On the contrary, I think you are extrapolating from your own experience to an extent vastly beyond what is justifiable. You may be right about some people, but the vast majority of people (myself included) are overweight because eating (and eating high calorie food) is enjoyable and in western countries extremely easy, and because they can’t be bothered to exercise. Period.
I was responding to a statement that some people can not lose weight, no matter what. She even used the word literally. This is not true. Would it be a change that she is not happy living with? Clearly. And it is her choice but it is not a fact that she, literally, can not lose weight.
People say things. Like, “This headache is going to kill me”.
The next person that says that I will shoot right between the eyes.
I was literally blown away.
But, You believe they are speaking literally when they use the word “impossible?”
When I say diet and exercise don’t work, I mean There is no way I am able to diet and exercise for the rest of my life. Any better?
Manda Jo, that’s called “being a human.” Lots of things are difficult to do. Getting and keeping and excelling at a good job is difficult. Finding a mate and raising a family is difficult. There’s no use in wallowing in all of the things in life that are difficult, because all of them are, and wallowing isn’t a way to get out of any mess one finds oneself in.
Six years ago I was about 60 pounds overweight, I didn’t move a muscle I didn’t absolutely have to (not that I had that much in the way of muscles to move), and I looked and felt terrible. I thought I had IBS or something because my guts were all fucked up.
Now I’m well on my way to becoming a strong-ass motherfucker (currently squatting 250, deadlifting 300, benching 170, and pressing 120, at 210 bodyweight, which are not really all that impressive numbers, but I’m moving up every week). I feel great and look like a fucking stud (I also learned how to take my shirts to the damn tailor so that they aren’t all billowy like those worn by 80% of the jackass guys I see walking around, but that’s a different thread). And that IBS I thought I had was just my guts telling me I’m a lazy fat ass–now that I’m in shape my guts feel great.
So, to all you fatties out there, stop wallowing, drop the french fries, and get to work trimming down that big fat floppy ass. Or just wallow and moan like BigTard if that’s where you want to be.
No, you are supposed to say “I am a lazy and degenerate fuck who can’t stand to get off my fat ass because of my weak and pathetic character”.
That’s a lot better, actually. You are owning up and admitting that it’s your own damn fault.
That IS what he/she said.
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But not all things are equally difficult, and not all things are equally difficult for all people. The hubris is assuming that it would be exactly as difficult for others as it was/would be for you, and therefore they must be lazier/weaker than you.
My husband quit his job to stay home with our son. Lots of people have told me 'I wish we could do that, but we could never afford it". Now, in many of those cases those people are making more than I do. What they mean is “we don’t think the particular sacrifices you are making are worthwhile for the degree to which it would benefit our family”. And we both know that’s what they mean. My husband and I are good at being frugal. We have simple tastes. So having one person stay home and just being poor for some years is easier for us. So I don’t go around being smug when people say “I can’t”. Instead, I just accept that people are different, and “I can’t” doesn’t mean they literally could not, but that it would be hard enough for them that it isn’t worth doing. It’s not that we are tougher and more willing to suffer. It’s just that we are different in this area so it’s how things worked out.
The truth is that they mean there is no way I am WILLING to diet and exercise for the rest of my life. That I can understand.
I’ve worked out (running and other cardio) for an hour five days a week the last year, pay attention to what I eat (sensible portions of fresh whole foods, minimal simple carbs), and I gained seven pounds over the past year. Is that a failure? Proof that diet an exercise don’t work?
I’m 5’6" and weight 127 pounds. The weight gain is from switching to a sedentary job. How much do you think I’d weigh if I switched from salads to chicken strips for lunch and cancelled my gym membership?
Diet and exercise does work. It may not be exceptionally visible or gratifying, but I’m sure glad I only put on seven pounds, rather than 20 or 30. Diet and exercise is not about the dramatic moments and big numbers. It’s something most people- even slim people- have to do regularly to maintain their weight.
What I see in a lot of these discussions is “Well, if I do X then I get hungry!,” as if slim people are just blessed with the magic genes where they never get hungry. Hunger is just another uncomfortable feeling, and it is something that you will feel through the day.
Diet and exercise work, but like Manda Jo says, it’s extraordinarily hard.
Having lost 60-65 lbs that way over the course of about 10 months and then gained it back over about 4 years, it’s difficult.
It basically requires re-doing the entire way you eat and think about food, as well as making exercise a priority that isn’t always feasible if you have a hard job, kids or someone else to care for, or something else (or some combination thereof).
Finally, the hardest thing for most people is the sheer time scale involved. I’ve heard you aren’t supposed to lose more than 2 lbs a week at most, so if you have 80 lbs to lose, you’re looking at 9 months, more or less, at the LEAST, that you’ll have to keep this restrictive diet in place and exercise, and probably a lot longer, because few people average 2 lbs a week over 9 months. Somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5 lbs a week is more common I think.
Then, once you have lost the weight, it’s really hard not to lapse into old habits and gain the weight back.
I can’t imagine for the life of me that drug addiction is somehow harder to kick. At least there, you can just avoid it entirely, but you have to eat, and you have to somehow regulate that over an extended period. How many dope fiends would be able to moderate their intake to some lesser amount over an extende period?
I know I’m citing a humor site here, but go ahead and follow his links, and also check out the forum thread on the topic.
