It is as we have said so very, very many wearisome times before: resolve to eat “healthier” is easy to generate in the short term, but in the long term such vague and feeble efforts alone cannot survive the barrage of maladaptive physiological and neurological cues that drive the chronic overeater to overeat. The only way for most such afflicted to keep on the straight and narrow is through deliberate restructuring of their lifestyle, even to the extent of estranging oneself from non-cooperative friends and family, in such a way that makes recreational eating difficult or impossible to continue. This restructuring necessarily includes elements of stricter rigidity and less negotiability than the lifestyle of a normal eater for much the same reasons that recovered alcoholics may no longer allow themselves to drink even in moderation.
It’s not ridiculous. Unless you’ve experienced the raging appetite that I did while taking several Benadryl a day, you simply can’t understand, and have no basis on which to stand in judgment. In this state, intellect is non-existent. A person can’t think rationally when the biology is raging. Like I’ve said several times, when leptin is suppressed, the brain doesn’t receive the signal that the stomach’s full, and can’t send out the signal to stop eating. Substitutions don’t even matter-what’s there will be eaten. In my case, antihistamines suppressed leptin, I had a very, very difficult time not eating, and I gained weight. I thank GOD I figured out what was going on. I hope when I’m more educated that I can help other obese people figure out what’s going on with their appetites, in a caring manner. I get how it feels, and know that criticism doesn’t work.
As for obesity being curable, I don’t agree that it is. I’m a healthy weight now, but I still feel like I have a huge tendency towards obesity. I religiously post to my food and exercise diaries on myfitnesspal.com, or I know I’ll misjudge and start gaining again. My body chemistry is different than before I gained the weight. I can’t eat as much, even though I didn’t have a weight problem before. I was overweight for about four years. I hope my body chemistry improves, but I’m not counting on it.
Just wanted to highlight that because I think it’s so important for people to understand.
Okay, since you two are now “we” I’ll address you both. Why are you ignoring the testimony in this very thread by posters who have cut out snacking in order to maintain a lower, healthy weight?
And there is no way I would ever advocate removing an obese Boy Scout (or for Pete’s sake, an adult, either) from his home environment unless there was evidence of abuse on top of the overfeeding, or unless his health and life were determined by a doctor to be in imminent danger of declining. I, and other posters, are describing reasonable methods of carving out some empty calories. You are describing ripping oneself from a family in order to lose weight. Which of us is reasonable, and which is making outlandish, preposterous claims?
I spent two years pregnant and breastfeeding, taking in anywhere from 750-1,000 calories more than I ever had before, nearly 1/3 more than I need now. I ate fattier, more sugary food than ever on top of the deliberately planned healthy diet, and a fair amount of ice cream, pop tarts, cheese, and crap that wasn’t prudent but packed on the pounds the baby and I needed to grow and make milk. I lost the baby weight by stopping the pop tarts and other empty, over-processed crap and I eat less cheese, eat less ice cream, and smaller portions. Yep, I get hungry. Yep, it was fun to eat all that shit with little repercussions because I was also eating a buttload of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and lean dairy with the baby’s health in mind first. Yep, I still crave Pop Tarts when I see them. I don’t buy them. If they aren’t here in my kitchen, I can’t eat them. Yep, I completely understand how bad habits form, and apparently I understand what moderation is. There is absolutely no need to go to such extremes to cut out a few extra calories or frame your argument with such histrionics because people of a healthy weight range make choices to eat a more balanced diet instead of calorie laden crap every single day.
No, because I know where I first found it - but it wasn’t in the primary literature. Have you ever seen the HBO documentary The Weight of the Nation? On the DVDs of that series (it may be in the supplemental stuff), there’s a segment which takes place at a research institution which is studying obesity. The morbidly obese volunteers were living in the facility for weeks, receiving a carefully monitored diet and exercise program which ensured they lost very substantial amounts of weight. At the start of the study and periodically throughout it, they underwent blood tests to measure multiple hormone levels both before and after consuming a meal as well as sophisticated physiologic testing (such as VO2 max calculations and body fat % measurements). The results showed a much lower basal metabolic rate than expected, and serum hormone levels after the weight loss similar to those of people who were starving.
But I don’t have the documentary right now, and I can’t remember either the researcher’s name or the name of the institute, so I’m having a heck of a time finding this particular study in the primary literature. Feel free to check out the documentary if you have time, though. In the meantime I’ll keep looking.
That seems to be how gastric bypass surgery primarily works: the more successful procedures (the Roen-Y and especially the duodenal switch) remove part of the portion of the stomach which secretes ghrelin. The least successful approach, the lap band, merely restricts the size of the stomach without directly affecting hormone levels. And it makes sense: if a person overeats just a bit but does that quite consistently, he or she will inevitably gain weight over time. (And the folks who have the least success with gastric bypass procedures are those who also seem to have an addictive/emotional eating pattern - especially a pattern of binging. Which also makes sense, as none of the procedures will alter addictive cravings or emotional disturbances.)
