Back before marriage and kids, I lived alone and controlled the food in my house. I just didn’t buy it. When I did buy it, I used the very dark chocolate trick to keep consumption down. When the only things to munch on in the house are healthy, healthy eating is easy for me.
My husband buys crap. My son, now fourteen, brings home worse crap. People show up at my house to visit with crap. Girl scouts means I have a ton of cookies in my house for several months.
I have little self control when I want it and it’s there. I’m too darn lazy if I want it and it isnt right there for me. And I have more control when I’m in a grocery store than I do in front of the tv.
Diet and exercise is an effective strategy for losing weight in exactly the same way that abstinence is an effective means of preventing teen pregnancy and STD infections.
Both are undeniably effective when the patient follows directions. Both completely ignore well documented facts of human behavior. Advocates of both are sure to blame the patient when the prescription isn’t followed, and so does not produce the desired outcome.
Basic biological urges are rarely denied successfully.
And how did their lives get built that way? Magic? Sorry to sound like a jerk, but your post seems to suggest that skinny people haven’t worked (sometimes rather strenuously) to stay skinny. It wasn’t just given to us on a silver platter. The situps and pushups and occasional hours-long walks that I take are not a pre-built structure that I lucked into. They are choices that I have made. Sometimes I don’t feel like spending a half-hour on the exercise bike, but I do it anyway. I’m nowhere near a fitness guru or some kind of specimen of physical perfection. But I’ve managed to remain fairly skinny in the 2.5 years since I went from a physically demanding job to a sedentary desk job. When I made that change I knew I would either (a) gain significant amounts of weight, or (b) have to change how much I ate and how much I exercised. I chose (b).
I’m not saying fat people are lazy; I’m saying that skinny people aren’t just lucky.
I’m militant enough about my diet and exercise regimen that my friends have come to regard me as an information source on losing weight. I’ve lost count of the number of people who have come to me asking for advice on how they can adjust their lifestyle to lose weight.
Being a good friend, I tend to check in on these friends after a few weeks. And they admit to me that they were really good for the first week and a half, but then life got in the way and they haven’t worked out in about ten days. Or they were so good, and then they had a family gathering so they couldn’t help but eat unhealthily.
Which then reminds me of the dates I’ve turned down because I didn’t have time to go on a date AND go to the gym. And the weekend nights where I offered to be a designated driver because I knew better than to undo my week’s progress at the gym. The cake I turn down at corporate functions, the mornings I wake up at 5 AM because I know I’m going to have to be at the office late and this is the only time I’ll have all day to make sure I get my workout in.
Gosh, you know what? Let me just say this. If you don’t have time to diet and exercise your whole life, that’s fine, that’s completely your choice. What floors me is people who don’t understand that people who are of a health weight DO this. If you don’t want to be overweight, you need to exercise every day. You need to control your portions and limit your carb intake and sugar intake EVERY SINGLE DAY.
And when you imply that I am not overweight because I’m luckier than you, that’s invalidating all the hours I put in at the gym, all the cookies and french fries and ice cream I’ve been avoiding, all the times I wanted to eat just a little bit more but refrained from doing so.
Look, losing weight is a huge commitment, and I really can’t knock you if you’re struggling to stay off of welfare and have a daughter that’s struggling in math class and your mother can no longer care for herself and you have other priorities that are more important. All I’m saying is that losing weight – or even maintaining weight – is just as difficult and demanding for most of the people who aren’t fat.
People suck at change. Especially to behaviours they have had forever. Instead of cursing us for being lazy, why not help out? Make us feel comfortable doing ‘skinny people’ things.
That’s probably the healthier option than what I did: just started drinking diet soda. I can’t even remember the last time I had sugared soda. Now if they can only make a calorie-free beer that tastes like the real thing, then I’d have no empty calorie vices.
We inhabit a clockwork universe and things can only happen the way they happen. It’s impossible for someone to be a weight other than what they are.
But yeah, anyone will lose weight if they burn more calories than they consume. And thinking a lot about predestination and our ultimate lack of freewill is not a good survival and mating technique.
Olivesmarch – Bear in mind that these people are as stupid as they are nasty. I would suggest that you let them talk to each other- since it seems to make them feel good about themselves and they may not have much else to feel good about - and just ignore them. You’ll never change their minds and you have better things to do.
No, I don’t think they’re nasty or stupid. I think I misunderstood the argument here.
This is absolutely fucking brilliant. Because it’s really only the first two or three bites of something sweet that hit the spot. The rest is just diminishing returns. I’m going to start keeping one in my purse.
