Well, yes, that was me until I bought a house at age 25. I always laughed at those people who told me that my metabolism would change in my mid-20’s. And before that, hell yeah, I ate whole pizzas in a sitting and weighed, tops, 105. Happily.
And then when I started to creep up, super-slowly, I had no idea how to really deal with it and I didn’t deal with it in a real serious manner (as opposed to short bursts) until I’d snuck up to 168 and went wedding dress shopping. Cue the record scratch sound.
Yeah, that doesn’t happen to everyone, but it did happen to me. And before it had, honestly, I had nothing constructive to say to anybody who wanted to lose weight.
I have a fourteen year old who has the metabolism of a hummingbird - he does move a hell of a lot (he skateboards well enough and often enough to have abs of steel), then sleeps fourteen hours at a time and takes a nap mid day, but he also eats like, well, a fourteen year old boy. And eats exactly what you’d think a fourteen year old boy will eat when permitted to make his own choices - junk food, soda, ramen, frozen pizza.
And he is thin and buff.
And I spend my days trying to convince him to pay attention to the habits he is creating in terms of what he eats and how he eats so he doesn’t gain later, when is isn’t growing (which likely won’t be for almost another decade), and his activity slows down (which I suspect is farther away).
I’ve never been overweight, I hit the number next to the top number, and I go on a diet, drop fifteen pounds over six months, and put it on over the next three years. But when I was fourteen, or nineteen, I could eat anything I wanted and not gain as well - and I was never “athletic” - I moved about as much as you’d expect someone who listed her favorite pastimes as “reading and watching movies” did. And I wish I’d developed better habits - less of a sweet tooth in my case, because then I wouldn’t fight it as much.
Is your son involved in sports, either in or outside of school? Understandably; thin, fit teens aren’t going to pay a whole lot of attention to mom and dad lecturing them about “eating well.” Sports can often instill good habits that last a lifetime; long after the athletic days are over. Does he have any interest?
Sometimes I feel like an ass when I go to town on some Doritos (that orange dust is dyed crack), but when I think about how I eat on a typical day, a 700 calorie breakfast is nowhere on the radar and seems all out insane to me. I’ll either eat a bowl of cereal (250 cal), some buttered toast (150 cal maybe), a cup of yogurt (100-150 cal), or if I have the patience to wait for water to boil, some oatmeal (150 cal or so). On weekends I’ll throw some bacon and eggs in the mix, but weekends are made for letting go, and I’ll die before I give up bacon. Lunch is a sandwich maybe – a regular sandwich, not some kind of 700 calorie behemoth from Burger King – or a salad. And again, a regular salad, not one of those shit shows from Chili’s or wherever, loaded up with eight kinds of deep fried chicken, covered in a gallon of dressing and lard. I usually eat a pretty big dinner, and even if/when I eat a huge ass 1,400 cal dinner, that’s fine because I’m not eating 700 for breakfast (!!) and I occasionally move around and shit. The idea of keeping it under 2,300/day being unreasonable or difficult is lunacy to me.
No overweight person who claims to be unable to lose weight will ever provide you with an honest journal of what they consume and their physical activity. It will never, ever, ever happen. The one person who I thought might go along with it, my sister, just all out refused. Re-fucking-fused. She didn’t say the words “I won’t do it,” but I never got that food journal.
Yeah, my metabolism has definitely slowed down. Happens to all of us. Gone are the days when I could bury my face into a trough of food and still be ridiculously thin, so these days I don’t do that anymore and try to get on my bike and stuff.
How is pointing out that “most” people posting in this thread (only a very few of who of whom have offered up their BMIs, to the best of my knowledge not including you) are likely not “normal weight” themselves accusing anyone, let alone specifically you, to be lying?
You still sound stupid.
And you still have not offered up what you intended other than a pathetic attempt to bully by “You sound fat.”
So what that I’m not? So what that I meet your standard for “a strong-ass motherfucker”? If I was 20 pounds heavier and benched a bit less would that make that comment okay somehow? Oh dismiss any points brought up because the poster is just a fatty?
Putz.
billfish678 and Otara,
Here we may even have some consensus: preventing obesity is key, with a focus on pediatric obesity. Agreed, the most effective long term response to the societal disease of an obese population is to prevent obesity in the first place. And the unsung story is that we having some success there, by treating it as a systems problem. The rise in child obesity rates has stopped and in some subgroups reversed. Anecdotally I see it in my patient population as well - BMI curves that were increasing farther away from the curve flattening out and reversing course. Substantially fewer hitting the criteria for obese and even, albeit to a lesser degree, overweight. I wish I could take credit but I can’t. Oh the messaging we give in our offices helps, but it only helps as part of a complete package including changes in the schools, in the media, and parental awareness of how they can and must control the local environment their kids eat and play within.
Perhaps you misread my post, I wasn’t referring to a journal that you (general you) gave to anyone else; rather you keep this journal for yourself in order to actually know-in concrete, black and white terms-how many calories you are putting into your body. It can serve as a wake-up call to a person.
Shiiieeet, I know ain’t nobody gonna hand that shit over. LOL Hell no.
