If the stats on long term weight loss are so bad, why bother?

ahoy_m8

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/02/magazine/weight-watchers-oprah-losing-it-in-the-anti-dieting-age.html
I thought this was a really nice article, thoughtfully written. Love the comments, too.

nvmomketo

Interesting article.
Could be right. Maybe.

I think some of it is that fat is becoming normal. Most people are overweight or very overweight. I think maybe there is less desire to change when you already fit in. Maybe?

everher

I believe with the right tools and attitude anyone can lose the weight and maintain their weight loss.

I think a lot of overweight/obese people are overwhelmed. I see it a lot even here in the forums. They have no idea where to even being losing the weight and when they do lose the weight they aren't sure how to handle maintenance.

There's also misinformation everywhere you look with this cleanse and that diet and ACV.

Gallowmere1984

I've always gone by the old "be the change you want to see in others" mantra. vOv

As for the WW membership woes, I have my own theory: with the advent of things like MFP, evidence based nutrition and the ease of access to knowledge, those of us who truly want to get out of the overweight/obese range are turning to ourselves, instead of "diets".

tk2222

nvmomketo wrote: »

Interesting article.
Could be right. Maybe.

I think some of it is that fat is becoming normal. Most people are overweight or very overweight. I think maybe there is less desire to change when you already fit in. Maybe?

I don't see it. I think the social, economic and cultural benefits (nevermind the health ones) are higher and more extreme than ever. That there's a 'fat acceptance' movement is just a marker of how prevailaing and insidious the anti-fat movement (and i'm really not, broadly speaking, in the fat acceptance camp - I just think it means anything but 'we're ok with fat now'.)

ninerbuff

Let's face it..................it takes a certain attitude to have to go against the tide in just about anything. If people REALLY cared about their weight and health, they'd flat out do something about it.
The people that really bother to do anything about it, really do it because they actually care about it. We're talking about 25% of the population because there are even thin lean people that do nothing to try to improve their health at all.
I'd rather be the one who goes against the tide instead of just letting it take me wherever the majority are just going with no fight.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Gallowmere1984

ninerbuff wrote: »

Let's face it..................it takes a certain attitude to have to go against the tide in just about anything. If people REALLY cared about their weight and health, they'd flat out do something about it.
The people that really bother to do anything about it, really do it because they actually care about it. We're talking about 25% of the population because there are even thin lean people that do nothing to try to improve their health at all.
I'd rather be the one who goes against the tide instead of just letting it take me wherever the majority are just going with no fight.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Especially when the tide consists of atrophied muscles and waves of adipose tissue.

lauracups

I can only speak for myself why I still bother. I want to live pass 50, 60, 70 etc without needing half of a medicine cabinet to do it and be active and mobile. Not being overweight may not be the only factor in achieving that goal, but I believe it'll help.

4legsRbetterthan2

This was an interesting article, it covered alot of different ideas.

The first several paragraphs seemed to mostly be a "whoa is weight watchers" story because they had a bad year. I can see where a shift in public perception of dieting to lose weight vs. an attempt at being healthy is taking place, I am not sure they are fully separate from each other though. I think in most people's mind they go hand in hand, it's just a different way of thinking about the same goal. Weight watchers had to adjust their marketing to catch up with societal interest, such is life. I don't think this really fortells any great societal change, just what buzzwords everyone is after.

"Weight Watchers’ chief science officer is Gary Foster, a psychologist — the first in that position, which previously had been held by dietitians. What he and his team realized from Benovitz’s research was that dieters wanted a holistic approach to eating, one that helped really change their bodies, yes, but in a way that was sustainable and positive. He got to work creating a new approach that would become known as Beyond the Scale: He used all available mind-body research to try to figure out a way for members to appreciate benefits of the program besides weight loss. This would help them stay on the program during setbacks and beyond their weight-loss period and allow the program to infiltrate their lives beyond mealtime and beyond plain old eating suggestions."

I like the idea presented in the bolded above. Speaking from personal experience, I think focusing on intake vs expenditure is essential to lose weight, but that alone can sometimes be frustrating and maddening. I think having secondary goals can be a huge help when you are struggling with sticking to your calorie goals, or just not seeing the results you would like on the scale.


I thought this part about fat acceptance was interesting:

"In other words, all this activism didn’t make the world more comfortable with fat people or dieting. Society doesn’t normally change the words for things unless we’re fundamentally uncomfortable with the concepts beneath them. Consider the verbal game of chicken we’ve played with the people all this affects: Fat people went from being called fat (which is mean) to being called overweight (a polite-seeming euphemism that either accidentally or not accidentally implies that there is a standard weight) to being called zaftig/chubby/pleasingly plump (just don’t) to curvy (which seems to imbue size with a sexuality and optimism where it should just be sexually and emotionally neutral) and back to fat (because it’s only your judgment of fat people that made it a bad word in the first place, and maybe being fat isn’t as bad as we’ve been made to believe). It bears mentioning that Weight Watchers doesn’t have a standardized word for its demographic, but Foster uses the term ‘‘people with overweight.’’


Lastly, towards the end she talks about her personal feelings about her weight loss journey and thoughts shared in her weight loss group.

