SpoilerVirgin, I don’t really have an answer for you, but I think people need to make peace with the part of themselves that wants the cupcake. If you are fighting a war against yourself every day, for hours on end, then yeah, that takes a huge amount of energy, and in the long run, you will not win. The thing is, no one needs a cupcake to be happy. There are millions of people all over the world, and throughout history that had no access to cupcakes, but were happy in spite of that. People need to work out what they really need, what is really driving them, because it’s not the cupcake. That is hard, and confronting. And in a way it is something that only they can know, so other people can’t give them the special knowledge that they need. People have to work it out for themselves.
But Crafter_man has been pretty clear that i need to manufacture an iron will and impose rigid discipline…anything less, like a diet I can live with, will result in failure.
No, what you are saying is a lie, in about 47 different ways.
You have been told. Or did you just decide to ignore Drain Bead’s links?
I COMPLETELY AGREE!
Now, I’m waiting with giddy anticipation: how does one do that?
Yes…so tell them how?
Well, I think you’re wrong about the “trying” bit. They’ve tried. But they’ve failed. You seem very sure, very clear…I assume you know how changing your relationship with food is accomplished?
Agreed! So what is?
Thank you.
Fortunately for the rest of the world, what you think does not define reality.
This is completely bizarre. Assuming for the moment you are correct, why would you be crtical of me for not acknowledging that I am doomed? Why would that warrant criticism?
I think noble is stretching it. It would have been generous, yes. But there was nothing that inspired me to such generosity, so I failed to offer it.
Since you’re taking a great deal from it, it would be good if you had any idea what you’re talking about. I devote a silly amount of energy to feeding my dog properly by any measure. I feed him healthy food, much of which is specially prepared for his pleasure and amusement, like turkey hot dogs diced small and cooked for hours on a slow oven to dehydrate them, making them easier to fit in one of his many treat dispensers. So I really can’t imagine what you think you know about me based on what you think you know about how I feed my dog, except that it’s wildly inaccurate. (Which may be my fault… who knew I was going to have my casual dog-feeding remarks dissected for clues to who I am in every possible respect?)
Well, you’re doing a lot more dot-filling than is called for.
When I referenced my “huge indulgences” I was thinking of my whole life and the insane ways I’ve eaten. What I have described to you about nutmeg cake defines huge indulgence for me these days, although it’s not always nutmeg cake. It’s some fabulously delicious thing I make from a very short list of favorites: the nutmeg cake, chocolate chip nut cake (that’s about once every two years or more…) pumpkin nut tarts, and egg custard or creme brulee. I hit one of those about 4 times a year, max. And I will eat my goodies for 2-3 days. After that, I’m done for another 3 months.
The rest of the time, I indulge myself in a very normal way: a cup of ice cream. 3-4 cookies. Maybe a Trader Joe’s dessert, like the molten cakes. There’s two in a box and I eat them on different days. Entirely normal, and not every day.
The most consistently out of control I’ve been in many years was a couple of months last year after I discovered Haagen Daz chocolate peanut butter ice cream. For some reason it triggered a total obsession, the likes of which I have not experienced for a very long time. Fortunately, a seriously painful abcess got pinged by the cold ice cream one night and finally stopped me. I was a little nervous trying it again, but I did and it was ok, I didn’t go nuts. (It was the ice cream I talked about a week or two ago. I didn’t even finish it.)
That was interesting, though, because my best friend is a very lean 126 pounds and always has been. She dislikes fatty food and has no weight or eating problem. I told her about the ice cream and she tried it…and I think I’ve created a monster. She’s been severely addicted to it for a couple of months now, and just admitted to me yesterday that she was up to almost two pints a day!!! I was stunned. She’s never eaten like that in her entire life, and I know because we’ve been friends for 40 years. I’m blown away. But it does make me feel a little better about getting obsessive about it myself. I blame the ice cream. (It’s really fantastic, if you go for chocolate and peanut butter.)
You could say the moon is made of green cheese and you have a unicorn in your backyard. That wouldn’t make it true.
