Unwarranted Advice
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smithmssycatsmithiris30 wrote: »"At my age I shouldn't be dieting, older people need some extra flesh to help fight any illness we/I may have." etc.
This from friends or relatives who are themselves overweight.
O. M. G. This, this this-itty this This THIS!
Yeah I get that too. Annoying as hell.1 -
And of course they were doing this for the good of your health, not the good of their bank balance.... Ha!!Rickster1967 wrote: »My sister, telling me that I should have bariatric surgery, because she had it.
(Only had 55-60 lbs to lose, no discomfort in my body, and no health conditions. Hadn’t seriously tried losing weight for years, until nine weeks ago. Down 10 lbs so far.)
I've had medical professionals who have tried to force me to have bariatric surgery and refused to help me in any way unless I agreed to it. They claimed I was so obese (BMI 48 at worst) that I would never lose weight in any other way and that if I didn't have the surgery then my weight would kill me
I refused and have lost 52lbs+ in 20 weeks using the App
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I've never received diet advice but I've heard a lot of people talk about their own diet/rules in ways that have made me cringe.2
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While most of these things we are told may be factual in some cases I think we overstep when we start advising others as how to eat.6
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i lost 10kg and i am now at 25% BF and my mom says: you are so skinny, eat more or eat this and she gives me that look of pity like seeing a skeleton LOL
in opposition i try to brainwash her to do keto just for the giggles i know that she isn't capable of following any diet1 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »"don't worry about losing your boobs as you lose weight, men love them at any size"
Hahaha, I saw what you did there. h.1 -
suzannesimmons3 wrote: »smithmssycatsmithiris30 wrote: »"At my age I shouldn't be dieting, older people need some extra flesh to help fight any illness we/I may have." etc.
This from friends or relatives who are themselves overweight.
There is a thought that actually a "little" extra weight (not low end of normal) can help...not an excuse for overeating though.
I have read that so many times and do think there may be some truth to it. However, the bottom end of the BMI 'normal' is where I am comfortable, and where I have a good fat to muscle ratio. (Actually I wouldn't mind increasing my muscle a little more but it is a slow process at 64- I'm on a permanent recomp
)
Oddly, no one has said anything about my weight or losing weight except my mum.
She thought I looked gaunt when she saw me when I first lost weight. But, when she saw me a year later, at the same weight, she thought my face had filled out.
It was all true. My face did have a strange gaunt look and it took a few months to reconfigure itself.
Cheers, h.2 -
Anything from my mother. Everything turns into an argument when I even try to suggest weight loss is about calories not what you eat.
"oh no you can't eat that" - "if it fits into my calories I will"0 -
xhunter561 wrote: »What's the most annoying unwarranted advice that you've ever received about your diet?
Mine was today at the gym, when I mentioned that I would like to do a body analysis at the gym before my breakfast/workout. The owner said "oh no! you should always eat a snack before working out, and never eat carbohydrates after working out".
LOL love it, it's silly but i would not take it as offence because I don't think it was meant like that. For most people that is good advice but for people that do OMAD or IF for Whatever reason they are doing it is not that relevant. But it depends on the eating window and If you eat your meal or meals before your workout or at the end of the day. As far as annoy I really don't let people get under my skin about my diet or at lest i don't sense I pretty much look up the science behind what i am doing and test it myself. People are going to find something to complain about and a lot of it has been drilled into them from doctors to commercials to stars, ect. What used to bother me was the whole "your going to die and all if you don't eat carbs". (I am referring to the simple carbs not the fiber carbs, fiber carbs are important for your little gut buddies.) Just trust how you feel when it comes to your diet if nothing is wrong there isn't much to improve, if something is wrong you have something to improve.
Around here it's kind of boomeranged the other way - CARBS WILL KILL YOU AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE.1 -
middlehaitch wrote: »I have read that so many times and do think there may be some truth to it.
