A lot of these issues ultimately boil down to making adjustments.
Do you have an emotional connection to food? Then resolve to break that connection. With determination, it can be done.
Do you dislike exercising? Then do so anyway. Better yet, supplement traditional exercises with some sort of physical activity that you do enjoy.
Do you feel unnecessary hunger cravings? Then learn to eat smaller meals. Again, it can be done, and your body will adjust.
This is one reason why people tend to be skeptical of those who insist that they cannot lose weight. Few people would deny that it’s difficult, or that some people will struggle much more than others. They key is to avoid making that an excuse. You can acknowledge that you have an emotional “need” for food, for example, but this doesn’t mean that you’re a slave to those desires.
There’s no doubt that overweight people get a lot of redundant (and sometimes useless) advice. There’s also no doubt that this advice can be offered in a tactless or otherwise unhelpful way – especially when it comes from people who aren’t terribly well-informed themselves.
Very often though, the problem is due to an emotional block – displeasure at the thought of exercising more or changing one’s dietary habits, for example. Hence the claim that they’ve “heard it all before,” when in reality, they may be either misinformed or struggling with some serious denial.
Case in point: One highly educated friend of mine says that eating nutritiously doesn’t help her get thinner, which is why she no longer bothers to curb her desire for greasy foods. Obviously, something’s wrong with that picture. Instead of figuring out why her previous dietary changes didn’t work (Did she need to give it more time? Did she need more complex carbs? Did she need more exercise?), she gave up, assumed that she was perfectly well informed, and kept on eating badly.
Even experienced gym rats know that even they have much to learn about diet and exercise. Do you think that you’ve heard it all before? I wouldn’t be quick to jump to that conclusion.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve deliberately reduced portion sizes since my waistline will now rapidly pack on the excess if I don’t. I didn’t notice a direct physical correlation with stomach size until recently when my wife and I went out to dinner with some friends.
They ate their full appetizers, dinners, and ordered desserts. My wife and I each ate only half of ours and boxed the rest, and didn’t order any dessert. For me, it wasn’t because I was making a deliberate diet choice–I physically couldn’t have squeezed in more food if I tried. It was the best tasting mega-cheesy-sour-cream-burrito in years, and the dessert cart going by made me pavlovate like a mastiff. If vomitoriums were still in vogue, I would gladly have purged for more room to eat this yummy food. I simply couldn’t fit it in.
I’m a pretty thin person, and I’ve never been able to do that, Gargoyle. Er, not reduce, but rather, eat when I’m not hungry. Even when dessert comes, if I’m not hungry, I won’t eat just because it’s so good. My theory is, I’ll be hungry in a few hours, why not eat then? I’m blessed with good genes/metabolism, but I am glad that my parents never encouraged me to clean my plate or any of that nonsense…I really can’t eat when I’m not in the mood. Not to be sociable or polite or because I’m bored. Just because I genuinely need food.
Is there anything on the site that explains what they mean, aproximately, by the different activity levels? 2.5 hours a week walking (at a rate of 4.5mph) plus 2 hours a week of aerobic exercise is what, moderately active?
Some have said that fat people know full well that they’re fat. As I said earlier though, that wasn’t true in my case. I knew that I had gained weight, but it was years before I fully realized that I was indeed fat.
According to this article, a good number of significantly obese folks have the same skewed perception. To wit,
Part of the problem is that even when people – or their kids – are overweight or obese, they don’t think they are. In fact, 8 percent of obese people think they are healthy and don’t need to lose weight (even though 35 percent of those people have high blood pressure, 15 percent high cholesterol, and 14 percent diabetes), according to a study of nearly 6,000 people presented in November 2009 at the American Heart Association meeting.
It’s not clear why there’s a disconnect. But with the rise in obesity, people may have a skewed perception of a “normal” weight. Right now, more than 60 percent of American adults are obese or overweight.