Agreed. I didn’t realize how many calories I was eating until I kept a journal. I would have thought it was pretty sensible, but 3000+ calories with little activity was a fairly normal day for me. And it’s not just the food; I like my beer. If I have four beers in an evening/night, that’s an extra 600 calories (at least) right there. After keeping a diary, I now know pretty well how to estimate calorie loads and make proper decisions. (Although today I bought some brioche buns at Trader Joe’s without checking the label until I got home. Would you believe they’re 430 calories a bun?! Holy crap. I’m just not eating that, unless I make half a sandwich with them.)
I lost about 25 to 30 pounds over the past few years and it was tough, it didn’t happen all at once (although most of it did - thanks CrossFit, P90X and running) and after I got started, it started to become really clear.
You can do it by diet alone, but exercise helps not only physically, but mentally - you want to eat crap less because you are aware how hard you are working out.
I am a Mom and I work full time, but you know what? My child and I exercise together. She bikes while I run. It’s great bonding, we talk and share stuff and she learns that health is a priority - it’s win/win.
I will admit though, I came from healthy eating habits, I grew up thin (skinny fat) so I haven’t struggled my whole life. I read and educated myself and found what works for me.
It’s not easy, until you get there. Health can be fun, but not until you achieve it.
But I’ve seen plenty of high school athletes struggle with weight once they stop playing. Especially if your interest have run to team sports and your post high school athletics are playing bar ball. It can develop good habits, but it isn’t a guarantee, and as metabolism changes along with lifestyle, bags of Cheetos aren’t good weight wise for anyone..except perhaps Olympic athletes. Then you add the beer that comes along with Saturday softball.
I’ve also see an lot of high school geeks with no interest in sports take up running or yoga or biking or something (usually individual type sports) and be in better shape at thirty than they were at fourteen.
Oh, I know what you meant. Just pointing out people’s complete and baffling unwillingness to do so. I get a lot of “I can’t lose weight,” and whenever you go, “Well let’s examine what you’re eating, like, honestly every single calorie,” the response is always, “No!” I’m always like, well okay then, you fuck, let’s never have this conversation again until you’re ready to provide that journal.
Every single time someone complains that they CAN’T lose weight (not that it’s hard, which is understandable – but that they’ve done everything right, and cannot), I tell them point blank to review their caloric intake, and they never do. I don’t ask random people what they eat because I don’t care, but people seem to have no problem telling me their stories of complete physical inability to shed a pound. Fine, if you’re going to keep telling me stories about how you just can’t do anything about it, my response is going to be “Oh yeah? So what are you eating?” and their response is going to be evasion and shifty eyes. I have a friend who stopped bringing up her weight problems with me because I told her to keep an honest calorie-by-calorie food journal, and that irritated her or something. Yeah, sorry for actually giving advice.
See this very thread. One poster originally claimed that she just couldn’t lose weight, no matter what she tried. Two pages later and she casually mentions that she has a serious sweet tooth, and maybe, just maybe, is thinking that she should cut down on sweets and chocolates.
Just how honest was she being about her efforts to diet? I’ll bet a food diary for her would reveal a lot.
To be fair, if you have never had a weight problem before, 20 lbs can sneak up on you. Not everyone’s metabolism slows down. My grandmother was as skinny at 104 as she was at 44 and 24. For me I looked in the mirror one day at the right angle and thought “How the hell did that happen?” I now know at 45 I can’t eat like I did at 25 or even 35. I had to change my lifestyle. It didn’t happen over night. I had to get in the right frame of mind.
What really sucks is that exercise used to mean I could eat whatever I wanted. Not any more. Dammit.
Yeah, it does make me laugh thinking of you chasing down all of these dozens of fatties demanding to see what they eat so you can advise them to eat more cereal and sandwiches, and when they don’t you call them fucks. Good show!
No one’s chasing anybody down, you dipshit. But when people complain to me about how they caaaaaaaan’t do anything about their weight other than run their fucking mouths, I don’t respond with hugs and comfort and bullshit, which is apparently what they want. I ask them to log what they’re eating, and they never do because they know they’re full of shit.
I said pretty much the same things up thread and, for those who consider calorie counting as a non-starter that doesn’t work for them, I thought I’d share yet another personal anecdote – I had several days when I assumed that I’d eaten pretty much the same; breakfast, lunch, dinner, some snacks etc.. and fitted a workout too. But when I looked at the actual calorie count / burn for each day, what I would have assumed was miles off the base. These so called ‘similar’ days cover a spread from circa 1800 calories consumed right up to 4000 (!) consumed, and I’d have been hard pushed to tell the difference in terms of how I felt from what I’d ate. (and ironically was more ‘stuffed’ on the lightest days that the other snack filled days ). Not every workout is equal either, with an hour’s swim burning less than half of an hour’s bike or run, yet the swim leaves me far more famished than either of the others. But with a diary, is is so easy to see what you burn, what you eat and set a realistic target to have a net weight loss each week / month / year. But total honesty is the key - every sip of tea or coffee, every sweet or cookie goes into the total and you see what pops out, otherwise you’re only fooling yourself.
Being on a ‘diet’ is not eating less or different foods until such times as you can go back to eating what you want. It IS what you eat. Exercising is not some chore you do until you get to a point when you can stop. It IS a part, as much an everyday part as eating is, of your normal life. Diet is just another word for ‘what you eat’ - it’s not something you ever stop doing, any more than finally giving up cigarettes allows you to start smoking again now that you’ve finally quit. The quitting part now IS your life, not a temporary placeholder or substitute until normal service is resumed.
These things do not interrupt your life, or get in the way of your life – they ARE your life.
