Why is losing weight so effortless for some and so difficult for others?
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True ^^.kommodevaran wrote: »
Regardless of how small I am or how active i've been - I still want to eat just as much as someone who has a calorie budget twice as big as mine.
I'm 5'3/5'4ish,128lbs and have a much bigger appetite than my 5'11, 230lb boyfriend.
To lose weight successfully, i HAVE to exercise to allow for extra food.
Never in a million years could i live off 1200 cals a day. Even 1500 is a struggle!
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ExRelaySprinter wrote: »
True ^^.kommodevaran wrote: »
Regardless of how small I am or how active i've been - I still want to eat just as much as someone who has a calorie budget twice as big as mine.
I'm 5'3/5'4ish,128lbs and have a much bigger appetite than my 5'11, 230lb boyfriend.
To lose weight successfully, i HAVE to exercise to allow for extra food.
Never in a million years could i live off 1200 cals a day.
Truth! It's a good thing I enjoy exercise because it would be rather painful otherwise.0 -
Restaurant meals are to satisfy the biggest and hungriest person at the table - think giant hungry bear man. They have to do that, or we would all complain they were stingy and eat elsewhere. They follow market forces.
Every woman and many men need a restaurant strategy. Take some home, leave it behind, whatever.
My restaurant strategy is skip breakfast and lunch. Even on 1200, which is what I am on, you can have a nice meal if you do that (not a technique that suits everyone, I will admit).0 -
I was into the cabinets after any sugar that wasn't locked down ever since I can remember. Really don't care if it's genetic, some early life trauma I seem to have forgotten about (I was a happy little toddler in a happy little home), or if space aliens landed, pointed at me with laser fingers, and declared, "You! You shall be a sugar eater all your days!"
Doesn't matter that much (though I'd be curious to understand the science behind it, as much as I can). My default mode (to borrow someone else's phrase) is eat all the sugary stuff.
MFP cleared up a huge puzzle for me on why I can't do that to my heart's content and exercise it off. It just isn't possible to burn off thousands of calories a day of indulgence. So that helps me with my mindset. I get it. I have to do everything possible with my mindset (#1 thing), my diet (appetite and craving suppression), and my activities to fight that beast.
Oh well. There are people stuck with much worse. No screw that, I hate it. Gimme a pill I can that forever after makes anything with added sugar taste like rancid dog turds, I'll take it, thanks! The greater misery of other people does not even fractionally reduce my own misery.
Uh oh, looks like I'm in pity party essay mode today.0 -
First, one thing I pick up here on the boards is a skewed time factor. Only a handful of the population will have experienced a sudden weight gain due to medication etc; for most it has been a gradual gain across many years. And then after several weeks or maybe a month there's all this frustration that 'it's not working!' Which kind of makes me smirk inside. I think you have to just patiently chip away at calorie restriction & fitness goals while accepting that actual weight loss involves some degree of nonlinear internal phenomenas that absolutely will occur over time if one remains consistent & patient.
Secondly, people who don't take the time to weigh everything really are flying blind. After almost 8 weeks of weighing every last thing (even if it's logged in my diary as a measure, I've weighed it too in grams to confirm!) I can really see how the eyes underestimate. Last night I ate without measuring at my daughters birthday party. Because I'm so familiar with weights I made very conservative estimates and I easily exceeded my calorie goal for the day by a landslide! If it's just one day here or there it's fine but doing that even one day of every week could wipe away a lot of deficit!
Thirdly, yes, the 1200 calorie people seem misguided. If they weigh what they say they weigh and they work out the way they say they work out very few of them should be eating 1200 calories! I haven't logged an official 'weigh in' yet but I'm wearing smaller clothes & people are commenting on my appearance and I average 1700 or 1800 calories a day walking +100k steps a week. And that is obviously keeping me in a gradual deficit. When I run my numbers at my eventual goal weight with the same level of activity I can see a baseline of about 1500 calories just to exist and about 2000 calories to maintain that weight at my current activity level. I can only extrapolate that one would have to be an exceedingly tiny adult to ever attempt 1200 calories a day...
Anyway, those are the things that jump out at me: lack of persistence due to unrealistic time frames, failure to get consistent & accurate measures of food volume, and unsustainably draconian calorie restriction goals.0 -
oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »
Why should she have as much extra cupcake as someone much larger, though?honkytonks85 wrote: »People who are shorter and lighter have fewer calories to work with. If you are 5'3 and weigh 65kg unfortunately you need to cut calories pretty much down to 1200 calories to create a reasonable deficit and be super accurate with your logging.
