Out of curiosity, why is #2 important for weight loss? I lost 40 pounds, and I’m coming up on my 4 year anniversary, and all that weight is still off. Red meat was never off the menu for me, and I can’t see why it should be. Hell, I ate McDonald’s McDoubles for lunch several times a week during my slim-down phase.
What worked for me was basically taking carbs down to 40% of my calorie intake, being aware of the caloric load of foods (probably the biggest thing), and running five times a week, about 5-6 miles on average. I love to cook, and cooking for yourself makes it a lot easier. If I ate out all the time, it would be a lot more difficult for me to have lost the weight. Even though you can exercise portion control when eating out, it’s difficult to do so (at least for me.) The problem for me is that a sensible 500-750 calorie dinner at your average restaurant seems like not a lot of food, because of all the high-fat and starchy ingredients the average middle-of-the-road restaurant uses. Meanwhile, if you make 750 calories of a chicken breast stir fry with veggies and rice, you can make a pretty darned large portion, and psychologically it seems a lot more satisfying than an order of your average appetizer at Chili’s, which can easily top over 1000 calories right there (if you eat the whole portion for yourself–and I’m not even talking about the Awesome Blossom they used to have, which a whole portion topped out at over 2000 calories!) When I eat out, unless it’s a special occasion, I skip the apps, I try to split the main dish with my wife, and no dessert (which I never liked, anyway, so no big loss there for me.) Similar idea when I wanted a burger. I never got the fries, unless it was my “cheat day.” (I gave myself one cheat day a week.)
I understand that my results are somewhat unusual, but I’m just sharing my experience in case it helps anyone. At the end of the day, for me, it was a matter of knowing how many calories I was putting into my body, figuring out a way to balance that with satiety, and exercising excess calories out. And, yes, trying to find a sustainable way to do this. I haven’t kept a food diary in years, and I don’t have trouble keeping my “diet,” because it is food I like and it really is my permanent diet. I like to eat this way.
I know how to lose weight. I know theoretically how to keep it off, but I fuck up every time. I have done so many things to modify my environment, to increase the inscentive for losing weight, to reduce temptation, because I do want to live a healthy lifestyle. I’ve never ‘‘dieted’’ in the way diet is understood. Obviously, none of my methods were effective. I’m really just out of ideas. It’s so fucking frustrating to be told you’re making a choice when you work so hard to figure out how to make yourself do the healthiest thing. Technically, yes, I’m making a choice. But I’m making a choice that is not in my long-term best interests and I don’t know how to make myself choose otherwise. If I did, I wouldn’t be overweight.
Especially not when faced with what I call The Biggest Loser Syndrome–people go on crazy diets and work their asses off and when they don’t lose ten, fifteen pounds a WEEK they get upset.
I’ve had issues with losing weight in the past which I recently found out was due to the fact that I do, in fact, have hormonal issues (wonky thyroid, Imma looking at you:mad::mad:) which made losing weight damn near impossible.
While I am happy for my friends who exult in their diet/exercise regime, I do not feel the need to indulge in one myself. I’m short and built like an oversized Hobbit–all the dieting and exercising in the world is NOT going to change that.
It doesn’t work because you choose to go back to eating the way you were. That is the point of the thread. He is Pitting people who make the excuse that it is physically impossible for them. You have proved that it is not. But some other non-physical problems make you go back to your old lifestyle. I love eating till I’m stuffed. I love fattening foods. I hate doing cardio. But I know what I have to do. Do I do the right thing everyday? No. Is it possible due to my job or family to eat right and exercise everyday? No. But I get back on it as soon as I can. And it would be great if I could run. Burn off calories quicker. But my fucked up knees keep me from doing that. So I find other ways. It’s not impossible just difficult.
This is an amazing post Manda Jo and very true. I know I would be very interested if you would be willing to field questions on your experience and talk in some detail about the habits you had ingrained and how you changed them, both because I find you articulate and because I think your advice might be helpful to me.
Actually it will. Well not the short part. This is not about looks. It’s about health. You may never have a models body. I will never have a models body. But good diet and exercise makes you healthier and makes you feel better. It’s not about looks.
Just out of curiosity, why did you not like the results you got? You dropped 48 pounds in 18 months - that is damn good. I would love to have results like that.
