The mental side of losing weight

In My Humble Opinion
41

The issue of losing weight is not the mindless binary “can’t shouldn’t/can should” you lay out. There are people who have the requisite mental discipline and ambition to create businesses, and business empires that make make millions of dollars, and some of these people are overweight and struggle with losing weight. There are people who have the physical and mental discipline to become professional athletes, and yet after their careers are over (or sometimes during) , struggle with losing weight. There are people who have the metal discipline and “willpower” to become top notch professionals in a variety of challenging and competitive fields, and they still struggle with losing weight.

You ascription to the inability to lose weight as a failure of “willpower” is meaningless and unhelpful, as is your suggestion that people who strive to lose weight and are unsuccessful need to “wise up” and resign themselves to being fat asses.

42

And to better answer the OP:

Only a small percentage of chronically overweight people have permanently lost weight (to where their BMI is in the normal range). As I have stated in other threads, I fall into this category - I was once overweight, but for the last 10 years have been in the normal BMI range.

Sure, I can tell you how to do it. I’ve told many of my friends and relatives how to do it. But experience has told me I’d be wasting my breath. The reason? Very few overweight people will actually do it. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but the truth is that few people have the strength and discipline to actually pull it off.

Case in point: An overweight friend of mine wanted to lose weight. I told him, “Eat what I eat, and let me know how it goes.” He lasted two days. Two days. And then it was back to sausage and mashed potatoes. He simply couldn’t hack it. And then he felt defeated. Looking back, it would have been more compassionate for me to simply say, “If you recognize you do not have the strength and discipline to lose weight, do not attempt it; you’ll only disappoint yourself.”

43

Astro, with all due respect, a person can have the strength to do one thing (build a business or whatever), and not have the strength to accomplish something else. I mean, look at all the athletes and financially-successfully people who are addicted to drugs, or cheating on their spouses. They may be strong in one area, but they certainly lack the moral strength to achieve other things.

I don’t know how many ways to say this: losing weight requires dedication, rock-solid discipline, and moral strength. So where does this come from? I don’t know, but here’s one theory: if losing weight is very very very very very important to you, then you will find the discipline to do it. The corollary to this is that a person who has been unsuccessful in losing weight simply doesn’t want to lose weight in a very bad way.

44

It’s funny, because as someone who deals in weight loss, one of the tools I commonly try to give to people is the realization that if they are successful in one arena, why not weight loss too?

So you’ve singlehandedly worked your way through college. That took discipline. It took focus. It took determination. Funny, that’s what’s required for weight loss too. So you have the skills, you just need to apply it in this arena, too.

But YMMV.

45

Falling Cow, it seems to me that you have already started the mental process of losing weight, because it is obviously important enough for you to start a thread about it. :slight_smile:

Here’s my story, thus far:

Last March, I was in a really low place, mentally and physically. I would be exhausted by 2:30 in the afternoon—I mean, ready to lay down and take a nap. I am self-employed, and spend a great deal of time sitting down at my work, so I was certainly not tiring myself out by moving around. Over a decade or so, I had packed on over eighty pounds.

One day, I decided enough was enough, and that I had to do something, anything, to get my energy back. One of the obvious solutions was to lose some weight, watch my nutrition, get exercise and so on…

I had a hard time with the idea of exercise, because how does one get started at exercise while tired all the time? Wearing a pedometer proved to be the answer for me.

I oredered a nice pedometer off of Amazon.com, and patted myself on the back for making a start. When it arrived, I put it on immediately. For a month after that, I did not change my diet at all, but I made sure the pedometer was clipped to my waist every morning, and I concentrated on getting in the habit of periodically checking how many steps I had taken. Turns out I was walking less than 2,000 steps a day at the beginning of my weight loss program! I started adding a little more walking around each day. At the end of the month, I was approaching the recommended 10,000 steps per day. I did not weigh myself at all until about a month had passed. I was happy to find that I had lost six pounds-- just from wearing the pedometer and being more mindful of how much time I was spending moving around. I also started a new habit of taking multivitamin every morning.

The next month, I replaced all sugar in my diet with Splenda. I have a horrible sweet tooth. I have to have something with chocolate in it everyday, or I become dangerous! I made friends with Blue Bunny Sweet Freedom ice cream bars. I also made a concerted effort to walk more than 10,000 steps per day. I did not make any other drastic changes in my diet; just got rid of the sugar. Before the month was over, I felt more energetic than I had in years. I rapidly lost another ten pounds.

