This is really an impossible argument; “Anyone who lost weight/is fit doesn’t count. You have no idea what I struggle with!” Why? Because we won? :dubious:
I lost 75kg over 2 years and have kept it off for well over a year now. The maths does work. What you don’t see are the years of therapy I had on other issues that eventually lead to it being possible. There is a very large difference between being a bit overweight or gaining weight through pregnancy etc. and being morbidly obese for your entire adult life. Most of it is between the ears. I had to change nearly everything about my life and I had to want it more than I wanted my old life. Nothing is the same as it was and that is great but from the other end? I would have looked at my life now and assumed it to be miserable because it contains so little of what once made me happy and so much of what once would have made me miserable. Moving used to hurt. Not eating the cheesecake on the table was unfathomably hard.
I can be asannoying on this topic as any ex-smoker, once you have done it you wonder why you waited so long but it is very easy to think something is simple once you have the answer sheet in front of you and have successfully knocked down all the demons in the way.
Of course it’s not truly physically impossible, even though people who say this may sometimes think so. It’s entirely plausible for it to be “impossible” to eat little enough to lose significant weight and remain functional and non-miserable.
If I told you (generic you, not calling anyone out here) that you had to live on 500 calories a day, you could probably do it for a while, but you’d be miserable. You wouldn’t be able to think about anything else but food. Your brain would be totally hijacked. If you had ready access to food, and the consequences of overeating your quota were not immediate, you’d have to have some ungodly willpower to keep it up.
Everybody’s brain goes into that mode at a different point, and it unfortunately has little to do with the body’s actual caloric needs.
So while it’s true that calories out > calories in will lead to weight loss, that summary severely understates how difficult that can be. The body is not just a simple machine that you can adjust inputs to and outputs from at will with no adverse effects. If you don’t understand why this can be so difficult/damn near impossible, just thank your lucky stars that it’s not something you have a problem with.
None of this is to say that there’s nothing anyone can do about their weight, or that it’s not worth it to try. But it puts the challenge into a little bit more perspective.
I already brought up that very topic here recently and the general consensus seems to refute your claims.
Again, just because someone is successful at weight loss, why does that automatically register them as “not understanding” what a unsuccessful person is experiencing? Who’s to say which experience was more intense, or “worse” or “better” or “easier” or “worse”; and who’s to say one person was just more fucking committed to it?
I’m not sure what in that thread refutes me. The people there who have been on such low-calorie diets mostly say that it sucked royally and they didn’t think it would be feasible over the long term. I’m just saying that the number of calories for which that is true is different for different people.
I’m not talking about people who have been successful at weight loss. Of course they understand how difficult it is.
But most of the time when I hear “Jesus! All you have to do to lose weight is eat less and move around more. It’s not hard!” it’s from people who have never had a weight problem at all. That very sentiment (in nearly those words, in one case) has been posted by two of my Facebook friends this week, neither of whom has ever had an extra ounce of body fat.
All I’m saying is that if you truly don’t understand what’s so hard about weight loss when it’s just a matter of eating less, then you should be thankful that it’s not a problem you have.
I never thought I’d side with Ambivalid in an argument.
Ahhh come on, this is the first one? lol Naaah, can’t be. You just won’t admit it. 
Yeah, I think we were arguing the same thing about that bodybuilder chick. You should re-don your cape and mask Dark Knight Rises-style so I can go back to hating you.
This must be wacky post day and I missed the memo or something. First SnakesCatLady says she lost 50 pounds by diet and exercise so that proves that diet and exercise don’t work, and now you’re saying that you lost 20 pounds but gained it back in a single weekend.
Really? That’s 70,000 EXTRA calories in a single weekend.
Thats equal to about 150 McDonalds cheeseburgers.
Or 270 double shot Mai Tais.
Or 100 Peanut Buster Parfaits.
All I can say is that if you were able to polish off 2 Peanut Buster Parfaits an hour for 48 hours in a row…well, thats impressive.
Thank you. I’m not sure why I posted it in the Pit; the signal to noise ratio is not promising. These arguments always devolve into “it’s just the fatties being lazy pigs!” vs. “I can’t lose weight because it’s physically impossible, laws of physics or thermodynamics are as nought to the likes of me!” It’s all useless, unproductive bullshit and I don’t know why I got involved. I guess if there’s one person who starts thinking about adding some psychological work to their diet/lifestyle plans, it’ll be worth it.
Geneen Roth has some terrific books on the subject, my favorites being “Feeding the Hungry Heart,” “When Food Is Love,” “Breaking Free from Emotional Eating” and “Why Weight? A Guide to Ending Compulsive Eating.” Though they’re aimed primarily at women, so I don’t know how much can be extrapolated to guys.
Thought better of it. Twas funny tho.
I’m currently trying to work with my nephew and help him lose weight.
I am also trying to lose a few kilos and up my fitness levels.
