Her mother’s advice to STOP EATING is good?
Plus, just because they’re closely related does NOT mean they have the same metabolism or anything. Hell, my mom is more straight up and down, no boobs, small difference between waist and hips. I have huge boobs and a 14" difference between waist and hips. We look nothing alike (body-wise) and have different food issues.
But yeah, just STOP EATING. That’s great advice.
Now I don’t remember if an explanation is given for these results, and I don’t feel like going back to check, but my guess would be that the body’s satiation mechanism is not triggered by volume of stomach contents alone. This is certainly true with different types of food; I’ve read that fat consumption triggers prolonged satiation. It seems that straight water consumption does not trigger the same response, but watery food (e.g. soup instead of casserole) does the trick.
BTW, I drink a lot of water all day, just because I like to. I am not, however, under the impression that it is helping me any more than if I cut my consumption down to a more normal level.
Stop eating was said in a context in which it obviously meant “eat less, less often.” CaerieD said so, albeit in the next paragraph. She wanted the phrase to stand alone for dramatic effect even though it occurred in a conversation and was probably part of a longer sentence as well. I don’t think anyone thinks her mother’s meaning was “stop eating as I once did in my anorexic days.” And the mother and daughter don’t have to share body type or metabolism for their interaction to be empathetic. All I’m saying is it’s not a counselor-counseled relationship primarily.
Can you point out where the OP said so in the next paragraph? All I see is:
That’s saying her mom is taking her to task for eating breakfast at all, not for eating a large amount at breakfast instead of a small amount.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly (or really close) to what her mom means, either. Have you dealt with anorexia? I have and you never ever get over it completely. There’s always a tiny tiny tiny tiny part of you that feels you should just not eat at all and that would solve any weight issue you have. And that’s how it feels if you really work to get over it. I know a lot of people who don’t really get over it, even if they’re not starving themselves anymore.
The OP employs hyperbole in paragraph four also. Did her mother really “scream” that in the restaurant? I’m guessing no, she probably spoke louder than was comfortable for all concerned. So, “just stop eating,” bolded, I read as “eat a little less” and, possibly, “skip breakfast.” With a breakfast like that I would gain weight too.
We can parse and reimagine what was said in the conversation that only ONE of us was privy to but the truth is still there. Eat less, less often is the way to go. Exercise and cutting out fat and sugar to a large extent will help tremendously.
Of course I don’t follow my own advice as often as I should but I don’t try to pretend the advice is somehow faulty.
FTR, I’m down 19 lb since Jan 1 and though I have a ways to go, it’s not as hopeless as I sometimes think.
Same here. In fact, if I eat breakfast it triggers something that makes we want to keep eating all day. There have been times in my life when I ate breakfast regularly and more normal weight was 10 pounds more during those years then it was during the breakfast skipping years.
Interesting. If that’s the case, maybe the stomach reduction techniques aren’t depending solely on creating a smaller stomach that would fill faster. I’m sure patients would receive post-op instructions about new eating guidelines in any case.
But a P.E./Health teacher once told me that people often overeat when they don’t correctly interpret the body’s signals. The body wants water, but they interpret it as hunger. Most (all?) of the things we eat have some water in them so eating does give the body what it wants, but we could accomplish the same thing by drinking a zero calorie glass of water. Her moral to the story: try a glass of water first.
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3) If by “[W]hat seems obvious to me is that we don’t drink enough plain ol’ water,” you mean that too much water is substituted with other beverages, then I agree. However, I see no evidence that simply increasing water consumption is going to provide any real benefit for most people. Unless they like peeing a lot.
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Agreed, re: substituting other drinks for water (instead of having them in addition to water).
IIRC however, things like my personal poison (Diet Coke) are often diuretics but water isn’t. So when Diet Coke exits the body, it will also take away some extra water (that was already in the body) along with it—whereas water won’t. So 32 oz of Diet Coke should produce more urine than 32 oz of water. It seems like a double whammy, A) not drinking enough plain ol’ water for the body to function properly, and B) drinking other things that exacerbate it by taking the water out of the system.
Actually, the comment about screaming in the restaurant was only mildly hyperbole–it could probably have been better described simply as yelling. It was loud enough to draw the attention of other patrons and to be heard across the restaurant when I got up to go to the bathroom, however, as my fourteen year old psyche was highly aware.
My mother and I have discussed my diet before and had arguments about it before that I’ve ranted about here. When she tells me to stop eating she really is advocating fasting. She doesn’t believe that eating healthily and exercise will control my weight, only fasting and “detoxing” can help. I’ve argued with her repeatedly that it’s simple physics–if I burn more calories than I’m eating, I’ll lose weight–and she simply, flatly doesn’t believe it. She’s an intelligent woman about many things, but on matters like this she loses all rational thought. Whenever my weight comes up, our arguments swing between the fact that she thinks I’m fine the way I am and her advice to fast. What constitutes fasting (skipping breakfast, not eating for an entire day each week, fasting on the weekends, etc) varies depending on the argument, but the advice is never “eat more reasonably”, it’s “don’t eat.”
The OP will have to answer this, but my mother herself suffers from guanoneurological anxiety psychosis. I can believe what the OP is saying is literally true.
Mom’s standard excuse/rationalization/whatever is that she’s “Pennsylvania Dutch.” Because, you know, they take care of people, show them hospitality etc. and that means two things: 1) food, and 2) more food.