I’m sure that in my case, having so many overweight Americans around me surely did help blind me to the fact that I had gained A LOT of excess fat.
In addition to what JThunder said, for some there may also be a “wow, I’m not as fat as that person, so I must be ok.” Its easy to get caught in the comparison loop and “justify” it that way.
It’s hard to tell from the way this is quoted whether 35 percent of the people who think they are healthy have high blood pressure, or 35 percent of obese people generally. I spent a few minutes unsuccessfully looking for the study itself - anyone know what’s being referenced here?
Most people would still be afraid to encounter a lion in the wild. This still makes sense.
People still do this.
This is wrong, simply because human males can still father children until very old age. There’s really no expiration date on human male DNA until they’re dead.
…and yes, if you have the wealth and power to back it up, as a human male, you can easily father children into old age. And there is little (or no?) genetic reason for you not to.
Totally missed the point. People would be afraid to encounter a lion in the wild because their evolutionary heritage did not equip them to be invulnerable to lion attacks.
And yet, people do not simply give up and wait to be eaten by lions. Because people do not let the vagaries of evolutionary heritages rule their lives.
Likewise, if someone’s evolutionary heritage did not equip them to be svelte while eating as many truffles as they wish, they should not simply surrender to being obese.
Yeah, tough break; you’ve got to worry about being fat and eaten by lions – so does everybody else.
I doubt the accuracy - there’s no way my calorie requirements can possibly be 2600. Despite being more active than a great many people, I eat about 600 calories less than that and mantain my weight rather than lose.
People are not equipped to be afraid of getting fat because their evolutionary heritage does not equip them to be invulnerable to getting fat. And why should it?
How exactly are they equipped to fight against their evolutionary heritage? I’m not trying to be clever, this is an honest question. I mean, I don’t think anyone would say dogs are equipped to fight against their evolutionary impulses, what makes humans special?
How can you not understand that your every choice and action is not foredetermined by your evolutionary heritage? Do you think we are automatons, doomed forever only to the choices dictated to us by our genes?
You are equipped to fight against whatever inborn traits you might have because you also have intelligence, understanding, experience, willpower, whatever. If you’re faced by a lion you can run away, shoot it with a gun, toss another bystander in its way, or some other action than being paralyzed by fear. If you’re faced with a donut, you can choose not to eat it, or eat it and then skip an equivalent number of calories elsewhere, or eat it and then burn off that many extra calories.
We are more than the sum of our evolutionary heritage. To claim that we are helpless to change because grandma was a savannah omnivore or an efficient user of calories is absurd.
Didn’t you EVER look in the mirror in those years? Didn’t you EVER put on some clothes that didn’t fit you any more? Didn’t you EVER have to buy new clothes in a larger size? I mean, if you’re gaining weight, and you don’t consider that you’re becoming fat, or are fat, I have to think that you don’t ponder your body and health at all.
I was going through my laundry the other day, folding stuff up to be put away, and I realized that most of my panties are waaaaaay too big for me now. I’ve gone down at least a couple of sizes. And I’ve made a mental note to buy more panties, in a smaller size. If I’d realized that I needed to buy larger clothes, then I’d realize that I was getting fat(ter) instead of thinner. I find it very hard to believe that an adult won’t realize that s/he’s changing sizes, and won’t reflect upon that change, unless s/he’s in denial.
Actually, for me that site is good motivation to eat healthy – reading it makes me lose my appetite. (Seriously, most of that stuff looks absolutely vomit-inducing.
As I said earlier, I knew that I had gained weight. I knew that I had to buy larger clothes. I just never realized that I had become FAT… and based on the article that I cited, that’s not exactly unusual.
Lynn, you seem to have a hard time believing that somebody can become fat without fully realizing it in their own mind. I daresay that this is a lot more common that one might think.
Oh, yes, I totally agree with you. I meant the fact that there is a market for those creations somewhere is an eye-opener. I realize I wasn’t very clear.