Why dieting doesn't usually work . Disturbing
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menojy
Posts: 92 Member
I just found this TED talk and it's pretty disturbing to me .. it's convincing though ! It happened to me ..
https://www.ted.com/talks/sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_usually_work
According to what she said I'll probably put on all the weight back !? how many years would it take my brain to get convinced that this is my new "normal" weight ? so confused ..
what do you think ? anyone could prove this right or wrong ?
Here is the article
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Three and a half years ago, I made one of the best decisions of my life. As my New Year's resolution, I gave up dieting, stopped worrying about my weight, and learned to eat mindfully. Now I eat whenever I'm hungry, and I've lost 10 pounds.
0:32
This was me at age 13, when I started my first diet. I look at that picture now, and I think, you did not need a diet, you needed a fashion consult. (Laughter) But I thought I needed to lose weight, and when I gained it back, of course I blamed myself. And for the next three decades, I was on and off various diets. No matter what I tried, the weight I'd lost always came back. I'm sure many of you know the feeling.
1:09
As a neuroscientist, I wondered, why is this so hard? Obviously, how much you weigh depends on how much you eat and how much energy you burn. What most people don't realize is that hunger and energy use are controlled by the brain, mostly without your awareness. Your brain does a lot of its work behind the scenes, and that is a good thing, because your conscious mind -- how do we put this politely? -- it's easily distracted. It's good that you don't have to remember to breathe when you get caught up in a movie. You don't forget how to walk because you're thinking about what to have for dinner.
1:52
Your brain also has its own sense of what you should weigh, no matter what you consciously believe. This is called your set point, but that's a misleading term, because it's actually a range of about 10 or 15 pounds. You can use lifestyle choices to move your weight up and down within that range, but it's much, much harder to stay outside of it. The hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates body weight, there are more than a dozen chemical signals in the brain that tell your body to gain weight, more than another dozen that tell your body to lose it, and the system works like a thermostat, responding to signals from the body by adjusting hunger, activity and metabolism, to keep your weight stable as conditions change. That's what a thermostat does, right? It keeps the temperature in your house the same as the weather changes outside. Now you can try to change the temperature in your house by opening a window in the winter, but that's not going to change the setting on the thermostat, which will respond by kicking on the furnace to warm the place back up. Your brain works exactly the same way, responding to weight loss by using powerful tools to push your body back to what it considers normal. If you lose a lot of weight, your brain reacts as if you were starving, and whether you started out fat or thin, your brain's response is exactly the same. We would love to think that your brain could tell whether you need to lose weight or not, but it can't. If you do lose a lot of weight, you become hungry, and your muscles burn less energy. Dr. Rudy Leibel of Columbia University has found that people who have lost 10 percent of their body weight burn 250 to 400 calories less because their metabolism is suppressed. That's a lot of food. This means that a successful dieter must eat this much less forever than someone of the same weight who has always been thin.
4:06
From an evolutionary perspective, your body's resistance to weight loss makes sense. When food was scarce, our ancestors' survival depended on conserving energy, and regaining the weight when food was available would have protected them against the next shortage. Over the course of human history, starvation has been a much bigger problem than overeating. This may explain a very sad fact: Set points can go up, but they rarely go down. Now, if your mother ever mentioned that life is not fair, this is the kind of thing she was talking about. (Laughter) Successful dieting doesn't lower your set point. Even after you've kept the weight off for as long as seven years, your brain keeps trying to make you gain it back. If that weight loss had been due to a long famine, that would be a sensible response. In our modern world of drive-thru burgers, it's not working out so well for many of us. That difference between our ancestral past and our abundant present is the reason that Dr. Yoni Freedhoff of the University of Ottawa would like to take some of his patients back to a time when food was less available, and it's also the reason that changing the food environment is really going to be the most effective solution to obesity.
5:37
Sadly, a temporary weight gain can become permanent. If you stay at a high weight for too long, probably a matter of years for most of us, your brain may decide that that's the new normal.
5:52
Psychologists classify eaters into two groups, those who rely on their hunger and those who try to control their eating through willpower, like most dieters. Let's call them intuitive eaters and controlled eaters. The interesting thing is that intuitive eaters are less likely to be overweight, and they spend less time thinking about food. Controlled eaters are more vulnerable to overeating in response to advertising, super-sizing, and the all-you-can-eat buffet. And a small indulgence, like eating one scoop of ice cream, is more likely to lead to a food binge in controlled eaters. Children are especially vulnerable to this cycle of dieting and then binging. Several long-term studies have shown that girls who diet in their early teenage years are three times more likely to become overweight five years later, even if they started at a normal weight, and all of these studies found that the same factors that predicted weight gain also predicted the development of eating disorders. The other factor, by the way, those of you who are parents, was being teased by family members about their weight. So don't do that. (Laughter)
7:26
I left almost all my graphs at home, but I couldn't resist throwing in just this one, because I'm a geek, and that's how I roll. (Laughter) This is a study that looked at the risk of death over a 14-year period based on four healthy habits: eating enough fruits and vegetables, exercise three times a week, not smoking, and drinking in moderation. Let's start by looking at the normal weight people in the study. The height of the bars is the risk of death, and those zero, one, two, three, four numbers on the horizontal axis are the number of those healthy habits that a given person had. And as you'd expect, the healthier the lifestyle, the less likely people were to die during the study. Now let's look at what happens in overweight people. The ones that had no healthy habits had a higher risk of death. Adding just one healthy habit pulls overweight people back into the normal range. For obese people with no healthy habits, the risk is very high, seven times higher than the healthiest groups in the study. But a healthy lifestyle helps obese people too. In fact, if you look only at the group with all four healthy habits, you can see that weight makes very little difference. You can take control of your health by taking control of your lifestyle, even If you can't lose weight and keep it off.
