Fat and Feminism--Want to get really pissed off??
Replies
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kshama2001 wrote: »This topic raises lots of issues for me:
- Do I believe that misogyny and sexism intersect with sizeism and anti-fat bias? Yes.
- Do I believe in Healthy at Any Size (HAES)? No.
- Do I believe that being somewhat overweight is healthier than the self-destructive under-eating and/or over exercise I have seen from some posters here? Yes.
- Am I curious as to why it is predominantly women who create posts indicating think they must suffer in order to lose weight? Yes.
kshama2001 wrote: »This topic raises lots of issues for me:- Do I believe that misogyny and sexism intersect with sizeism and anti-fat bias? Yes.
- Do I believe in Healthy at Any Size (HAES)? No.
- Do I believe that being somewhat overweight is healthier than the self-destructive under-eating and/or over exercise I have seen from some posters here? Yes.
- Am I curious as to why it is predominantly women who create posts indicating think they must suffer in order to lose weight? Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, and yes.0 - Do I believe that misogyny and sexism intersect with sizeism and anti-fat bias? Yes.
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Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.0 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »You guys are right, I shouldn't get worked up about such BS, but I guess it's the first time I've really seen the HAES idea spouted in such a destructive way. It's like this article is actively trying to convince women that losing weight is bad for you and maybe even impossible!
I was listening to a discussion on the radio where the authors of a meta study claimed that anyone who lost weight and kept out off was an anomaly. Apparently many of us here don't exist.
Not sure what you mean. You can't be an anomaly unless you exist. People who lose weight and keep it off are anomalies because most people either fail to lose weight or (more commonly) fail to maintain the loss.
Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. To be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
Is it?
Actually, read my edit, to me if you are going to say it's an anomaly and we aren't going to consider it you better be looking at a very small portion of the population you are excluding. Yes, there isn't an exact definition of anomaly but they were set point theorists and they weren't accepting people who could maintain as a reason to dismiss the validity of their theory. They label us anomalies so they can dismiss us summarily, and THAT is my issue. The model is wrong but they exclude any counter as being "just an anomaly". Sorry, I was rushed when I said what I did and it was inaccurate.
I think James Hill at National Weight Control Registry said it best (paraphrase): "We certainly have people who diet and maintain that loss. Do our records contain all of them? Probably not, but I don't know, it could be all the people registered with us are the only people who ever dieted and kept it off. It could be that our group is just a small fraction of people do successfully maintain. We do know, though, that it is possible."
Unfortunately, no one will give me a grant to do it the same way they count animal populations: blow dart a random group, collect data, release, wait and do the same thing with a different random group, including possibly getting ones that were tagged before (that's used to estimate population sizes). Someone at one particular budget office asked for security. What rubbish, nothing wrong with tranquilizing some random people, heck, some people pay good money to be tranquilized, and here I'm actually offering to do it to get health statistics. I just wonder if the people will answer my questions about are they contemplating losing weight honestly when I wake them up post darting and tagging. The NHS in England's study that just used raw numbers from physicians' offices without checking what percent of those people actually were trying to lose weight looks rather abysmal, but again, percent isn't of people actually trying to lose weight, just people that are overweight.
One of the problems I see in the data is that I don't believe that it represents a complete view of the data. It's a lot like early drug and alcohol addiction recovery data that couldn't account for spontaneous recovery rate, which was actually quite high. It's possible that there are a lot of people, like me, who just do our own thing and never report to anyone in an official record but exist in the "wild" in larger numbers than anyone realizes.
I know at least some "studies" of the spontaneous rate of drug recovery are kind of wrong. A few early ones that said that spontaneous recovery is common were based on the recovery rate of Vietnam vets, and the statistics didn't account for the fact that many of the people they considered spontaneously recovered had actually under gone addiction therapy in Vietnam, they just weren't in a program once they arrived state side.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
Then I would strongly suggest that you do apply and ask anyone else you know who is doing it your way to do as well so they can be represented. The big issue is that we know why people fail, but it's why they succeed that is the bigger issue here. Exercise is the biggest predictor of success in maintenance according to what data we have and the Registry confirms this, but there are people here that have done it through only diet and they should be noted too. The bigger issue here is also how did people learn to modify their behaviour no matter what route they took, and have they yo-yo'd in the past. What factor allowed people to modify their behaviours to lose and then maintain their weight loss? These are the more interesting factors but if people, like yourself, decide to avoid the study just because they don't see themselves in the stats then it will skew the data and miss other potential factors that are important.0 -
HappyCampr1 wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »
Also, I applied for the Registry a few months ago and haven't heard back so I'm sure they don't have all that are actually even interested in being in the Registry actually in it.
I think they send out packets for new participants quarterly, but I could be mistaken in my recollection.
Thanks, I'll see what happens.
