rates for weight loss have taken a nose dive as the professions continue to take the easy way out and blame the patient as being stubborn, lazy, rather than figure out that what they are saying is so wrong. They see the few that are actually losing weight as a mark of success while ignoring those that stop attending clinics, paying for expensive tests, do not kill themselves at Gyms, and simply fall off the charts. It is the same psychology in how unemployment figures are calculated. Only those on the list are considered and of course, the professions brag on being highly successful. It has become a self preserving industry. Conspiracy? Maybe but if the shoe fits…
As I see it, there is only one solution and if you are old enough to read this, it is too late for you.
Crosby, Stills, and Nash said it" Teach your Children"
- Don’t feed your a new born anything with any kind of sweetener in it.
- As soon as possible, stop giving any juice of any kind. Water and Milk are the ONLY liquids.
- Reward with vegetables and not snacks if needed.
- Reduce all carbohydrates to an absolute minimum.
The child will develop a life long taste for that which is good for the body. It will take 15 years to stop the obesity epidemic and as I said, it is too late for you and what you are being told will scarcely mitigate your situation. Unfortunately, this is expensive over soda and snacks. You cannot even consume the bad foods in front of the child and that in itself, may help you lose weight.
There are other ways for the rest of us though.
Something burped and part of my message was submitted prematurely
Maybe someone can delete the first message and this one too…
Perhaps – a lot of things have changed since the 1950s. Food has become a lot cheaper; industry has gotten better at marketing fast food and junk food; air conditioning has become more common; premature babies and infants with serious health problems are more likely to survive to adulthood; families have become smaller; more mothers are working outside of the home; just to name a few changes.
It’s easy enough to come up with a story why any one or more of these changes is responsible for the rise in obesity.
Perhaps. See above.
People respond differently on exercise, according to BBC documentary The Truth About Exercise. I haven’t seen it, but a year ago or so I read about it on BBC’s site; I can’t find the piece now, but if you google for it you will find more info on the subject. The following is a summary I found instead:
So when “everyone” shares their fantastic exercise experiences, it may not apply to you. – I don’t know if the documentary presents the truth on the subject, but this is something that I’ve always thought myself (that some people just don’t respond to exercise as some others), so it was a small revelation to read about the findings.
(I know this is a slight hijack, but considering the age of the thread and the numerous answers the OP already got, I believe no one gets upset about it.)
Here’s what I did. I lost a LOT of weight due to High Protein Low Carbs.
But then, I changed my lifestyle. No more eating at Fast Food places. Stay away from many snacks, no more do-nuts, lots of fiber, eating healthier. And I started walking, like a hour a day. Mind you, that would have resulted in such a slow loss i would have been discouraged.
Thus I kept most of that weight off for well over two decades.
Now, I have a tussle with about ten pounds, going back & forth. But the nearly 50 pounds I lost long ago is gone.
So- diets can work, in that they can take some weight off fast. But almost no one can stay on a “diet”. What you need is to change your mental mindset and lifestyle to keep it off.
I tried many forms of exercise, but the only one that wasnt boring and a 'chore" was walking to me. You also will have to find that right exercise for you.
No, not ignoring statistics … just not making some up or very confused as to what the facts are.
The medical profession discussing what made up a balnaced diet does back probably as far as there have been anything to call a medical profession. An actual Federal Nutrition Policy began in the 1970s, not the 1950s with “Dietary Goals for the
United States” which then became “Dietary Guidelines for Americans.” Moreover, highly unlikely that once published they had huge immediate impact on what most people ate! In terms of Federal efforts to increase calories available - that dates back to the first decades of the 20th century when malnutrition associated with poverty was a major issue in America; cheap additional calories via fats and sugars were promoted not as “balance” but on the simple recognition that such improved growth compared to inadequate calories (and thus industrial productivity among the working poor).
The 1950s part of your claims, as the onset of the rise in obesity (20 years before the Federal Nutrition Guideline) is mostly correct, although more precisely it varied by demographic group: Whites pretty much early 1950s; Black males in the 40s, Black females later 1950s.
Correlation is most strong with the onset of Big Food Inc. (highly processed mass produced food; fast food; etc.) and with the change in physical lifestyle of modern times. Subsidies certainly may have been a reflection of the influence of Big Food Inc…
No correlation between governmental promotion of “balanced diet” with obesity onset exists internationally either. What correlates internationally?
