The mental side of losing weight

In My Humble Opinion
61

**Crafter ** Your “moral strength and discipline” paradigm might be useful except you refuse to describe it concretely or usefully. Failing that, it remains just a metaphysical attribute of Crafter’s superiority, rather than something with any empirical reality or value. What constitutes discipline and “moral strength” for you? How do you know that it’s discipline and moral strength that allows you not to eat and not something else? Maybe you don’t want to eat as much as someone who fails a diet. Or do you want to eat constantly? If you, how do you prevent yourself from eating? Do you grit your teeth until the desire goes away? Do you distract yourself? Do keep unflagging attention focused on your weight?

Are you extremely motivated in other areas? Are you good at denying yourself things you want to have? If you are, do you have any tricks to help you? Do you like to deprive yourself? Are you obsessive? Do you think about it your weight all the time? If it’s moral strength - is that religious for you? Do you pray? Is moral strength the result of grace?

And exactly how *much * are you eating? (You’ll only say “you’d be shocked”) How many calories? Do you eat that every day? Do you ever slip? How often do you exercise? How much?

If moral strength is something that can’t be dissected, then tell me why is it that you have it and other people don’t. You have implied many times that it can’t be acquired. If so, then what distinguishes it from any genetic trait that determines behavior, and what distinguishes your paradigm from the “fat-acceptance” people who say fat is pre-determined and can’t be helped. Other than that they should feel ashamed even if they can’t change.

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In July 2004, I weighed over 190 lbs. As a 5’7" woman, I was definitely overweight and uncomfortable with my size. I had always had issues with my weight and had twice in the past lost weight only to gain it all back (and more).

I had one of those “trigger” moments, something distressing because of my weight. It was like an internal click - I immediately began overhauling my diet/life to be healthier. I didn’t say “let’s make a few easy changes” or “let’s ease into this” it was very significant change from the first day.

Mentally, it has been very very easy. No cheating, no binging. I made a plan to lose weight and stay at my goal weight. It’s a matter of good habits, being informed (knowing exactly how bad a fast food french fry is makes it easier not to want them) and feeling so much better (more energy, happier).

I am honestly not sure why this time has been so successful when I’ve had many half-hearted 3 day diet “attempts” where I would try to “diet” for a few days and then immediately backslide.

By late March of 2005, I was down to 140 lbs and I have maintained that weight since. For me, maintenance is exactly like the weight loss process except I allow myself more calories for the day. All the shopping, planning, cutting up vegetables for snacks, all the work is exactly the same (I do the lots of little meals a day approach which works well for me).

Maybe I’m so successful because I planned to do this forever? There was no “okay, one day I’ll be done and I can have cheese fries from Outback.” Personally, I’m not in to deprivation, but I realize that some foods are just not worth it. As another poster mentioned, eating healthy foods and avoiding junk has retrained my taste buds to be more appreciative of the good food I eat (like fresh raspberries!)

Losing weight is easy - just eat better foods, move your body and avoid crap. Mentally, I went with the idea of “long term health” which seems (for me) to have been much more successful than “I want to weigh 130 lbs.” (which had no plan for "what happens after you get to 130 lbs).

Your thoughts:

*-I don’t like denying myself *
I don’t feel like I’m denying myself. I deliberately chose a diet plan of food that I loved (which meant I couldn’t give up pasta or bread).

-I feel like it’s useless when I don’t see results
The first week, I lost 2 lbs and I had a steady 2 lb a week weight loss for several months. The results were exciting and motivated me to keep going. I took measurements and before pictures to help me see the changes.

-I feel overwhelmed when contemplating a complete lifestyle change
I was motivated by changing my lifestyle to be a healthier person. None of my grandparents made it to 70, I am using a healthy diet as disease prevention.

-I’m lazy and don’t want to exercise
Okay, me too. Adding exercise consistently has been my hardest objective. Still working on this!

-I’m guilty of preferring instant gratification over long-term effort
I understand this, because I am an instant gratification person too. I found weight loss to be a very gratifying experience. I can’t really explain it better, but every day I woke up feeling like a success and not like an out of control eater. There are lots of little things to feel successful about.

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I’m not Crafter, but I’m usually of his opinion on things like this. So I’d like to field a few of these questions.

As far as I’m concerned, these are all very silly questions. And they can call be answered with “discipline”.

