I unhappily report that I am right about obesity and diet (Very long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Okay, and … So? I agree that the message wasn’t meant to be sneering, condescending or what have you. But it’s not helpful, either. By that, I mean that you can say the basic concept is simple all day long, but that doesn’t give any details, information, etc. Just about any concept is quite simple when you get to the underlying principle; that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to truly understand the concept (and how to do it). The basic concept of computer programming is quite simple (you type out commands that tell a computer to perform specific actions), but I’d say the majority of people couldn’t suddenly bang out workable programs just knowing that concept, y’know? Even if you narrowed from “computer programming” to “c++” or another language, you can understand the overall concepts perfectly well and still (even after taking classes, practicing, etc) not be able to program well at all.

Obviously I don’t mean that the majority of overweight people are unable to lose weight. But understanding that weigh loss is calories in vs calories out, burn more than you consume, get x mins of exercise y times/week, and so on… Is only the most very basic, simplest understanding. The devil is in the details.

You could argue that the details should be fucking obvious, but clearly they aren’t for a hell of a lot of people. Is it more productive to repeatedly state that it should be obvious/the details should be evident from just those overall concepts or is it more productive to realize that for whatever reason, the details aren’t clear and need to be taught?

To go back to the programming example: I have a bachelor in Computer Science (heavy emphasis on programming). I’m not a natural programmer. Every damned assignment was extremely hard for me, while being surrounded by classmates who had natural aptitude for programming. Not only did they grasp the details more quickly and easily, the effort they put into it gave much faster results and with less frustration and pain. I definitely wasn’t under the delusion they just “magically” created a program without errors, cocked up results, etc. But that work was (at worst) part and parcel of doing the enjoyable programming for them (or at best, actually an interesting or enjoyable part of the project). For the masochists like me ;), it was absolutely awful, battered our confidence and really was torturous.

Even when I DID get something done properly (and yeah, would feel pretty damn proud), I had to struggle SO much to get there that it never felt like it was worth it. *

I absolutely believe this is similar to many people’s weight loss attempts. For whatever reason (the popular glandular disorders ;), inherent dislike of exercise, actual true psychological addiction to food (which can be for maaaany different underlying reasons), etc), the efforts will be more of a struggle than for many others. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible, of course. But it’s not surprising that many may subconsciously do a cost-benefit analysis and feel like it’s just not fucking worth it to have to struggle this much.

And again, I want to stress that I do NOT mean that healthy-weight individuals (and the formerly overweight/obese who have lost the weight) don’t struggle to maintain that weight, that they don’t have times of really fucking wanting that junk food and having to resist temptation, that they don’t have days where the last thing they want to do is get up and work out.

It’s like my affinity-for-programming classmates, who may have gotten frustrated, struggled to fix code, and so on, but they never understood how I could spend twice as long working on mine, accomplishing not even half as much, making mistakes they saw as obvious and (a least a couple times a semester) going to the restroom to sob uncontrollably.

  • why did I stick with it? Like I said, I was a masochist and didn’t want to “admit failure” and that I couldn’t do it.

Heh. I can guarantee you that the times I have done this never take my mind off of being hungry. The entire time I’m exercising, my mind will repeatedly go back to how I’m hungry/what I want to eat.

62

I’m glad that you acknowledge that he wasn’t being snide. That’s good to know.

As for your objection… I agree that Crafter_Man’s statement was lacking in details, but I wouldn’t hold that against him. It was a quick post, after all, and clearly wasn’t intended to be a thorough analysis.

Besides, I think he made his point quite clearly. In his own words,

“I think you’re getting too bogged down by the numbers. Forget the precise number of calories vs. precise amount of weight loss.”

In other words, he was opining that Stoid was being overly concerned about numerical computations. He was counseling her to simply focus on reducing her food intake somewhat rather than crunching the numbers. He didn’t go into great detail, but I would hardly hold that against him.

63

I think this is very true, and it’s why there is no one-size-fits-all way of eating. We are all humans, but our nutritional needs vary and our brains vary. What may be a satisfying meal to me might leave you hungry and frustrated, while your satisfying meal might make me feel stuffed but want to eat 30 minutes later.

There’s a lot of self-experimentation that goes on in any successful weight loss attempt. People need to pay attention to what they are eating, how they are feeling, and whether changes in one make changes in the other. They need to learn things like whether they can eat rice and feel content an hour later (I can’t) and whether they can be happy without bread (I can) and all the many little individual tastes and needs we all are bringing, literally, to the table. :smiley:

64

I just bought this on Kindle and have only read the first couple of pages, but I already second this. I think I’ll spend the rest of the day with this book.

65

Neither, of course. :slight_smile:

If you’ve severely restricted your caloric intake to the point that you are constantly starving, it is probably worthwhile to bump it up a bit. (It also seems to be a bit of conventional wisdom that if you restrict calories too significantly, your body will enter “starvation mode” and you will have more trouble losing weight. I don’t know how true this is, but I do know that going around constantly hungry will make sustained long-term weight loss very, very difficult.)