The thing that’s hitting me is, just how hard it is for him to exercise.
When I was growing up, I was ALWAYS out and about doing something. I have never been what you would call fat. At a kid, people would comment on how skinny I was. Now, at age 38 I’m nudging 80kg, my BMI is about 25 - I want to get back to 72 kg.
I started dieting and training in October last year - and for a run. In April I ran 10km in an hour in a race. Then got a bit overtaken by circumstances and an indulgent holiday and put on around 4 -5 kg in the space of 6 weeks.
But coming back to it - right now, I take my kid out jogging in her stroller, I will jog 6km in approx 40 minutes, buring somewhere around 500 calories (plus some as the app doesn’t count the pushing stroller).
When I go and get my nephew, and basically force him to come jogging with me, he manages 5 km in about 45-50 minutes, buring around 350 calories. Last night he went alone (after I nagged him, as I was giving my daughter tuitition) and did 6 km in 1:15:00, buring less than 400 calories.
This is the part where I feel the most sympathy. Even in my “worst and fattest” state, I would think very little of a 4 km run, (around 350 calories) followed by a 1 hour cycle (another 500 odd calories). I don’t see him having that same sort of energy. Whether it’s just a product of how I grew up, whether it’s my genetics or something different I have no idea.
What I do know for sure is that I have two goals for him
a) Get him to the stage where it’s also not a big deal to go for a 10 km run, or a 30 km cycle, burning 800-1000 calories without even thinking about it
b) Get him to realise and understand and truley internalise that if you exercise, you work hard and stick to it then good things come. (there’s a whole bunch of related issues here that I am hoping that he can learn if he suceedes with the exercise)
I have absolutely no illusions that it’s hard to loose weight. the weight I lost at the end of last year didn’t come easy, and it was very easy to put it back on (especially as I love food - just today i ate a spring chicken for lunch). But it can be done, and it does get easier as you get fitter. I think that “getter easier as you get fitter” part is the one that most people underestimate.
yeah, there’s a bit of hyperbole there, but do bear in mind - for some it is very very easy to eat. I am “only” 80 kg (approx 1.74m) - I can sit down and eat a full packet of chocolate biscuits (250grammes) in 1/2 an hour, I used to eat a 300 gramme bar of chocolate, plus a 2 litre milkshake before dinner.
I went on holiday, and I would eat a full family bag of candy while ready a book in bed at night. I am eternally thankful that while I do gain weight with this sort of eating, for whatever reason the weight doesn’t seem to accumulate very quickly.
A two-liter milkshake? As in this much milkshake?
yes 2 litres as in that much milk - in addition to a 375 gramme family size chocolate bar while I hid in my room and read a book
Chubby cheeks, you say? I thought you had a flat ass 
Not for me, honey. Long-term exercise does absolutely zero for my severe depression. I know because I’ve done it. I get a boost for maybe an hour afterward, if I’m lucky.
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.
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Nothing, not one single thing written in this thread by anybody trying to refute the OP has amounted to any more than, “Its hard and I can’t do it”.
Not for me, honey. Rigorous exercise 4-5 times a week does absolutely zero for my severe depression. Sometimes I can get a boost for an hour or two, long enough to do something else that will help my depression, but exercise in and of itself cannot fix my brain.
See, the problem with depression is that you stop fucking caring about everything, including your health. Eating junk food is the fastest, easiest, most immediately rewarding way of feeling better. Of course that means I’m concluding, in that moment, that it’s not worth the effort. That’s the whole point. Eating high-sugar foods is more reinforcing than eating vegetables. I can’t be soothed by a cucumber.
I look at this problem from a behavioral perspective. People aren’t terribly different than lab rats. If an environment is not producing a reward for a behavior in a given person, the behavior will not be reinforced. It’s as simple as that. Weight loss is a matter of figuring out how to permanently reinforce diet and exercise, and that exercise must be reinforced more strongly than the rewards of overeating. The short-term rewards for diet and exercise diminish over time, whereas eating sugary foods pretty much always delivers. That’s why so many people fail after a period of time. Because the likelihood that someone’s environment can be permanently more reinforcing for health than junk food is very small.
Fine. 2 weeks. I gained 9 pounds in a week once, so that seems reasonable to me. My point is, there’s little room for error.
I’m so tired of all this sanctimonious bullshit. Again, I ask you, how many times do you have to hit a brick wall before you’re allowed to stop throwing yourself at it? Especially knowing that failure will have even worse consequences than doing nothing.
This articlewas linked off from the Cracked cite someone gave earlier. It appears to be a very well cited study of the overall issue. It makes for very interesting reading. It’s far, far worse than you say. The very short version of what the article says? If you are overweight your body adopts that as the “new normal”. Your brain and hormones change in a way that changes your behaviour such that it take tremendous willpower not to eat, and your metabolism slows such that you burn less calories from the same exercise.