(Why) are people really disappointed to hear they can eat anything they want and still lose weight?

kommodevaran wrote: »

I see this many times each day on the forums. Question: "What can I eat that will make me lose fat?" (Almost) collective answer: "You can eat anything you like as long as you are in a calorie deficit." Reaction is in 99.99% of cases, disbelief, mistrust, frustration, even anger. Why? I was over myself from joy when I realised that I could still eat candy at birthdays and that low fat diet foods weren't necessary to lose and maintain weight.

Because they don't want to believe that it isn't as difficult as they thought. No one wants to be blamed for being unfit! It's the food's fault!!

PRMinx wrote: »

Because it's hard to accept the fact that you have had control over your weight all along. And, also, that food isn't the problem - you are.

It's so much easier to blame food than accept responsibility and take the time to understand portion control. And, it's much easier to forgive yourself for your failings when you believe that fad diets, crash diets and highly restrictive diets are the only way to lose weight. Because, those diets are hard to do comfortably and most people fail at them.

It's also easier to blame food, then to get up and go to the gym every day.

All of this! Accountability for ones self is hard!

i was actually over the moon when i realised this! I thought losing weight was this complicated, unobtainable thing that i would never succeed at. now i understand it and am enjoying the process. I have always been a bit of a control freak though, so i quite like how its all in my hands.

It's not helpful a lot of the time. Eating whatever they want is what got them fat, something has to change. Some structure and guidelines at first are what some people need to get started since they don't know where to begin. Incorporating more foods can come later once they can maintain a deficit.

Or the opposite. Logging whatever they eat without restricting calories and over a period they can figure out what foods and quantities work for them and what doesn't. It's a process.

kommodevaran wrote: »

I see this many times each day on the forums. Question: "What can I eat that will make me lose fat?" (Almost) collective answer: "You can eat anything you like as long as you are in a calorie deficit." Reaction is in 99.99% of cases, disbelief, mistrust, frustration, even anger. Why? I was over myself from joy when I realised that I could still eat candy at birthdays and that low fat diet foods weren't necessary to lose and maintain weight.

Why? Because people are constantly bombarded by marketing for the latest fad diet book/plan. Weight loss is a huge money making industry but there isn't much money to be made by saying "Eat less".

I personally think that using the word "diet", "lose" weight" all comes with stigmas as a one time only thing...

What we do here on MFP is teach, preach, discuss, debate, learn, ingest that this is a long term lifestyle change..

In the past when I went on a "diet" I looked for instructions, a how to manual to lose x pounds and never looked for what do I do after I lose x pounds...

Here I learned I can eat ALL the things I love and can still be "happy".

Limiting, restricting, etc.. may as well have put handcuffs on my back and pad locks on the cabinets.

I have control... the food does not control me. People refuse to accept that once their minds are right on the concept that they can have all they want.. just a wee bit less..

I think others have nailed it , I just wanted to add that it is interesting to watch the process unfold from the newbs and recall how I felt and delt with the concept when I first started reading the replies of " you can eat everything " but but but ...... It takes some time to sink in.

In the end though, even though I can and ocassionaly do eat everything I certainly choose my food with purpose now.

Camo_xxx wrote: »

I think others have nailed it , I just wanted to add that it is interesting to watch the process unfold from the newbs and recall how I felt and delt with the concept when I first started reading the replies of " you can eat everything " but but but ...... It takes some time to sink in.

In the end though, even though I can and ocassionaly do eat everything I certainly choose my food with purpose now.

Love the bolded! I will choose my food with purpose!

Because it is so simple. Not EASY, but simple. You have to do the work and barring any medical issues that prevent achieving your goals, it's on the individual whether you succeed or don't. Most people I know of hate the fact that it is so do-able. Don't do it, can't put it on anyone but yourself. Personal accountability - lack of it everywhere these days.

kommodevaran wrote: »

I see this many times each day on the forums. Question: "What can I eat that will make me lose fat?" (Almost) collective answer: "You can eat anything you like as long as you are in a calorie deficit." Reaction is in 99.99% of cases, disbelief, mistrust, frustration, even anger. Why? I was over myself from joy when I realised that I could still eat candy at birthdays and that low fat diet foods weren't necessary to lose and maintain weight.

I think you are making that stat up. Your whole premise seems like a straw man argument.

I_Will_End_You wrote: »

I don't get it, either. People just don't want to believe that it doesn't have to be hard or miserable!

Being able to incorporate any food into your diet, doesn't necessarily mean the diet won't be hard. It's not as if you can eat everything you want and lose weight.

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Because eating "whatever you want" to them might mean eating 12 pizza slices and tons of mac and cheese regularly. Sure you can have pizza and mac and cheese just not that much.

And to the poster above about it being "that easy" it really is NOT easy at all. It's simple CICO sure, but it is not easy to lose weight by any stretch of the imagination.

blankiefinder wrote: »

I've known people who were in denial about how many calories they were eating. 'It's not fair I'm fat, I don't eat anything!". Accepting that it really comes down to calories would mean admitting that they really didn't live on a single slice of lettuce, that it might have been hitting McDonald's every night on the way home from work for a couple burgers, fries, shake and a couple apple pies. (In this instance, not referring to anyone else!)

I think this is a big part of it. For a lot of people, especially women, there's a real stigma, at least in their own minds, to overeating. It's much easier and (they think) more socially acceptable to claim that they ate very little but still got fat, and if that's so it has to be the fault of the food--bad food choices must make you fat, since it can't be excess calories. (They may even really believe this--I finally broke down and watched that Secret Eaters show, and the episode I saw certainly fit into this pattern, but so have MANY conversations I've had with women who struggle with their weight.)

Even for those women (and men, I'm sure) who admit that they overeat, many will still feel like they need to find an excuse for it, because acknowledging that they are (in their own minds, again) being gluttonous is uncomfortable or unacceptable. So we get to the "oh, for ME, if I eat whatever I CANNOT stop." This also, as was pointed out above, provides a built in "it's too hard" excuse, since most people eat, say, bread and pasta, so if you are someone who supposedly can't lose weight without giving those things up, then you would have to do something too extreme to really be expected of you, at least not now.

And, of course, because humans are crazy complicated creatures, these messed up ideas tend to often cause cycles of emotional attachment plus guilt and shame connected with eating choices that actually probably result in the creation of many of the psychological issues with food that people have that DO make it hard for them to eat whatever and still lose weight.

Finally, it's not strictly true that people can just eat what they've been eating (in smaller quantities) and lose weight. Some can, some will naturally and practically get how they have to adjust their diet to make it work with fewer calories (this was me, I think), but some don't have any kind of set eating schedule or plan and think they just eat when they are hungry or what's available without choice and are overwhelmed by the whole thing. For some of them eating less means being very stressed and hungry, whereas getting excited about some new thing (eating healthy, IMO, being a better way to frame it than "dumping the BAD foods like all the WHITE ones" or "eating clean, which I define to mean excluding fatty meats, no matter where from, and home baked bread, but processed cold cuts are fine since they aren't really processed according to my personal non-coherent definition" but then that's just my pet peeve).

kommodevaran wrote: »

For me, it was just so liberating and empowering to know that I could do it by myself.

Not to be a wet blanket, but until someone actually reaches goal weight and successful maintains the weight loss for 5-10 years, they're not really in a position to say that anything in particular "works".