Not always true. Many women workout hard to be able to eat more. This thread isn't specifically about short women, but several are peppered through the responses:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/506349/women-who-eat-more-than-1800-calories-a-day/
Yeah but it will still be harder on the petite woman to have that extra cupcake than for the 6 foot man, if both exercise the same.
I've never been a 5' woman, but I'd think that her appetite and caloric needs should be roughly proportional to the 6' man's, such that an extra cupcake would be out of proportion for her.
If only when people brought cupcakes to work they baked teeny tiny ones for us petite people. If only restaurants provided meals that fit our requirements. It annoys me to spend money on a nice steak and it's literally quadrulple what I 'should' eat. When even the salads and entrees are out of proportion unless I've exercised for two hours earlier on in the day. And then I'm hungry anyway because the volume was tiny but the calorie density was high. I'm fine if I can prep all my own food, eating out is much harder when you have less wiggle room.
That is often not allowed in restaurants where I live due to food safety laws. And you're missing the point about there being something deeply frustrating about spending $60 on a meal and still being hungry because I've had to cut it in half. I work out a lot to eat more which gets me by. In some ways the calorie needs and appetites of a 5' person are proportionate (sometimes), can you admit that there might be additional challenges in eating out and so forth?
60 bucks for a single meal? Holy moly.0 -
It's easier said than done because it mentally requires a lot of work to make the changes.
I'm an emotional eater I've been tired and worked up the last few days and it's really difficult to stick to my guns and not pig out.
I also love food and love cooking. Some people hate to cook when they get home from work but I love it. It chills me out and I feel like I'm being creative. I want to cook things and then end up eating them. That has helped a bit as it gives me opportunities to create healthier meals but then you see a cake recipie and you have to resist or make it and give it to someone else
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Well, the still being hungry part doesn't really have anything to do with the oversized meal. Presumably, you'd still be hungry if the meal were smaller. That's a limit of your calorie intake, and not related to the size of the meal.oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »
Why should she have as much extra cupcake as someone much larger, though?honkytonks85 wrote: »People who are shorter and lighter have fewer calories to work with. If you are 5'3 and weigh 65kg unfortunately you need to cut calories pretty much down to 1200 calories to create a reasonable deficit and be super accurate with your logging.
Not always true. Many women workout hard to be able to eat more. This thread isn't specifically about short women, but several are peppered through the responses:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/506349/women-who-eat-more-than-1800-calories-a-day/
Yeah but it will still be harder on the petite woman to have that extra cupcake than for the 6 foot man, if both exercise the same.
I've never been a 5' woman, but I'd think that her appetite and caloric needs should be roughly proportional to the 6' man's, such that an extra cupcake would be out of proportion for her.
If only when people brought cupcakes to work they baked teeny tiny ones for us petite people. If only restaurants provided meals that fit our requirements. It annoys me to spend money on a nice steak and it's literally quadrulple what I 'should' eat. When even the salads and entrees are out of proportion unless I've exercised for two hours earlier on in the day. And then I'm hungry anyway because the volume was tiny but the calorie density was high. I'm fine if I can prep all my own food, eating out is much harder when you have less wiggle room.
That is often not allowed in restaurants where I live due to food safety laws. And you're missing the point about there being something deeply frustrating about spending $60 on a meal and still being hungry because I've had to cut it in half. I work out a lot to eat more which gets me by. In some ways the calorie needs and appetites of a 5' person are proportionate (sometimes), can you admit that there might be additional challenges in eating out and so forth?
Yeah, I'm acutely aware of many additional challenges for people in just about anything if they aren't in the fat part of the bell curve. I can see how it might be annoying not to be able to get a meal sized for more petite calorie requirements. I also know that it can be annoying to walk out of a restaurant still hungry because the meal wasn't proportioned for a guy who's three standard deviations from the mean. Hell, for that matter, I know how annoying it is to use a salad bar at which the sneeze guard is about stomach high.
So, I definitely see that there are additional challenges for you and there are additional challenges with which you don't have to deal.0 -
Restaurant meals are to satisfy the biggest and hungriest person at the table - think giant hungry bear man. They have to do that, or we would all complain they were stingy and eat elsewhere. They follow market forces.