Fantastic, actually! I’ve lost a total of 11 pounds eating fried chicken wings, chile rellenos, macadamia nuts, guacamole, carnitas, eggs, bacon, cheese, pepperoni, peanut butter, and a lot of ground beef, because I love ground beef.
What’s truly remarkable, though is that my knees are a completely recovered. And considering how big I am, I find it difficult to believe that only 11 pounds can be the difference between severe, persistent pain on standing, and complete comfort. It might, of course, but I suspect that something about the change in diet is playing a part, although I have no idea what it might be. I’m just damn glad about it.
Ok. Where does that discipline come from? Can you buy it somewhere?
By the way, I quit smoking 11 years ago, after 26 years of 2+ packs a day. I didn’t do it with discipline. I tried discipline over and over again…fell apart every time. What I did was change my belief system about it, which I did with help from an excellent book I’ve talked about at length on these boards. So it was absolutely mental. But it had nothing to do with discipline.
I think you’re right.
I did a little experiment. I measured a quarter cup of flour, which is 26 grams of carbs. I used a pastry brush and after dipping the chiles, I brushed off as much flour as I could. Judging from the remaining flour, I might have added 4 or 5 grams of carb over all three chiles - MAYBE, since it looked to me like nearly all the flour was remaining. Which was good news. I did the same thing with the chicken wings. Brush on just the barest trace, enough to dry the skin and help with browning.
Nothing to excuse, no pie to eat. I didn’t do a single thing that was wrong, out of line, uncalled for, rude, mean, or “poisonous”, either by design or by accident.
A practice at which you excel.
Perhaps you consider “discussion” to be the same thing as “convincing evidence”. I don’t.
However, well-reasoned argument is a good tool for convincing me.
Unfortunately, in the substantial amount of discussion that’s occurred over the last few years, very little in the way of evidence has been offered, and when it has been it frequently turns out to be inaccurate, irrelevant, and even completely misrepresented as to content.
In place of reasoned argument, there’s been an enormous amount of repetition & insistence, which often devolves into derision and baiting. That I fail to find it persuasive should be unsurprising.
So if you’d like to take the challenge you’ve set for me in reverse, and show me (telling doesn’t cut it, that’s just more insisting and repeating, and more interpreting - plain words that speak for themselves, you just need to quote and link) the instances in which I have, first, stated that my position was factually correct, and second, been shown with minimally reputable evidence that I was wrong, and failed to acknowledge it, feel free.
If you’re going to use that thread to try and prove something, you might want to read it first. It appears you hope to use my healthy, high-fiber, very nutritious and filling beans as evidence of some out of control eating, which of course, a lot of people tried to do in that thread. Which led to:
And yet you still trot that thread out as some proof that I’ve been not only scarfing down “vats” of beans, but that I’ve been saying so and I forgot.
Really? * Really?*
Shame on you.
And SFG wonders why “discussion” doesn’t lead to my capitulation… good lord.
In the case of ADD, long term goals are like no goals at all. Time horizons and time management are at the core of ADD. (Which is why giving kids with ADD more time to accomplish things is pointless. They don’t need more time, they need to manage the time they have.)
Thanks for the feedback on my post, Stoid.
Congratulations on your 11lb loss! Though I know you only ever treat yourself 3 or 4 times a year, I trust you reward yourself well with some cakey bakey goodness for those few solid days.
And being assuredly generous, rather than noble, leaves no doubt that you will ensure that your dog has his saucepan of fat-soaked kibble in celebratory comraderie. It’s good to know that you spend endless amounts of energy and time nurturing him too, to view food as pleasure and amusement rather than simply a source of healthy nutrition.
Well done!
Just because you say a thing doesn’t make it true. I hope there’s a small part of you squirming in embarrassment for being so utterly and shamelessly rude, mean and poisonous to another human being who has never hurt you.
Also, you are starting to lash out randomly in all different directions. It’s making your posts extremely hard to follow, as I have pointed out to you in oh, three threads now? Four?
