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"Unrealistic" body goals

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  • MPyLP
    MPyLP Posts: 25 Member
    I am being discouraged from trying to lose at least 30 lbs in 4-5 months. I'm being told I can't do it bc they don't think it's possible. I already watch what I eat and exercise and im trying to add more fiber and protein. I've done it before so I know I can. Their excuse is bc now I've been diagnosed with Endo what they don't know is it is BC of that that I want to lose weight. I dont want this to define me and keep me from what I have always loved to do.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,598 Member
    MPyLP wrote: »
    I am being discouraged from trying to lose at least 30 lbs in 4-5 months. I'm being told I can't do it bc they don't think it's possible. I already watch what I eat and exercise and im trying to add more fiber and protein. I've done it before so I know I can. Their excuse is bc now I've been diagnosed with Endo what they don't know is it is BC of that that I want to lose weight. I dont want this to define me and keep me from what I have always loved to do.

    I have no doubt that it's possible. I have doubts that it's healthy, for most people - unless under close medical supervision for nutritional adequacy or health complications throughout. Some people are so very obese that the obesity itself creates more health risk than the risk of an aggressively fast weight loss: Perhaps that's your scenario, but that's a question for your doctor, not us. For those not in that situation, a goal being realistic is not the only measure of whether it's a positive goal.

    This site being open to the public, we're free to offer our viewpoints, constrained by the terms of service to which we agreed. (BTW: The terms of service prohibit discussion of very low calorie diets . . . . )
  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    edited January 2021
    It depends on what it is. Getting into the healthy weight range is a realistic goal for almost everyone, and can be done with relatively few disruptions to one's life (you don't have to spend hours in the gym, cut out entire food groups, or even exercise at all).

    A lot of people think they can't do it, or it's not a priority for them, or they really deep down have no desire to do it, so they turn that into "it's an unrealistic goal for me." And as for other people telling you that being a certain weight is an unrealistic goal -- well, that's probably just their own projection, or even a subtle form of sabotage.

    I even wonder a lot of times if these unrealistically restrictive lose-weight-fast diets people go on are a subtle form of self-sabotage, as in "See? I told you I can't lose weight, it's impossible!"

    Getting a certain physique, like really large muscles or something, is a less realistic goal, both because of the time commitment and because of health issues that may preclude strenuous exercise. But it's still doable for many people if it's your priority. However, you may also find that it's not a priority after all. I used to wish I looked more muscular until I went to a Brazilian jiu jitsu class and realized that, even though many of the women there were strong, most of them really weren't visibly muscular. So there's kind of a difference between "vanity muscles" and having enough strength to do what you want to do.

    (Also, sometimes working out can actually be counterproductive. My husband works out too much and oftentimes he is tired and sore for the rest of the day and can barely do anything. Whereas I do pretty light exercise but if I need to do something, I have the energy for it. When we were moving a few weeks ago, I had more energy to carry everything up and down the stairs than he did, even though he works out a lot more!)
  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I'm a bit torn here, because the statistics on obese people losing weight and maintaining in the healthy weight range long term show that it is unlikely.

    Well, if one goes into it with that attitude, they're setting themselves up to fail. We don't tell alcoholics and drug addicts that getting sober is "unrealistic."
    I think it's more accurate to say that we know how weight management functions in the context of activity and calories consumed, but we don't yet have a great understanding of why some people are just unable to maintain weight loss long term. If the context is most people who set out to do something fail, I don't know if a goal is truly realistic.

    The fact that we don't have research on this says a lot. There's certainly a large enough sample size of obese people out there to study and find out why some cannot maintain weight loss. But apparently it isn't a priority. Maybe that's why losing weight, and preventing from gaining in the first place, ends up not being a priority for so many people.