How do I stop myself from eating? Discipline. Of COURSE I’m hungry a lot. When I get hungry, I want Taco Bell. It takes discipline to eat a banana and salad instead. Gritting my teeth? Distracting myself? Those are just techniques for people who lack the discipline to say “yes, I’m hungry, but I’m not eating shit that’s bad for me.”

Personally, I aim for 1800 calories per day. Yes, sometimes I slip and eat that much in a meal. In these cases, I force myself to exercise more. That takes discipline. I run 4 miles per day, 5 days per week. The other 2 days, I do weight lifting and ride my stationary recumbant bike 15 miles. On days I eat more than I should have, I run 6 miles or do 20 on my recumbant bike.

I’m not extremely motivated, but I would say I’m more motivated than most. I wouldn’t say that I was born with this trait… I aquired it and work at it.

If you think you NEED a technique or distraction to stop you from eating what you shouldn’t… well, you’re looking for the easy way out and probably shouldn’t bother. You just need to stop eating so much garbage and substitute a healthy dose of exercise.

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I’m about where you are, Falling Cow. I don’t particularly like fruits & veggies (especially veggies!), and I don’t particularly like exercising, and I do particularly like Foods That Are Bad For Me.

My main weakness is Ben & Jerry’s “Everything but the…” ice cream. I can easily eat a pint in 2 sittings, and I’m sure 1 sitting wouldn’t be a stretch. Ice cream in general isn’t a weakness, it’s just that one. So I am now allowing myself to buy only one pint of it per calendar month. I can eat it all on the first of the month, if I want, but then I’ll have to wait 30 days for another bite. I am allowed to buy 1 pint of Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Vanilla, which is extremely good vanilla ice cream, but I don’t have the urge to binge on it. I can easily have a bite or two and be done. So this way, I don’t feel like I’m denying myself the pleasure of ice cream, but I’m not eating a pint a week or so. I know it’s only one thing, but that’s a lot of calories I’m saving.

Another thing I’m working on – and this is as much a time/organization/energy thing as a “diet” thing – is planning our menus for the week. I am trying to work toward eating only hand-made foods. That means very little processed food (cereal, bread, etc. are exceptions – it’s unrealistic for me to commit to making my own bread for a sandwich!), but I can still eat out. This also helps me cut back on sodiumSo I’m cutting back on chips, crackers, candy, etc. If I want sweets, I have to make a batch of cookies, and a) I know myself well enough to know that that’s trouble! and b) I’m lazy. That’s a lot of work for wanting “a little something sweet” – I’d have to clean the kitchen, in addition to making the cookies!

Since sweets (especially baked goods) are a downfall of mine, I’m also trying to make biscuits or cornbread with a lot of meals, and I put honey on them – really good honey. That way, I feel like I get something sweet, but not something I’d be inclined to binge on them. I’m sure it’s cheating, calorie-wise, but it means my taste buds are satisfied without eating 5 cookies. And I’d have had some bread or something with the meal, anyway.

These aren’t really big picture mental things, in terms of the trigger you’re talking about, but for me, dieting – or changing one’s eating habits – is mostly mental. My body isn’t telling me that I’m still hungry and need more fuel, my brain is saying “ooh, ice cream!”

I hope you find a way to lose the weight you want to – I hope the same for myself!

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For me the main answer was routine. I’m 5’9", female, fortysomething, and was weighing in at about 215 when I just got sick of feeling like crap all the time. I work in a job that has pretty regimented break and lunch times, with no real way to snack on the job (call center work, bleargh!). So I started out by regulating my breakfast and lunch intake. I don’t drink pop or sugared drinks anyway, so that part was easy. Breakfast is a high protein bar, Balance, Genisoy, etc. (I especially recommend Genisoy for older women, as soy is very good for the perimenopausal) The rule is the bar MUST have at least 14g of protein, and no more than 7g fat. Lunch is a veggie burger or chicken breast sandwich on whole wheat bun, one thin slice of cheese, no mayo, all the mustard or ketchup I want, also as many veggies as I want to pack onto it (avocado, though, has to be just a bit, no great slathering of guacamole!) By the time I get home, I’ve eaten about 650-700 calories depending on what kind of veggie patty was on the sandwich. The other thing that started me off was finding a likeminded friend at work–we’d take our breaks and lunch together and we’d walk around the park adjacent to our building. It adds up, 45 minutes or so by the time I’d go home.