On the other hand, if you haven’t restricted your caloric intake enough so that it’s below your caloric expenditures, you won’t lose weight.

The difference here isn’t between 300 and 3,000 calories; it’s more like the range between 1,000 and 2,000. For most people that are somewhere in the normal height range and aren’t serious athletes, your target caloric intake is probably somewhere in there.

66

When it comes to weight loss threads, I think we do a disservice by complicating the issue. We tend to get bogged down in second and third-order effects, and ignore the first-order effect. We also have a bad habit of claiming, “It’s such a complicated issue, everyone is different, blaa blaa blaa.”

Fact is, if she wants to lose weight, she must lower her caloric intake.

67

I said ‘this board’ not ‘these threads’. The Pit is home to a large amount of threads on the issue - I’d hazard to guess there are as many Pit threads on fat people as there are weight loss support threads in MPSIMS.

68

I don`t have any solutions for you Stoid, only sympathy.

Im a short female, one of those people who was teeny in all dimensions until puberty because food was a necessary evil (except for dessert). At puberty something changed (my guess is hormones) so that food became really tasty and important to my happiness. Despite maintaining a moderate level of activity, I steadily gained weight (highest weight ever was 35 pounds above what those idiot actuarial tables say I should weigh) and would periodically go down to ridiculously low calorie intake and jack up the exercise to try to fix this. Im now perimenopausal and doing the weight lifting thing 2-3x a week to try to keep my metabolism and fitness as good as they can be. I`m afraid of the further drop in metabolism that menopause may bring on.

For me personally , I dont think I overindulge in food on a daily basis (typical calorie intake is about 1400 calories per day, which is what the calculators suggest I should be needing) . I have to acknowledge that I must be eating more calories than I need on a daily basis because anytime I get sick and have no appetite for a day or two, I drop weight. I am unwilling to routinely stay on a less than 1400 cal per day diet (I enjoy food too much). I find things work best for me if I weigh myself no more frequently than once per week, do not put any food on a forbidden list, accept that I will periodically overeat and need to pay the piper afterwards with more exercise and more tightly controlled diet for the rest of that week, and on any given day make a choice between a glass of wine with dinner or a small dessert or the equivalent of an appetizer. I do the plate proportion thing where half my plate is veggies, a quarter of my plate is carbs (if I have them) and a quarter of my plate is meat or fish. After reading a relatively recent article which suggested that moving from savory to sweet or the other way around artificially enhanced appetite, I am tending to go with the wine or nuts and cheese rather than dessert but with my sweet tooth thats hard for me to do. I only allow myself to watch TV or PVR or DVD if I get on the elliptical and keep moving for 45 - 60 minutes (thats the only way to motivate me to do any cardio in daily life). In general, I try to keep moving and not stay sitting for longer than 20 minutes at a time. I take the stairs at work rather than the elevator. These are the things that work for me, in that theyve kept my fitness level and my weight at reasonable levels (though not ideal) over the last several years.

My husband trupa is doing his own fight against the weight. He has been heavy for most of his life (lifetime max weight above what he should beis about 60 pounds) but has been working on this with great focus and determination for the last 2 years, if not longer. He typically finds that if he can do ridiculous amounts o higher intersity interval cardio on the elliptical (I`m talking 1.5 hours 2-3 x per week) in addition to the weight lifting workouts 3x per week and he is extremely rigid about what he eats (no carbs except at breakfast, this includes fruits and underground veggies like carrots and potatoes) then he is able to drop about 0.5 - 1 pound per week. When he deviates from this, the weight loss stalls or reverses. He too loves his food and adjusting to this diet has been extremely difficult for him, but it works for him so he is perservering with it and getting results slowly.

What Im trying to say in sharing all of these personal details is that clearly what works for my husband would not work for me and vice versa, so in our experience the losing weight thing had to be individualized for each of us. A lot of it was figured out by trial and error. We have certainly gotten more fit even if the scales dont necessarily reflect that directly - we can see this in our energy levels, the way we look and clothes fit, etc.

Good luck and I hope you`ll hang in there!

69

Well, that’s what the nutritionist is for! He or she can tell you what is the appropriate caloric intake and nutritional requirements for your body size and desired weight loss. I went originally because I was getting the Type 2 diabetes diagnosis, which is what made me decide to lose the weight. I was told an appropriate caloric level for me, at 6’1", 345 lbs (initially), was about 2200 calories to lose the weight. More importantly, it was also a carb-counting exercise in that I was given a plan for n * 15 carbs per meal/snack, with n ranging from 1-4.

From that information I created a menu to which I adhere even today, except for special occasions and occasional extras. This would likely make most people lose their minds, but it worked/works for me.