Then, in May, I started keeping track of everything I ate–limiting myself to around 1600 calories a day. It helped me to think of it as a “food budget” instead of a limitation on my eating. I am really good at penny-pinching, and soon learned that if I eat a big salad with lite dressing at lunch, I can have a cheeseburger or some pizza at dinner, by leaving extra calories in my daily “budget” for the splurges. If I avoid the “splurge” foods, I can eat pretty much whenever I want, so I never feel hungry.

I have also learned that the first few bites of a forbidden goodie are the tastiest, so if I want something like french fries, I split an order with someone else, so I get to enjoy the naughty food without going overboard and packing on a lot of extra calories.

After May, I lost patience with writing down all of my food choices for the day, so I only do that every few days, and the rest of the time I try to keep a running tally in my head. This works well for me because my goal was to teach myself to be mindful of what I am eating, and this needs to be a permanent behavior or the weight will come right back.

So far, I have lost 38 pounds. My wieght loss has slowed down a little in the last six weeks or so, but it continues to come off. Interestingly, even though I have not been losing the pounds as fast, I am losing lots of inches right now. In fact, I need to go to buy some jeans in the next size down. In March, my most comfortable pair of pants was a size 22. Now, I need to buy some in size 14. Yay!

I am a bit concerned about how I will do when winter rolls around, since I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, and I tend to run to food when I am depressed. But I think the changes I have made will stand me in good stead, and I am planning ahead for dealing with winter blues–buying more full-spectrum lighting for the house and whatnot. The fact that I now have the energy to get out and walk will help as well.

I do NOT want to end up feeling as bad as I felt last March…ugh. That is a strong motivator for me to keep my new, heathier habits going. Also, when I am in the grocery store and pick up a heavy bag of something–say, a twenty-pound bag of kitty litter, I think to myself that I used to carry around the weight of almost TWO of these bags with every step. I feel so much better now. I want to know what I will feel like when I am no longer overwieght. It is relief to get that weight off, just as it is a relief to set down something heavy that you have been carrying.

I thought it would be really hard to get rid of sugar, but I have found as long as I can get a taste of something sweet, I’m content. As an experiment, I ate a bowl of regular, sugary ice cream (two scoops) about a month ago, and I felt awful for the rest of the day. I don’t miss real sugar anymore.

I have a goal of losing 75-80 pounds. I have not set a date by which the weight has to be off; that would be setting myself up for failure. I am telling myself that it is a permanent lifestyle change, and as a result of the changes I am making, success is inevitable. It is a journey.

God luck to you, and when you are ready to lose weight, you will know it. As others have said here, it is a very personal, individual thing.

46

Congratulations, Tabithina.

Yep, this is key. A lot of people go into diets thinking, “I’ll stick to this diet for 6 months, and lose some weight.” What they don’t understand is that losing weight - and keeping it off - requires a permanent lifestyle change. You must change the way you view food, and the way you eat, for the rest of your life.

47

I think it’s awesome the variety of different approaches that posters in this thread have taken to weight loss.

I just thought of something to add. In the OP, Falling Cow says:

[quote]
I feel like it’s useless when I don’t see results.
[/quote.]
I’m always kinda wierded out when people talk about losing X lbs a week, because I don’t lose weight over the course of a week. I lose 5 pounds in two days. Then, although I’m Eating Right and Excercising and doing All the Right Things, my average weight is rock steady for 26 days. That’s TWENTY-SIX DAYS of my weight fluctuating up and down by 2 lbs or so, with no progress whatsoever. And then I lose another 5 pounds in 2 days.

I’m losing fat steadily throughout the month, but I can’t tell because just when the pounds begin to add up, I start retaining water. Then I get my period, and my weight drops and I can finally see the results of my hard work and discipline. It was incredibly frustrating before I figured out what was going on! But now when I weigh myself, I just think, “Holdin’ steady. X weeks, Y days till my period. Hang in there. I’m eating fewer calories than I burn. The weight will come off. It’s simple physics. Just hang in there.”

So you have to take a long-term approach.

48

Re

" I don’t know how many ways to say this: losing weight requires dedication, rock-solid discipline, and moral strength."

I can know how many ways I can say this- On a practical. real world dieting level you’re wrong - dead wrong.

