Which subject, losing weight? Done it plenty, including days off. Keeping weight off? Done it, in spite of eating whatever I liked much of the time. (See post earlier today.) Maintaining strict adherence to a rigid eating plan from which I only deviate by the degree and schedule you believe correct? No, but then I never sought to.
Stoid,
About low carb, lower carb, high carb, etc, I could drag out a gram counter but I would prefer not to. With the amount of legumes, starchy veg, breads, and fruit I eat now, while maintaining a steadily moderate weight loss, I doubt that i am following a low carb plan. Comparing the restrictive plan I used to follow, with what I do now, it just doesn’t compute. But that is a relative thing, and the gram counter shouldn’t have to come into it.
Now, being 30 lbs overweight perhaps might not qualify me as obese, but I think anyone with a moderate to significant amount of weight to lose is qualified to offer the model for weight loss which works on an individual level, and which could be extrapolated to other cases. So, I am not sure I understand what qualifiers I have to have, from your point of view, to offer a worthy model. Is it just being obese? Or are there other factors? And if I don’t have those qualifiers, then by the same token, are you not equally disqualified from providing your model to others if they are not exactly as you? I am interested to know.
Additionally, you are suffering from the same foggy understanding of the topic that Brazil is:
What a person learns and knows about weight loss isn’t erased by their inability to permanently stick with any particular diet. Its such a strange idea… Do you think someone who loses 100 pounds on, for instance, Weight Watchers, but then stops following the plan and gains it all back has somehow “forgotten” the things they learned? Or is it that they simply stopped following the plan? Does it mean that the plan is not valid, since the person who was on it stopped being on it? Because the people who have lost weight on the Weight Watchers plan that gain it back, and the people who lost weight on the weight watchers plan and not gained it back have precisely the same “knowledge” regarding the plan, and the eating plan itself worked for both of them.
You and Brazil seem to equate “valid knowledge of how to lose weight” with “knowing” some way of losing weight that somehow undoes whatever circumstances existed that led to the weight gain initially, that “cures” them permanently so that they no longer struggle, and that anything less means they don’t know anything.
You further seem to operate from a very narrow understand of all the different factors at work in obesity, apparently believing that there is some “knowledge” that, if truly valid, will fix all of those factors, as though obesity were like rickets, and the knowledge of what foods to eat will lead to a cure and theres nothing else to it.
Do you believe that anorexics fail to really understand that they need to eat more in order to avoid dying, and that once they have that knowledge, they will be cured?
Can’t remember the last time I wandered into the Pit (was bored tonight). Have to say, beating up on overweight people because they generally have little success keeping off losses is a cheap shot. It’s well known. No credit for the insight. If the critics have a solution, there are a whole lot of afflicted people who would be interested. If not, you’re just kicking folks who are down. Shame on you.
FWIW, this isn’t my issue. Rather, it’s my mother’s, who has struggled with weight all her life. The condescending judgmentalism pisses me off. The professionals don’t have a solution. Neither do you.
If I read The Art of Jeet Kune Do, can I call myself Sensei Ashtar and open a dojo? If I studied a website full of pick up tricks, can I then teach lonely guys how to get laid? If I walk into a gym and am greeted by someone is 50 pounds overweight and seems winded from having jogged over to me offering to help me put together a diet and exercise program to get the ripped, hard body I’ve always wanted, how much credence should I give him?
Bottom line, if you can’t apply knowledge to yourself in a sustainable way, then you have, in my opinion, no business claiming expertise in that subject.
Where have I said anything that even remotely approaches any of this? All I have said here is that, based on your posts, I doubt your ability to speak authoritatively on this subject.
You know nothing of my knowledge in this area, so I’ll thank you to stop trying to put words in my mouth.
What I understand of anorexia is that it is primarily a psychological condition which requires therapy and possibly medication under the guidance of a trained professional. I claim no knowledge in this area. Perhaps you have a book you’ve leafed through that you can recommend?
Oh my god this thread is stupid. Does anyone know what knowledge is? Your examples require more than secondhand knowledge to gain expertise. The subject of weight loss and nutrition doesn’t.
To give an example another way, what if someone held 3 PHDs in nutrition, physiology, and sports medicine, but they decided that for them, personally, staying in good shape wasn’t worth the effort. Would you say they don’t know anything about diet and exercise?
Stoid’s personal failings don’t credit or discredit any arguments or factual statements she makes. If someone who says that the key to weight loss is eating fewer calories and doing more exercise - would you say they have no fucking idea about how to lose weight because they were fat?
Why the fuck am I subscribed to this thread?
I think you misunderstand. No-one is beating up on fat people generally, just on Stoid for claiming that she has that solution in the same breath as stating that she’s failed to lose weight and keep it off.
There is, of course, a solution, but it’s hardly an easy one. Eat a healthy diet, today and everyday, and you will slowly lose weight until you are the right size. Many, possibly most, people (including myself, before you think I’m only judging others) are unwilling or psychologically unable to do this.
