The old nanny-vs-daddy debate in a nutshell. Either our problems come from beating ourselves up too much, or else they come from not beating ourselves up enough. Seems as though you’d lean towards the latter.
Of course, if you believe everybody is entitled to some basic sense of self-worth, then you have to immediately follow up the idea that “it’s entirely your fault” with a lesson in self-acceptance. Something along the lines that everybody fails at something, and it’s best taken as a wake-up call and an opportunity to do right by yourself.
I don’t gain weight, I stay about the same (165 at 5’7"ish, so 8-10 pounds overweight, that is, if I want to be in the upper end of “at weight”). I may not have everything my doctor said down, but basically what he said was:
If you eat less than you burn you’ll generally lose weight, but at a certain point your body starts doing weird things because it thinks it’s about to have to prepare for a fast. Normally your body would use the energy it gets put into it and then take any excess from fat you have stored, so the other parts of your food will be processed more efficiently and towards better ends (i.e. building muscle mass for protein). But when your body is in this mode it freaks out, your body will start burning fat only (and depending on how extreme it is, your liver and muscle tissue like it does for anorexic people) and instead of being smart about how it stores/uses your calories it will store ALL of it as fat, regardless of whether it could have otherwise used it or not (he said this is related to the body slowing down its metabolism in response to its panic). It is possible to gain weight in this mode, but it requires an extreme lack of activity to make happen.
I don’t understand all of it, and it is somewhat counterintuitive, but I was basically told I’d probably start losing weight again if I ate a little more.
Those are exactly the questions I was trying to answer here. Back in the 60’s there was relatively little processed food. The percentage of our food that is processed has been going up since then. The problem is that people think they’re eating healthy whenever they grab a bag of chips that’s “low fat” or ice cream that’s “low sugar” or a TV dinner that’s “low cholesterol”. In reality, those products are unhealthy and fattening. Many people think that fat is a cause of obesity. In reality, it’s more like amarker or warning flag for fattening foods. Or at least it was, back in the 60’s. Now companies have simply made stuff with the fattening components, but without the marker.
And Cheif Pedant, I agree with what you’re saying, but my point is that the erroneous advice out there is thwarting people who want to make better choices, by confusing them about what actually is a good choice and what isn’t.
To some extent, obesity is infectious. That is, when a lot of people around us are seriously overweight, it’s easy for us to tell ourselves, “Hey, I’m just average!”
The thing is, being average or thereabouts is not the same as being healthy.
I think one of the causes of the obesity epidemic is that more and more people are eating at restaurants more and more often. We’ve lost the inherent control of what went in our food. The salad at McDonald’s is better than the burger, but it’s still not as good for you as the salad you made at home (generally.) Would you go through the trouble of deep fat frying chicken fingers to make salad? Use as much dressing? put eggs, ham, bacon, cheese, and extra butter croutons on your home made salad? Restaurant portions are also much larger than a standard portion of food. We’ve gotten the idea that 8oz of steak, a large potato (with 2 T of butter and 2 T of sour cream), and an itty bitty portion of over cooked veggies is a regular meal. A serving of a pasta dish at any restaurant completely fills a 12 inch plate.
Growing up, my family went to a fast food restaurant maybe twice a year if we were lucky. Friends who went out to eat a lot went once a month. I know families who go out to eat three times a week at a minimum and some people who eat at least one meal a day at a restaurant. It’s hard to eat right when you are letting other people determine your portion sizes and your food ingredients that often.
I think a lot of the problems with obesity would be solved if we stopped eating out so much. It won’t cure it, but it will help. Of course, the problem is so large and so difficult because there isn’t any one reason this is happening.
There’s some other unhealty things that aren’t being mentioned.
Fat is not BAD. It’s okay to not have sixpack abs and a sub-10-percent ratio.
I like excercise. I like how it makes me feel, I like what it makes be be able to do. But just the same, I have a genetic pre-disposition to carry a little around the midsection.
If I can walk up 35 flights of stairs in 10 minutes, AND I have a little fat on the front, that’s not a bad thing. But you look at what the media portrays and it’s as unhealthy as some of the food habits we pick up as well.
It also comes down to what your weaknesses are. Some folks like sugar and that can easily lead to a carb/energy output skew. Personally, it’s chips. If I have a bag of doritos, I’ll finish them off. That means I try not to have a whole lot of Doritos around.
That said, when the 2 Lb. box of Hot Tamales says it’s a ‘Low Fat Food’, who you kiddin when you polish it off?
I stopped eating all processed food, low-fat food, and sugar. My daily menu is extremely simplified. I eat a high-protein, moderately high fat, low carb shake for breakfast/lunch (I don’t like breakfast, my first meal is in the middle of the day), and for dinner I have a protein and a salad. Sometimes I indulge in low-carb ice cream for dessert, but generally I either make my own whipped cream, or go without. And I’ve lost 20 pounds since February.
I think that the real problem is that people consume so much sugar every single day. It’s unbelievable to me. The vast majority of food available is highly-processed and full of sugar your body simply does not need and converts into fat. I mean, if you go to the grocery store with the intention of not buying anything that is pre-made, processed, or otherwise not fresh, then you can only shop on the perimeter of the store. The vast majority of floor space is dedicated to food that’s basically nutritionally no better than pouring cups of sugar down your throat.
When I was growing up in the '60’s, my mom cooked meat, potatoes, and a vegetable for dinner. We each had one portion of each, NO SECONDS were available. Breakfast was cereal and milk, every single day (or mom would share her black coffee and toast with you). Lunch was a peanut butter sandwich, or a baloney sandwich, or a jelly sandwich. We had chips, cookies, candy, ice cream, and soda, but when it was gone, we had to wait till the next shopping trip on payday. On occasional hot nights we’d pile into the seat-beltless station wagon and go to the ice cream stand, and we ate at McDonald’s once a month, if that. Oh, and we played outside and rode our bikes all day…As a result, I entered my teens weighing a bit over 100 lbs., and I stayed that weight into my 20’s. Until I got a car and started driving everywhere, even short distances; went to lunch with co-workers to restaurants every day; spent much of my weekends in bars guzzling beer, mixed drinks, and sweet wine. By the time I was 30, I weighed 140 lbs. It just crept up on me.
Can I also say, one factor that’s always overlooked is the medications people take. Anti-depressants, high blood pressure pills, cholesterol pills - the TV commercials reel off a list of side effects (including TB, incurable twitching, liver damage, and death!) - they fail to mention “you will blow up like a Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon”. I seriously think if they mentioned weight gain, they’d turn people off. People would rather have any side effects than weight gain.