[QUOTE=The Global Epidemic of Obesity]
Of the multiple causal factors associated with the rise in obesity in developing countries, perhaps the two most important are urbanization and globalization of food production and marketing. Urban dwelling has a profound effect on energy balance, particularly on energy expenditure. On the energy output side, urban living is usually associated with lower energy demands compared with rural life … The global nature of modern commerce, sustained by the technical advances in food production and transportation, has permitted the introduction of low-cost, energy-dense foods in the domestic food market of many developing countries.
[/quote]
Cheap high calories food often designed to be highly palatable and not very satisfying being created and marketing by the Food Industrial Complex coupled with less built in physical activity is what correlates.
No, there is no nose dive in the progress being made impacting this trend. No, the medical profession not blaming stubborn lazy patients … it is working hard to consider obesity as a disease that has genetic predispositions and is triggered by exposure to our modern obesiogenic environment. The medical profession recognizes that solving this problem requires multiple lines of attack, including societal level interventions.
Problem with second-hand summary of media interpretations of actual research is that much gets misrepresented.
There is some real research that shows that some respond to aerobic exercise with much greater impact on VO2 max (one measure of aerobic capacity … although not performance) and some with virtually none. Well duh. No matter how hard I train I wouldn’t get much better on my marathon time than I did those several years back. There is a point that my body would top off on performance and addiltional training has diminishing returns. That point is different for another person who will get more gain for the same training and have a much better performance at their peak. Likewise for strength, power, and other individual fitness aspects: some people will respond more getting bigger and/or stronger (not the same thing) to resistance training than others and some are predisposed to be better at endurance and to respond better to that training and so on.
Presuming that the absolute amount of change in VO2 max means how much you can “shift the fat” - is the nuts that the media is often guilty of. It means only how much your VO2 max is and how far off from that you are from baseline to top. Not how many calories you burn with exercise. Not even aerobic performance which also has to do with other factors like lactate threshold and technique. And while there are, I am SURE, differences between individuals as to what sort of exercise will do what, with some people having dramatic changes in body composition with only a small amount of resistance training and others not and likewise for endurance training, showing who responds more or not at all with VO2 max changes does not show that. Claiming that even a single person is a nonresponder to exercise - period - rather than a nonresponder in regards to one particular measured outcome only while possibly a strong responder to other outcomes and possibly a strong responder to other sorts of exercise - is completely unsupported and very highly likely untrue. Note even in that media hyped report they stated: “every volunteer improved physically in some way.”
As far as exercise as a means to lose weight … very few are great responders. As noted in this thread, exercise is a great way to impact body composition, how much is actual fat loss, to impact a variety of health measure (and there will be individual variation as to how much on each individual measure), and to help keep the weight off - possibly by helping reverse leptin resistance in the brain and who knows what other factors that we still don’t quite get. B
Interesting thread.
I’ve been slowly, but steadily losing weight since the last quarter of last year. I have lost more than 60 lbs. I’m 5’ 4", weighed about 200 lbs last year, size 18 jeans and bigger. I was put on medication for high cholesterol last summer after a physical. At that time, I started taking COQ10 to ease/prevent possible symptoms (bone aches) that sometimes come with being on statins on the advice of my pharmacist. My first weight loss goal was to get off that medication. I accomplished that, and felt so much better that I continued to watch my food intake so I would not gain back what I had lost. Instead, what occurred is that I continued to lost weight.
Right now, I weigh 134, have been at 132 for days, but 134 is my number today. my jeans size in the Gloria Vanderbilt style that I always bought when I was bigger is now a 4. My jeans are anywhere from a size 4 to a 9 depending on the manufacturer. Well, it even varies on the style. My size 9 shorts that fit me are Levis and my size 6 jeans that fit are also Levis. I have a size 4 pair of Levis that I can wear if I want to display a muffin top. I have a pair of size 2 jeans (not Levis) that fit better than those 4s. Anyway, I’m saving those jeans for future as I’m not done losing weight yet. It won’t be long before I can wear them comfortably.
I’ve had several goal weights over time. At first, I just wanted to get into size 14 jeans. When I got to size 14s, I kept control of my eating to maintain and continued to lose weight, honestly with out trying all that hard. I have continued with taking the COQ10 just because I think it helps with easing cravings, but no doctor has agreed with me on that theory so far.
When I broke 150, it was a huge milestone for me. Getting under 130 is going to be another one. I will not be celebrating with a piece of cake. At the moment, I’m aiming to weigh around 125. I won’t really know till I get there if that will be enough. We’ll see.
