“The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now.”
–from The Simpsons ep. 135, “King-Size Homer”
Again, though, if an anorexic posted something like, “I just can’t eat. I can’t force myself to do it. It freaks me out and makes me anxious and depressed and makes me hate myself whenever I eat normally, so I just stopped doing it and I don’t plan on starting again anytime soon,” I think there would be a lot more reactions along the lines of, “We care about you and you should seek some help. This behavior is very harmful,” and less, “Just put the fork in your mouth skinny.”
To be honest, this is my preferred approach for all self-destructive behavior. I think mindless comfort and support are less effective, and there is a passage in Seligman’s Learned Optimism that bears this out. However, while Seligman is a well-decorated psychologist, I am a psychologist/psychiatrist of no kind.
But it does work for me. My internal monologue whenever I am faced with two options, one of which is weight-loss oriented and the other of which is not, says (with the voice of Stan Smith from American Dad), “Fatty can take the stairs!” or “Fatty doesn’t need another cookie!”
I mentioned this upthread at one point, but it bears repeating, speaking relatively to someone of average height with similar proportions, a taller person will have higher numbers on BMI and a shorter person will have a lower number; higher or lower muscle mass will also, obviously, put it off. As such, you being on the shorter end, your BMI will appear lower than perhaps it ought to relative to the scale, which probably accounts for why you appear in the ideal range but still feel you’re a little overweight.
Gestalt, I think you are still missing the point. Certain obese dopers are saying that no matter what they do, it is impossible for them or a friend to lose weight. That’s not the equivalent of saying “I just can’t eat” (ie, a statement about one’s own behavior). It’s more like saying “My body is different than every other human’s and doesn’t obey the laws of physics.”
In fact, the obese person’s statement above is actually the opposite of the skinny statement you posited–the obese person doesn’t recognize that there’s any problem with their behavior and blame their problem on physical factors beyond their control.
And that’s why they get bagged on–the fact that they are fat is just a side issue.
Just to further make the comparison, it would be like an underweight person saying ‘I eat 2500 calories a day and I can’t gain any weight! No matter how hard I try, I can’t get myself in to a normal weight range, so I gave up. I don’t want to have to eat 10,000 calories and lie in bed all day, so I decided not to try any more.’
If an obese person said ‘I know I eat too much, but I can’t help myself. I just binge like there’s no tomorrow and I keep gaining weight. I can’t stop myself.’, then they’d get the same type of advice as the anorexic acknowledging their problem in the same fashion.
Well I think that also has to do with the fact that you’ll be quicker to cause yourself harm (or even death) by not eating than by overeating, so people are more likely to want you to get immediate help.
(And I haven’t weighed myself recently but I’m typically around 18.3-18.5-ish.)
Weight loss is about more than physics. It’s not just calories in and calories out. As much as it makes for cute platitudes, the human body is not a machine. This is a morbid (heh heh) oversimplification when hormones and metabolism are such huge (and for many people, unknown) parts of the equation. Physics doesn’t account for things like the metabolism going into starvation mode and holding onto every calorie that crosses your lips. Physics does not determine how much fat your body wants to hold onto or where it is distributed. Biochemistry is a much more fruitful field when we’re talking about these issues. What the fuck does physics have to do with anything?
As I stated multiple times upthread, I can lose weight. But doing so is an herculean effort for minor results, which I’ve decided isn’t worth undertaking any longer. I’ve personally known people (family members and friends), even in their 30s or older, who can change from regular soda to diet soda without changing activity level and melt off 20 pounds (or at least an inch or two). I change to diet soda and nothing happens. I worked my patoot off for a year, was miserable and feeling deprived the entire time, and ended up at a BMI which is still classified as obese. I believe insanity can be (clichely) defined as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.
I’m pretty sure I’m not insane. So instead of going down the road of yo-yo weight swings, increasingly desperate dieting, and/or endemic self-loathing, I’ve decided to content myself with the body I have. At the end of the day, I have only to answer to myself. If you find my reasoning is just making excuses or indulging in rationalization, I can’t change that. But I feel fairly rational and cognitively consonant. It’s a lot more pleasant to like myself than it would be to hate myself.
FWIW, not that I think rachel’s POV is healtful there is a bit more nuance to weight than just calories in/calories out.
In my last week of pregnancy I put on 14 lbs of water weight due to extreme hypertension (fun times, let me tell you). Despite having avoided stretch marks for the duration of the pregnancy BLAMMO, but I digress. When Junior was born I lost 30 lbs within 2 weeks time. 7ish pounds of that was Junior (plus placenta, etc) but the rest was the water. That has nothing at all to do with the number of calories I was eating. Ditto for people on steroids - you can retain a huge amount of water which bumps up your weight, BMI and general ‘fatness’.
