See, this is why people are having a hard time with your story. If your intake is low enough you will lose weight. Maintaining a low intake is very hard, I think everyone in this thread believes that. But if we locked you in a room and only gave you 1200 calories per day for 6 months you would lose weight.
It’s hard to argue with the physics here, the difference between carbs and fats will only take you so far. Without energy coming in your body has no choice but to burn what is available simply to stay alive.
The problem is finding a diet that allows you maintain a weight that you desire in the real world. It could be low carb, it could be low fat, I don’t think we’ll resolve the question in this thread. But there should be no argument that if we reduce your calorie intake low enough there is no question that you will lose weight.
I’m actually not trying to figure out how much you’re eating, that’s the point…it can’t be done based on the information you give. I’m trying to show you how your reporting doesn’t jibe with the fact that you don’t lose weight, because what you report is always a tiny amount of calories, and intuitively, people are going to know that it’s not the whole story.
So I can sum up your confusion and questions pretty simply as: Stoid, we know you were really eating 3 or 4,000 calories a day, because that’s the only way it’s possible for anyone to be fat and stay fat. And/or you were eating 3000 calories a day when you told us you were eating 1400, because otherwise you’d lose weight. Therefore you are lying. Maybe you’re also lying to yourself, but you’re definitely lying to us.
I would say that you are very lucky because you can eat foods you enjoy on a low-carb plan. For me, at least, I don’t really like meats except fish and some poultry and would rather eat carbs. I have no doubt I could lose weight on a low-carb diet because I would quickly tire of the few foods I would want to eat (cheese omelets). I also suspect that I wouldn’t be as hungry but it would take away any enjoyment I got from food. That, coupled with the digestive issues and foul breath, would make it an unacceptable long-term solution for me. I do think that for those people who enjoy meats, low-carb is often more sustainable than other eating plans. I still do not, however, understand how you did not lose weight on the restricted calorie diet. Even the book’s author acknowledges that while you may not lose fat, you will still lose weight on a low-calorie diet.
There’s a big difference between 1400 calories and 4000 calories. That’s the entire point, actually. I believe that you’re not eating 4000 calories, because you would know it if you were. But I don’t necessarily believe that you’re not eating 2000 calories, because it would be much easier for that to happen without your realizing it. So, I don’t think you’re actually lying to anyone, but I do think you may well be mistaken.
I know. I’ve said that many, many times. I said it in the OP, third paragraph. This will be the third or fourth time I’ve quoted the third paragraph of the first post in this thread for the benefit of people telling me that if I cut calories enough I’ll lose weight:
When are you talking about, Sarhafeena? The time period I clearly stated that I was eating more than 2000 calories a day, during my regular non-dieting life over the past few years, or a couple of months ago, when I was religiously recording every swallow of juice, weighing everything, including nuts in the shell by weighing them before I ate and then weighing the shells afterwards? You think I accidentally was consuming 600 or more extra calories that I just wasn’t noticing jumping into my mouth in between by religious recordings of every spoonful of creamer in my coffee, every cracker, every bite of apple? I “mistakenly” ate a big mac every day, or did I mistakenly eat…what? a couple of eggs, a few piece of toast with butter? Did I mistakenly eat a half pint of haagen daz?
“Mistaken”, if you’re sincere, means that maybe I was thirsty and I reached in and grabbed the juice bottle and took a couple of swigs and forgot to record it. Which would be 150 calories. And I’d have to make that mistake three or four times a day. Every day. While I was obsessively counting, measuring, weighing and recording everything else.
But there’s another possibility. I was eating 1400 calories a day and not losing weight. Far from impossible. It’s possible I might have lost as time went on. But six weeks with just a four pound bounce up and back and two and back and 1 and back two…well, it still proved my point: If cutting down to 1400 calories a day means it’s going to take me six weeks to lose a couple of pounds that don’t even stay gone, and a few more weeks for those pounds to actually go, then I’m not mistaken or lying when I say I really wasn’t eating that much before I went on the diet, and I sure as hell wasn’t being a compulsive glutton.
The studies that show that overweight people tend to under-report their calorie intake do not use this kind of loaded terminology because scientists don’t make judgement calls.
You have once again asserted that overweight = morally inferior and ideal weight = morally superior. Heads you win, tails I’m lying.
You can slice, dice, or spin this any way you like, but this, no matter how mildly worded, is engaging in persecutor behavior. Not that I’m surprised, many overweight people do engage in victim behavior.
Here’s a little mental game for you. When you lose weight, where does the weight go? Or, I should say mass. However, since earth gravity is the de-facto standard environment, I think we can state that weight and mass are equivalent for this exercise.
Fair enough. What do you take? Because so far, I’m with Zyada: CM has said, in multiple ways: I lost weight through iron will and discipline, applied to reducing calories and fat, permanently. This is the only way that works, and I know this because the only people I’ve ever known of who managed to lose weight and keep it off for five years or more has done exactly the same thing. Stoid will fail because she refuses to acknowledge that this is the only thing that works. No other way has ever worked that I’m aware of.
That, to me, looks exactly like he’s extrapolating his experience to everyone, but if you see something different, I am genuinely interested in knowing what it is.