Losing weight is all about appropriate dieting strategies that work with your lifestyle. That’s why threads like this are useful. People exchange strategies and information. You’ll get a farther in successful dieting with a bunch of tasty salads and filling, low call meal choices in your pantry than some fantasy about moral stoicism and self denial. That’s why this “willpower/moral strength” nonsense you enjoy flinging around is so irritating. A successful diet is a lot more about saying yes to good food choices and meal planning, than saying “no” to calorie dense foods.

A successful diet should involve as little self denial and straining “willpower” as possible and maximize nutritious and pleasurable eating.

49

You’re right, Astro. It doesn’t take any discipline or willpower to lose weight. Heck, anyone can do it. That’s why obese people have no problems losing weight.

50

It doesn’t take much willpower or self-discipline to lose weight. It takes consistency and breaking the long engrained habits reinforced meal after year in the years it took to become obese, which took just as much discipline and willpower as it does to become fit. I keep saying this, and people keep denying this, but it takes work to be obese.

51

Here’s my story, for what it’s worth.

Let me start out with a few facts about myself:

  1. I was significantly overweight in early 2003. About 125 pounds. I’d been overweight for quite some time–was thin in college, but weight crept up over the next 10-15 years to the point where I was getting uncomfortably close to 300.
  2. I hate many things that diets advocate: won’t touch salads, don’t like fruit, only like a few vegetables.
  3. I basically don’t cook. I live at fast food restaurants.

All of that said, I lost 125 lbs. in about 1.5 years, with the help of Weight Watchers. I have maintained that loss for over a year (fluctuating a bit–currently I’m about 5 lbs over my WW goal weight and 15 over my own personal goal). I’m healthy, happy, and reasonably fit now. I never intend to go back to being fat again.

How did I do it? I started out by deciding one day that I was too fat and I was going to do something about it. I was lucky in that I never experienced any medical problems related to obesity (with the exception of some pretty nasty but intermittent acid reflux), but I just decided that I was tired of being fat, tired of not fitting in restaurant booths and amusement park rides, tired of being uncomfortable in my car, and above all tired of not being able to wear the kind of clothes I enjoyed. I was just generally tired of being fat. I was not an attractive fat person. I consider myself average looking now, but as a fat person I was awful. I’ve seen plenty of large people who are attractive, but I wasn’t one of them. I hated the way I looked.

So…I joined Weight Watchers, and quickly discovered that their point system worked for me. Since I was so heavy, I got to start out with quite a few points, which made the transition easier. I didn’t have to alter my diet too much–just cut down. I pored over their lists of restaurants and point values, and designed myself a regimen that would let me still eat at my fast food restaurants, but eat less. I soon realized that in order to hit my point totals, I’d have to do two things: prioritize my favorite “bad” foods and cut out all but the ones I valued the most, and exercise. The first one was surprisingly easy. I discovered that I could not give up my once-a-week pizza date with the spouse, but I could give up McDonald’s Quarter Pounders. And even then, I didn’t give them up. That was part of the key–I’m a very contrary person, and if you tell me I can’t have something, I’ll obsess about it. But as long as I could tell myself, “Hey–you can have that QPC, but it’s 13 points. Do you really want to waste 13 points on that? You can always have it later if you want it.” And I didn’t. I haven’t had a Quarter Pounder in months, and I haven’t missed 'em, either. As for the exercise, I bought myself a treadmill and walked every night for 30 minutes while watching TV. Eventually as I got thinner I took up ice hockey, racquetball, martial arts (for awhile), mountain biking, and even a little bit of running. I also used “Dance Dance Revolution” as a great way to work off the calories in a fun way.

Sure, I didn’t follow every WW rule–I didn’t drink milk every day (I hate milk), I didn’t eat fruit at all, and I only had veggies a few times a week. But you know what? It still worked! The weight came off (slowly, sure–but I was ready for that. I didn’t gain it overnight, and I wasn’t going to lose it overnight either). At the end of every month I dragged out some old clothes that I’d outgrown and tried them on. Since I rarely throw any clothes away, I had stuff all the way back to my “thin” days. Imagine my happiness when I finally fit into all my “thin” clothes!

My WW leader doesn’t quite know what to think of me, but she sometimes trots me out as proof that it can be done without depriving oneself of everything one loves to eat.

It can be done. You don’t have to eat salad. You don’t have to give up anything. Moderation is key. Sure, if you’re addicted to cheesecake you might be able to just have a bite instead of a whole piece, but it’s funny–I learned to appreciate that bite. I don’t need the whole piece anymore.

