Living the Lifestyle, Wildcard Friday! 9-16-2022
steve0mania
Posts: 3,405 Member
This is a thread for everyone. If you're new to GoaD, or to weight loss, your questions and comments are always welcome. If you're maintaining, or a long-term loser, your thoughts on the topic may be just what someone else needs to hear. If you're reading this, join in the discussion!
Each weekday, a new topic is offered up for discussion.
Monday - crewahl (Charlie)
Tuesday – Flintwinch (Tim)
Wednesday - misterhub (Greg)
Thursday -imastar2 (Derrick)
Friday - Wildcard
Today's Topic: Accepting discomfort
We often operate in a "tribe-like" manner. We tend to adapt, sociologically, to the groups that we belong to. We dress like others in our peer group or our work colleagues. We tend to adapt similar speaking styles. We often gravitate to those who share similar world views, etc.
Managing our weight sometimes requires us to diverge from our group. If everyone is going out to a bar, we might decide that a night of drinking beer isn't a good plan for weight loss, or we might decide to go out, but have just one beer, or maybe alternate beers and waters. Similarly, a night out at the Cheesecake Factory may result in your diverging from the group (e.g., skipping the cheesecake dessert, or only eating a small part of your enormous meal, etc.).
How hard is it for you to deal with the discomfort of not simply following the crowd? Do you simply avoid those situations, or do you prefer to take it on as a challenge? How successful are you? What strategies do you use?
Each weekday, a new topic is offered up for discussion.
Monday - crewahl (Charlie)
Tuesday – Flintwinch (Tim)
Wednesday - misterhub (Greg)
Thursday -imastar2 (Derrick)
Friday - Wildcard
Today's Topic: Accepting discomfort
We often operate in a "tribe-like" manner. We tend to adapt, sociologically, to the groups that we belong to. We dress like others in our peer group or our work colleagues. We tend to adapt similar speaking styles. We often gravitate to those who share similar world views, etc.
Managing our weight sometimes requires us to diverge from our group. If everyone is going out to a bar, we might decide that a night of drinking beer isn't a good plan for weight loss, or we might decide to go out, but have just one beer, or maybe alternate beers and waters. Similarly, a night out at the Cheesecake Factory may result in your diverging from the group (e.g., skipping the cheesecake dessert, or only eating a small part of your enormous meal, etc.).
How hard is it for you to deal with the discomfort of not simply following the crowd? Do you simply avoid those situations, or do you prefer to take it on as a challenge? How successful are you? What strategies do you use?
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In some settings I find it easy to manage the discomfort and operate independently, but at other times, I tend to follow the crowd.
We've been keeping strictly kosher for a number of years now. Keeping kosher is easy when I'm in my local environment, because the community we spend most of our time with mostly all keep kosher at the same "level" as we do. However, when I am out "in the wild," such as if I'm away at a business meeting, it can be very uncomfortable to keep kosher. There are some meals that I simply can't attend because there's no way to get a kosher meal. There are other events where I am provided with a kosher meal, but it's very obvious that my meal is different from everyone else's (often because kosher meals are often double-wrapped in tin foil or saran wrap, and lots of tape, so it takes me a few noisy minutes of unwrapping to get to my meal). I have learned to accept the social discomfort that comes along with this.
On the other side of things, though, I don't want to feel "different." Provided the food is all kosher (like in the various local events I attended this week), I didn't want to admit that I need to limit my intake (to be a "weight-watcher"), and so I ate and drank whatever my group was eating and drinking. It's a weird psychology that I don't really understand. Why would I be comfortable being blatantly different when I'm out of my environment, but so uncomfortable being different when I'm in my local environment?
Hmmm, I'll have to ponder this a bit more...0 -
steve0mania wrote: »Why would I be comfortable being blatantly different when I'm out of my environment, but so uncomfortable being different when I'm in my local environment?
Can I offer a hypothesis (which you’ve probably already recognized?)
When you decided to keep kosher, you did it with a full awareness, and presumably acceptance, that it meant you would be eating differently that others who don’t keep kosher. In essence, kosher became part of your identity, and part of your priorities. Because you’ve accepted it, and internalized it as “who Steve is”, you’re comfortable being that person when you’re out in public with a non-kosher keeping crowd.
