Senor Beef, I read the whole thread. You have been on a long journey from childhood to adulthood.
How you lose, and maintain is up to an individual. Yourself, and others have gone back and forth over the last 2 years. You are the one who has to live in your body, and you have to decide what is best for you as you have already. If you look for tweakings, and suggestions outside yourself, then that’s your choice.
People overall from what I read meant well, and a few seemed to really invest themselves emotionally into how you are doing. People on the thread tried their best, and you tried your best as well. Kudos to everyone seriously. There is some truth in some of what everyone is saying, and in varying degrees. As most people are not trained with deep listening skills, not trained with empathy, not trained with meeting people at where they are at emotionally/thinking wise, not trained at how habit/behavior change really works, not fully experienced what it is like to be emotionally abused from childhood to teen years, they can eventually get frustrated and say things that make you feel on defense. You were always on “defense” Senor Beef, and felt in the minority of horrendous treatment.It makes sense you were depressed because you did not have love and acceptance. You having to stand your ground when the majority is against you, and this thread seemed to symbolize that even if unintentional without malice. obviously you know that Senor Beef. (P.S., I am not saying who is right or wrong for any commenters over the last 2 years, it’s just the way things played out eventually, and how it can come too look, and obviously how you see things is the minority opinion).
I know many people all feel they are right, and know they are right. But is that the point of this thread? Let’s get beyond who is right, and the methods of this and that and let Senor Beef make a decision as an adult what he decides. Let him have some control of what he can do with his body. I am theorizing that maybe he is way over people telling him anything about his body, they tried to “get to him” in childhood/teen years by emotionally abusing him because of his body. Now it seems to be “attacking” his thinking, and what he does with his body in this thread, even though people mean well. He has been through a lot-emotional abuse takes a toll, and emotions of that negative level can affect a lot how you can think in adulthood.
(P.S. It is noted that many of you referred him to a professional as they are trained in certain things, but I will state that there are many who don’t get the emotional depth of abuse of the obese from kid hood to young adult; many don’t even really know how to treat depression-I believe in therapy, and I believe they are many who are ill equipped to help-believe it or not many are impacted by cultural factors/biases in helping obese or depressed clients. Many despite being trained default to UN-empathy/frustration when the client does not get well fast enough. It becomes more about them “helping others solve their issues quickest” than about truly helping the client where they are truly at. They “get high off” of helping quickly solve their issues, and they get worthiness from that. Many depressed or obese give up because several honestly give mediocre effort/ caring to clients. There are some shining stars, but few in between as many are not trained on the mindset of the obese, and really how it is to be depressed day in day out.
You started the thread because you wanted to lose significant weight(Originally you said you took on the weight loss thing mostly as a challenge, you were aimless, just sort of drifting through life with no idea about what to do, very depressed, assert some sort of control by proving that you could accomplish this huge task - something that would come with temptation and a desire to quit, and that you could not only stick with it, but absolutely demolish it) and to share with others who are dealing with the same problems. Now you say as an adult, you don’t want this health scare to kill you. You want to live.
(Please Senor Beef, correct me if I am wrong about the following)
Why Do Values Matter?
The main benefit of knowing your values is that you will gain tremendous clarity and focus, but ultimately you must use that new found clarity to make consistent decisions and take committed action. So the whole point of discovering your values is to improve the results you get in those areas that are truly most important to you.
Values are priorities that tell you how to spend your time, right here, right now. There are two reasons that priorities are important for our lives.
The first reason is that time is our most limited resource; time does not renew itself. Once we spend a day, it’s gone forever. If we waste that day by investing our time in actions that don’t produce the results we want, that loss is permanent. We can earn more money, improve our physical bodies, and repair broken relationships, but we cannot redo yesterday. If we all had infinite time, then values and priorities would be irrelevant. But at least here on earth, we appear to be mortal with limited life spans, and if we value our mortal lives, then it’s logical to invest them as best we can.
The second reason priorities matter is that we human beings tend to be fairly inconsistent in how we invest our time and energy. Most of us are easily distracted. It’s easy for us to fall into the trap of living by different priorities every day. One day you exercise; the next day you slack off. One day you work productively; the next day you’re stricken with a bout of laziness. If we don’t consciously use our priorities to stick to a clear and consistent course, we’ll naturally drift off course and shift all over the place. And this kind of living yields poor results. Imagine an airplane that went wherever the wind took it - who knows where it would eventually land? And the flight itself would likely be stressful and uncertain.