"We all cheered for Donna, and when I left, I walked around outside. A skinny woman was eating a cupcake and talking on her phone, tonguing the icing as if she were on ecstasy. Another skinny woman drank a regular Dr Pepper as if it were nothing, as if it were just a drink. I continued walking and stopped in front of a diner and watched through the window people eating cheeseburgers and French fries and talking gigantically. All these people, I looked at them as if they were speaking Mandarin or discussing string theory, with their ease around their food and their ease around their bodies and their ability to live their lives without the doubt and self-loathing that brings me to my arthritic knees still. There’s no such thing as magic, Taffy. I shook my head at the impossibility of it all, and sitting here writing this, I still do."

This is a viewpoint that often annoys me. People take isolated events and draw lots of conclusions from them. Then they want to compare their own lives to that situation. You have no idea of those people's back story, but it is so easy to fall into the trap of "it is so easy for everyone else" when in reality you have no idea the ease of their situation.

Packerjohn

lauracups wrote: »

I can only speak for myself why I still bother. I want to live pass 50, 60, 70 etc without needing half of a medicine cabinet to do it and be active and mobile. Not being overweight may not be the only factor in achieving that goal, but I believe it'll help.

Yep, who wants to be riding one of those mobilized carts around the supercenter?

VintageFeline

I do wonder if those who use MFP (or similar) and especially those who engage in the forums and do indeed find other goals out of simply chasing a number on scale or a dress/clothing size have more success than others.

For me it was a desire not to have both chronic mental illnesses and physical problems (though I've somewhat come a cropper there but it's not my fault and developmental). There are many drivers and I'm not sure if it being solely vanity can lead to long term success.

But these are just the musings of an amateur.

OliveGirl128

I read the article yesterday and thought it was a good piece. I do wonder sometimes why I'm successfully maintaining when so many people fail, but observing the overweight, yo-yo dieters in my family/friends, I definitely can pull out differences in what they do vs what I do.

amtyrell

I find in life you never succeed at the hard things if you don't try.
Also approach matters . I would bet those who log and calorie count have a better rate of success then those who do a 5 day juice cleanse diet and drink acv.

Jruzer

I think that the statistics are poor. Each individual attempt at weight loss may have a poor chance of success, but that doesn't mean that each person has a poor chance of success over the long term. I made multiple attempts to lose weight, but this last time "took". It wasn't magic, and I wasn't more motivated than previously. I just had the right tools.

GottaBurnEmAll

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

I've always gone by the old "be the change you want to see in others" mantra. vOv

As for the WW membership woes, I have my own theory: with the advent of things like MFP, evidence based nutrition and the ease of access to knowledge, those of us who truly want to get out of the overweight/obese range are turning to ourselves, instead of "diets".

I agree. The concept of dieting is inherently flawed. People tend to think of dieting as something you do and then stop doing and that is why they fail.

I read the article (well, speed read it, because it's long) a few days ago), and remember one of the critiques the author gave was that someone would have to be on WW for life.

Weight management is an ongoing issue for someone who does not have a proper understanding of energy balance. I don't think dieting culture necessarily promotes an understanding of that. Perhaps initially people keep portion sizes in check, but over time, people tend to revert back to old habits because they have failed to develop a full understanding of how everything works.

Knowledge is power, and named diets don't exactly provide the knowledge necessary to equip people with the tools necessary for long term success, imo.

Successful weight loss maintenance requires an overhaul of lifestyle, and for many people a vigilance. The fat acceptance movement refers to it in a derogatory manner as being on a constant diet. Eating the proper amount of calories for a smaller body, keeping up new habits you've learned, and staying on top of weight creep through monitoring.

Weight regain is not inevitable, success is a matter of proper knowledge and applying it.

GottaBurnEmAll

Jruzer wrote: »

I think that the statistics are poor. Each individual attempt at weight loss may have a poor chance of success, but that doesn't mean that each person has a poor chance of success over the long term. I made multiple attempts to lose weight, but this last time "took". It wasn't magic, and I wasn't more motivated than previously. I just had the right tools.

The statistic for individual attempts at smoking cessation are abysmal, but the overall rates aren't too shabby.

Also, the reasoning that some give that because statistically success rates are poor no attempt should be even made is rather silly given that the success rate improves over multiple attempts.

It should be noted that the real success rate is not the oft-quoted 5% rate, but closer to 20%.

NorthCascades

Same reason people text and drive, knowing the stats. Everybody hopes they're the exception.

lalepepper

The main reason people fail with continuing or maintaining weight loss is they stop the behaviors that result in weight loss or maintenance. It happened to me and although many people don't want to admit it, it has happened to countless others I have seen. No one said it was easy, but usually nothing worth doing is. I must have tried to quit smoking at least 10-15 times until I finally stopped caving to buy them. Doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile!

canadianlbs

4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »

This is a viewpoint that often annoys me.

i took the article to be what i've seen called a 'think piece'. it's more exploratory and introspective than conclusion- or dogma-oriented, so she's just presenting an aspect of her personal take about it.

mfp always strikes me as a very much a results and doctrine kind of mindset, as a community. people want or have answers and it's just not especially into introspection just for the sake of introspection itself. me, i really like that kind of writing and i really liked the piece. it doesn't 'conclude' anything, but i like the way she does her wondering and her thinking about all the factors involved. i can see how it would annoy people who want everything to lead to a specific something though.

tk2222

GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »

[quote="Jruzer;c-40170949"

It should be noted that the real success rate is not the oft-quoted 5% rate, but closer to 20%.

Source on that?