I don’t know much about PCOS but I do know that it makes losing weight very, very difficult. I also know that losing weight is supposed to make the symptoms much less. In the end it’s up to rachel if she wants to put in the effort to lose the weight - I will say I suspect that effort would be a lot more than what is required for someone without PCOS.
26
I have less than 10 lbs to lose to get under 25, and I’m usually around 5 or 6 lbs striking distance from that goal, though I took a hit during the holiday.
But I’ve been treading water in that range for a while–I know what I need to do, I just need to be more regular about doing it.
It’s about more than physics, but not that much more. The bottom line is that people who insist they have magical metabolisms that can’t be explained medically are simply wrong.
pbbth’s friend who exercises vigorously 4 hours each day and never consumes more than 2000 calories but still gains weight isn’t inexplicable; she’s deluding herself and pbbth.
To me, the ideal range seems extremely wide. If I were at the higher end of the ideal range, I would consider myself overweight. As it is, I’m pretty much in the middle and I don’t consider myself “ideal.” The BMI range seems extremely generous.
I don’t disagree that mindless comfort is bad. In fact, I’d argue it’s next to useless. But what I don’t get is why so many people seem to think it’s a perfect dichotomy. I honestly think that, for most people, the best strategy is to be supportive and empathetic, while at the same time still encouraging someone to better themselves.
I don’t see any value in choosing the other extreme and attacking the person with a problem as often happens here.
As for rachel, I would say the following:
Being happy with your body is a good thing. But that doesn’t mean you can’t at least try to be healthy in what you eat. It doesn’t matter if that makes you lose weight–the point is just to make you be and feel healthier.
As for RR’s comment: I’ve seen it–mostly in the assumption that the comment “I can’t lose weight” means it’s physically impossible. Do we have the same standard when a skinny person says they can’t gain?
Plus, fat people are often disparaged in our society–can you blame us for being a bit more sensitive? Instead of getting into a fight with someone because they misunderstood your intent, why not clarify that you were not attacking them? (My default assumption is because you actually were.)
And yet, every single smoker in the world who has quit by any means but the “six feet under” method has done just that. That is the only way to stop smoking. It is effective 100% of the time when used 100% of the time.
More like there’s a lot of Americans on this board and Americans, statistically, are giant fatties.
I think “medically healthy” would be better descriptor than “ideal”. ‘Ideal’ seems like it should imply more than it really does. A man on the low end of “ideal” would be at no increased risk of obesity related health problems, but I’d find him scrawny looking, not an ideal I’d work toward.
More vast oversimplifications. Stopping smoking is as much (or for some people, more) about replacing or distracting oneself from the psychological addiction. (Not to mention, an unlit cigarette can be placed in one’s mouth without making one a smoker)
I’m glad I don’t live in Blackandwhitia as described by you and Rand. It sounds pretty dystopian.
Ah! Hadn’t thought of it that way.
When it’s somebody else’s problem, the solution is always easy. Overweight? Easy, eat less food! Addicted to nicotine? Easy, stop smoking! Depressed? Easy, change your bad attitude! And so on.
It’s ‘Ideal’ because people in this range are more medically healthy as a group than those outside it. The medical establishment uses BMI in a lot of studies, that’s how they determine cut-offs. ‘Underweight’ people have been found to have certain health risks compared to ‘Ideal’ people who are at least risk of a variety of ailments, ‘Overweight’ people have somewhat increased risks compared to ‘Ideal’ and ‘Obese’ people dramatically increased risks. After gathering this kind of information, a decision was made to lower the BMI cut-off for ‘Overweight’ from 27 to 25 to just a couple decades ago.
FWIW, this is almost my exact experience (except that the less I exercise, the lighter I get).
Trying to do what I need to in order to gain significant weight made me miserable and ill -I got diagnosed with IBS after a year of eating massive amounts of crap food. I have immense sympathy for anyone who is struggling to change their weight, I know how difficult it can be (not that it’s difficult for everyone - people vary hugely here). And at my thinnest, I only wanted to gain 25 lbs (now just 10 more I think - woo!). If I desired to gain (or lose) 50 or 100 lbs I can’t imagine how hopeless I would feel, and how resentful I would get if I did decide to bust my ass for a while, feel like crap the whole time, and only get a few pounds closer to a goal that seemed unobtainable.
So yeah, rachellogram’s attitude makes a lot of sense to me. It’s a negative attitude, but totally understandable in her relatively extreme circumstances. ‘Just eat less’ isn’t going to change her situation for the better any more than ‘just eat more junk food!’ will mine.
That sucks, rhub! There’s a lot more room to go up than down and still be functional so I can see how being on the smaller side could be scary. My old college roommate didn’t break 90pounds on a rainy day, and she ate like a fat kid in a twinkie factory just to maintain it.