Is there some reason why you and Stoid continue to offer study after study of subjects who are put on severely restricted diets rather than those of a gradual tapered down diet? I mean, I can see how such extreme diets support your claims of “starvation” but why bring that here when reason and real life scenarios would provide a more realistic, productive conversation?
I think we have to remember that obesity is a spectrum. Everyone is subject to the influences you mention in your quote to some degree (and I HIGHLY recommend reading the book Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink for a lucid and entertaining discussion of that topic), which is why the insidious super sizing of drinks and food at restaurants and movie theaters and the promotion of the idea that fun must involve food in some way is such a problem. But the people at the more extreme end of the obesity spectrum seem to also have other physiologic disturbances (hormone derangements, additive responses to certain foods) which also play a huge role in their overeating. And then there are the other factors that not everyone is subjected to equally (like needing to taking drugs which are know to cause weight gain as a side effect). It’s messy and complicated.
Yeah, there’s nothing like taking a drug which alters your brain chemistry in an undesired way to make you realize the limitations of “free will.”
For me, it’s been Prednisone. I’ve had to take it on rare occasions to control mild asthma exacerbations secondary to respiratory infections, and that stuff always makes me ravenous (It also gives me GERD, which is a fun combination.) On those doses I can usually control the overeating, but I have to really work at it.
But last spring I had the misfortune to develop mild pneumonia, which resulted in a brief hospital stay during which I was on doses of cortiocstaroids about 5 times higher than I’d ever taken before. And the steroids didn’t just make me ravenously, uncontrollably hungry; they made me hyopmanic. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t stay still, I couldn’t stop talking, I had the attention span of a gnat, I was quick to anger. And while I knew I was hypomanic and that the steroids were what was causing it, that knowledge didn’t help me control the behavior at all. The drug was firmly in charge, and I was just going along for the ride. Things only improved when the dosage was significantly reduced (which, thank goodness, was only a few days later).
Well, any study which follows a gradually tapered diet (and especially one which lasts for years) of necessity has to use patient self-reporting of food intake, which you’ve already written off as useless. No one can actually do a study such as the one you want to discuss (one where food intake and activity level is measured directly by the researchers, but which lasts for years).
Because the case-to-case variation in effectiveness of any given strategy for long-term healthy weight maintenance differs drastically depending on the nature of the problem that led to the weight gain in the first place. Some obese people have compulsive eating disorders and some do not. The greater the degree of overweight and the earlier in life it manifested, the greater are the odds that such a disorder is a factor.
It is an unfortunate truth that morbidly obese children do not have a very good track record of getting healthy while the environment that enabled their their obesity remains unchanged. If understanding that makes you a proponent of forcible home removal, then such a proponent you should become, although I have advocated nothing of the sort. If you have any actual evidence that this is not the case, nobody is stopping you from presenting it, but your exclamations of indignant incredulity do nothing to refute any of what I have said to you.
On the one side, we have researchers, clinicians, parents, and former children–some in this very thread!-- who have experienced this uncomfortable reality first- and second-hand.
On the other side, we have you, who continues to insist with–lacking any accompanying empirical evidence or even any relevant personal experience–that this simply cannot be, perhaps because it makes you feel all negative and frowny inside.
But facts don’t change because Troppus doesn’t like to hear them.
Cite that, please. I’d like some evidence that any habit or addiction adopted early in life is rooted in a “disorder”. Many people take up nail biting as children or smoking as teens, do you presume them to suffer a “disorder”, too?
That certainly wasn’t me who stated that:
I find this statement ridiculous. There may be an element of co-dependency to some morbidly obese households, there certainly is in the case of feeders. But your suggestion that the only way for most chronic over eaters to adhere to a healthier diet is to estrange oneself from friends and family is as ludicrous as the claims that a reduction in calories results in starvation. So on top of a host of hormones poisoning their system, a lack of self-control and the impossibly bottomless stomach, chronic over-eaters have no mind of their own, huh? But all this drama is necessary to defend overeating though, right?
This thread also has multiple posters who relate stories of reversing a weight gain by cutting out some bad habits and replacing empty calories with healthier food. Including me. But you don’t want to hear from me, because I’m not fat, right? I mean, as far as you know. I’m probably typing this from around the house, and when I say that I mean around the house, ya know what I’m sayin? You only want to continue to shout down the voices of reason and restraint and share tips about healthier eating and exercise with other chronic overeaters. Let me know how that works out fer ya. Far be it from me or other folks who successfully lost unwanted weight to refute your claims that no one in a healthy weight range could possibly ever, ever, ever understand what it’s like to want to eat all the food with no restrictions. Which is, quite simply, a fantasy constructed by you and Stoid, who will continue to post outlandish experiments to support the claim that fasts and severe calorie restrictions result in hunger. News at 11.