You’ve also accepted intellectually that there need to be boundaries on the amount of food you eat - but is it part of “who Steve is” or is it just “something Steve does”? Is it an optional behavior, or is it a part of your identity? I’m guessing the former, because part of the WW approach is that nothing is completely off limits, and going overboard sometimes is acceptable.
One other point of distinction is that while managing your weight is a matter of small individual choices or degrees of freedom, I’m guessing keeping kosher is a lot more binary. It’s possible to be “mostly on plan” for weight management, but I suspect there is no “mostly kosher”. For most of us - and likely for most people - it’s easier to say “no” than to say “no more”. In other words, we do better with binary choices than with degrees of gray.
So I’ll go back to the Venn diagram concept I used last week. One circle for you may be the circle of kosher, and another circle may be the population that is being disciplined about their weight. How much overlap is there between those circles? When you’re in the kosher circle, that may exert the primary primary gravitational influence on your behavior, and it's harder to feel any gravitational pull from the presumably small area of overlap that is weight management.
Or I could just be talking bulls**t. I’ve been known to do that. 🤷♂️0 -
Great observations and thoughts Charlie. I actually had not thought about the potential distinction between who I am vs what I do. But in the end, I think both aspects are who I am (a WW and a kosher guy...at least where food is concerned).
The black/white versus grey is probably a big part of it.
I was also thinking that perhaps it's the comfort of being in the "in group." When I'm around my group, perhaps the desire to be part of the group outweighs (no pun intended) my desire to limit my food intake. Conversely, when I'm in the "out group," there is no great need for conformity, since I'm already outside.
But...my ideas may also simply be bull. :-)1 -
Where's my shovel. Need all this bulls**t for next spring's garden.
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Hope I didn’t use up todays supply of brainpower on Steve. 😉
I’m going to turn the vocabulary a little bit and characterize it a conforming or performing. Am I conforming to the group or environment, or am I performing in accordance with weight management?
I’m generally pretty comfortable with being a non-conforming individual. If I'm out as part of a business or larger social environment, I don’t think my default “salad with protein” particularly stands out. People order all kinds of things, so I can generally fly under the radar and perform my WW rituals. What I generally DON'T do in those situation, though, is make explicit changes like “could you make sure there’s no oil in that?”
I tend to conform more at special events - a trip with my in-laws to Hereford House in KC, for example, where the steaks are great. I’m more likely to get a steak, but even there I may have broccoli or someth8ng instead of baked potato. Also, if everyone is hav8ng dessert, I’m more likely to conform and order dessert.
One nice thing about using conform and perform? “Conforming” means I don’t have to say “caved to peer pressure”, and “performing” recognizes that my behavior as a WW in those situations is an act to hide the grumpy fat guy in me screaming for dessert.0 -
Now I’m thinking about going out to lunch with the folks from work. I was always the first to sign on to going out to lunch. Chicago had some great restaurants. But then I started WW.
Do you want to go to lunch with us?
No, thanks. (Actually I really do. But it would blow up my plan so I’m going to say no.)
Then they send Debbie to work on me. They know it will be harder for me to stick to no if she asks. But I’m still a no. But then she says “We’re going to X, its all you can eat.” Well, that did it. Definitely no from there. I think restaurant X was one of those South American meat places.
Then about a month later, I go. But now we’re in a sit down restaurant I don’t recall which one, ordering from the menu. A month later I feel more confident eating out. I’ve switched from avoidance to challenge mode. There are about 8 of us. When the server gets to me, I start what has become my eating out routine. It starts when the server comes and says “Hello, my name is John, I’ll be your server today.” I make a special note to remember the server’s name.
When my turn comes- “John, I need some help with the menu.” Right away I catch couple of eye rolls among my coworkers. “John it says that this fish is Parmesan crusted, but how is it cooked? Is it fried?” “How about the baked halibut, does that come in butter? Some kind of sauce?” More eye rolls and a bit of squirming. “The side of broccoli, is that steamed? Is there butter on it.? More squirming. Then finally-
What kind of potato? “None. Don’t even put it on the plate. Can I swap it for some extra broccoli?” By now I’m getting audible sighs, maybe a “Are you done yet.?” This really happened. This is how I recall it 16 years later.
Uncomfortable? Maybe some. But I found that to lose weight I had to be more assertive. To heck with what other people think about what I’m doing. Just so it works.
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