Good luck!

52

FWIW you’re not breaking a WW rule by not eating fruit. Carry on!

53

I’ve lost about 37lbs since March 27th of this year (inital weight 270lbs) - and only through counting calories and virtually no exercise. I try to take the stairs more often and I often walk/catch the bus (no car), but I’m not doing any pre-planned exercise right now.

And to back up winterhawk11’s experience, I haven’t had to completely eliminate junk food or fast food from my diet. I just prioritize and set myself a “food budget” like someone else mentioned earlier.

In fact, I’m really shocked at how easy it’s turned out to be so far. No huge willpower or mental stamina required.

I think this is mostly due to the exact subject of the OP - the mental side of losing weight. I’m currently 26. In grade 12 I was very fit, played many sports, and was about a size 14 at 170lbs (and I thought I was fat then!). Through six years of university, no regular physical activity, emotional eating, poor self-esteem and other issues, and what was in hindsight probably several episodes of depression, I gained until I was 250lbs in 2004. Then I broke my ankle a year and half ago, and gained another 20lbs. Throughout all this I was progressively more miserable, and even though I theoretically had the knowledge to lose weight (Physical Education student in university, took classes in Nutrition, Exercise Physiology, Body Composition and Physical Activity, etc…) I still continued to gain weight.

This spring I just got (found?) my head was in the right place, and I had to start losing weight and I knew I would make it happen.

I’m pretty analytical and enjoy technical solutions to things, so to lose weight I “dorked out” and my tools have been Fitday and The Hacker’s Diet.

I completely track all of my calories ingested, and estimate calories expended based on the Fitday formula/estimate and by tracking my daily weight. In The Hacker’s Diet it shows how daily weight can easily fluctate 1 to 2 pounds, but a weighted moving average of daily weights produces a pretty smooth weight loss curve that I can use to estimate actual calories burned.

I have good, predictable results so far and it hasn’t been a particularly onerous process. I’m starting to add more physical activity so I’ll be more fit and prevent any decreases in basal metabolism that might hinder continuing to lose weight.
So good luck to the OP. The variety of responses to this thread attests that there any many possibly methods/techniques for losing weight. You just need to mentally get yourself in a place where you can sustain that effort. You can’t just want to lose weight. I wanted to lose weight for many years, all the while continuing to gain. You need to be in a place where you have to lose weight (not necessarily for medical reasons, etc…) - where you just know that it’s something you need to do, and can do.

54

Amen to that. Changing habits is the key.

I have had experience of this in the course of the last year. One day a year ago it finally clicked in my mind and saw that I simply had to reverse the trend of the last two decades, or quite possibly not see my sixtieth birthday. Since then I went down from BMI 39 to BMI 29, and am currently losing about a kilogram per month (long-term average - like for Podkayne it goes in uneven stages for me).

Friends and colleagues used to ask me where I got the willpower, and my answer is: it did not need much willpower. If it had it wouldn’t have worked as I am not a particularly disciplined type. It just took abandoning wrong habits, and replacing them with moderately right (but not particularly onerous) ones.

Some things that I think have helped me on the mind front:

  • not treating it as an one-off project but as changing my habits for the rest of my life. I have not tried to do anything that I cannot do indefinitely.

  • assuming the attitude that it’s not about self-denial or privation after all, instead about escaping my current privation. I don’t feel deprived at all, instead I sometimes break into a run for a few hundred meters sometimes, just for the joy of being able to again. There is a discernible increase of physical fitness and wellbeing after a relatively short time (a few months at most) that you can use for positive reinforcement.

  • strict rules to the extent that you can keep them, and only to that extent (i.e. no rules that you cannot help but break). For me these are mainly: no soda drinks or other sweet drinks; always start the day with a nice (but exactly defined) breakfast; elevators only for five or more floors; one ice cream per week (with Sunday lunch), skip exercise group only when traveling or when sick to the extent that you are unfit for work.

  • structuring the needed exercise so that there is group pressure not to skip it. For me that meant mainly joining a preventive sports club where other people of unimpressive physique have two one-hour exercise classes per week. Slacking off would mean letting the others down and I’d feel ashamed before the instructors who put a lot of work into it.

  • asking family and friends to mention possible backsliding to me.