One morning, when I was at the acme of heavy, mom said she was concerned about my weight, how it wasn’t good for my health etc. Now, I was tempted to mention that she always had Little Debbies etc. around the house when I was growing up, fought me tooth and nail when I started jogging (like a 17 year old is going to have a heart attach or something), and so on.
Do I need to say how not healthy her cooking is? Too much oil, too much salt, etc. She grew up during the Depression, when people actually worked off their meals, so that style was more appropriate in her time. And when I was little my dad got deathly ill, so she started working outside the house to help support the family—she didn’t have time to get all fancy with the cooking after eight hours at the factory. So I understand in why she cooks like that, but she refuses to concede on even things like portions, even as she watches some of her grown children struggle with weight.
If you’re not 20 lbs overweight, you’re too thin in her eyes…like she projects anorexia onto people. And by the way, those leftovers? You’re taking them home…she insists, even though past arguments over this issue have nearly come to blows. My brother said to her once, “Sure, I’ll take it. You can retrieve it from that garbage can by the road just around the corner if you like.”
Fact is, she wanted and wants an eating buddy. If you clean your plate, you must still be hungry and she will fix you more. So after expressing concern about my weight, she asked me if I wanted bacon or sausage with my breakfast. All day, it’s “There are some cookies out there if you’re hungry” and “I want you to try this new candy I found at the supermarket.” She’s hopeless and at 83 years old, not going to change.
Guanoneurological anxiety psychosis, GAP for short: I tell you, it exists.
You must give me the name of your oculist; I, too, would like to be able to see far into the past and at great distance to observe casual events with which I was not previously acquainted.
As for the suggestion that a former anorexic/bulimic with reported ongoing food-related neuroses is “probably her best counselor all things considered,” can be considered true only in the negative, contraindicative sense. “Eat less, less often,” is scarcely an effective or comprehensive strategy either for long term weight loss or healthy nutrition unless one is starting from a baseline of excess food consumption to begin with. “Eat better, more vegetables and complex carbohydrates, monitor the amount of fats and refined sugars, snack on low caloric density foods, and exercise regularly,” is better (though hardly complete) advice. And “just stop eating,” (especially, if the o.p. is translating accurately, fasting and “detoxing”) is just plain bad advice from any nutritional standpoint.
Stranger
What does she mean by “detox”, exactly?
Guinastasia - she’s usually referring to something like the master cleanse. We’ve had arguments about the beneficence of colonics as well.
Oh yuck.
My own breakfast usually consists of whole wheat toast with some peanut butter and a Yoplait Whip, or a banana. Plus some juice and of course, my coffee. A donut or coffee cake every once in a while.
I second Lean Cusines-they’re convenient, yummy, and lo-cal. Lean Pockets are good too, once in a while.
(I do confess, though, I have a diet pop habit, that’s probably not going away anytime soon. It’s probably my only vice-I just want the caffeine.)
(BTW, have you tried Fiber One bars? They’re sooo good. Just like the Quaker Granola bars with chocolate chips, and so filling. They also keep you, um, regular.)
Um, no they don’t. I am drinking a can of some generic diet cola right now. It has 5 mg of sodium , which lists as 0% of the RDA.
And my Diet Dew has about 2.5% of the RDA of sodium in a 20 oz bottle. That doesn’t strike me as a lot either.
Next time just tell her it’s none of her business.
The fact is, though, that she does have a point, not about skipping breakfast, but about the foods you ate. Those may sound like good food choices, but really, they’re not. Regardless of being “whole wheat” and meatless and all that healthy-sounding crap, it’s still pancakes and sausages, which is a poor choice for anyone trying to lose weight. If you’re serious about dropping fat, you need to re-think your ideas about what makes a truly healthy meal. Pancakes and sausage are American comfort-foods and are mainly just sugar and fat when you think about it. Something along the lines of a cup of cottage cheese (100 cals) plus a piece of fruit is a much better choice for breakfast.
I find it ironic that the OP is being told the myth that diet soda is “loaded” with sodium (it’s not), yet no one has pointed out that the V8 she drank has damn near lethal levels of the stuff. 1 12-oz glass of V8 has over 1000mg of sodium, which is over HALF of the maximum RDA of 2000 mg. :smack:
In these kinds of threads I like to share something that helped me… bottom line, your goal is to remove fat from your body, and you won’t know whether your strategy is working unless you get a body fat test. Where I live, there’s a little mobile van that will do a hydrostatic test for $35.00. I found that even when my weight wasn’t changing, I was still losing fat. If I’d been watching the scale I’d have thought I failed, but actually my strategy was succeeding, so I was able to stick with it.
If it’s an important goal, then it’s important enough to invest in a reliable way to measure your progress. Check around, with a little luck there will be some sort of measuring facility around you. Maybe the mobile van people.
Oh, and yeah, your mom’s nuts. With a nutso anorexic mother like that, it would be totally understandable for you to have some distorted food issues and not a great understanding of nutrition. That being said, the breakfast sounds sorta on the high-calorie, very-processed side of the equation. Less emphasis on the vegan, more emphasis on the whole-grain and raw.
Save your $35, do your own “body-fat test” right in the privacy of your own home.
Get naked
Stand in front of a fuill-length mirror
Jump up and down
Anything that jiggles is fat.