What I have done is limit portions of good food, only eat till I don’t feel hunger pangs, not till I feel full. I don’t eat after a certain time of day, usually 6 or 7 pm, though I have made exceptions if my schedule was wacky on a certain day. I figure I won’t starve overnight. If I’m really hungry, not just eating from habit, I will drink a cup of chicken broth before bed. Just dump a can of Campbells into a mug and microwave it warm.
I did not really exercise at all until I got down to about 150 lbs, I found it too hard on my joints, my wrists especially for pushups. Since getting below 150, I have been doing sets of exercises - jumping jacks, squats, crunches,plank, pushups, the boring basics. I have never really exercised regularly like this in my life. Starting was hard. It took me a whole day to do a set at first, just learning what it felt like, and I’d perspire like crazy. Felt like such a noob. Over time, I got to the point where I could do a whole set all at one time, then two, then three. At first, I exercised every single day, would not allow myself to have coffee, or anything but water until that was accomplished. I’m the sort who will put off exercise, so it was necessary for me to make this kind of bargain with myself. No coffee till exercise is done has worked for me. I’ve been doing the same exercises for 6 weeks or more now, and I do feel better if I get them done. I have been able to ease up on myself, allow myself a day off here and there, but never more than two days have passed between exercise days.
I have never enjoyed exercising, but I sure like the results. I have muscles! I feel better. I still have way too much belly fat, but I can feel the muscles in there underneath. I have a great deal of jiggle going on in that area. Look way better in clothes that I do naked, but I hope to improve that.
As far as food, I am eating just about the same thing every day for the most part. I have one poached egg on toast for my first breakfast. Later, I will have another breakfast of a small amount of steel cut oatmeal, all dolled up with nuts and maple syrup and dried apples if I have them. If I don’t have breakfast at breakfast time, I have it later in the day. It’s all about portion control, not about no sugar or whatever. The oatmeal portion is small enough that it fits in a 1 cup plastic food container with all the extras. After that, maybe a yogurt, cut up fruit, cut up veggies. I have the same dinner that I make for everyone else here, I just really limit my portion. Same size container as the oatmeal. Maybe an additional side of veggies. I allow myself Kit Kat bars as a treat. I find I like them best frozen. Then nothing but (lots of) water at night if I can help it. Chicken broth before bed if I’m actually hungry, not just munchie. Lots and lots of water.
Having Kit Kats on the menu helps me not feel dessert deprived. I do not allow myself other kinds of chocolate bars for the most part, or dessert of any kind apart from fruit and yogurt. If I must have chocolate, I need to wait till I can get a Kit Kat. Silly but keeping the allowed food list simple has worked for me.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep the weight off. I figure I can if I can continue to eat small like I’ve done since last year. Anytime I see something that I WANT, I ask myself if I really want that. or would I rather lose a pound. So far the pound wins most of the time. Rarely, it doesn’t, like the ice cream I had, but sometimes you have to splurge. It was a small sweet cream Cold Stone ice cream with fresh raspberries, dark chocolate and marshmallows. I enjoyed it, but won’t be doing it again any time soon.
I’m having such fun buying clothes. I have bought all my new clothes at Goodwill, well, except for undies…
I’ve already donated back a lot of the stuff that is now too big for me — no going back to that size. I go to the Goodwill and just fill the cart up with possibilities, then only buy things I love once I try them on. I’ve bough some teeny things that are way too young for me just because I want to. No chance to wear them in public unless I’m going to a costume party, but I don’t care, I enjoy em.
Its true that dieting is hard because you can’t just completely stop eating, however, you can completely stop eating certain classes of junk food… I fear some foods, the way I used to fear just one cigarette after I quit smoking. Well, not fear so much, that may not be the right word. Whatever. Anyway, So, haven’t drank soda for many months, it’s just not worth letting into my diet. I am afraid of even one donut, even one of whatever junk food. I did have some ice cream one time since August, but really want to stay away from it if at all possible. It was good, but no substitute for the feeling of being thinner. I’m just really wary of high calorie foods sneaking into my diet.
Yesterday, I was at the grocery store. Went down the candy aisle, put a bag of jelly beans in my basket. Stood there looking at the jelly beans in my basket for a couple of minutes. Picked them up an put them back on the shelf. I know that if they were here in my desk drawer, I would be eating them right now, but I really am ok not having them, and kind of proud of myself for resisting the temptation.
Anyway, good luck to those of you fighting this battle. Its a tough one and the battle is lifelong. Sure feels good to win at it though (grin).