8:47
Diets don't have very much reliability. Five years after a diet, most people have regained the weight. Forty percent of them have gained even more. If you think about this, the typical outcome of dieting is that you're more likely to gain weight in the long run than to lose it.
9:07
If I've convinced you that dieting might be a problem, the next question is, what do you do about it? And my answer, in a word, is mindfulness. I'm not saying you need to learn to meditate or take up yoga. I'm talking about mindful eating: learning to understand your body's signals so that you eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full, because a lot of weight gain boils down to eating when you're not hungry. How do you do it? Give yourself permission to eat as much as you want, and then work on figuring out what makes your body feel good. Sit down to regular meals without distractions. Think about how your body feels when you start to eat and when you stop, and let your hunger decide when you should be done. It took about a year for me to learn this, but it's really been worth it. I am so much more relaxed around food than I have ever been in my life. I often don't think about it. I forget we have chocolate in the house. It's like aliens have taken over my brain. It's just completely different. I should say that this approach to eating probably won't make you lose weight unless you often eat when you're not hungry, but doctors don't know of any approach that makes significant weight loss in a lot of people, and that is why a lot of people are now focusing on preventing weight gain instead of promoting weight loss. Let's face it: If diets worked, we'd all be thin already. (Laughter) Why do we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results? Diets may seem harmless, but they actually do a lot of collateral damage. At worst, they ruin lives: Weight obsession leads to eating disorders, especially in young kids. In the U.S., we have 80 percent of 10-year-old girls say they've been on a diet. Our daughters have learned to measure their worth by the wrong scale. Even at its best, dieting is a waste of time and energy. It takes willpower which you could be using to help your kids with their homework or to finish that important work project, and because willpower is limited, any strategy that relies on its consistent application is pretty much guaranteed to eventually fail you when your attention moves on to something else.
11:54
Let me leave you with one last thought. What if we told all those dieting girls that it's okay to eat when they're hungry? What if we taught them to work with their appetite instead of fearing it? I think most of them would be happier and healthier, and as adults, many of them would probably be thinner. I wish someone had told me that back when I was 13.
12:23
Thanks.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
https://www.ted.com/talks/sandra_aamodt_why_dieting_doesn_t_usually_work
According to what she said I'll probably put on all the weight back !? how many years would it take my brain to get convinced that this is my new "normal" weight ? so confused ..
what do you think ? anyone could prove this right or wrong ?
Here is the article
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Three and a half years ago, I made one of the best decisions of my life. As my New Year's resolution, I gave up dieting, stopped worrying about my weight, and learned to eat mindfully. Now I eat whenever I'm hungry, and I've lost 10 pounds.
0:32
This was me at age 13, when I started my first diet. I look at that picture now, and I think, you did not need a diet, you needed a fashion consult. (Laughter) But I thought I needed to lose weight, and when I gained it back, of course I blamed myself. And for the next three decades, I was on and off various diets. No matter what I tried, the weight I'd lost always came back. I'm sure many of you know the feeling.
1:09
As a neuroscientist, I wondered, why is this so hard? Obviously, how much you weigh depends on how much you eat and how much energy you burn. What most people don't realize is that hunger and energy use are controlled by the brain, mostly without your awareness. Your brain does a lot of its work behind the scenes, and that is a good thing, because your conscious mind -- how do we put this politely? -- it's easily distracted. It's good that you don't have to remember to breathe when you get caught up in a movie. You don't forget how to walk because you're thinking about what to have for dinner.
1:52
Your brain also has its own sense of what you should weigh, no matter what you consciously believe. This is called your set point, but that's a misleading term, because it's actually a range of about 10 or 15 pounds. You can use lifestyle choices to move your weight up and down within that range, but it's much, much harder to stay outside of it. The hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates body weight, there are more than a dozen chemical signals in the brain that tell your body to gain weight, more than another dozen that tell your body to lose it, and the system works like a thermostat, responding to signals from the body by adjusting hunger, activity and metabolism, to keep your weight stable as conditions change. That's what a thermostat does, right? It keeps the temperature in your house the same as the weather changes outside. Now you can try to change the temperature in your house by opening a window in the winter, but that's not going to change the setting on the thermostat, which will respond by kicking on the furnace to warm the place back up. Your brain works exactly the same way, responding to weight loss by using powerful tools to push your body back to what it considers normal. If you lose a lot of weight, your brain reacts as if you were starving, and whether you started out fat or thin, your brain's response is exactly the same. We would love to think that your brain could tell whether you need to lose weight or not, but it can't. If you do lose a lot of weight, you become hungry, and your muscles burn less energy. Dr. Rudy Leibel of Columbia University has found that people who have lost 10 percent of their body weight burn 250 to 400 calories less because their metabolism is suppressed. That's a lot of food. This means that a successful dieter must eat this much less forever than someone of the same weight who has always been thin.