    We have a society that normalizes obesity and tells people that it isn't a big deal to be obese, and enables being addicted to food. Even on MFP, stating that obesity increases the risk of health problems will get you yelled at and branded as a "fat shamer." If we normalized, say, heroin use the same way we normalize overeating, we'd probably have a lot more heroin addicts, too. The countries which maintain low levels of obesity tend to be countries where obesity is considered to be a problem and not normalized, and that should tell us something. Basically, the way we normalize food addiction now, is similar to how alcohol addiction was normalized in the US in the decades before Prohibition.
    the time I've spent listening to obese people or people who used to be obese has opened my eyes to the fact obesity isn't just like being overweight.

    In what way? I'm not sure about that. "Obesity" and "overweight" are kind of arbitrary terms -- it's a spectrum, not a dichotomy. Like someone who is just slightly into the obese range probably has more in common health-wise with an overweight person than with a person who is 600 pounds. Also, in my experience, a lot of people who are slightly in the obese range are in denial that they are obese, and think they're just slightly overweight. And a lot of overweight people are in denial that they're overweight. This seems to be particularly common in men.
    I know some highly accomplished people who are obese and seem truly motivated to lose weight. They aren't dumber than me, it's not like I have some understanding of life or science that eludes them. What's the difference between the obese person who sets out to lose weight and does it long term and the many, many more who don't? I I have no idea.

    Beating an addiction doesn't really have to do with intelligence. It has to do with willpower.

  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    edited January 2021
    Lietchi wrote: »
    Equating obesity to food addiction and making an analogy with heroin and alcohol addiction? I'm offended at that generalization, quite frankly, as someone who used to be obese.

    Why?

    (BTW, this is exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my post above about getting yelled at.)
  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    I don't think acknowledging that a goal is difficult or not accomplished by many people who set out to do it is setting one's self up to fail. I think it can actually be useful in accomplishing that goal. Of all the difficult things I've done in my life, most of them involved an understanding that they would require effort and dedication (and maybe some luck) and that failure was a possibility. When I lost weight, I knew that the statistics for maintaining that weight loss long term were not good and that motivated me to develop multiple strategies and also made me realize that I needed a plan I could sustain for the rest of my life. In contrast, all the fad diets that promised me easy or effortless weight loss wound up failing me.

    It depends on the person. But I know I've seen quite a few of those "fat acceptance" activists use the "most people who lose weight will never be able to keep it off" as a way of saying, "Well, you're going to fail to lose weight anyway, so why even put yourself through the travails of dieting in the first place? Why even try?"

    I've only ever lost 10 pounds before, since I dealt with my weight gain before it became overweight/obesity, but I know if I went into it thinking "I only have a 5% chance of losing weight," rather than in terms of concrete CICO and measuring out everything, then I would have been more likely to give up. And once I got into it, I was actually surprised at how easy it was. I thought it would be much more difficult, especially considering all the negative messaging about dieting in the media. The media makes it seem like dieting is just suffering from start to finish. But for me it wasn't at all, it sucked for about three days and then I got used to it. And it seems like a lot of people on MFP have that same experience where it turns out to be a lot easier than they expected once they get into calorie logging. It almost makes me wonder if the media sends negative messaging about dieting on purpose to keep people overweight and increase profits for the food industry...but that's conspiracy territory LOL. They do have a lot of food-based advertisers though!
    We DO have research on long term maintainers, as well as those who fail to maintain. My point is that the research has not yet managed to isolate the difference between those who experience failure and those who experience success. There's some things that people who maintain long term do, but there are also obese people who do those same things. Your assumption that there isn't a huge body of research on obesity, weight loss, and maintaining weight loss isn't accurate. You should check some of it out, it can actually be quite illuminating.

    I didn't say there wasn't research. I've read a lot of that research already. YOU were the one who said the research was insufficient, not me.
    I don't think you're accurate that our society believes that obesity is "no big deal." In fact, we get a lot of messages about the health risks of obesity, as well as a lot of messages about the attractiveness of obese people relative to the non-obese. There are also strong cultural messages about the moral worth of obese people relative to the non-obese. We have whole television shows dedicated to negative messages about obesity. That there are people elevating a message that is counter to that doesn't mean that our culture overall thinks that obesity is a positive thing or even that it's neutral.