Every woman and many men need a restaurant strategy. Take some home, leave it behind, whatever.
My restaurant strategy is skip breakfast and lunch. Even on 1200, which is what I am on, you can have a nice meal if you do that (not a technique that suits everyone, I will admit).
I would faint before I made it to the restaurant. I create an additional deficit over about five days by eating back fewer exercise calories.0 -
Personally, I think it's all in the mind set. It still, all comes down to CICO, but as you age and your metabolism slows, or (sometimes I'm just lazier), you get less bang for your buck (less CI allowance), thus you have to work a bit harder than when you were in your 20s. To counter this, I need to have a better mindset if I'm cutting.0
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stevencloser wrote: »oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »
Why should she have as much extra cupcake as someone much larger, though?honkytonks85 wrote: »People who are shorter and lighter have fewer calories to work with. If you are 5'3 and weigh 65kg unfortunately you need to cut calories pretty much down to 1200 calories to create a reasonable deficit and be super accurate with your logging.
Not always true. Many women workout hard to be able to eat more. This thread isn't specifically about short women, but several are peppered through the responses:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/506349/women-who-eat-more-than-1800-calories-a-day/
Yeah but it will still be harder on the petite woman to have that extra cupcake than for the 6 foot man, if both exercise the same.
I've never been a 5' woman, but I'd think that her appetite and caloric needs should be roughly proportional to the 6' man's, such that an extra cupcake would be out of proportion for her.
If only when people brought cupcakes to work they baked teeny tiny ones for us petite people. If only restaurants provided meals that fit our requirements. It annoys me to spend money on a nice steak and it's literally quadrulple what I 'should' eat. When even the salads and entrees are out of proportion unless I've exercised for two hours earlier on in the day. And then I'm hungry anyway because the volume was tiny but the calorie density was high. I'm fine if I can prep all my own food, eating out is much harder when you have less wiggle room.
That is often not allowed in restaurants where I live due to food safety laws. And you're missing the point about there being something deeply frustrating about spending $60 on a meal and still being hungry because I've had to cut it in half. I work out a lot to eat more which gets me by. In some ways the calorie needs and appetites of a 5' person are proportionate (sometimes), can you admit that there might be additional challenges in eating out and so forth?
60 bucks for a single meal? Holy moly.
That's Australia for you! A nice but not fancy restaurant is easily $30+ for a main meal per person. Extra for sides of additional vegies which I do to bulk it out. A glass of wine is around $14.0 -
oh_happy_day wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »
Why should she have as much extra cupcake as someone much larger, though?honkytonks85 wrote: »People who are shorter and lighter have fewer calories to work with. If you are 5'3 and weigh 65kg unfortunately you need to cut calories pretty much down to 1200 calories to create a reasonable deficit and be super accurate with your logging.
Not always true. Many women workout hard to be able to eat more. This thread isn't specifically about short women, but several are peppered through the responses:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/506349/women-who-eat-more-than-1800-calories-a-day/
Yeah but it will still be harder on the petite woman to have that extra cupcake than for the 6 foot man, if both exercise the same.
I've never been a 5' woman, but I'd think that her appetite and caloric needs should be roughly proportional to the 6' man's, such that an extra cupcake would be out of proportion for her.
If only when people brought cupcakes to work they baked teeny tiny ones for us petite people. If only restaurants provided meals that fit our requirements. It annoys me to spend money on a nice steak and it's literally quadrulple what I 'should' eat. When even the salads and entrees are out of proportion unless I've exercised for two hours earlier on in the day. And then I'm hungry anyway because the volume was tiny but the calorie density was high. I'm fine if I can prep all my own food, eating out is much harder when you have less wiggle room.
That is often not allowed in restaurants where I live due to food safety laws. And you're missing the point about there being something deeply frustrating about spending $60 on a meal and still being hungry because I've had to cut it in half. I work out a lot to eat more which gets me by. In some ways the calorie needs and appetites of a 5' person are proportionate (sometimes), can you admit that there might be additional challenges in eating out and so forth?
60 bucks for a single meal? Holy moly.
That's Australia for you! A nice but not fancy restaurant is easily $30+ for a main meal per person. Extra for sides of additional vegies which I do to bulk it out. A glass of wine is around $14.