4:06
From an evolutionary perspective, your body's resistance to weight loss makes sense. When food was scarce, our ancestors' survival depended on conserving energy, and regaining the weight when food was available would have protected them against the next shortage. Over the course of human history, starvation has been a much bigger problem than overeating. This may explain a very sad fact: Set points can go up, but they rarely go down. Now, if your mother ever mentioned that life is not fair, this is the kind of thing she was talking about. (Laughter) Successful dieting doesn't lower your set point. Even after you've kept the weight off for as long as seven years, your brain keeps trying to make you gain it back. If that weight loss had been due to a long famine, that would be a sensible response. In our modern world of drive-thru burgers, it's not working out so well for many of us. That difference between our ancestral past and our abundant present is the reason that Dr. Yoni Freedhoff of the University of Ottawa would like to take some of his patients back to a time when food was less available, and it's also the reason that changing the food environment is really going to be the most effective solution to obesity.
5:37
Sadly, a temporary weight gain can become permanent. If you stay at a high weight for too long, probably a matter of years for most of us, your brain may decide that that's the new normal.
5:52
Psychologists classify eaters into two groups, those who rely on their hunger and those who try to control their eating through willpower, like most dieters. Let's call them intuitive eaters and controlled eaters. The interesting thing is that intuitive eaters are less likely to be overweight, and they spend less time thinking about food. Controlled eaters are more vulnerable to overeating in response to advertising, super-sizing, and the all-you-can-eat buffet. And a small indulgence, like eating one scoop of ice cream, is more likely to lead to a food binge in controlled eaters. Children are especially vulnerable to this cycle of dieting and then binging. Several long-term studies have shown that girls who diet in their early teenage years are three times more likely to become overweight five years later, even if they started at a normal weight, and all of these studies found that the same factors that predicted weight gain also predicted the development of eating disorders. The other factor, by the way, those of you who are parents, was being teased by family members about their weight. So don't do that. (Laughter)
7:26
I left almost all my graphs at home, but I couldn't resist throwing in just this one, because I'm a geek, and that's how I roll. (Laughter) This is a study that looked at the risk of death over a 14-year period based on four healthy habits: eating enough fruits and vegetables, exercise three times a week, not smoking, and drinking in moderation. Let's start by looking at the normal weight people in the study. The height of the bars is the risk of death, and those zero, one, two, three, four numbers on the horizontal axis are the number of those healthy habits that a given person had. And as you'd expect, the healthier the lifestyle, the less likely people were to die during the study. Now let's look at what happens in overweight people. The ones that had no healthy habits had a higher risk of death. Adding just one healthy habit pulls overweight people back into the normal range. For obese people with no healthy habits, the risk is very high, seven times higher than the healthiest groups in the study. But a healthy lifestyle helps obese people too. In fact, if you look only at the group with all four healthy habits, you can see that weight makes very little difference. You can take control of your health by taking control of your lifestyle, even If you can't lose weight and keep it off.
8:47
Diets don't have very much reliability. Five years after a diet, most people have regained the weight. Forty percent of them have gained even more. If you think about this, the typical outcome of dieting is that you're more likely to gain weight in the long run than to lose it.
9:07
If I've convinced you that dieting might be a problem, the next question is, what do you do about it? And my answer, in a word, is mindfulness. I'm not saying you need to learn to meditate or take up yoga. I'm talking about mindful eating: learning to understand your body's signals so that you eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full, because a lot of weight gain boils down to eating when you're not hungry. How do you do it? Give yourself permission to eat as much as you want, and then work on figuring out what makes your body feel good. Sit down to regular meals without distractions. Think about how your body feels when you start to eat and when you stop, and let your hunger decide when you should be done. It took about a year for me to learn this, but it's really been worth it. I am so much more relaxed around food than I have ever been in my life. I often don't think about it. I forget we have chocolate in the house. It's like aliens have taken over my brain. It's just completely different. I should say that this approach to eating probably won't make you lose weight unless you often eat when you're not hungry, but doctors don't know of any approach that makes significant weight loss in a lot of people, and that is why a lot of people are now focusing on preventing weight gain instead of promoting weight loss. Let's face it: If diets worked, we'd all be thin already. (Laughter) Why do we keep doing the same thing and expecting different results? Diets may seem harmless, but they actually do a lot of collateral damage. At worst, they ruin lives: Weight obsession leads to eating disorders, especially in young kids. In the U.S., we have 80 percent of 10-year-old girls say they've been on a diet. Our daughters have learned to measure their worth by the wrong scale. Even at its best, dieting is a waste of time and energy. It takes willpower which you could be using to help your kids with their homework or to finish that important work project, and because willpower is limited, any strategy that relies on its consistent application is pretty much guaranteed to eventually fail you when your attention moves on to something else.