After I’d get home, I’d go walk the dog at least three times a week. At first it was just a mile or so on a flat bike path, but after I got into better shape I tackled a local butte, now I’m up to five miles or more per hike and a vertical rise of about 400 feet–it’s challenging but my butt looks like a bowling ball these days! Then dinner. I found a 1750 calorie per day intake worked pretty well for me, so I’d have about a thousand calories to play with for dinner and snacking–this is plenty, believe me! I figured out how to make my favorite recipes lower in fat and upped the veggie/fruit factor by orders of magnitude.

That’s the practical side. The mental side was telling myself that eating things that are bad for me is NOT a “reward” or something I “deserve” and that abstaining from these things is NOT “depriving myself” or “denying” myself. Eating something yummy and healthy is the reward, NOT the pile of doughnuts or the whole cake or the five chocolate bars. I don’t own a scale and advocate never weighing unless it’s at the doctor’s office. It’s all about how clothes fit and how you feel, not how much you weigh, because that can vary as much as ten pounds due just to water retention or dehydration, and you’re in it for the long haul not trying to “diet” until you achieve some “target weight.” The idea is to change your life and habits, and your size will change accordingly. If you eat right and exercise moderately you will get to a point where your food intake and calories burned will reach equilibrium, and you will stay at the exact correct weight for YOU. There is no chart to figure out what this might be, so don’t go look for one. Your body will tell you when it’s happy.

Meat is an accent, not the main thing. Beef bad, chicken good. Fish VERY good. Olive oil or real butter, screw those nasty margarine and “reduced fat” spreads. Tastes gross and transfats are killers. Fiber is your friend–brown rice not white, whole grain bread, oatmeal, multi grain pancake mix–that Atkins stuff is bad for you, puts your body into a state of ketosis and you don’t shit right. Ass cancer is a very bad way to go. Lycopene is good–ketchup really IS a vegetable!

Don’t eat because you’re upset or bored or depressed. Exercise fixes most anxiety and depression, so walk instead. Got a craving for something fatty, sweet and bad for you? Walk around the block. Still crave it? Walk around the block again. Eventually you will be too tired to even think of the yucky thing you thought you wanted and you’ll find that a nice chunk of melon or an apple is just what you REALLY wanted after all!

Have sex regularly, whether with a partner or on your own–the endorphins are great for your mental state and regular orgasms improve your skin.

Drink a LOT of water. I like iced tea with lemon myself, loads of antioxidants and vitamin C from the lemon juice. Artificial sweetener if you can’t hack it straight, I like mine sweet so it’s Equal for me. Most of us are borderline dehydrated all the time, and often hunger pangs will go away with a glass of water.

Keep your hands busy. If you’re used to hand to mouth movements you’ll feel like something’s wrong when you stop–take up crochet or needlepoint or typing, just keep the hands busy.

Accept the fact that once in a while you just really want something naughty–so plan for it, decide consciously what it will be and make it GOOD. Instead of a bag of gross Oreos, go out to a restaurant and have a mind meltingly indulgent dessert, so amazing you can remember it fondly for weeks, but so out of the ordinary that your mind accepts that it’s “special” and not to be repeated very often. One Godiva truffle. A small wedge of pate and brie. Whatever your “spoiling myself rotten” thing is, make it a really incredibly good example of the breed, rather than a big pile of something mediocre.

Learn the joy of being in control of yourself, your appearance and your own well being. Don’t be at the mercy of anything, don’t allow the victim mentality to get a foothold in your mind. Learn the truth of “I don’t need that to feel good.”

Guilt is for suckers, it just gives you an excuse to fail and eat to confirm your failure. Don’t join a gym, get a good pair of sneakers and walk. Costs nothing, low impact, good for you.

Result? I’m stabilized at about 160, a size 6 and a BMI of about 23.6. My blood pressure dropped about 15 points, my cholesterol is around 140, I feel good and don’t sweat or stink even a fraction as much as I used to. I fluctuate a bit, but I don’t worry about it–I just go walk one more day that week if I’m feeling chunky. My waist has gone from 36 inches to 28, and I’m wearing the same size clothes I did in high school (track team, swimming team, two dance classes a day, and about five miles on a bike per day average–I was a serious athlete back in the day!)

It’s a life change, but I guarantee it will be the best change you ever make, and one day you’ll look back to now and you won’t be able to remember what used to drive you to eat nasty food and deny yourself exercise.

Good luck!