A glass of wine is what? You all must have to be liquor drinkers over there.0 -
oh_happy_day wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »oh_happy_day wrote: »DeguelloTex wrote: »
Why should she have as much extra cupcake as someone much larger, though?honkytonks85 wrote: »People who are shorter and lighter have fewer calories to work with. If you are 5'3 and weigh 65kg unfortunately you need to cut calories pretty much down to 1200 calories to create a reasonable deficit and be super accurate with your logging.
Not always true. Many women workout hard to be able to eat more. This thread isn't specifically about short women, but several are peppered through the responses:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/506349/women-who-eat-more-than-1800-calories-a-day/
Yeah but it will still be harder on the petite woman to have that extra cupcake than for the 6 foot man, if both exercise the same.
I've never been a 5' woman, but I'd think that her appetite and caloric needs should be roughly proportional to the 6' man's, such that an extra cupcake would be out of proportion for her.
If only when people brought cupcakes to work they baked teeny tiny ones for us petite people. If only restaurants provided meals that fit our requirements. It annoys me to spend money on a nice steak and it's literally quadrulple what I 'should' eat. When even the salads and entrees are out of proportion unless I've exercised for two hours earlier on in the day. And then I'm hungry anyway because the volume was tiny but the calorie density was high. I'm fine if I can prep all my own food, eating out is much harder when you have less wiggle room.
That is often not allowed in restaurants where I live due to food safety laws. And you're missing the point about there being something deeply frustrating about spending $60 on a meal and still being hungry because I've had to cut it in half. I work out a lot to eat more which gets me by. In some ways the calorie needs and appetites of a 5' person are proportionate (sometimes), can you admit that there might be additional challenges in eating out and so forth?
60 bucks for a single meal? Holy moly.
That's Australia for you! A nice but not fancy restaurant is easily $30+ for a main meal per person. Extra for sides of additional vegies which I do to bulk it out. A glass of wine is around $14.
I've noticed that it seems that price of a meal at a restaurant is inversely proportional to the price. Super fancy, froofroo places charge a fortune and don't serve much. I used to get annoyed, but I've found that I have relatively skewed views of portions (and my hunger cues are off). Now, I realize that savoring the flavor and eating lots of different courses can be a great experience, and because of the smaller quantities, I can have 3-4 courses for the same calorie level as a much larger single dish at a cheaper place. That said, I typically only go to fancy restaurants during restaurant weeks when a portion of the price goes to the local food bank and there's a set menu (and set price).0 -
stevencloser wrote: »I have no idea. I was chubby/overweight my whole life for as long as I remember and well into my early 20s, and then I just... kinda decided and did it, no hassle.
It was like that for me too. I was 43, but still.
Maybe my question should have been "why do I obsess over my not understanding why weightloss seems so effortless for some and so difficult for others"
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It's a very interesting question, though. I just don't know how well it can be addressed in this forum.kommodevaran wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »I have no idea. I was chubby/overweight my whole life for as long as I remember and well into my early 20s, and then I just... kinda decided and did it, no hassle.
It was like that for me too. I was 43, but still.
Maybe my question should have been "why do I obsess over my not understanding why weightloss seems so effortless for some and so difficult for others"
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honkytonks85 wrote: »People who are shorter and lighter have fewer calories to work with. If you are 5'3 and weigh 65kg unfortunately you need to cut calories pretty much down to 1200 calories to create a reasonable deficit and be super accurate with your logging.
@5'3" and 135lbs, I have to disagree. I'm maintaining right now on roughly 2200 calories. I keep meaning to eat a little less and drop those last 10 lbs, but it's not really a time-sensitive priority, so I've been slacking a little.
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PinkPixiexox wrote: »So yes, it is simple - CICO, but my mum struggles to focus on weight loss for absolute obvious reasons. She just can't commit to any plan despite knowing how because she just has too much mentally going on in her life to spend her time calorie counting and meal prepping. And I would never, ever hold it against her.
Some people struggle with it - that's just the way it is. And I would never, ever judge someone for that. Others find it easier to mentally 'get in the zone' so to speak. We ALL need a little boost every now and again, that's a fact
I love your answer! I was posting recently that losing weight feels like a full time job. what with having to plan, prep, shop, chop, check etc. So yeah, personnally I find it easier to do when most of the stress is removed from my life so that I can focus on myself, not only food but also exercise. While not necessary for weight loss, exercising always puts me in a "health" state of mind and I then pay more attention to what I eat.
