Losing excess weight, as many upthread have said, is a much harder proposition than not gaining weight. Case in point, myself: I am on a very strict ketogenic diet and have lost about thirty pounds in six months. Hurrah? Well, yes and no. It’s not nothing; but I started out about 110 pounds over the weight the height-weight charts say I should be. Most people would be deliriously happy to drop thirty pounds; for me, it’s a start. I am still seventy pounds above goal weight– by most measures, including my personal one of not being insulin resistant and chronically fatigued, obese. I will have to lose another thirty-five pounds before I can say that I am merely overweight. And the problem with weight loss is that it’s invisibly slow while its happening– you can only say that you’ve lost weight, not that you’re losing it. Because as one does lose weight the diet that previously produced weight loss stops working and you have to double down. I wonder if to get down to my goal weight I will eventually have to live on water, vitamin pills and one boiled egg a day.
Probably not, but you will have to exercise nearly every day. Which of course gets harder as we age.
Something that’s hard for heavy folks to accept is that they got that way by dint of decades of sustained effort. Misdirected and pleasant effort, but effort nevertheless. Undoing the work of decades is likewise the work of decades if done gently, or of years if done aggressively. While fighting our highly obesogenic culture and commercial food interests every step of the way.
This isn’t theoretical for me either …
As I’ve posted about before, I’m naturally smallish and scrawny as adult men go. In my 40s I let a combo of stress and stupid get ahold of me and I gained weight equal to 50% of my lean weight. Compared to the many ordinarily chunky or muscular people around me I didn’t look so bad; merely ordinary. Certainly didn’t look like the traditional apple with legs. But …
One third of my body was blubber. Which in turn triggered frank diabetes. Which in turn triggered a crash effort to recover from that, lest I lose my occupation forever. Can you say “motivated”? I thought so.
Very deliberate eating: nil simple carbs and kid-sized portions, exercise in the gym or run every day, the small weight loss boost of metformin, and I knocked out all the blubber. All of it; right back to scrawny. Took IIRC 10 months. Everybody from my MD to the crew at the diabetes clinic said it was one of the more amazing performances they’d ever seen. I can only take credit for diligence; how my body reacted was all its doing, not mine.
I kept that up for 10 years. Starting at about 3 years I slipped the occasional bite of simple carbs in a couple times a week: bread, rice, potatoes, various desserts. At first I didn’t even like the taste of that stuff. But it’s seductively easy to re-acquire that simple carb habit. My advice is don’t do it. There is nothing in simple carbs that is required for a long-term healthy diet.
It’s been almost 15 years now. Now that I’m retired, and my late wife is late, so I don’t need to worry about surviving and maintaining my employee medical insurance to take care of her, it’s easy to get lazy and let the carb monster, and the portion monster, out of their cages to ravage your (my) body again.
I’ve backslid some, could stand to lose 20 lbs, and in fact am re-dedicating myself to nil simple carbs w smaller portions, and now doing walking and mild calisthenics daily to loosen up for real gym + run daily exercising starting in a couple more months. It doesn’t get easier as we get older.
IMO it’s really a mind game, not a body game. When you’re certain that a bite of dessert is poison you’ll hate yourself in the morning for having swallowed, it’s easy(ier) to skip it. When you’re bargaining with yourself (it’s only 25 measly calories in one teeny bite …) you’re going to lose willpower eventually. Tempt not your demons for they hate you with a passion and will destroy you given a chance.
IME defeat the mind and the body will follow. If you’re fighting your mind and your body, well, that is super hard.
Good luck to everyone working on this journey.