On one hand, it’s “mental”, on the other, it’s calories in/out.
Then we have issues about how certain foods play on one’s ‘emotions’.
We also know that things like insulin resistance pretty much make the ‘mental’ part prone to defeat.
Crafter Man could try to use ‘mental’ telepathy and strong-willed coaching and change the world of the obese to one where the odds are not overwhelmingly against you. I keep seeing these onesy-twosies of ‘success’ quoted by a few Dopers. For every Crafter Man, there are thousands of people who can’t chime in and offer up anything about their attempt, since they’ve failed. Some failed trying to do the same thing: Use sheer will to overcome it.
You guys are cherry picking success stories. As long as a handful of people have supposedly done it, then it must just be that you aren’t trying hard enough. It’s ‘mental’
The brain is an organ. Crafter Man’s brain can deal via sheer will. Everyone is free to play the lottery, as long as they accept the ridiculous odds and have another – realistic – plan.
I was not talking about the time you were religiously recording every nut you ate. I think you didn’t give that level of calories long enough for it to show results. I’m talking about your typical diet when you are not keeping track. You’re constant refrain is “I DON’T stuff my face! I only eat a small cup of beans! My indulgence was a cup of ice cream, which I didn’t finish! The cornbread was only 600 calories!” None of that was during the 1400-calorie What I’m trying to explain to you, and apparently failing miserably, is that this sounds VERY MUCH like someone who is trying to justify what they eat because they know that they’re eating too much. I’m trying to explain why people are having the reaction to you that they are having. You are giving contradictory information about your own feelings and behavior. On the one hand, you say you are impulsive, can’t control yourself around food, can’t possibly hold yourself to 1400 calories a day, and then on the other hand you say, “gosh, 3 cookies just really hit the spot, and three days later when I had some ice cream, I didn’t even feel like eating the whole cup!” It’s confusing, it doesn’t make sense, it leaves a lot of questions as to what’s going on with you.
You know, I do wonder what my life would be like if I lived in an agrarian society as a farmer’s wife. Would I find that lifestyle fit my personality better than the one I’m in, or would it be just as stressful?
I can’t really answer for SpoilerVirgin, but for me it’s not about the cupcake making me happy, or not having the cupcake making me unhappy.
My problem is that I work in a high-stress environment (I’m a programmer). The place I work at is a corporation, and I have never seen a job for my skill set that wasn’t a corporation. It’s not really a good environment for me - I’m required to sit at my desk for 8 hours a day and at least look like I’m working the entire time. Corporations understand if you need to go for a smoke break, or go to the candy machine for a candy bar. But they don’t understand if you need to take a break by reading the web, or by going to your car and reading a few minutes. They don’t understand that I accomplish things by the rabbit method (minus the hubris), rather than the tortoise method. Eating a small amount of something pleasureable reduces my stress levels just a little bit, while still being acceptable to my superiors. And trying to not eat something, when I am already using my much more limited than average self-control to play corporate games is just one more thing I don’t need. Yes, I have made a decision to eat food that I probably don’t need, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s more of a job vs. weight than a pleasure vs. vanity equation.
I agree. On the one hand, **Stoid **says calorie reduction does not work for her. On the other hand, she acknowledges that anyone can lose weight via calorie reduction. So yes, I am also confused.
Well, I think she’s saying that calorie reduction COULD work, if she could stick to it, but she can’t. Which…ok, I get that. The part I don’t get is that when she talks about specific meals, she gives the impression that it’s not actually that difficult for her to control the calories at all, that she tends to have a little nibble here and there, and generally speaking her diet is pretty normal. But then, on the other hand, it’s “well over 2000 calories.” So…how much over 2000? And how do a few cookies every few days add up to that? I can’t reconcile it.
I just reread the OP. It was ***very ***confusing and convoluted (especially the Conclusion Section), and some statements seemed to contradict others. Using a total of 2,104 words, I think she was simply saying that losing weight is possible, but hard. That’s it. That’s her big discovery: losing weight is hard. Well hells bells, who doesn’t know that?
I have the exact same problem, and the only way I have found that works for me is to bring in all my own snacks from home each day. Carrots, yogurt, small zip-locks with a measured amount of almonds, fruit, etc, fill my cravings but still allow me the sensation of eating while at my desk. They’re much better than a candy bar or keeping a container of any of those things at my desk (I’ll eat the whole thing). Occasional FiberOne bars help as well.
One of the things taught in Weight Watchers is that you almost always have some control over your own environment. Most folks who are successful on WW carry good snack food with them at all times to avoid the temptation of bad food. It’s not that you should stop eating, but that you should make choices to eat what’s better for you.
The cornbread and ice cream were the last three weeks, planned cheats during VLC, when I’ve lost 11 pounds. So I guess it’s true that with those two things, I wasn’t stuffing my face.