So for these two reasons - limited time and a typically low index of distraction - consciously knowing and living by our values become extremely important. Values act as our compass to put us back on course every single day, so that day after day, we’re moving in the direction that takes us closer and closer to our definition of the “best” life we could possibly live. The “best” is your own ideal, but generally as you get closer to this ideal, you’ll enjoy increasingly positive shades of “better” even if you never reach “best.” And this makes sense because many results in life exist on a continuum. There are some discrete entities like being married or not married, but your health, financial status, relationship intimacy, and level of happiness are generally continuous, meaning that they can gradually get better or worse. It seems reasonable that more health, happiness, wealth, intimacy, inner peace, love, etc. is better than less.
But here’s the interesting part: Since our time is limited, and since it takes time to move along the continuum through the various “betters,” we usually cannot instantly achieve the state of “best.” We can’t land our plane just yet - it’s still in flight. Moreover, everyone has a different definition of what “best” means to them. For some people, good health is an absolute must. For others, being compassionate is what’s most important. And for each of these values, every person is at a different point along their own continuum. So imagine that there are a bunch of planes in the air, each in a different starting location and each having a different destination airport. You can’t then plot the same course to land every plane at its “best” airport. Each plane requires its own individual course.
For a more human example, everyone is in a different state of health right now, and everyone has a different ideal for their “best” possible health. So the course each person takes from their starting point to their own best state of health will be unique.
Because of these individual differences, some of your “planes” will be much farther from their airports than others. If you want to weigh 150 pounds and you currently weigh 155, this plane is within sight of its airport and is approaching the runway. If you want to become a millionaire and you’re flat broke with a low income, that plane is much further away.
Because you can’t do everything at once, you have to prioritize which planes are most precious to you. You may not be able to land them all within the span of your lifetime because you probably don’t know how long your lifetime will be; nor can you be certain how long it will take to land each of these planes. But realize that the closer you get each plane to its airport, the better that area of your life will be.
Your major motivation is to live, and you know because when a health scare reminds you of that. I wonder if you have anything to live for that really moves you currently as an adult. You say you seek a significant other. It seems for you, it is like when a person is for example is being choked that the body fights automatically to preserve life no matter what. Or like a person who was thinking of killing themselves later that Friday, but they start to choke on the food on Monday, and they fight to get that food out because they are trying to desperately breathe in order to continue living. You seem to want to live at some minimal level, but nothing is really challenging you or exciting you. You seem to be in a hum drum of life. You seem to value authenticity, truth, transparency, empathy, love, connection, logic, commitment, standards, hard work, effort, purpose, direction, honor, accomplishment, contributing, competition, significance, daring, discipline, duty, ethics, compassion, caring, fairness, teaching, helpfulness, honesty, Independence, Individuality, Integrity, Intelligence, Learning, kindness, Mastery, Meaning, motivation, Nonconformity, passion, Realness, Reality, Persuasiveness, power, Reputation, Responsibility, sacrifice, Self-reliance, Self-respect, Strength,Success, Understanding, Uniqueness, Pride,Variety, Variety, Victory, Warmheartedness, Youthfulness.
I think you want to be your own man, do things on your own for whatever reason, go against the grain, not be like everybody else, be a leader, stand out, not give in, not let people control your thinking, or what you do. You have low tolerance for being thought weak, tired emotionally from being treated sub humanely, who can you trust, do people really like you for you, perhaps you want to see who really cares despite how you look, or your just tired thinking like any cookie cutter type person. You have a need to be different, to be radical. You never ever want to do things for others, but for yourself. You believe in breaking something down to its essence, and you may be persuaded by logic if done correctly.
I am 34, weigh 400 pounds, and I found your thread by googling “200 pounds lost atkins induction” a 1.5-2 years earlier, and again last night. But I had only read the first page of thread then, and read all last night. My experience is being a psychology major initially, then eventually to a degree in social sciences major. I have for more than 15 years been studying extensively on my own principles of psychology, sociology, how change/empathy/focus really works etc. From age 7 to early 30s, I have been to helping professionals of all ages, genders, races, cultural backgrounds and it is rare to get a person who really gets it and empathizes to the level needed. Yes, helping professionals are better than the average layperson, but at a point many are not that prepared. That’s why Peer Recovery Specialists or similar titles(former depressed people in recovery helping others-like a big brother/mentor/sponsor) are able to help more generally because many understands exactly how it feels, and can be more patient, and less likely to feel frustration to go for the long journey to recovery. People remember how it was when everybody gave up on them, so they are less likely to do it to others.
Anyhow, I have decided I will choose Atkins induction for the majority of the weight loss. I am a person who knows a lot, but I figured for myself that I am a social being at heart, and have finally after years been the last few months been working with like minded folks(people who are already healthy, and doing well) to implement what we know. Then with my current support team in place, I am going to figure out in the next week what is the best way to keep the weight off through habits/strategies and type of long term meal plan. I have learned a lot from all the commenters on this point on planning for transition-thank you all for your insight.