Yes, as the saying goes the sweetest victory is conquering yourself.
This thread addresses a pet peeve of mine, so I’m going to resurrect it (hey, it’s only been a week since the last post).
Assuming that indeed 95% of weight loss attempts fail, then concluding that weight loss is pretty much impossible is a fallacy. 95% of all first dates fail to eventually result in marriage. So I guess pretty much nobody ever gets married. Wrong, because of these two factors:
[ol]
[li]There’s a bunch of people who never succeed but keep trying over and over[/li][li]There are people who eventually succeed after several attempts[/li][/ol]
The fact that we all know tons of married people bears this out.
I see no reason why this would be very different for weight loss. The majority of people trying to lose weight at any given time are the chronic dieters who keep trying the latest fad diet. Their outcomes have no bearing on the results of the much smaller group of people doing it right. (Whatever that may entail.)
I’ve been losing weight myself for about 18 months now after being fat my entire adult life, way before it was fashionable. My main goal is to get below a 30 BMI (how much below TBD) and I certainly plan on staying there the rest of my life, even if that means I never get to eat more than I do now.
Iljitsch, that’s something I haven’t thought of before.
I don’t know if you can compare it to dating because it’s not like there are biological forces working against people getting married (more of the opposite, really).
Also, the studies I’ve looked at tested weight loss attempts over a five year period. That’s pretty long. But it is possible that someone can regain their weight after five years and then start over again.
The problem is that unlike marriage, I haven’t seen someone lose a lot of weight (>25 lbs.) and keep it off. Just using celebrities as anecdotal evidence, everyone I can think of who lost weight regained the weight later on. Oprah, Kirstie Alley, Anna Nicole Smith, Jeff Goodman, Jonah Hill, and Jarret from Subway. They are all regained their weight.
Drew Carey is still slender, but that’s only because he had gastric bypass surgery.
Losing weight is certainly not like dating in most respects, I only used the latter as an example of how a high failure rate may be observed and yet most people eventually still succeed.
I’ve seen some results from studies (or maybe it was all the same one) that tracked people for five years, with pretty pathetic results, especially as the percentage weight lost got higher. I’m not sure if those studies also track people who lose weight, then regain, lose again, and then succeed.
I also wonder how participants are recruited. It would make sense for people who are actively recruited for a study to be less motivated than those who decide to undertake weight loss on their own. Or maybe not.
It’s certainly true that the examples of people who regain a good amount are much more numerous than the ones of people who lose the weight and keep it off.
Which is all quite depressing and somewhat perplexing. Apparently lots of people manage to lose the weight, which requires restricting calories to larger degree than maintaining weight. So why can they do the former but not the latter?
Anyway, all of this was one of the big reasons for me to lose the weight relatively slowly. If you lose it fast then you never learn to eat appropriate amounts of food, so you’re completely unprepared for maintenance when you reach your goal weight.
And I’m delusional^H^H^H^H^H^H confident enough to think that I can do things that 90% of the population can’t. Such as write two books. 
Your dating/marriage analogy doesn’t really work because it only has to succeed once, whereas weight loss is a continuous ongoing process that has to succeed significantly on the winning side all the time. And I think one reason it’s so hard is that it involves basic aspects of lifestyle, not just what you eat and how much, but when you eat, how often, and how much you exercise. That could potentially be quite a burden, especially for a lifetime. So it’s not even comparable with a simple willpower thing like quitting smoking, which might be hard for some relatively short period of time but then you’re done with it. I’ve heard statistics like some of those quoted upthread on how pathetically poor the chances are of keeping weight off in the long term, and I think that’s why. But it’s certainly true that it’s been done.
Ok, so let me pose these questions to those who ever lost weight and then regained:
How soon did you notice that you were gaining weight?
Did you give in to the weight gain or did you try to fight it? Why?
My own experience: I did lose a fair amount of weight when I was in college so I was home early and had plenty of time to cook, unlike before when I worked full time. (Yeah I know that’s not the typical story.) I also did a lot of walking. As far as I can remember (this was a long time ago) I didn’t really try hard to lose weight, it just kind of happened. But the whole thing derailed when I got an internship in Amsterdam at a place with insane working hours (noon to 8 PM) so I found myself hungry at the train station in the early evening with 1.5 hours of commuting to look forward to before I could eat.
I have lost and regained significant amounts of weight several times over the last 40+ years. (Significant being 20-34kg).