This time, I’m not going to spend the time in taking out all your underlining, bolding, nested quotes, etc. I just wanted to let you know that you might as well have just said BLAH BLAH BLAH, because not very many people are going to follow that mess.
Very well said.
Stoid, I’ve been reading along wishing you well because I think in general the hostility you attract here is excessive and I like to see you catch a break. But that comment was pretty low and yet pales in comparison all that self righteous crap about not saying sorry for hurting someone because you’re too noble not to be true to yourself or whatever. Give me a break. You should be ashamed but the fact you’re so obviously not makes me just not care any more about you.
Mothers who binge on junk food while pregnant could be programming their unborn children to eat junk food in later life.
Read more: Women hooked on junk food could pass addiction to children | Daily Mail Online
Stoid
Stoid might be wrong.
Stoid might rationalize (irrationally).
Stoid might get flack and fight back.
Stoid might bring out the worst in others.
Stoid could be any number of people out there exhibiting the same behavior.
Food/diet originated chemicals/withdrawls/etc – maybe not classically labeled addictions (yet) – contribute to this… maybe… maybe not. Can’t discount this out of hand, or we won’t find answers deep within the brain/body.
.
As for the strength of the so-called science behind studies, weight loss, diet success, etc… let’s see what The Community for Skeptical Inquiry has to say:
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/science_and_pseudoscience_in_adult_nutrition_research_and_practice/
*"Do weight-loss diets in obese people work?
None work well. On average, over the long term, obese humans do not lose much weight on voluntary low-calorie diets of any kind. (There are of course a few obese individuals who have “self discipline” and can lose weight and keep the weight off. Their “secret” is obscure.) There is, however, some evidence that low-carbohydrate diets “work” best at least for periods up to one year,22 but this has not been replicated in a two-year study.22a Notwithstanding thousands of weight-loss articles and books, there has been very little progress in this area outside of surgical intervention."*
cont’d… at CSICOP
I don’t think I am, actually.
I think this post encapsulates where people are having a hard time reconciling what you’re saying with your situation. Every time you talk about food that you actually eat, you are describing (as you say) completely normal meals which, if they are representative of your entire diet, should be within the 1000-1200 calorie a day diet which you claim in the OP you would need to maintain in order to lose any weight at all. A small cup of beans here, 600 calories worth of cornbread there, a few cookies for dessert…you should already have been losing weight if this is how you’re eating on a daily basis
Look, I’m glad the low-carb thing is working for you, I’m not as skeptical of it as some around here. But I think that if you’re frustrated that people here are not taking your claims at face value, it’s because you’re only giving specifics about certain meals that don’t involve a lot of calories, and then you are vague about the fact that those things are clearly not all you are eating. And every single reference to SERIOUS overeating is from some former life you lived that is so completely different from how you’re living now that you can barely seem to remember it. I doubt you’re up all night stuffing your face with Cheetoes, but I do think there’s a lot more going on than what you’re describing in this thread. There has to be; it doesn’t make sense otherwise. As Judge Judy says, if it doesn’t make sense, it isn’t true. I don’t mean you are lying, but your self-reporting here is inconsistent and it leaves gaps that people are going to assume are filled with something other than a small cup of beans.
A very interesting point of view, since I was not speaking to, or about Ms. Whatsit in any manner whatsoever. Nor was I speaking to anyone at all, except the “anyone” who might have asked my hypothetical question, which in truth I was thinking would be Travis, since that is who I was responding to and I was simply anticipating his reply before he made it. And even if I was speaking directly to anyone at all, the most that could possibly be said is that I was a little rude by ending it with the line Ms. Whatsit had the vapors about. Nothing in it was mean, much less poisonous.
There are several reasons why I decided that Ms. Whatsit’s reaction did not deserve or call for an apology from me. But I’m not going to get into any more than this, because while I wont’ offer an insincere and pointless apology, neither will I turn this into an opportunity to publicly dissect her. Because I think THAT would be pointlessly mean and poisonous, although that is yet another topic on which I appear to swim against the crowd.