So, OP while I am in "weight loss mode" I don't find it hard really although I am at 1200 cal diet. Some days I'll eat more but that's totally fine with me. It's almost a game to find what will fit and be filling and to find substitutions for things I like that can't fit in my calorie budget. When I am not as focused because life gets in the way then I do struggle a bit more: Struggle with finding time to plan my meals and shop accordingly. Struggle to prep healthy snacks and cook. Struggle to find time to exercise. I also traveled a whole lot and so the whole planning thing, especially when you don't cook yourself and don't know most of the foods being served... So yeah Some people DO struggle
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I set out to get healthier, but had no idea what I was in for. If someone had told me all the changes it would take, I probably wouldn't have started. I'd have said, "That's not the life I want!"
This is interesting. For me, once I had a clear, realistic picture in my head of what it would take (thinking back to the first time I lost, in 2003), I thought it WAS the life I wanted--cooking regularly, healthy food, putting priority on making time to exercise, being a strong fit person who enjoyed lots of outdoor activity, so on. There was just a disconnect in how to get there. Before I started I wanted to get back to being able to go on a long run, but I was out of shape and running just made that obvious and was hard, so if I was feeling tired and lazy and stressed already I didn't do it. Similarly, cooking was something I wanted--I always enjoyed home cooked meals and wanted to be one of those people who could just whip something up, I just didn't know how. I didn't believe that I could really change my body, either (in theory I knew how it worked, but I didn't believe it would work for me, since weight control hadn't been something I'd ever thought about before).
But at some point (after seeing a photo of myself and realizing how bad it had gotten and doing a trip with a bunch of fit people and realizing I wanted that lifestyle), I just decided things had to change. I'd done lots of other hard things, I could figure out how to do this. So I put together a plan.
What was surprising was that other than working myself back into shape (which wasn't that fun, but exercise was once I started to get better at it), the changes were quite easy and I was right that it was the lifestyle I wanted.
That's why allowing myself to regain after having that lifestyle for 7 years (the loss period and maintenance period) made me kick myself so much -- the whole time I was regaining and then fat again I knew I'd been happier being a more active person, eating better (I didn't eat horribly, but I ate in ways I knew were contributing to the regain), but for some reason my other issues won out over what I knew was good for me and would actually make me happy.
(Of course there were emotional reasons--I was depressed during part of this time, going through some really stressful periods, but it is related to the fact that I still have some innately dysfunctional ways of coping that I need to work on.)
I really don't perceive the weight loss or the changes I made to get there as all that hard, though. However, one thing this discussion is causing me to do is think about what "hard" means to me.0 -
DeguelloTex wrote: »
It's a very interesting question, though. I just don't know how well it can be addressed in this forum.kommodevaran wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »I have no idea. I was chubby/overweight my whole life for as long as I remember and well into my early 20s, and then I just... kinda decided and did it, no hassle.
It was like that for me too. I was 43, but still.
Maybe my question should have been "why do I obsess over my not understanding why weightloss seems so effortless for some and so difficult for others"
I know
But the discussion at hand has been interesting too. Lots of different views and viewpoints. I appreciate every contribution.0 -
PinkPixiexox wrote: »People are very fond of the "It's simple - CICO" answer in regards to weight loss - and that's exactly how to do it - but there are many who struggle, and that's totally okay too. There is little room for sympathy on the message boards in regards to 'I'm finding this really hard' and it's a shame because everyone has a different story.
Case in point? My mum. She has been up and down weight-wise all her life. There was a time where she was at a very healthy weight and feeling fabulous - she knows all too well HOW this is done. Now? She is around 100 LBS overweight. She knows HOW to lose weight and many would question 'Well why hasn't she?'. Her mother recently passed away and her father is suffering from dementia - she is his full time carer and is slowly having to watch him fade away. She is a single mother to a 12 year old girl and she struggles to pay her rent. She also suffers from depression on top of everything else. So yes, it is simple - CICO, but my mum struggles to focus on weight loss for absolute obvious reasons. She just can't commit to any plan despite knowing how because she just has too much mentally going on in her life to spend her time calorie counting and meal prepping. And I would never, ever hold it against her.
Some people struggle with it - that's just the way it is. And I would never, ever judge someone for that. Others find it easier to mentally 'get in the zone' so to speak. We ALL need a little boost every now and again, that's a fact
This post is the best.....thank you Pink Pixie!0
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