I get what you’re saying. I am definitely not arguing that it’s physically impossible. I think it’s physically impossible for it to be physically impossible. I am arguing that it’s harder for some people than it is for others, and that I have not yet figured out how, in that moment of stress or temptation or whatever, I can make myself make the right choice. I’m willing to keep trying. I’m just losing hope.
I also have bad knees. I keep injuring myself, which then sets me back on my exercise goals, so I think until I do take off some of this weight, I am going to stick to safe activities like, say, walking.
I feel like I could have written this post. I am actually a fairly accomplished individual except in the maintaining weight loss thing. It kind of struck me when I went back to my diary and looked at how every single entry was basically about weight loss. What new mental and/or environmental tricks i was trying. Calorie restricting, carb restricting, eating whatever I want, making rules about where/when I could eat, making rules that I couldn’t think dwell on eating, etc. And I know I’m overweight cause I eat more than I should and don’t exercise as much as I should . . . but it’s just that i have set up these habits that are so hard to break. Food is so comforting and is so relaxing for me, and I have yet to find something that can trigger the same release of brain chemicals.
And it is totally about the moments of stress for me too. When you’ve been working a long time and are tired/frustrated/angry and you have a dollar bill in your wallet and you know the snack machine is around the corner and you have habituated yourself to acting in these ways and to overcome that you have to work to retrain your brain in the same moment that you are tired/frustrated/angry . . .
It is absolutely harder for some people. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have been a struggle to take off weight. But 10 years ago I could eat whatever I wanted. It’s much harder for me now but I like how I feel when I’m in shape. BMI says I need to drop about 40-50. I carry a decent amount of muscle so I think 25 should be good. Luckily the muscle means I can carry the extra weight now without looking obese. But it’s not about how I look. It’s about how I feel. My health and stamina.
Well, I have to admit, the last time I successfully lost weight, four months is the longest I have ever consistently engaged in healthy behaviors. I was losing about a half pound a week. So maybe if I just keep practicing, those periods will get longer and longer and I will get better at doing this.
Just know that it is a rare person who won’t cheat every now and then. The key isn’t that you can never indulge again. It’s that after a holiday weekend with the family, you are right back on it on Monday. You can’t look at a setback as imsurmountable. You don’t quit because this week you gained 2 lbs. it is normal.
People use the word impossible to describe weight loss because of the value judgement being made against them by others. Not everyone gets all judgemental about it but a significant number of people do, and if I say to someone, “Yeah, I did the diet and exercise thing and lost 45 lbs but it took up so much time and energy that I was really miserable so I decided it wasn’t worth it for me and went back to the way I lived before” more than likely I will get one of a handful of responses:
“Really? You’d rather be fat than thin?”
“I can’t believe you don’t value your health more than that!”
“Why would you quit? It’s so easy! Just do this, that, and the other thing as a lifestyle change and the weight will just fall off!”
If I say, “You know, I tried the diet and exercise thing but weight loss is just impossible!” I would get one response:
“That sucks. I’m sorry to hear that.”*
I’m sure internally they are rolling their eyes so hard they are spinning out of their sockets and rolling down the hallway but they keep their snarky comments about what a defective person I must be if I can’t do this thing to themselves. It is the same reason people say it is impossible to save any money, the same reason people say they are allergic to foods when they just dislike them, and the same reason people say they just couldn’t function without their car. The people they are talking to are being judgemental about their choices so they try to present their situation to appear as if they don’t have a choice.
Hell, it is right here in this thread. People are saying, “I know it isn’t physically impossible and it is about my personal choices but I haven’t been able to keep the weight off because I find it very, very difficult” only to have others come in and tell them how they just aren’t trying hard enough and that they are choosing the wrong thing, dammit! The implied judgement there says that if only you weren’t such a bad, weak person you could be fit and thin like them.
*This obviously doesn’t apply to the internet, most especially the straightdope.
Heh. People are always so focused on weight. Of the people I know who managed to slim down, most of them had stable or increasing weight early on, especially the men. Exercise is a terrible way for fat people to lose weight. They don’t really have the cardio to burn significant calories. They can make pretty impressive changes in body composition, especially if they’ve never trained before.
The other point I’d make is the ~95% failure rate of course excludes all the people who never got fat and needed to slim down in the first place. It seems like asking the guy who trashed his computer with malware about which virus protection software to use. Why not ask the guy who uses good security practices and never had a problem in the first place?