Breakfast
Some sort of fruit bagel with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray OR a bowl of cereal with skim milk

Mid-morning
Protein bar (after the gym) OR sugar-free yogurt

Lunch
Large iceberg salad with ~4oz of chicken and 4 tbsp Kraft Light Asian Sesame dressing

Mid Afternoon
Kashi chewy granola bar

Late Afternoon
Piece of fruit

Dinner
~4oz of Black Pepper turkey breast on good multi-grain bread
6 pretzel sticks (pennysticks)

Mid-evening snack
Two Jell-O sugar-free puddings or something of similar caloric content (Kashi cookie, light ice cream bar)

Late-evening snack
A portion of a 100-cal bag of popcorn

I drink about 4 cups of coffee (no cream/milk), a few cans of diet soda, and a 32-oz Powerade Zero (at the gym).

I also work out at least 4-5 days a week, doing 30-45 minutes on the treadmill @ 4.5 mph on a 15% incline and about 30 minutes of varied weight training (not too heavy duty).

This routine enabled me to lose 160 lbs and maintain it.

As JThunder said, this is NOT EASY. It requires a tremendous amount of self-discipline – something I never realized I possessed. I have to overcome living with someone who eats pretty much nothing but crap food, and I have to do all the shopping. I also HATE the gym. I get none of the “high” many associate with exercise; I do it simply because it’s necessary to maintain, and because to not maintain would be an embarrassing return to that from which I came. I am also a COMPLETE binge eater. When I talk of special occasions, I totally go off the rails. I have the ability to put away a ton of food without even thinking about it. The key is obviously not to let that take the entirety of your lifestyle change off-track; the next day I just go back to the routine, and within a week or so the effects of the binge are gone.

Sorry for the TL;DR. This is one of the few areas in my life in which I can offer something of a story, and I get a bit carried away. :o

70

Stoid, regarding metabolism, have you had your thyroid checked, to make sure its levels are where they should be? Apologies if you already mentioned this above.

71

To be clear - 1444 ish is what I’m currently on, scaled down from more when I was heavier. I have been fat all my life, and I’m 42. I have had multiple yo yo diets, losing lots by eating nothing and gaining it back. My heaviest was north of 300lbs. I currently weight 185 which is about 29.8 by BMI, making me technically overweight for the first time in my adult life. I weighed about 275 when I started.

I’m saying that two weeks isn’t enough to make a go of anything. I suspect it’s more about an “oh well, I tried”.

Fair enough, if it gets you through, but I suspect that unless you are seriously ill, your metabolism cannot be so broken as to not lose weight on that intake. If it is that broken, then mea culpa but see a doctor because there’s something wrong.

What I specifically call BS on is where you say you’re not claiming to be one of those who can’t medically lose weight, then turn around to blame your metabolism.

72

Look again…

73

That’s not mean spirited, that’s just saying that her position doesn’t make mathematical or scientific sense, unless she’s got some other issue that’s causing her weight to be like that.

As most others said, she probably just hasn’t been at it long enough, that’s all.

74

But we all know the first-order effect. I don’t think anyone is ignoring it. And I think the reason some people point out that everyone is different is because so many other people come in and say, essentially, “I did it this way and it worked so it must be something you’re doing wrong. Or you’re lying”

Tell me, is there any science out there that benefits from only looking at the highest level of information, while ignoring more detailed information and information not central to the study?

Which she is, so why are you pointing this out? Telling her to cut her calories even more? At what point should she be standing back and saying “If I cut any more calories out, I’m going to hurt myself, so I need look at this problem in other ways?”

75

Saying that something is BS isn’t mean spirited?

76

As DiosaBellissima said, that’s not a mean-spirited response. And even if it were, I never denied that such mean-spiritedness does exist. Rather, as I’ve emphasized twice now, I don’t see a lot of it. Mostly, I see people overreacting and perceiving ridicule where none exists.

You say “something is BS isn’t mean spirited?” No, I don’t think it is… at least, not inherently so. And if it is, then both sides are just as guilty as the other, so there’s no point in singling out the ones who emphasize that weight loss IS simple in principle, albeit difficult.

77

I’d say that’s a distinction without a meaningful difference. What is this board but a collection of threads? And where are these threads if not on this board?

78

I want to expand on my reply to Crafter_Man with an analogy, please bear with me.

Let’s say that I’m at point A, on a river and that I need to get to point B, which is up-river. If I ask someone how to get to point B, which I know (and they know I know) is up-river, then saying “Just go up river” is astoundingly un-helpful. If I then try to walk the bank of the river only to find that most of the river bank is impassable and I have to swim, then I end up at point B. However, the other person is already there going “Why did it take you so long”, when all they had to do was take a shortcut that was only open to them.

Of course, that person could have told me about the shortcut (and some people are trying to do that by recommending certain things); however, we are each in our own private geography. The path that this other person took may not even be in my physiological geography, and there are lots of people who were born at point B that never had to go anywhere else.

The analogy … has problems, but in one respect it is very true. For many people, trying to lose weight is like trying to swim upstream.

79

Spot on.

But if you want to take it that way, then by all means. It’s an emotive issue, and the hardest bit isn’t putting the fork down, it’s taking the emotion out of it.

80

Exactly, Gleena!

And that’s why these discussions always wind up being a landmine through which people must tiptoe. It’s such an emotionally laden issue that one can scarcely address it without incurring somebody’s ire.