Sounds fair to me. Maybe we should stop looking at what fat people don’t do and start looking at what skinny people do.
Really, bitch? You think the people who are saying "yes, diet and exercise works and it worked for me! are the stupid ones in this thread? Who are you again?
If people want real advice, here’s what I did to drop sixty pounds:
I weigh myself every day. The idea behind this is not to make sure I lose weight every day, though, because of course that won’t happen. Rather, it starts to give you a sense for your body’s reaction to food and exercise. I think over the long haul it’s reinforced the right behaviour. On occasions when I stopped weighing myself, I stopped losing weight, or even gained a little back, AFTER stopping weighing myself.
I simply do not have weakness foods in the house. There are no cookies here, no Pop Tarts, no candies, no sugary drinks. The only treats here are ones that happen to be ones my daughter likes but that I hate (she loves apple juice. Blech.)
I eat frequently. Haven’t eaten in 3-4 hours? I eat a banana, or a granola bar, or something.
I made myself aware of portion sizes. People, even people who think they are eating well, grossly overestimate a normal portion size. Reduce your portion sizes a lot, eat a little more frequently, and you’ll minimize the hunger problems. Use smaller plates (no, really.)
Count calories. Again, people THINK they know what’s in stuff. They don’t. I didn’t. Want a Pop Tart and a glass of milk? That’s enough calories for an actual meal. Drinking juice? You may as well drink Coke and take a vitamin C pill; they’re basically the same in calories.
Cut out sugary drinks, potatoes, and rice.
Don’t be too ridiculous on food choices. Cut out white calories and sugarly drinks, but if you love steak, keep some steak in there. You still have to enjoy what you eat.
Start out with a really, really modest exercise program, but do it a minimum of 4 times a week. REALLY modest. If you’re really sedentary, walk like 15 minutes. Add 30 seconds every second day. That’s it. Don’t rush this; you are trying to change lifetime habits and if you exhaust yourself quickly you won’t keep it up. No matter how modestly you start, if you just add a tiny bit as you go, you’ll end up doing quite well, because this is something you’re going to do the rest of your life.
Set goals in 5-pound intervals. If you’re at 259, aim to get below 255. When the scale says 254.8, spent a week working on keeping it below 255. Then aim for 250. When you accomplish that, aim for 240. Do not concentrate on or even think much about your goal weight of 180 (or whatever it is) **Your goal weight is the next multiple of 5 below where you are now, and that’s it. **
Stop watching so much TV. Seriously. I know it sounds trite but fuck, people watch too much TV, and when you watch TV you know what you’re doing? Nothing. Or maybe nothing plus eating, which is worse. Turn the TV off. After a few weeks you won’t miss it.
As the fellow who started this runaway train of a thread, this is one of the best possible responses I could read.
My intention was never to say “being physically fit is so easy!” In fact, about half of my OP was about how difficult it is to lose weight and stay in shape. But that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless or impossible or that people should stop trying because they’re destined to be fat regardless of what they do.
I never figured skinny people into the equation when it came to the statistics. Scientists have mostly studied people who need to lose weight. Our obesity stats are scary high, but if you think about it, that means 60% are still doing it right. This means that we could probably learn a lot from thin people.
So, no more sweets in the house (except dark chocolate - I like that idea.) We’ll start there.
I’d have to see a lot more signs that you are taking in the scientific evidence cited in this thread before I’d be too quick to assume you are showing any great intellectual depth.
There’s no doubt that as a matter of simple physics if you eat little enough and exercise enough you simply must lose weight. However, people are animals which are just biological machines, the behaviours of which are controlled by chemicals and structures. There is as much science in the second sentence of this paragraph as in the first, and the second is far, far, more relevant to questions relevant to the topic of this thread than the first.
Screaming “Just fucking work!” at software that hangs a computer because of a bug no doubt feels good, but it’s not very sensible or rational.
The scientific evidence quoted says that 97% of people fail to lose weight and keep it off through diet and exercise. That is not the same as saying that diet and exercise does not work as a matter of principle. I haven’t ever said that losing weight is an easy task or that anybody can do it with no problem. That is actually the crux of the thread though. Losing weight isn’t impossible, but it takes an incredible amount of patience, will power, and emotional work. For someone to come in and say “those meanies being mean to you are just stupid, they don’t understand!” is childish and stupid. Plenty of people in this thread have come in to talk about their own struggles, and successes, with weight loss. So is it insensitive for them to say that it worked for them? Are they displaying intellectual shallowness to hold themselves up as an example to say “Hell yes this was hard, but it does work”?