Ending 1200 Calorie Bashing: Respecting Your Peers

You weren't the snarky guy !

Crap. There goes my day.

I really already addressed this. It's not about not offering advice. I never said don't express concern. I only hope that we can not make people feel wrong or bad or like failures. You can most certainly always say "How did you arrive at 1200? Some calculations can be off" or "this is how net calories work..." You can even say, "Wow 500 calories [or whatever] seems so low to me and I think you should seek medical consult (if you haven't already) for such an extreme deficit. "Here is a link to IPOARM and if you haven't checked it out already it might help and it might explain [insert issue] that you're having." All of these meet the goals of educating without being negative and without prying.

I don't think I'll ever be able to offer advice in a manner you find acceptable. I think you will always find fault in what someone says about diet or exercise. It's not the information that matters to you, but the way you perceive their tone. While criticizing people who come off as "experts" you have set yourself up as the grand expert on how everyone should behave and speak to one another. Not my cup of tea. So I'm bowing out now and setting you on ignore. Good luck to you on your efforts.

Each of these comments had a little something in common that I really want to address. First and foremost, why does anyone have to justify or reveal intimate, personal information to someone else?

When you tell someone outright that their caloric intake is wrong or bad and you cause shame, you make them feel like they have to defend themselves and that's just cruel

I love when Men in particular have advice for women on weight loss . It's so cute

Yeah, that's hilarious Who do they think are?

And those male OB/GYN Consultants as well giving women advice in hospitals. How dare they!

a guy OBGYN doesn't know what the hell he's doing. I've had several, and they don't know a woman's body like a woman.

A doctor is a little different than a snarky dude on the Internet

It's actually NOT easy to be snarky and judgmental. I think most of us who roll our eyes at these "I'm different! I swear it! I will die if I eat more than 8 calories per day!" posts would truly LOVE to be able to discuss healthy food and fitness techniques with the new members of the site.

The problem is that most of the people who come here claiming to be looking for advice are really only looking for confirmation of their pre-existing misconceptions about weight-loss. And when you tell them they are wrong, they immediately get defensive. Any attempt to dissuade them from bowing before the systematic starvation throne is viewed as being mean, snarky, and judgmental.The people here who say "Eat more," "lift heavy weights," "stop doing 100 hours of cardio a week," etc., are people who have been there and done that and have learned from experience what is SUSTAINABLE and what only works for about six weeks.

Then there is the inevitable "my doctor told me to do this, so you must not know what you're talking about" nonsense. Allow me to clue you in: most doctors don't know their *kitten* from their carotid arteries when it comes to losing weight. They tell you to eat 1000 calories per day because they don't KNOW what else to tell you. They spend their careers wiping noses, writing prescriptions for antibiotics, and passing people off to specialists. Experience has taught them that telling you to starve yourself will cause you to drop a lot of weight in a short amount of time, thus convincing you of their brilliance ... before you inevitably crash and burn, blame yourself, and settle on the fact that losing weight is simply not possible for you because you don't have the requisite willpower or discipline. And if you could think for yourself, you might have realized at some point along the way that maybe your doctor was wrong.

If you don't want to take my word for it, that's actually a good sign because you absolutely SHOULD be doing real, independent research. Spend some time educating yourself rather than taking your doctor's advice as gospel.

I think I love you.

'

YES YES YES!

THIS 100%.

Even when people give polite advice, if it goes against the mindset the OP has decided on (not the OP of this thread, but the OP who would ask for advice, for example) then you still can somehow upset someone....people don't like to be told that they are/may be wrong. I also quite enjoy that responses that question or challenge the OP but are polite = "I've already said this but You clearly missed the point" but responses that agree agree = "Thanks! Glad someone gets it.". No, mostly everyone "gets it"...it's just that not everyone thinks the same way and everyone needs to be a bit thoughtful that this is the INTERNET. Don't let someone's words...simple typed out letters on your screen...somehow break you.