It’s also interesting that you would take up for someone who has, in your view, “never hurt me”, indicating that you believe that being rude, mean, and poisonous is acceptable against people who have been hurtful, and not acceptable towards people who have not. I wonder what it is you believe I’ve done to the sizable number of people on this board who have been and continue to be rude, mean, and poisonous towards me, that makes their behavior ok? Because while your assertion that I have been “lashing out” is nothing less than ludicrous, if I have been even a little bit snippy, it’s hard to argue that it’s unprovoked.
And between us, I don’t doubt for a second that you hope that I squirm in embarassment, and I don’t doubt for a second that it has nothing to do with this.
Really? I wonder why the only time I’m hearing about it is when you decide you are going to skip the opportunity you’ve been given to be the one to give me that break, and instead elect to jump in to add your voice to the hostility directed at me? Why would you stay silent when you see multiple voices and instances of hostility that you believe is excessive, but in the one time you believe that I have been unjustly hostile, you pipe right up about it? It seems to me that if the hostility has been excessive, and I’ve finally done something you believe earns it, your choosing this moment to let me know you used to be for me but now you’re not keeps the scales out of balance.
WHAT comment? Did you read the post that Ms.Whatsit was quoting, or just the part she pulled and decided was directed at her? Did you read the exchange leading up to it? Because there was nothing low anywhere. NOTHING. Particularly nothing “low” directed at her.
Give ME one, and have the decency to take me to task over something more substantial and clear than “whatever”: I said nothing about being “too noble” for anything at all. I said** was not** noble, I **wasn’t even generous. ** Because I didn’t and don’t feel that my typing the words “I’m sorry” would be remotely sincere, on any level whatsoever. It would be an empty, pointless, dishonest gesture. Even so, I tried, but it would have been too big a lie -I can do polite little meaningless lies if push comes to shove, but this wouldn’t have been a polite little one, it would have been a big one. And since you purport to see for yourself the kind of hostility I get around here, some of the reason that would have been a big lie should make itself clear to you. If it doesn’t…then there’s nothing to be done about it, since more public dissection than that I will not do.
Again… that the only time you feel the need to tell anyone that they should be ashamed is the one time you think I should be (for someone choosing to take offense when none was offered) dilutes my joy over your silent, unheard supportiveness in the past when you were independently perceiving others being unmistakably offensive towards me.
Damn, Stoid! Just when I thought that **During semistarvation, **you had developed disturbances of “psychotic” proportions and actually did chop off three fingers of one hand in response to the stress.
As I mentioned previously, obese people are notorious for fibbing about the calories they’re consuming. They will swear up and down they eat like a bird. They will claim that, no matter how little they eat, they can’t lose weight. In essence, they are claiming the laws of physics do not apply to them. But we know it’s all BS. They’re lying to themselves and others.
[QUOTE=Stoid]
And between us, I don’t doubt for a second that you hope that I squirm in embarassment, and I don’t doubt for a second that it has nothing to do with this.
[/QUOTE]
Ha! Hilarious.
Not everyone is out to get you, you know!
You think people are provoking you? I think you’re being paranoid. Lots of people in this thread have been rather sweetly reasonable or objective, and you’ve treated what they’ve said as an attack on you.
I don’t think you can separate honest disagreement and scepticism from personal attacks.
Not once have I said, “Stoid, you’re a lazy stubborn short-sighted fatass and you need to get your tubby lardbutt out of the easy chair and stop stuffing your face with whole cakes” - this is a personal attack.
I have said, “Taubes is comparing humans to squirrels in a ridiculous and unscientific fashion” - this is honest disagreement.
It’s excusable to lash out at personal attacks (even if it is still unreasonable) but not excusable or reasonable to lash out at people who simply disagree with you. You can disagree back! Try it!
I don’t care about your rationalisations about your treatment of Ms Whatsit’s grandmother. She was sharing a personal anecdote and you decided to take the figure of her grandmother and make your own point with her, and also take huge leaps of logic in how Ms Whatsit treated her own grandmother. That was rude, mean, poisonous, what have you.