  • a reminder to lose weight as my password that use to log into the office network several times per day (in the beginning it was something to the effect of shape-up-you-pathetic-fatty. Now it’s to the effect of keep-up-the-steady-weight-loss)

Mainly what willpower and mindfullness it took were only needed for the first few months, before I got from one rut into another one. After that some awareness is needed for me to notice when my habits develop into the wrong direction again. But no iron willpower needed, and no sense of deprivation experienced.

55

Firstly, thanks to everyone who took the time to respond. I found almost every post helpful in one way or another. I greatly appreciate the gift of your thoughts and experiences.

I can’t remember who asked but my username has nothing to do with weight issues. Cows make me laugh, that’s all. Nothing deeper than that!

I’m starting to get excited about losing weight (I always dreaded it even though I tried to be upbeat and resolved). I’m going to re-read this thread a few more times, but I think I can see the clouds blowing away and everything looking all positive and bright and normal. It’s not normal to think of weight, food and exercise in the way I have been - I think I can now see another way!

The posts about asking myself what I get out of being overweight, and about perfectionism were very helpful, too. I’m sorry I have forgotten your usernames at this moment in time - hopefully I get used to the navigation on this board soon.

Podkayne, just wanted to say a thank you to you specifically, as your posts really spoke to me. Thanks for making the effort to post to my thread. I hope I’m not the only person who got something out of it.

Crafter Man, thanks for showing up! While lurking a month or two ago, I read a thread about losing weight. Your (very) blunt words were quite helpful in that thread, as they made me face up to a few head games I was playing with myself and realise I was creating excuses by trying to make weight loss be some horribly complicated thing. So, I thank you for that.

56

Aha! I found the problem and have changed the display to linear mode. :smack:

Anyone else getting mild humor out of the ads on this thread? Yes, I’m convinced that a magic pill will work - no wonder it’s so easy to delude ourselves for so long!

57

Sorry I’m late, but you said you’d be back.

I stopped stocking snack foods or convienient foods in my house. If you have to go to the store and buy ingredients and cook a meal, or scavenge on what is available, it takes more energy to make dinner and you don’t snack when bored or tired or depressed. I also, made small portions and if I was still hungry, I would go back and make more rather than making more than you want and eating it all anyway so it doesn’t go to waste. Also, whoever upthread mentioned the first few bites tasting best was right. Buy a carton of ice cream, premium, of course, and have a few spoonfuls a day, or whatever it takes to make you feel like you aren’t dieting. Also, make a mental or physical list of things that you can do or do better when you are more fit, like go hiking, biking, boating, on a roller coaster, to your grandchild’s wedding, etc. Someone (else?) upthread mentioned slight vs. severe hunger, I found that drinking iced tea or water when I felt hungry and if I was still hungry after that, then I would prepare something to eat. And I walked alot on a regular basis and added other activities as I wished.

58

Thanks for the kind words. Hopefully you’ll find success in your weight loss journey.

One of the unfortunate things on the SDMB is that we go on, and on, and on, arguing about weight loss, yet we’re all pretty much on the same page… the only difference is that we’re looking at it from different viewpoints. If you compare Astro’s comments and my comments, for example, you’ll find that we’re actually in agreement on the weight loss issue, but we’re coming at it from different angles.

I admit I’m guilty at instigating many of the arguments. I guess it has to do with my personality… I’m a no-BS kind of guy, and I have zero tolerance for explanations that absolve people of personal responsibility. This usually works out O.K. for me, except in those rare instances where someone’s predicament is really not their fault, and I continue to insist otherwise. :wink:

Anyway, this is not one of those situations; we all agree that, in order to lose weight and keep it off, you must eat better, and/or eat less, and/or exercise more. We should just stop there and part friends. But instead we argue on how to eat better, eat less, and exercise. It is my opinion that a person must be strong & disciplined in order to pull it off, and that you will be disciplined if you really really really really really really really really really want to lose weight. Others disagree.

59

I think I get what you’re saying, but to a certain extent, this is just another way of saying the same thing; the ‘saying yes’ idea is still a wagon you can fall (or jump) off if you don’t apply it seriously and diligently.

Horses for courses I reckon; some people thrive on self-denial and straining of willpower; I know I quite often deliberately do things I don’t think I’ll enjoy, because there’s a sort of meta-enjoyment of the overall process, rather than the individual activity itself.

60

…Of course, I’m not going to claim this is normal or commonplace.