The cup of beans is a cup of beans that someone was trying to assert was me eating a vat of beans and lard. I didn’t say all I ate all day was a cup of beans. It was part of my overall diet that was being mischaracterized because I’m fat. As needsoffee said in that thread:
[quote]
It’s a very common kneejerk response on the part of (presumably) normal weight people to react to anything a fat person eats that isn’t steamed fish and broccoli as though it’s something disgusting and horrible that completely explains why they’re fat. This thread has seen plenty of it. And it’s so completely unreasonable and rude, basically treating fat people like criminals for every mouthful of food they consume that’s in any way less than punitively dull… yet, interestingly, those same people will gleefully point to the man who lost weight eating nothing but twinkies to prove that calories are the only thing that matters. In which case, who cares if I get 1400 calories eating pigfat wrapped in bacon and deep fried, so long as I only eat the 1400 calories? But that would be too logically consistent, I think.
In any case, the beans say nothing about my total intake during my “whatever” eating, which was actually around 22-2500 a day.
Okay, but what it actually IS is my responding to what I just pointed out: the irrational attacks that exaggerate what the food in question is, the beans being the most shining example, since beans, even cooked with a ham hock thrown in, are a superior food, carbs and all, so trying to twist them into some fatgirl foodcrime is unreasonable and unjust. I don’t like unreasonable and unjust.
It’s really simple, Sarahfeena: I gain weight eating a varied diet that provides more than 2000 calories per day, whether it’s 2000 calories of steamed fish, brown rice and broccoli (which would so never happen…ugh on steamed fish to begin with) or 2000 calories of nutmeg cake, so focusing the nutmeg cake doesn’t tell you anything. (Although I don’t gain weight eating more than 2000 calories a day without significant carbohydrate, if the last few weeks hold true in the future. Only time will tell.)
Okay, but again, you are MIXING things, so that’s why you’re confused.
[ol]
[li]I have severely impaired impulse control across all parts of my life. (Vividly demonstrated by my inability to control my impulse to read and respond to threads on the Dope, and I’m very sincere about that. You think 250+ posts doesn’t suck massive time I should be using on other things??) This includes my impulse to eat.[/li][li]My impulses (and compulsions) to eat have mellowed tremendously over the course of my life, for many reasons. The urges just don’t come upon me the way they used to. There was a time when I could barely stop thinking about food, and anywhere I went and everything I did was first about what foods I would be able to eat. That is not remotely true anymore.[/li][li]I still love food. But I love it like many people I know love it: as an extremely pleasurable part of life.[/li][li]Reducing my calories, particularly by adopting what is assumed to be a “heatlhy” diet of grains, low-fat protein, etc. produces physical hunger and forces me to obsess over food, just to make sure I stay within the rules.[/li][li]Staying within the rules robs me of most of the pleasure I get from food, since I am very fond of fat in almost any form. This is very uncomfortable for me to tolerate, because my life is very narrow right now, and extremely light on the pleasures.[/li][li]Taken together, I find myself in the position of creating an obsession with food that is profoundly unhealthy. I spent years shedding myself of making food the center of my world, learning to appreciate and enjoy it as part of my life, not the center of it. But starvation dieting (see the lenthy post I made last night) takes me right back to being exactly who I don’t wanna be: obsessive-compulsive about food, which makes me completely vulnerable to my natural lack of impulse control, and leads to a collapse of the system. (Again, PLEASE read the post: it explains so vividly how calorie restriction in anyone, for any reason, fat or thin, is practically guaranteed to turn you into a food obsessive, and how that can possibly be an effective way to treat obesity, I cannot imagine). I find I’m thinking about it in a way I never do when I’m just living my life and eating at will. Which I try to combat by giving myself a treat to let off some of that building obsessive steam.[/li][li]Eating VLC, as I have been, is far less pressure. (It is not perfect and flawless: as I’ve repeatedly said, the only perfectly easy diet is anything-you-want-never-gain-weight, but I dont’ get to be on that diet.) As I’ve described, I loves me some meat, and cheese, and dairy, and nuts, and fat in almost any form. And so far, the amounts I’m eating are completely satisfing and I’m losing weight. So while I expected to be more in need of planned cheats, I haven’t really cared. I keep trying to think of something I really, really want…and the only things that sound really great are things that I know I can’t happily eat a small amount of: my sweet goodies. So I’m not going to go there right now, it’s too likely to be too big a trigger. Maybe I’ll have a Tom Collins Float if I really get the urge: light mint ice cream with Tom Collins mixer (which has half the calories of regular soda). I fix those when I’m not dieting at all. Very tasty and refreshing and pretty mellow.[/li][/ol]
So, you can accept that** I gain weight eating 2000 or 2200 or 2500 calories,** and that I have consumed those calories in the form of beans, tom collins floats, eggs and toast, nutmeg cake & milk, etc.(And really, it’s not that hard to believe: I’m 52 and sedentary and I’ve been fat my whole life.I’m good at gaining weight.) Or you can continue to assume that it takes more than that for me to gain weight and I’m just not recognizing that I was eating it. But I’ve done my best to make VERY clear who I am, what my history is, how I eat and how I’ve eaten, what triggers my unhealthy behavior, and what supports my healthy behavior, and where my cornbread, nutmeg cake, cup of beans and cup of ice cream fit into all of that.
And for the record, your patience and civility have been much appreciated, and account for why I have been glad to work so hard to get past our difficulties in making ourselves clear to each other. Thank you.