There are a number of longevity studies that look at BMI and compare it to all cause mortality that essentially come up with maximum longevity at BMI 23 to 27 with no difference at 27 and 23 (a so called U curve). And actually worse outcomes at the lower than 22 and definitely as you get closer to the underweight ends than moving towards the higher ends until you get well into the obese ranges.
Of course this is referring to "all cause mortality". Quality of life, health, and activity levels before mortality occurs are not discussed. Of note that former smokers do better near the higher end than the lower end even when it comes to the 23 to 27 bmi range.
The implication is that in many situations that may occur as we get older there is a period where the body has to rely on stored energy to survive and if the resources are not there it might not do as well once these things happen to us.
However this does not discuss other potential diseases that might be avoided by a person who is not overweight and which may impact the quality of their life without impacting on the number of years they live.
Random example, please do not read if you've recently lost an elderly relative or friend.
Think of a BMI 22 fit and trim 90 year old with complete mental acuity (due to not having had high LDL cholesterol and plaques that contributed to the start of dementia) who is out there walking every day till he trips and falls on some leaves and breaks his hip and pelvis. This requires a lot of internal resources to fix. He gets hospitalised, declines, gets pneumonia, dies by 91.
His twin brother separated at birth got with the wrong crowd and is overweight at BMI 27. He suffers from dementia due to a poorer cardiovascular system and higher levels of LDL over the years, has a bit of drinking problem and a failing liver, and watches a lot of TV in the winter and rarely goes out. No walkies on leaves. No fall. No break. Lives in care facility till complete liver failure at 92. Last few years weren't that great... but he did live an extra year when it came to measuring all cause mortality!
An interesting thing, if I recall correctly, is that people with relative higher amounts of lean mass do the best as they get older, and that total lean mass is a better predictor than BMI or fat level.
YMMV, but these are intriguing perspectives and things to consider when finding yourself too far up or down the BMI continuum
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Thanks for all that info @PAV8888.
If my weight was a weight that wasn't what I had easily maintained most of my life without thinking of calories. And if it was a weight that I struggled to maintain, I would probably advise myself to gain some weight.
I am not adverse to weighing a little more as I age- so long as it is still a good fat to muscle ratio.
(I am from a small family, we all weigh within 20lbs of each other with 2-3 inches of height difference, mum at 90 had shrunk)
Cheers, h.2 -
middlehaitch wrote: »
Think of a BMI 22 fit and trim 90 year old with complete mental acuity (due to not having had plaques that contributed to the start of dementia) who is out there walking every day till he trips and falls on some leaves and breaks his hip and pelvis.
It is also possible he did not fall and break his hip. He could have been walking, experienced a pathologic (spontaneous) fracture of the femoral neck and fallen as a result of the fracture occurring, breaking the pelvis secondarily. It's more common than even some healthcare professionals are up to speed on.
Even the sedentary, obese, example can experience the same waddling to the bathroom one morning if the underlying cause for both is hereditary in nature.
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grinning_chick wrote: »It is also possible he did not fall and break his hip. He could have been walking, experienced a pathologic (spontaneous) fracture of the femoral neck and fallen as a result of the fracture occurring, breaking the pelvis secondarily. It's more common than even some healthcare professionals are up to speed on.
Even the sedentary, obese, example can experience the same waddling to the bathroom one morning if the underlying cause for both is hereditary in nature.
Well you got me there @grinning_chick , which shows us the difference between professional experience and insight vs reading studies you googled
My real point was that "all cause mortality" does not address the "quality of life during that longevity" aspect.
Also cancer survival was only hinted at with the "former smokers" do better at the higher end of BMI. I am thinking that depending on the type of cancer having extra fat might either help, or hinder, but that on average it helps...2 -
grinning_chick wrote: »It is also possible he did not fall and break his hip. He could have been walking, experienced a pathologic (spontaneous) fracture of the femoral neck and fallen as a result of the fracture occurring, breaking the pelvis secondarily. It's more common than even some healthcare professionals are up to speed on.