Basically, a 5% success rate is wrong, only because it’s much less than that. Once your body “locks in” a new weight, it’s essentially impossible to permanently drop back down to a lower weight.
Even if that is true that just means don’t let youself get to fat level X because it will be nearly impossible to drop back below that. But almost nobody wakes up suddenly fat. You knew it was happening and IMO most folks did little or nothing about it till it got bad.
My experiences with weight gain/problems started after my car accident/spinal-cord injury, when I was 20. Prior to that, I had always been a small, lean guy who ate whatever he wanted and never gained weight. Now I didn’t eat very much, relative to many others but I didn’t discriminate when I did.
Now fast forward to my spinal-cord injury and I find myself sitting 16hrs a day (8 hrs in bed) but continuing with the same dietary lifestyle habits that I had prior to my accident. And it was amazing how quickly I got chubby. I mean, take away a person’s biggest source of energy-expenditure (physically speaking, the legs) and the metabolism slows and you don’t burn the same amount of calories. But I sure consumed the same amount. And I got fat. Fat to me, at least. And I HATED it.
I was also newly injured so I was dealing with that as well, and I had heard and read all about how being in a chair can make you gain weight and it’s normal and I felt like there was nothing I could do about it. I tried dieting and failed and my stubborn chubby cheeks were going nowhere and that’s what slowly started my interest in my body and how it worked post-accident. Over the past decade-plus, I’ve learned what I need to do to be at my best. I learned the (for some) not-so-pleasant truth very quickly that someone who has a SCI can’t (and doesn’t need to) eat as much as an able-bodied person, not if they want a good-looking body.
And I also learned the difference between “hunger” and “craving”. Cravings are mental, hunger is physical. I think many people blur the lines between the two. This is why you hear reasons akin to “I can’t stick to something that leaves me hungry all the time” for ditching a diet* so often. It’s the cravings that they are actually referring to. They’ve had plenty of food; they just want that damn cake. Well I wanted that damn body more. And for me, that’s what it came down to.
*I don’t even like the phrase “diet” in this context. It’s one’s lifestyle that determines dietary habits and “healthy lifestyle” would be a better replacement.
To a person who needs to lose weight, there is nothing meaningful about “eat less, move more.” It’s completely redundant. You might as well say, ‘‘you can lose weight by losing weight.’’ The problem is that a huge proportion of overweight people are unable to eat less, move more for a sustained period of time.
Think about this. 2-5% of the human population trying to lose weight is capable of keeping weight off. Saying that ‘‘anyone can do it’’ is like saying anyone can be an aerospace engineer. There are aerospace engineers in the world, they worked hard to get there, but to expect most people to reach that goal, even with incredibly hard work, is very unrealistic. If some people have a gift for engineering, I don’t understand why some people wouldn’t have a gift for remaining fit.
It’s not just hard, it’s unrealistically hard. For many of us. Consider the fact that in my life, I have basically accomplished everything I have ever set my mind to - despite tremendous obstacles - except keep off excess weight. Why when I exhibit a large amount of discipline in every other area of my life would I fail in this area? Because people who haven’t been through this have no fucking idea what they’re talking about. How many times do you have to hit a brick wall before you decide to stop throwing yourself at it?
I can lose a good 20 pounds, which is great. I’ve lost the same 20 pounds many times. The longest I have ever gone with the diet/exercise routine is 4 months. And no gimmicks - just by reducing my caloric intake and eating more nutritious food. But the crux of the problem is, 4 months can be undone by a single weekend of overeating. We all have slip-ups, relapses, whatever, but weight loss is completely unforgiving in this regard. It doesn’t just set you back, it ruins everything you have worked so hard for. Just like that. 4 months of effort down the drain. To expect a person, particularly a person who is addicted to food, to adhere perfectly to a diet plan, is completely unrealistic. But that’s just what this journey requires for many of us. Absolute perfection.
At this point in my life I’ve concluded it’s all a scam. For a long time I worried about all the health statistics, telling myself that losing weight for my health was a more noble cause than doing it for vanity. I have come to realize it’s all bullshit. We cherry-pick studies about the proper way to do things, but the truth is, nobody fucking knows. Nobody on this planet has yet figured out how to approach this problem effectively.
Yeah, but 2 generations or so ago almost everybody WAS an “aerospace engineer” weight control wise.
Back then we could go to the fucking moon. Now we can barely waddle to Walmart.
Well, of course, everyone experiences hunger upon some level of cessation of food. But the intensity of hunger at a particular level of food intake may be different for different people. Everyone has some rate at which hunger intensity starts to move from “Oh, might be time to eat” through increasing discomfort eventually to unbearability, and that rate may be significantly intrinsically steeper for some. (It also may not, but there is an empirical question here; emcee2k’s links suggest that there really are such differences.)
Two generations ago the average person’s lifestyle was radically different, to put it mildly.
The mental health benefits of weight loss are myriad. And it sounds to me that you know what you need to do, you just don’t see the ultimate benefits to be worth the efforts. Or at least you’re rationalizing it to yourself that way.
What you mean they didn’t sit on their ass 24/7 and eat shit non stop?
Yeah, it might have been different. But it wasn’t THAT different. Most people today COULD live like most people in 1970 give or take did when it comes to activity and eating. Most people just don’t want to.
Its not like in 1970 everybody was a hard working coal miner and today everybody is cubicle bound software programmer.