Sure, and that pretty much sums up the semantic games you are playing. You can call years of yo-yo dieting “success,” but that’s not a success anyone is interested in achieving.
Sorry, I’m not going to comb through 20 pages of posts searching for an argument to support your position.
Looks to me like you have no answer at all for my question.
No, you are the one who is implicitly conflating the two. You are just engaging in more variations on the chestnut of “I know how to lose weight, I just have trouble sticking to a diet.”
It depends what you mean by “lose weight.” When a fat person says that he wants to “lose weight,” he normally means that he wants to lose fat and keep it off. Agreed?
Agreed. And this is a challenge that (perhaps) you do not know how to overcome. It looks to me like the jury is still out.
I agree that it is unusual, but I think it’s more common than “almost no one.” I know a few people personally who lost significant amounts of fat and kept it off for years and years. I also believe that crafter_man has done so.
Perhaps, but the yo-yoing is not encouraging. Do you mind following up in a year or so?
I basically agree. Here is a refreshingly honest take on the situation from a politician of all people.
Interviewer: Why do you think you’ve had a battle with your weight?
Chris Christie: If I could figure it out, I’d fix it.
Interviewer: You don’t know what it is?
Chris Christie: I don’t.
Contrast with stoid who basically insists that she does have it all figured out.
I do think that there are psychological techniques to make it easier to stick to a diet. I have been investigating this issue for some time now. Part of the problem is that there is a lot of misinformation out there which acts to camouflage the fundamental issues. And there is a huge market for misinformation, particularly if it promises solutions which are quick, easy, and allow the dieter to eat tasty foods ad libitum.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that have no fucking idea, but I would say that they are pretty clueless, particularly if they acted as if they were some kind of expert. Admittedly, such a person is a step or two above the fad dieters who insist that the key to weight loss has nothing to do with eating fewer calories or exercising but instead you need to drink a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar after every meal.
It’s the same as if somebody wandered into a thread on stock market investment and stated that the key to making money in the stock market is “buy low sell high.”
In my case, I attempted to deal with alcoholism, mental illness, and obesity. Trying to fix all of them at once failed rather dismally, and I decided that obesity was, by a significant margin, the least urgent to fix of the three. There’s a limit to how many lifestyle changes it’s sensible to make at one time.
That’s the point, though - just like with alcoholism or mental illness, the solution to obesity is permanent lifestyle change. Anything less will at best be unsuccessful, and at worst destructive both physically and psychologically. Losing weight is as simple, and as difficult, as stopping drinking, in my opinion, and should be considered as the same sort of thing.
I would say it’s “neither.” Most likely the person never knew how to stick to a diet in the first place. At a minimum, they seem to be missing something important.
It depends what you mean by the word “valid.” It does appear that Weight Watchers, standing alone, is ineffective.
I would say it’s a lot more than just knowing what food to eat and not to eat. (Although this plays a role.) It’s also knowing how to deal with your own mind. And putting the same into practice. It’s even remotely possible that nobody knows how to lose weight and keep it off because it’s psychologically impossible for most people. But I don’t think so, since a decent number of people actually succeed. (I am using the word “succeed” here in the normal sense, i.e. I mean losing a significant amount of fat weight and keeping it off indefinitely.)
Yes I agree to a large extent. I have researched these issues informally for quite a while now and I am just about convinced that there is a similar psychological process in play as between an alcoholic who is addicted to alcohol and a fat person who cannot resist the urge to pig out.
Well you can, but if you did, you would deserve to get mocked a little bit.
I think it’s a pretty good analogy – the knowledge required to successfully lose weight is evidently more than just something you need to read in a book. Even if it’s correct, it must be put into practice.
To be an expert martial artist, you must (1) learn the correct knowledge; and (2) practice it for quite a while. Why is that? Well apparently the knowledge must be applied at a subconscious level to be useful. If you are punching or kicking at an enemy, he is moving to quickly for you to intellectualize each step of your response.
So too with dieting, I suspect, except that the battle is taking place inside your brain.
Show me someone who has put the effort into getting doctorates in all three of those disciplines and has decided to let themselves get overweight and not do anything about it despite having superior knowledge of what it’s doing to their body and what they can do about it, and I’ll eat my hat.
Bingo.
Heres Only one extremely important reason that anyone’s attempts at remaining slim after being fat are likely to be hugely difficult and probably fail, Having absolutely zero to do with how much they “know” about weight loss:
The above not only demonstrates why and how a person could remain fat or get fat again even know they know plenty about losing weight, It also shows why low carb can be so much better than cutting calories: it doesn’t starve the body, triggering the reactions that calorie cutting does. It also demonstrates why Athabasca Is a poor model of managing obesity, and also never genuinely became obese him/herself: 15 years low carbing to manage those 30 pounds versus starving the body of calories, which would have likely resulted innthose 30 pounds turning into 60 or 90 over 15 years.