11:54
Let me leave you with one last thought. What if we told all those dieting girls that it's okay to eat when they're hungry? What if we taught them to work with their appetite instead of fearing it? I think most of them would be happier and healthier, and as adults, many of them would probably be thinner. I wish someone had told me that back when I was 13.
12:23
Thanks.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Replies
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I can't find the link? Anyway diets don't work, life style changes of eating less, while moving more works. If you can get back on your link and post what this article says, by copying and pasting the article on this thread then we can address it.0
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Thanks for the link! I love TED Talks. This one didn't disturb me, as one of those controlled eaters she's talking about, it gives me hope. Maybe one day I'll be a mindful eater and can turn my will to something more important. I'm already hellbent on finding the foods that fuel me and make me feel good, now I just need to learn how to stop eating them when I'm no longer hungry. She said it took her about a year. Well, it's taken me a lot longer to get down from 245 pounds, and it will be well worth it. I haven't had a normal appetite ever in my life. Always was a sugar craver, and after my first ignorant diets of practically no food, I was a binge eater, too. But maybe, just maybe it's possible to change that.
As far as it being true about needing less calories after losing weight and fighting not to regain? Oh yeah. In my experience it's a daily obsessive battle. Every. Single. Day.0 -
The link worked for me. Good talk about lifestyle changes, the problems with diets, and mindful eating. Goes over the idea of our body's set point. Talks about adopting healthy habits, whether you're overweight or already at a healthy weight, and how that reduces your risk of death.0
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Your link led me directly to this one: https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_attia_what_if_we_re_wrong_about_diabetes#t-50408
Now this one does disturb me. Our best educated people flat out don't know enough! But at least some of them are interested in trying, rather than putting in their time and retiring early to play golf. Good for this doctor and everyone like him, and for the rest of us.0 -
Your link led me directly to this one: https://www.ted.com/talks/peter_attia_what_if_we_re_wrong_about_diabetes#t-50408
Now this one does disturb me. Our best educated people flat out don't know enough! But at least some of them are interested in trying, rather than putting in their time and retiring early to play golf. Good for this doctor and everyone like him, and for the rest of us.
It's great that some researchers still have enough honesty to stand in front of a crowd admitting being wrong and doubting their own knowledge. we get better by questioning . thanks a lot for that video0 -
I just found this TED talk and it's pretty disturbing to me....
TED Talks sure aren't what they used to be. There is an awful lot of misleading and cherry picked information in there.0 -
I just found this TED talk and it's pretty disturbing to me....
TED Talks sure aren't what they used to be. There is an awful lot of misleading and cherry picked information in there.
Had to look up TED as never heard of them before - On their webpage
"OUR MISSION: TO SPREAD IDEAS"
not necessarily scientifically proven fact, not necessarily even a hypothesis - IDEAS!! :huh: :grumble:
I fear a number of overweight people with 'Broken Metabolism" etc will now start to claim that they have abnormally high "Set Points" - and continue to fail to successfully lose weight and keep it off.
Our brains tend to accpet "solutions' that suit our own subconsciously established perspectives - if you want to convince yourself that you are failing for a good reason - this is a great paper!! There are millions of examples of people re-training their brains in relation to food . .. . . . I much prefer to focus on those!!0 -
I just found this TED talk and it's pretty disturbing to me....
TED Talks sure aren't what they used to be. There is an awful lot of misleading and cherry picked information in there.
Had to look up TED as never heard of them before - On their webpage
"OUR MISSION: TO SPREAD IDEAS"
not necessarily scientifically proven fact, not necessarily even a hypothesis - IDEAS!! :huh: :grumble:
I fear a number of overweight people with 'Broken Metabolism" etc will now start to claim that they have abnormally high "Set Points" - and continue to fail to successfully lose weight and keep it off.
Our brains tend to accpet "solutions' that suit our own subconsciously established perspectives - if you want to convince yourself that you are failing for a good reason - this is a great paper!! There are millions of examples of people re-training their brains in relation to food . .. . . . I much prefer to focus on those!!
Agreed.0 -
I'm going to share something very personal here, and end with a very important question.
When I was young, I OBSESSED about food. I don't know why...was it because my parents were too controlling over food? Was my brain broken? I was a healthy, active child, average weight. I am now 33 and still OBSESSED with food. Here's where it gets extra personal. I have noticed the same trend in my 11yr old for many years (toddler). I have not been controlling over food, have been more permissible with food without allowing utter indulgence, than my own parents, more forthcoming with knowledge and the whys and whats behind the science of calories etc. My other 3 children do not obsess about food. She is reaching that super fun puberty stage and is a little chunky around the middle/torso. I'm not worried about her weight just yet (its her obsession that I worry about because the mirror shows me where she is headed and I don't want her to have to deal with that pain), but she obviously is...she gets very self conscious when I bring up eating habits, activity levels, science of calories, etc.