I can be unbelievably strong willed while losing weight, sometimes eating quite a bit less than I should while striving to get to my ideal weight, which used to be 56 - 58 kg but which is higher now that I’m older. Skinny old women who used to be fat look a lot older than those with a bit of meat on them, in my opinion. I have always had an all-or-nothing approach to dieting which is a fault of mine but I’m trying to be as truthful as possible here. While I am losing, it’s relatively easy for me to eschew the ‘bad’ foods, however they may be defined. However when I get to goal I find it incredibly difficult to add back foods which have previously been on the forbidden list. I try to eat small amounts of food previously banned but one morsel leads to I’ve-broken-my-diet thinking and almost inevitably leads to eating way too much of the food item in question.
So, long story short: I have tended to regain the weight quite quickly and I have tried to get back on the dieting wagon, so to speak, before regaining too much weight but, hey, there’s always tomorrow for that, isn’t there?
Not saying I’m typical but I do think I probably have an eating disorder of some kind. Or maybe just disordered eating and I do think that psychological elements are present in degrees not generally taken into consideration by people who have the eat-less-move-more ‘solution’ to overweight/obesity.
Sure, but the biggest problem when comparing something like quitting smoking or drinking with weight loss is that with most other things, you can flat out quit them- not buy them, not consume them and not be around them for the most part, if you so choose. Food is something that you do have to consume multiple times a day, every day in order to exist.
Look at it this way… if you took pack-a-day smokers and told them that they had to cut down to a range between 1 and 8 per day, how effective do you think they’d be? Or if you took alcoholics and told them they had to have at least one drink a day, but no more than 3? Or to make it more fun, tell them that it has to be half-strength liquor rather than the high-octane stuff.
It would be pretty damned ineffective in the long run I suspect, yet that’s exactly what the diet and exercise method of weight loss is asking in the long term. Eat more than X amount, but no more than Y over some arbitrarily period. And while you’re at it, avoid everything that human bodies say is good for us, and eat a bunch of relatively unappetizing stuff.
I’m fat, and it’s damned hard. I lost about 60 lbs about 10 years ago in the spring of 2000, and kept about 30 of it off for something like 5 years. Losing weight wasn’t “hard”, per-se, but it did demand pretty much total focus when it came to eating, drinking and socializing. Once I quit focusing to that degree, the weight gradually came back.
Another consideration is stress-eating. Everyone reacts differently- the lucky people are the ones who don’t eat when under stress, but some of us tend to overeat in those situations. Lots of people smoke and drink too much in those situations, but those things don’t really add pounds like overeating does.
Yes, you have to keep eating, but surely you can quit the appetizing stuff cold turkey and you won’t be overeating on the unappetizing stuff because it’s, you know, unappetizing.
I’m also fat but not nearly as fat as 18 months ago. And although I wouldn’t exactly say it’s easy to lose weight, it’s not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. So I have a hard time imagining how keeping a stable weight, which allows you to eat more, is harder than losing weight.
But maybe the hard part is still to come as I get closer to my goal weight.
The thing that does help me stay on track is that I know with 99.9% certainty that if I don’t follow through now, it’s never going to happen.
In the weight lifting world there’s a phenomenon known as “the novice effect”. Basically, when you’re relatively untrained, almost any stimulus will cause you to get stronger, and if you do it right, you can increase your strength very rapidly at first. But eventually you have surpassed all that low-hanging fruit, and your training has to get more complicated to eke out comparatively fewer strength gains.
My worry is that something like this is happening with weight loss. I know a lot of people who breeze through significant weight loss at first, but then hit a wall. What they’ve been doing for a long time with great success stops being effective. They need to increase the stimulus to continue driving adaptation, but you can only restrict caloric intake so far.
My hunch is that this would be an ideal time to add full body strength exercises into the mix. Squats, deadlifts and the like. By stressing the body in such a way, you spur a large hormonal response that just isn’t going to happen with simple caloric restriction. This would kick your metabolism into high gear (and high intensity interval training could increase metabolism even more if necessary) and divert any excess calories you eat from fat deposits into muscle building.
And I’m disillusioned enough with “exercise” and nutrition science to think they simply haven’t thought of this. But I’ll admit, I’m no scientist, and the job those guys have to do is hard. Still, I think they could use more outside input. If nothing else, the idea that sedentary obese people, slightly overweight ex-athletes, women with pregnancy weight, “skinny fat” people, and people who’ve already lost a lot of weight but still have a way to go, should all lose weight in the same way strikes me as naive.