So people who go on and on about it eat less/exercise more are simply demonstrating their ignorance about obesity and weight loss. If you have a reason to want to really understand obesity and weight loss, stop paying any attention to diet books, and skinny people teaching you how to exercise and live on salad. Instead seek out science. Research. Data. Real information vs. regurgitated “pop info”. Drop your preconceived notions and your prejudices and open your mind. Let your brain actually work. Stop buying into the idea that in spite of the fact that you can see his naked penis, the Emperor is fully clothed, just because everyone agrees. He’s not. And what we supposedly “know” about what is “obvious” about weight loss is horseshit.
By the way, here’s what I said in the other thread, in the very first post:
All of which I came to by observing my own experience. Then science came along and took a closer look and has said, yep, Stoid, looks like you’re right.
Then later in the thread the Taubes book, which explains the body’s systems in ways that line up perfectly with this observation and research, became the topic, finally clarifying, within the context of all the rest of these observable phenomena, how it has come to be that so many Americans particularly have managed to get so huge.
The fact that yes, subtracting sufficient calories will cause anyone to lose weight is addressed in my OP; the problem is people extrapolating from that simple truth the idea that healthy long term management of weight is achieved by lifelong calorie restriction. That’s a big, bad, wrong leap that isn’t merely ineffective, it’s actively damaging, turning a small problem into an issue that destroys people’s lives physically and emotionally.
Honestly, the belief that obesity and weight loss/weight maintenance are “simply” a matter of “Calories in/Calories out”, is not merely not “obvious”, it actually defies rational thought. This is particularly so when considering the obesity, morbid obesity, and super obesity which have exploded in the past 30 years.
So yeah, I think…wait, I know for sure that I have a great deal of knowledge and a very good understanding of the factors involved in obesity and the things which affect it, either positively or negatively. I know that the driving reason I acquired that information is because of my personal stake in it. The fact that I did not long ago succeed in getting and staying slim (as, say, Crafter Man did) has kept me very interested in the subject, leading me continue to always take new information, always expanding and increasing my knowledge and understanding of it. (I am by nature a person who seeks to increase and expand my knowledge of everything that interests me, and nearly everything does interest me, although of course not equally.)
On the other hand if I were as the sort of person who had the ability to adopt a sort of steely resolve to deny myself to whatever degree necessary to become thin, did it, then continued to impose upon myself whatever degree of self-control and deprivation proved necessary to remain slim, (as it appears Crafter Man did) then I would certainly be slim, but that would in no way be good evidence that my knowledge and information about the subject was particularly comprehensive or reliable, because I almost certainly wouldn’t have gone on to continue to acquire the kind of information about the subject that I did as a result of continuing to struggle with it. After all, having that kind of self-control is terrific and effective, if you have it, but it’s not knowledge. It’s not something you can really teach other people to have. (Far from it , actually… science is learning more all the time about the nature of self-control, and rather than being like a muscle that use will strengthen, it’s more like a fixed and limited resource that if tapped, will have less and less for use later.) In other words, it has actually been my repeated failure to remain slim that has increased and expanded my knowledge of the subject.
To what degree I am ever able to apply that knowledge remains to be seen. But it is no indicator of what I know, EXCEPT to the extent that I acquire knowledge about how to make it easier…and I have got the knowledge, and I have applied that knowledge, and this has led to my being able to be less obese at 55 than I was at 42, even if I am not actually slim.
One way to split the difference might be to say both have inherent biasses.
As in when we succeed at something we can tend to overemphasise personal qualities at achieving it, when we fail we can tend to over emphasise external factors for the failure. Sometimes its the reverse. Which is why clinical knowlege can guard against either tendency, although not entirely.
Cancer survival and weight loss are two interesting examples in this regard.
Otara
I agree. In my.own case I have always admitted that I started using food like a drug when I was a kid, and remained a compulsive, disordered eater with an unhealthy relationship with food for decades. But at the same time that became less true, I not only found myself fatter than ever before, the general degree of fatness innthe rest of the population exploded. And it never made the slightest sense to me that a huge percentage of the population would suddenly become compulsive eaters for anything other than biological reasons.
Assuming your claim is correct (and I am somewhat skeptical), this is yet another variation on “I know what to do, I just have a hard time sticking to it.” Let’s assume for the sake of argument that generally speaking, diets fail beause of hormonal changes which result from dieting. In that case, your problem is perhaps that you do not know how to consistently and sustainably deal with these hormonal changes.
That’s just speculation. Speculation which is unsupported by one important piece of evidence – the National Weight Control Registry, which tracks thousands of people who have kept at least 30 pounds off for at least a year. Despite the popularity of low carb dieting, very few of these people use a low carb approach (apparently).
And one very useful – scientific – thing to do is to look at people who have succeeded in the weight loss game and see what they have in common. Agreed?