None of the above came about because of dieting...our brains have been obsessed from the beginning. I am dealing with the awful aftermath of giving in to my stupid brain's obsession and desperately trying to teach my daughter how to fight it preemptively without forcing her into an eating disorder...what do I do? What can I do?
On a side note, I HATE my body's 'set point' - it is bizarre to me that I seem to always settle at 240 when I am not being conscious of my habits. I don't ever go higher, work like mad to get lower...but dang, I better not get complacent for more than a day or 2 or I will rush right back up to that 'comfort zone'.0 -
I like the concept.
So, when I'm, eventually, at target I will work on mindfulness ....cool
Should mean, in theory, that there will come a point, perhaps after a year or so at maintenance when I won't have to track any more0 -
I just found this TED talk and it's pretty disturbing to me....
TED Talks sure aren't what they used to be. There is an awful lot of misleading and cherry picked information in there.
Had to look up TED as never heard of them before - On their webpage
"OUR MISSION: TO SPREAD IDEAS"
not necessarily scientifically proven fact, not necessarily even a hypothesis - IDEAS!! :huh: :grumble:
I fear a number of overweight people with 'Broken Metabolism" etc will now start to claim that they have abnormally high "Set Points" - and continue to fail to successfully lose weight and keep it off.
Our brains tend to accpet "solutions' that suit our own subconsciously established perspectives - if you want to convince yourself that you are failing for a good reason - this is a great paper!! There are millions of examples of people re-training their brains in relation to food . .. . . . I much prefer to focus on those!!
She does say our set points will break. If we become overweight. So she speaks of encouraging people not to get overweight in the first place. This is a bad idea from any angle how?
She also encourages people not to go on diets they don't need to be on in their teens because it increases their chances of later becoming overweight. And this surprises who?0 -
Bump0
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I'm going to share something very personal here, and end with a very important question.
When I was young, I OBSESSED about food. I don't know why...was it because my parents were too controlling over food? Was my brain broken? I was a healthy, active child, average weight. I am now 33 and still OBSESSED with food. Here's where it gets extra personal. I have noticed the same trend in my 11yr old for many years (toddler). I have not been controlling over food, have been more permissible with food without allowing utter indulgence, than my own parents, more forthcoming with knowledge and the whys and whats behind the science of calories etc. My other 3 children do not obsess about food. She is reaching that super fun puberty stage and is a little chunky around the middle/torso. I'm not worried about her weight just yet (its her obsession that I worry about because the mirror shows me where she is headed and I don't want her to have to deal with that pain), but she obviously is...she gets very self conscious when I bring up eating habits, activity levels, science of calories, etc.
None of the above came about because of dieting...our brains have been obsessed from the beginning. I am dealing with the awful aftermath of giving in to my stupid brain's obsession and desperately trying to teach my daughter how to fight it preemptively without forcing her into an eating disorder...what do I do? What can I do?
On a side note, I HATE my body's 'set point' - it is bizarre to me that I seem to always settle at 240 when I am not being conscious of my habits. I don't ever go higher, work like mad to get lower...but dang, I better not get complacent for more than a day or 2 or I will rush right back up to that 'comfort zone'.
Come to think of it, I'm naturally obsessive, too. When my parents controlled what I ate, I obsessed about figuring out how to get more sugar. I'd eat it right out of the bag if there was no other source. Then when I realized I was chubby and wanted to be thin, I obsessed about that, too. Well, I am ADhD. If I don't obsess over something it doesn't get done. I missed my calling when I didn't become a burglar after all those years of sneaking around locked pantries with pilfered keys (yes, they did lock up our sweets, and I was primary reason why!) I never got caught, either.
I wonder if you could recruit some professional help from your daughter, either for her mindset, or just a registered dietitian who specializes in her age group and issues. Or both. Someone to teach her how to rethink her mindset, and someone to teach her to eat to properly fuel herself.0 -
I'm going to share something very personal here, and end with a very important question.
When I was young, I OBSESSED about food. I don't know why...was it because my parents were too controlling over food? Was my brain broken? I was a healthy, active child, average weight. I am now 33 and still OBSESSED with food. Here's where it gets extra personal. I have noticed the same trend in my 11yr old for many years (toddler). I have not been controlling over food, have been more permissible with food without allowing utter indulgence, than my own parents, more forthcoming with knowledge and the whys and whats behind the science of calories etc. My other 3 children do not obsess about food. She is reaching that super fun puberty stage and is a little chunky around the middle/torso. I'm not worried about her weight just yet (its her obsession that I worry about because the mirror shows me where she is headed and I don't want her to have to deal with that pain), but she obviously is...she gets very self conscious when I bring up eating habits, activity levels, science of calories, etc.