Even the sedentary, obese, example can experience the same waddling to the bathroom one morning if the underlying cause for both is hereditary in nature.
Well you got me there @grinning_chick , which shows us the difference between professional experience and insight vs reading studies you googled
My real point was that "all cause mortality" does not address the "quality of life during that longevity" aspect.
Also cancer survival was only hinted at with the "former smokers" do better at the higher end of BMI. I am thinking that depending on the type of cancer having extra fat might either help, or hinder, but that on average it helps...
My concern is that conclusions from these data are severely muddied by circumstance, to the point of being useless to us at n = 1.
Among the "number of longevity studies" are some that did not adequately account for people with certain conditions wasting on the way to death (cancer is one case, but not the only one).
Certainly, as you hint, people with terminal cancer do linger longer if obese when cachexia sets in, and it's not clear how that balances against obese people being more likely to get certain cancers in the first place (such as the breast cancer I had).
Further, these are population studies. They lump rather delicately-constructed people like @middlehaitch with more sturdily-constructed ones (I'm not talking BF% here, but skeletal factors like broad shoulders, big ribcage, wide pelvis, etc.). You rightly point out studies that lean mass is a better predictor.
So . . . how to reason sensibly from these data to n = 1? It's a puzzle.
While it's completely unscientific, I can't help but think about this in the light of my subjective experience . . . which is that in nearly every case where I've heard these words in real life, they were coming from someone who was materially overweight, who had a whole library of reasons why losing weight was inappropriate, dangerous, difficult to the point of impossible, or all of the above.
And that was consistent with the post from @smithmssycatsmithiris30 that set off this sub-thread. She, at an unspecified BMI, was hearing it from clearly overweight people.2 -
I have a colleague who did low-carb and lost 37 pounds. She'd gained 7 back "because of the sugar and carbs." She can't stick to low-carb because she doesn't like it and doesn't understand she lost weight because of a calorie deficit. And she doesn't have to "do low-carb" in order to lose weight, espcially since it isn't sustainable for her.
She does weight-watchers religiously and we debated on Friday (frankly, I avoid talking about food/weight-loss with her because of all the woo, she's done HCG, too--how can such an intelligent woman fall for all this crap?) because one of her meeting "leaders" told them at a meeting that blending fruit (just fruit, nothing else) increased the number of calories. I told her that was absolutely ridiculous and by that logic the act of cutting food with a knife before eating it increased calories. I was eating a bowl of blended fruit (nothing added--I like all the flavors) when she came into my office.
Sigh ...
Your friend misunderstood. Weight Watchers does not allow you to count blended fruit as a zero point food because they have found it is too easy for people to over consume and erase their deficit. So if you eat a banana, it's zero points. If you blend that banana into a smoothie, it's 3 points (or whatever the going rate is for a banana these days.)0 -
Went to the Doctors 8am this morning for my 6 month 'Diabetes Check Up'
The nurse weighed me, took bloods and blood pressure.
She asked me "Are you drinking plenty of water?"
No, I have not been drinking water. I drink some before, during and after workouts but other than that no. I
drink green tea and coffee in the morning, Coke Zero, English Breakfast tea and sometimes a fresh veggie juice
(usually beetroot, celery, ginger) blended with plenty of ice cubes.
"Oh well, you HAVE to drink plenty of water to lose weight" she says
Funny that because I dropped 53lbs in 20 weeks without drinking much water at a rate of 2.5lbs per week3 -
When I was a uk size 10 (I’m 5’9”) and had visible abs and my hips stuck out I was told I still needed to lose a stone because even if my measurements seemed healthy I couldn’t be because my bmi said so0
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A friend whom I haven't seen in a while was shocked when I rejected a bar of chocolate, so he decided to treat me like a child and explain to me that not eating candy will result in me binging on it and gaining weight. Any attempt to correct him and explain anything about what I am doing went in from one ear and exited through the other instantly. He insisted that I have no idea what I am doing and that I will end up binging and gaining weight. I swear some people are so infuriating.1
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