    When 42% of the population are obese, 70+% are overweight or obese, and people keep gaining weight and not losing, public health officials hardly talk about it even when there's a pandemic that disproportionately affects obese people, there are ads for junk food everywhere....yeah, the culture does normalize it.
    What I meant by my comment about the distinction between obesity and being overweight wasn't that these designations aren't on a spectrum, but that the factors and conditions that lead to someone having 200 pounds to lose may be, at least in some instances, more complicated than someone having 20-50 pounds to lose. When I eat to satiety, I apparently have some kind of trigger that will be tripped before I consume enough to maintain a weight of 300 pounds.

    See, I used to think that until I gained 10 pounds in a year several years ago. I wasn't paying attention to what I was eating and ended up eating 2500+ calories a day without even realizing. I always thought I was one of those people who was "naturally thin" and that I had some kind of satiety trigger, etc. But I realized then that I'm no different to anyone else and have just as much ability to become obese as anyone else, if I didn't take steps to make sure I didn't overeat. People don't become obese in a day, and over time as you gain weight, your appetite increases commensurately. If I had continued gaining 10 pounds a year instead of losing the weight through calorie tracking and maintaining, I would be almost 200 pounds by now at 5'4". I don't always calorie track (right now I'm doing it to make healthier food choices), but even if I don't calorie track, I can ballpark how much I eat in a day now because of what I learned from calorie tracking.

    With 42% of the population obese and average weight and calorie intake per day only rising, it seems more likely that anyone can get into the "200 pounds to lose" situation, rather than the population being divided into people who have the ability to become obese, and people who don't. There's this narrative in society that some people just naturally tend to be overweight and others are naturally thin, and I don't think that's true.
    There was a point where I was certain I had all the answers on weight management. I am no longer certain about it. I hear your anecdotal experience about the self-perceptions of people who are overweight. I've also met some people who are in denial about their weight. But most obese people I've met seem to understand the situation. I think this is going to depend on where you live and who you happen to meet. I will say when I was overweight, I certainly understood the situation. I don't have greater willpower than I did when I was overweight. I'm not a different person. My personality hasn't changed. Most of my accomplishments in life, I did those things as someone who was either carrying extra weight or in the midst of temporary weight loss related to yo-yo dieting so to describe extra weight as just a failure of will power doesn't ring true to me. Do I think willpower is part of it? Absolutely. But will in a situation isn't just something that is inside of you or isn't. Will is generated by physical conditions and circumstances.

    TBH, of the obese people I know who acknowledge they have a problem, most of it seems to come down to that it's not a priority. Work, or hanging out with friends, or hobbies, etc. take precedence. They know it's a problem but they don't think it's an urgent enough problem to take immediate precedence over most everything else. That's just what I've seen though.

    It's actually kind of ironic because my willpower is very low in general in life, but for some reason dieting was easy enough that it didn't even matter. Despite the fact that I love food and that food is very important to my overall mood and stress level.
  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    edited January 2021
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    If you're someone who is not generally inclined to overeating and has ten pounds to lose, losing ten pounds is usually easy. This actually supports my whole point -- that an experience of losing a little bit of weight and having it be easy may not set one up as an expert on how to overcome legitimate obesity.

    But I WAS generally inclined to overeating. I gained that weight in a relatively short period of time by overeating consistently over the course of a year. The only reason why it didn't progress is because I stopped it. But I easily could have kept going on like that and continued to gain weight. Even now there are still times where I want to overeat and tell myself to stop -- I think that's true of most people on Earth. There are still times when I binge on junk food or live off fast food (that's why I rejoined MFP in the first place, because it helps me to not binge on junk food and make better food choices). As I said, I'm not special or somehow "different" from people who are overweight or obese.
    You wrote: "The fact that we don't have research on this says a lot." I have no idea why you would write that when you knew there was a great deal of research on the subject. What you thought it "said" was that it wasn't a priority and that is why we have a problem with obesity. But if you knew the research was there, why would you argue that it shows we don't prioritize obesity? Also note, I never said there was no research. I said the research had not yet identified concrete details on why some people are able maintain long term or why obesity is more of a struggle for some people than others.