None of the above came about because of dieting...our brains have been obsessed from the beginning. I am dealing with the awful aftermath of giving in to my stupid brain's obsession and desperately trying to teach my daughter how to fight it preemptively without forcing her into an eating disorder...what do I do? What can I do?
On a side note, I HATE my body's 'set point' - it is bizarre to me that I seem to always settle at 240 when I am not being conscious of my habits. I don't ever go higher, work like mad to get lower...but dang, I better not get complacent for more than a day or 2 or I will rush right back up to that 'comfort zone'.
I was the same as you--normal weight, very active, continually thought about food and what I was going to eat next. And I haven't changed. One thing--I come from a long line of fat people even though my weight is normal. I volunteered for a medical study several years ago (when leptin, ghrelin, and other hormones were first being studied in obesity) and ended up doing several because although I was of a normal weight, I had the hormone profile of a fat person and the researchers were trying to see if they could find a reason why I was lean and others with the same hormone profile weren't. Answer: I never stop moving.
If possible, get your daughter involved in something physical that she likes and will continue doing. It's still that calories in, calories out thing and if you eat more, you have to burn more.0 -
I am very familiar with the ideas in that talk. I know about intuitive eating, set points and mindfulness.
But first of all one must ask what does she mean by dieting? What type of diet do people mean when they refer to dieting in this way? I wonder? Because not all diets are the same and most are grossly flawed. But anyway generally nearly all the studies seem to show that most people who try to lose weight, regain it sooner or later. Most people regain it within a year. A lot will regain within two years and not so many will regain within 5 years, so on until only a very small minority manage to keep it off for life.
But when you think about the ways all those people have tended to go about their weightloss is it any wonder? Not all diets are equally bad though most are bad. So i'm not convinced that all attempts at weightloss by controlling food intake are doomed to failure. Certainly there are people who manage to make a permanent adjustment. So that means one should not give up hope.
The thing is there is a very large psychological element to successful weight loss and maintenance and few people ever talk about it. Mindfulness is one psychological approach but i am not sure those writing about it have explored the possibilities that thoroughly. But its good to learn about this and intuitive eating.
And then there's also the part that exercise has played in weightloss failures. The consensus here is starting to change. So we may start to see some improvements in the long term success of dieters. Exercise is not an ideal weightless tool and may even contribute to regaining.
Anyway before i continue, i should say there's one element of set point theory that i am not certain about. Some people say its fixed - even if its a fixed range. Other people believe it can be changed. I'm going with the notion that it can be changed and so does the scientist who has worked with this theory first hand and is still in the field. In fact she would take issue with this scientist in the talk. While the scientist in the talks says the set point range is fixed by say our genes, and suggests we just adopt lifestyle changes like taking up more exercise, in one of her books the scientist i've learnt form - Dr Amanda Sainsbury- Salis, says that she does not support this approach. In fact, i think she's right because if you think about it like this...
...Take a bunch of overweight people - even obese people and get them started at the gym like they do on the biggest loser, but unlike that show, tell them not to worry about losing weight and that they can eat whatever they want and if they lose weight too well that's great. Well its just not really credible that this bunch of people will continue with the lifestyle change in the longterm either. I mean its our appearance that gets us down and that most of us really want to change, not some remote promise of a slightly longer life. Health doesn't really become a big motivator for people until they really come face to face with some big threats and even then, some people have to be at death's door before they will take action. So i don't believe that lifestyle changes alone (a euphemism for exercise basically but alas with quitting smoking and moderated alcohol consumption )will have anymore success than the traditional broad approach to weightloss.
What about exercise etc and a change of eating habits. Has this got any better chance of lasting into that long term. As far as i'm concerned, exercise is the main problem in this equation - more exercise and better diet = longer life. This will only be true if you can keep the exercise up long term. And the better diet is likely to fail when the exercise fails. And i'll come back to this.
So i'm afraid that i don't think giving up on weightloss and settling for lifestyle change is going to help those of us with weight problems even if we do manage to have a longer life, its not really what all of us here are aiming for. We all want to lose weight.
Intuitive eating can solve some eating problems that some people have. But its worth knowing that intuitive eating will result in very slow and limited, to a greater or lesser extent, weightloss. Dr Amanda has used the intuitive method for a number of years and advocates it. She has a great system which i now use and have taught other people on forums. But i use it to go with weight loss and ultimately for weight maintenance.
Anyway Dr Amanda was originally well over 200 pounds and has lost a fair bit of weight and kept most of it for quite a long time. But in no way can she be described as skinny. I'd say she struggles to stay in her healthy weight range in the pictures i've seen of her but its a fact that she looks considerably lighter than she did as a 20 year old. It was her own struggles with weight that led her into the field in science for her career. Now she works with eating disorders people, teaches doctors, writes book, conducts more research and still does private coaching and workshops for people.