For the couple of posters who are participating who aren’t locked into a cycle of “We just can’t!!!”, the range of possible factors leading to chronic overeating is pretty broad. Insulin, leptin, thyroid disorders, depression, self-soothing with food… it’s no more possible to find a single cause of over eating than we will find a single cause of depression, and even though I find the studies artemis is pulling to be rather biased in favor of her POV, at least she is offering evidence that there are multiple causes which lead to food addiction, many of which are already diagnosable and treatable.
It sucks to be sick, and for some people chronic over eating that leads to morbid obesity is surely an illness. Very few people want to limit their lives in such a way. Don’t make the mistake of reading all this negativity and cites to outlandish studies and convince yourself that your condition is hopeless. Get a metabolic panel and have your insulin and thyroid levels checked. Or find a therapist. Treat your depression. Or like Helena330 said: it could be your meds working against you. Explore new foods, learn to cook; do what alcoholics do and say “I will not drink a soda today.” Go outside, or invest in a game that forces you to move and participate if you’d rather be indoors. There is no reason to set impossible goals like 1,000 calorie diets or a size 3. Many people are fat, happy, and still quite healthy. Many curb their intake before reaching the scooter stage. Many reverse the whole trend altogether and replace mindless eating with activities which give them pleasure.
Hell, I’ve reversed my feeling on the BMI 40+ Scouts at this point. If they are living with this kind of negativity at home, a week-long break and exposure to typically developing, active kids might be just the thing to break the cycle.
I’ve just got to say how much I’m enjoying the war between colander’s moderation won’t work, effective diets have to be EXTREME!! spiel and Stoid’s EXTREME diets always fail rhetoric. If you guys ever reach a consensus please post the results.
Yes, and that is unfortunate. Still, to use smoking as an analogy, people who quit smoking gradually feel less and less cravings over time, although the cravings never go away completely and the ex-smoker is much more vulnerable to becoming a smoker again than someone who has never smoked.
I would guess it’s the same way with food, i.e. a formerly obese person gradually becomes nearly the same as before he was obese and over time the urge to pig out diminishes; but he will always be a lot more vulnerable than someone who never had an eating problem.
Yes, HBO has been good enough to publish it on Youtube.
I have already watched it and I don’t remember anything like that. Besides which, I’m not sure how researchers could get blood measurements of people who are actually in the process of starving to death.
Thank you.
An honest perusal of the medical literature would see you realizing that there is in fact no approach, moderate or extreme, that is more likely to succeed than it is to fail. In this sense, Stoid is correct.
Another thing that it seems we all agree on is that you don’t seem very interested in educating yourself.
I’d be very interested in your success story.
Was this the segment? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i_cmltmQ6A&list=PL4CCC69AC0439DEED&index=8
If the word “disorder” gives you the heebs, feel free to call it whatever you want.
In order to break oneself of unhealthy eating habits, it is necessary to dissociate one’s self from those who would not support you in this goal, including friends whose favorite activities are food-based and parents who stock their house with intolerable items. Any “drama” you take home from this statement is yours to own.
Troppus, in case you haven’t guessed, I number among those who have suceeded in maintaining an astounding weight loss for a period of time thus far exceeding a decade. Somehow, this has not stopped me from noticing that your posts here are full of rambing, hysterical nonsense.
Of course, that must be it. It’s so simple, yet it explains everything! How could we not see it? The studies that have been linked to in this thread are all biased! :smack:
Is that so? I suppose, then, that I can expect you to concede every other point made against you in this discussion around this time next week. That should be fun.
At this point, I cannot say I am very interested in sharing it with you, Troppus.
No, colander, the studies linked profile outrageous experiments and they provide nothing in the way of pratical diet information. The extreme diets cited are undertaken for the purpose of experimentation and study, not because they are expected to result in sustainable results. They should not be attempted at home, and the results are not comparable to home diet failures nor should the results of these extreme, intensive and well- managed studies do not excuse or explain the failure of the home dieter. These studies do not serve to bolster your own personal diet failures is unless you were foolish enough to attempt the diets described by yourself at home.
It isn’t necessary to starve, divorce your family, or pore over medical case studies in order to lose weight. You can’t treat dysfunction with more dysfunction and expect positive results. You guys are all over the place with your outrageous claims that are completely discounted by everyone who has ever successfully beaten an addiction or lost weight deliberately. But you guys seem to be enjoying hand waving away all talk of success and moderation, and you seem bent on haranguing everyone who disagrees with the extreme measures, the claims of starvation, and the piles and piles of research which do not apply to the home dieter at all. Just keep patting each other on the back for digging up “proof” that obesity and over eating are incurable. Maybe someone motivated will start a “Why aren’t you obese” thread in order to generate some practical, useful, reasonable discussion about treating obesity that bars “evidence” that consuming less and making healthier choices results in abject misery and utter starvation.