    If we can make a vaccine in record time that surpassed all expectations by focusing many resources on it, surely we could figure out the answer to a relatively mundane human behavioral question if we focused more resources on it. It can't be THAT difficult to figure out. If we don't know the answer, it's because it isn't a priority and probably doesn't get that much funding compared to other things.
    Your self-perception is that it is only your self-control that is preventing you from being obese. That could well be true, but there are many people who don't exercise any conscious calorie restriction and are not obese and many more who aren't even overweight. You're taking your experience and universalizing it. You're assuming that since you can imagine yourself as an obese person, your experience of losing ten pounds being easy means that it is equally easy to lose 100+ pounds. But all you're doing is IMAGINING yourself as an obese person. There are actually obese and formerly obese people who have actually lived it and can tell us what it's like. Our imagination of an experience is not always a reliable guide for what it is really like.

    So you think I should become obese, lose the weight, and then I have a right to comment on this discussion? I'm not really sure how I'm allowed to respond to that.

    I guess I could ask my husband though. He used to be obese and lost about 50 pounds. Is his opinion more legitimate than mine in your eyes? Or was that not enough weight to lose to be allowed to have a perspective?
  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    My weight issues have/had nothing to do with food addiction, that's why. And I'm sure that's the case for many obese people.

    Well, if it wasn't caused by food addiction, then what was it caused by?

    I'd also like to point out that a hallmark of addiction is denial. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case for you, I'm just saying it's a fact in general.
    Reminds me of a former coworker who was surprised to learn that I like vegetables, another one of those prejudiced notions about overweight/obese people.

    I know plenty of overweight/obese people who like vegetables.
  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    - overweight mother that non stop complained during my childhood that it was impossible to lose weight, combined with the belief that weight was 'hereditary' so also applicable to me
    - a few failed attempts at weight loss (not calorie counting) confirming the erroneous notion that weight loss was impossible
    - lack of understanding of weight management in general and specifically with regards to water retention phenomena and unreliability of BIA scales (leading me to stop previous attempts to get fit because they seemingly weren't working)
    - due to all of the above, not thinking there was anything I could do
    - job/commute that drained my energy level
    - lack of physical activity
    - too many snacks for my activity level (habit in front of the TV)
    None of which had anything to do with food addiction. Proven by the ease with which I lost weight once I found calorie counting.

    I hope you don't take this line of questioning the wrong way, since it's meant in the spirit of investigation. But, I just don't really see how this could add up to obesity without a psychological "attachment" component.

    By which I mean, you were aware of the fact that you were eating excessive snacks in front of the TV and not exercising, but you have also stated there was a disconnect between the knowledge that this behavior was happening, and the idea that you were gaining weight. To me it seems pretty obvious that trying to eat less snacks would be the first thing to try out, if there was no psychological attachment making this difficult.

    You also had some failed attempts at weight loss, but a quick visit to any public health website would probably have given some idea of why that happened. Again, I'm just wondering why you were so quick to write off weight loss as impossible during those previous attempts, instead of trying to investigate why it hadn't worked.
    Not sure what your point is regarding knowing overweight/obese people who eat vegetables.

    You're the one who brought it up and accused me of thinking overweight/obese people don't eat vegetables.

  • siberiantarragon
    siberiantarragon Posts: 265 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    I tell you my reasons, not related to food addiction, and you still see food addiction in there because it seems 'unlikely' otherwise. Hence my idea that more detailed explanations will not prove productive in convincing you 😉

    I didn't say that. I said "psychological attachment," and you did agree there were psychological reasons behind your overeating as well. Your explanation just didn't add up for me, and I told you why and asked for further clarification. Maybe food is too sensitive a topic for people to have debates on.

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