You can read her books the Don't Go Hungry Diet and Don't Go Hungry for LIfe. Frankly i think these are the best and most useful diet books i've ever read. I have picked up great ideas elsewhere and understand that there are other types of diets e.g. low carb that may be important for certain types of people, but Dr Amanda's approach is applicable to all regardless of one's health issues and what diet or non diet one ends up wanting to follow. Whatever your approach to weight loss or weight management, i think Dr Amanda has a few very good ideas to share and she explains them very well.
So yes she teaches an intuitive eating approach but also much much more. She teaches you about set point in a way that you will feel that you have a deep understanding of and will enable you to work with the ideas for a long time to come. Basically it goes like this: Lose some weight, then stabilise. Lose some more, then stabilise. Lose some more then stabilise. She doesn't say how long to do each period for but she does give you signs and symptoms to watch out for so you can determine yourself how you should manage these signs and symptoms. However, the picture is even broader than she goes into and so it make take you a awhile to learn how to interpret the signs and symptoms correctly. e.g. is your hunger due to a famine reaction (i.e. pushing against your set point? ) or is it due to stress or lack of sleep or some other explanation - she doesn't really talk about those options at all. Nevertheless, if you can develop your psychological tools for weightloss, you might have a better chance of being able to clarify when your famine reaction has kicked in. And that's when you need to stabilise and stop trying to lose.
So She will teach the following things in these books:
1. all about the set point and how to work with it in your life.
2. a system of intuitive eating which has you rating your appetite and hunger for each meal. She goes into this in great length in the second book but introduces it in the first so you can start using it straight away.
3. the importance of eating a wide variety of whole foods to maximise nutrition which optimises your weightloss chances.
4. Different aspects of nutrition.
She also does recommend exercise and low fat foods which i no longer hold with. I am not against exercise but suggest that its better kept somewhat separate from your weightloss program. Exercise for other reasons. The fear of fat that predominated over the last 30 years or so has just about all but been exposed as a failure of diet science. REad the book Good Calorie Bad Calorie and others to get the low down. But in recent exchange i had with Dr Amanda she acknowledged that low carb diets have a place and will help some people more easily than low fat diets.
I've been doing this for seven months now. Here are some of my strategies:
1. don't rely on exercise . Go with the 80% rule for weightloss. Make it 80% diet.
2. address stress and psychological issues and struggles quickly. I use counselling.
3. severely minimise the place of my problem food - e.g. sugar/honey and artificial sweeteners. I recently read that everyone should eat no more than 6 tsp a day of sugar anyway and no they can't be saved up for one day a week.
4. full fat because it makes food taste better. Enjoy your food. Make your food enjoyable. That is learn how to cook and make time for it in your life. Food is one of life's great pleasures and its worth making sure that its a pleasure and not punishment. I must say that i enjoy the food I'm eating so much more since i've been on my diet than when i'm not on a diet.
5. Eat whole foods from a wide variety of food types and sources while minimising processed/packaged foods. Especially significantly increase vegetables to something like 2.5-3 cups a day for women leading a sedentary life. More for men. and more for highly active people.
6. Use a hunger and satiety ratings diary
7. log all food as accurately as possible so that you have a record of what to look back on if things start to stall. Counting is not necessary if you just want to do this.
8. Weigh regularly. I weigh daily but weekly would be fine.
9. Your diet should be easy for you and tailored to suit your general tastes and preferences.
10. Don't lose weight too fast. AVoid hunger. Don't restrict your calories severely. I found for me that when i was about 180 pounds down to about 150 pounds eating 1600 calories a day for my very sedentary lifestyle was fine. I'd eat more if i were more busy or active. Now i'm around 1400 a day on average. Or perhaps a little more. I am 5'5" and 50 years of age.
Finally Dr Amanda says our body does have an ideal low weight; and of course this will probably increase as we age. This sounds more like the set point referred to in the TED talk. But Dr Amanda's idea of a set point shows up at points much higher than your ideal low weight. This will be clearer if you read her books. So for me although i'd like to weigh 55kilograms for my 5.5 height, i don't think its realistic. So i'm going for 60kg which is more in the middle of my healthy weight range. I've been at 55 before but not stuck there.
So the bottom line is don't give up. But work on going about it in a best way you can. Read her books, read French Women Don't get Fat for learning how to enjoy food, Read some low carb books if that tickles your fancy. I think low carb and paleo might be best for people with diabetes, or insulin resistance. But you are best reading a book or two about these diets before you dive in so that you can do them properly. I tried low carb. I liked it quite well at 100 carbs but 40 carbs while fun for two weeks is not for me.0 -
Maybe there does need to be a divide between intuitive eaters and willful dieters. Because I have no idea what intuitive eating means.
"Eat when you're hungry." What "hungry" feels like to me is apparently something quite different than what "hungry" feels like for thin people.
"Stop when you're full." What "full" feels like to me is apparently something quite different than what "full" feels to thin people.
If I followed my intuitions I would probably weigh 500 pounds. If I followed thin people's intuitions about what constitutes "hungry" and what constitutes "fullness" instead of my own intuitions about those things, then I am, in fact, practicing willpower.