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Forgive the hijack, but it really isn’t unrealistic. I’ve been making my own bread (for 2 people, about 2 loaves/week) for nearly a year now, and it takes less than 1 hour per week time spent actually in the kitchen. I’ve even started adding finely chopped nuts and oatmeal to my bread to add fiber.

You certainly don’t have to make everything from scratch; what you are doing is obviously working for you, and congratulations for that. I just don’t want you to discount bread just because it sounds complicated. Email me if you’re interested in learning more about bread-making.

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I don’t think anything. I’m asking for facts which I prefer to metaphysical verbiage. 4 miles a day and 1800 calories is a fact.

You say you acquired and worked at motivation - how did you work at it?

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The rest of your post had some useful info, but this is probably bad advice since the data is pretty clear that even a small weight loss can have a substantial medical benefit.

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Oh, I love making bread – I’m going to try sourdough from scratch (well, from a starter as per Cook’s Illustrated) this fall. And I have a breadmaker, too. The trick is that I don’t really like making sandwich bread, and I’m no good at cutting it nice and thin. And with only my husband and me at home, we don’t go through that much bread regularly – it goes in spurts, like if I get on a toast kick. :slight_smile:

But in terms of dieting, I need to set realistic goals for myself. I know I could easily get distracted from the bigger issues of my eating habits by the relatively small ones, like making my own bread. It’s already a pretty big goal for me to try to cut out most non-staple processed food; cutting out the pre-made staples would just send me over the edge. And then I’d be likely to scrap the whole thing and go back to my really bad eating habits.

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Like most of the other people who replied, I’d say that the most important thing is to start doing something. Once you make the decision to actually do it, the rest is just keeping it going. Once you get into the habit of exercising and paying attention to your food intake, it’s not that hard to keep it up. Certainly it’s not as hard as getting started.

I got fat because I injured myself and got out of the habit of exercising. Over the next couple of years, I just didn’t do anything physical. The first year, I had an excuse; my injury. After that was sheer laziness.

Last year, I finally had enough of my, “I’ll get around to it,” excuses and got my chubby butt into the gym. I was shocked at how much strength I’d lost and how hard it was to do things that only three years ago, as a fairly fit individual, I’d been able to do without thinking. That shock was more than enough to keep me working out.

I differ from most people here in that I haven’t really thought much about the food side of the equation. I started out with the Podkayne Don’t Eat Stuff That’s Bad for You Diet, which truthfully didn’t change my diet much. I got fat because of not exercising, not because I like crappy food. My comfort food is healthy. For example, I can’t get whole-wheat bread very often in Japan, and I crave it. I hate white bread. I increased my protein intake a bit, by eating meat and tofu more often. I went back to my normal food habits from when I used to exercise all the time, which was to eat all the time. I eat between 3 and 6 meals a day, depending on the day. My calorie intake is probably a bit less on the 6 meal days since I want to eat more at a time on the days I can’t eat as regularly.

Exercise was the real key for me. I’ve lost 11 kg (about 24 lbs.) mostly just from working out. That sounds like less than it is, because I actually have gained a lot of muscle at the same time as I’ve lost a lot of fat. I try to get at least 3 days a week of weight lifting in, and I’m going to be stepping up my aerobic exercise to 5 days in trying to reach my next goal.

I started with baby steps of 1 day a week for two weeks, then 2 days a week for the next few weeks. By then, I’d gotten back into decent enough shape that I could handle heavier weights. I did a split body workout 3 days a week with a high weight, low rep emphasis and a short 15-30 minute aerobic session following it. That basic workout enabled me to lose the bulk of my total weight, about 9 of the 11 kg. To maintain, all I need is about 2-3 days a week.

If I want to make any progress, however, I have to change some things. I’ve maintained for a couple of months and now my goal is to get not just muscular, but cut and muscular. Right now, I look pretty good, but I’ve still got a slight bit of pudge that hides the stomach muscles. I hope to have that gone by spring. I’m going to be doing that by focusing on performance issues, like increasing the intensity or distance of my aerobics, switching to a more optimal time for aerobic exercise vs. my weight workout, and trying to increase the weight I’m lifting, particularly for a couple of exercises.

Getting started is the hard part. After that, I’ve found that setting goals is the way to keep motivated. If I don’t have goals, I tend to slack off more. Not to the point of getting fat again, but to the point where I have to cover some of the same ground. I’ve been stuck at one bench press weight for a couple months because I’ve only been doing 2-3 weight workouts, instead of always getting 3 days in, for example.