You just can’t admit you’re wrong. Does it have anything to do with your ADD, by any chance?
First of all… what? I’m not surprised you’re confused either, since you are taking different reports of different times, contexts, etc. as some kind of summation of my daily diet! I’m certainly confused by what you’re trying to reconcile: you are mixing up planned cheats while on a diet with my regular whatever daily eating with my sick compulsive episodes many years ago with my a few times a year sweet freakouts.
What are you trying to figure out? What I have been eating on a regular basis for the past few years? What I’ve been eating the past few months? What I ate decades ago? What I eat daily on a diet, what I eat daily not on a diet?
So let me direct your attention to the OP. The point of the thread was to say: I knew I wasn’t pigging out on a day to day basis, the way those who would see my obesity would instantly assume. I wasn’t dieting, I wasn’t making any particular effort to eat lightly, but neither was I compulsively overeating, nothing like it, and I knew it.
But once I actually DID decide to diet, I started to make a religious record of every mouthful. And while I intended to take a few days or a week to continue to eat as I was accustomed to eating while recording it, just for the comparison, once I started to record it I couldn’t stop myself from restraining myself: the awareness that I was writing it down made me stop myself from adding the extra bit of butter or whatever, so I started to diet before I really intended to, in a strange way.
So, based on what I was recording that was intentionally restrained, I knew what I was NOT eating, so to speak. And once I was seeing the caloric values, I knew what I had been eating when I wasn’t making any effort was not in any way outrageous. I wasn’t pigging out. Even when I was pigging out I wasn’t pigging out, as it turns out: I would have guessed that my nutmeg cake days were much worse than they actually were. (And maybe they are with a different splurge) Obviously I was eating more than my body needed or used, because I had gained 30 pounds over the last few years after getting down 30 pounds. But I did it eating something in the neighborhood of 2200-2500 calories a day, hardly gluttonous, and often far less, sometimes more.
My dieting calories averaged less than 1400 daily calories and my weight hadn’t changed apart from going up and down and back up a few pounds. This told me that I was right again, because if I’d been pigging out like I know pigging out to be, I would weigh 500 pounds, not 300, and cutting calories to 1400 would have produced an immediate and real drop in my weight.
Over the past few weeks, the first of which was transitional, I’ve been eating very restricted carbohydrates, and twice I’ve deliberately stepped outside, once for the cornbread, another time for the ice cream I didn’t finish. I haven’t been as consistent about recording my food, but I’m trying, and I seem to be averaging closer to 2000 calories, a couple of days I’ve gone as high as 2800 calories (Fat. It adds up fast!) a few days (yesterday being one) I’ve barely cracked 1200. I’ve lost 11 pounds and my knees are completely recovered from the pain they had been in for months. It’s still early, so who knows what it will shake it to be over the long haul, but that’s where I’m at right now.
The best part of where I’m at is the comfort level. Every day that passes finds me with fewer cravings. I don’t have any cravings for savory carbs at all, I can still get excited by the thought of nutmeg cake or other favorite sweets, but I’m not plagued by any means.
I realized a few years ago that my two big food “things” were really meat and sweets, primarily my own baked goods. Those were the foods that I really got excited about: corned beef, prime rib, pork roast, fried chicken, spareribs, etc. and my oft-mentioned sweets. Most of my non-sweet starchy eating was really about “supporting” my meat, eggs and cheese in the form of bread or rice. All of which is to say: making low carb work isn’t that hard, since it gives me, for all intents and purposes, carte blance with the savory half of my favorite foods list. That’s miles easier than trying to impose the iron will and militaristic discipline I agree with Crafter_man is absolutely required for me to have successfully spent the rest of my life eating lean poultry and steamed vegetables with as little fat as possible.
So it becomes a matter of managing my desire for yummy sweets, and the monotony of all that delicious meat that can’t be easily varied without adding too many carbohydrates. We’ll see.
Yes, I do.
Are you saying you cannot lose weight by cutting calories?
No.