I did start dieting in my pre-teens. Right about when I noticed my first stretch marks, and that I was chunkier than my friends and couldn't swap clothes with them and was too embarrassed to undress around other girls my age. Dieting may have made things worse, but I didn't get to be a chunky kid in the first place by dieting.
I do think we are bombarded by stupid ideas about dieting in our culture by charlatans, and folk wisdom and 'ancient Chinese secrets' that are designed to tell people what they want to hear, i.e. that weight loss is easy and requires no effort really if you just buy/do/avoid xyz. With the advent of the information age, I'm hoping the trend of infomercials and horseshat diet tips that constituted the majority of the publics education about dieting, has seen its heyday and is drawing to a close; and I am hopeful that newer and brighter and more hopeful trends will begin to emerge.0 -
I'm going to share something very personal here, and end with a very important question.
When I was young, I OBSESSED about food. I don't know why...was it because my parents were too controlling over food? Was my brain broken? I was a healthy, active child, average weight. I am now 33 and still OBSESSED with food. Here's where it gets extra personal. I have noticed the same trend in my 11yr old for many years (toddler). I have not been controlling over food, have been more permissible with food without allowing utter indulgence, than my own parents, more forthcoming with knowledge and the whys and whats behind the science of calories etc. My other 3 children do not obsess about food. She is reaching that super fun puberty stage and is a little chunky around the middle/torso. I'm not worried about her weight just yet (its her obsession that I worry about because the mirror shows me where she is headed and I don't want her to have to deal with that pain), but she obviously is...she gets very self conscious when I bring up eating habits, activity levels, science of calories, etc.
None of the above came about because of dieting...our brains have been obsessed from the beginning. I am dealing with the awful aftermath of giving in to my stupid brain's obsession and desperately trying to teach my daughter how to fight it preemptively without forcing her into an eating disorder...what do I do? What can I do?
On a side note, I HATE my body's 'set point' - it is bizarre to me that I seem to always settle at 240 when I am not being conscious of my habits. I don't ever go higher, work like mad to get lower...but dang, I better not get complacent for more than a day or 2 or I will rush right back up to that 'comfort zone'.
I was the same as you--normal weight, very active, continually thought about food and what I was going to eat next. And I haven't changed. One thing--I come from a long line of fat people even though my weight is normal. I volunteered for a medical study several years ago (when leptin, ghrelin, and other hormones were first being studied in obesity) and ended up doing several because although I was of a normal weight, I had the hormone profile of a fat person and the researchers were trying to see if they could find a reason why I was lean and others with the same hormone profile weren't. Answer: I never stop moving.
If possible, get your daughter involved in something physical that she likes and will continue doing. It's still that calories in, calories out thing and if you eat more, you have to burn more.
'like' lol...thank you, that's exactly what I'm working on. We bought tennis racquets and a soccer ball and she has agreed to
play with me'
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I just found this TED talk and it's pretty disturbing to me....
TED Talks sure aren't what they used to be. There is an awful lot of misleading and cherry picked information in there.
Had to look up TED as never heard of them before - On their webpage
"OUR MISSION: TO SPREAD IDEAS"
not necessarily scientifically proven fact, not necessarily even a hypothesis - IDEAS!! :huh: :grumble:
I fear a number of overweight people with 'Broken Metabolism" etc will now start to claim that they have abnormally high "Set Points" - and continue to fail to successfully lose weight and keep it off.
Our brains tend to accpet "solutions' that suit our own subconsciously established perspectives - if you want to convince yourself that you are failing for a good reason - this is a great paper!! There are millions of examples of people re-training their brains in relation to food . .. . . . I much prefer to focus on those!!
She did cite a study that found that when obese people change their lifestyles to healthier ones, they are at no greater risk than those at an average weight, even if they haven't lost weight. Aside from aesthetic preferences, if someone can be healthy at 300 pounds, there is no reason for them to feel compelled to lose weight. We should instead be promoting healthy lifestyles: eating fresh fruit, drinking enough water, not smoking, moderate alcohol consumption, exercise, psychological well being, getting enough fiber, etc.
While I agree that we do tend to rationalize our own failures, I think that to walk away with just that from the article/lecture is unfair. We need to change our relationship to food, as well as our perception of health. Some people DO have a harder time losing weight, and we need to be understanding of that. It doesn't mean it's an excuse, but it need to be taken into account. Some people have dyslexia. It is not an excuse by any means, but it does mean they have to work harder to achieve what everyone else can. Other people have asthma, scoliosis, or yes, higher set points. These can become excuses, but that does not mean that we should never acknowledge them.0 -
My brain doesn't work that way.0
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This is very interesting, but also definitely not the fully story. There is a lot left to learn still about why and how we lose and gain weight, which is good as this particular bit of information would be rather depressing, otherwise.
One example of other information that is relevant and shows that there's more going on:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gut-bacteria-help-make-us-fat-and-thin/
Gut bacteria in this study actually altered whether mice gained weight or kept it off, and helped mice who had gained it to lose it again.0
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