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Sites like this (feminist, fat activist etc) are not a good source for medically accurate info. They make it a political issue in order to find a "reason" why they don't have to take responsibility for doing anything about the state of their bodies and why anyone who is concerned for them is an evil tool of the patriarchy and needs to shut up, and why every place needs to have giant chairs and giant doors and blah blah blah. It's amazing how much effort people will put into rationalizing. If they put that same effort into calorie tracking and exercise, guess what would happen? lol.
The secret to maintaining loss is, for many, continuing to track and continuing to exercise. Don't change what you did that worked. You up the calories some to stay at maintenance, but the other behaviors stay the same. That will work. While, of course, continuing to have your annual physical and taking care of your body medically and your mind in whatever way is good for you, as stress and cortisol are not the friend of people who would like to look their best. I had no access to a gym for 3 months due to having to move twice, and I gained back 8 lb. It was a change in behavior. I now have a gym membership and am taking that fat back off.
I saw the thing online about the woman who eats a full meal at McDonald's before having dinner at her friend's house so she won't be seen to eat too much. Well, no wonder she's fat: She's eating two dinners, and the first one is greasy high cal fast food and sugary soda!!! These are the people who will say "Look how little I eat. Fat has nothing to do with how much I eat." while they are secretly scarfing down double cheeseburgers. Sorry folks yr not fooling anyone.
If people have decided to be fat for whatever reason, that's up to them, but I wish they would not fill the Web with misleading articles, tweaked statistics, carefully culled sources, and other inaccuracies that derail the efforts of people who would really like to improve their bodies.
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I've thought about/read about women and body size issues for years. So many women think they have to be very, very thin to be attractive (whether healthy or not). I think its good to examine those assumptions.
I think the wish to be very tiny has to do with current fashion -- I'm not sure it's anything sinister. Skinny jeans, pencil skirts, short dresses, low-waisted jeans/trousers look best (meaning they look as they are intended to look by the designer) if one is quite slender.
I certainly don't think that makes ultra-thinness a good thing, but I think women who strive for that are usually striving to look good in certain clothing.
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lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
You don't need a comparison group when you are just looking at particular behaviours of a particular group in and of itself. Unless they are trying to say that those who don't do this are more likely to regain, which they don't, they don't need to extrapolate to outside the group. The behaviours they note have a great commonality among the participants, but not all, so this indicated that these behaviours are likely factors that contribute to success. Does this mean that those who exhibit some or all of those behaviours won't regain? Well that's for a comparison study, but this data is useful as a starting point for future study. This isn't non-sense, you just don't like it, that's fine, but it doesn't invalidate the study.
If you have any peer reviewed studies that indicate that the conclusions maybe incorrect please feel free to link because I would certainly like to see all of the evidence.0 -
missblondi2u wrote: »
They state that “Popular belief would have you convinced that being fat – like living in poverty – is a choice,” and “But just like we don’t have much choice about our economic status, we don’t have much choice about our body types either.”
Auuugh! yeah... This quote from them frustrates me to no end! Everything thing that I am is the result of the choices I've made in life. Everything! There was a time in my life were I had absolutely nothing. I remember the night where I lost my first car. It was upside down in a ditch and I was standing by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night wondering who I could even call for help. I didn't have many friends. I didn't have $100 left to my name. I didn't have a job. I didn't even have a car anymore. I didn't have hope. I made a choice that night. I decided to be the person that I wanted to be. I chose to make actions which would better my economic status. Granted I managed to do all kinds of stupid things with money along the way, but, I chose to learn from my mistakes. I do not live in poverty because I chose not to.
Losing weight is the same way. I chose to lose weight. It was a choice. I was raised obese. I have been obese my whole life. My family is obese. I love them as they are, but I choose a different path. I was over 410 lb by the time I was 26. At 277lb, I'm still obese! I am lighter now than I've ever been as an adult though. I think I weighed more when I was 16 than now. It was a choice and it was a choice brought into adulthood because I accepted that it wasn't my choice. I accepted that it was "genetics" and "just how I was raised." It was my choice to continue living "how I was raised". But I chose to live differently and to lose weight.
I've also had my share of injuries. My left knee is destroyed. Spent a couple years struggling to walk from that. I have nerve damage on my right side from a muscle injury that crushed the sciatic nerve and never quite healed right, so now get phantom pains down my right leg when I over exert myself. I spent a year practically a cripple dealing with this. I chose to work through it all though. I chose to continue making something of myself. I chose to continue losing weight. I chose to overcome the injuries and learn to dance, so well that I teach for fun.
That is the great gift of being human. We get to choose to be who we are in life. Anyone who says different only aims to repress you, to drag you down, perhaps to control you. You get to choose your life. Choose the best life you can.
Ugh... Ok I'm off my soap box.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
They catalog behaviors that are common to the people that maintain their loss. Like I said, it isn't meant to be a-b testing. Of course they're selecting behaviors they think might impact weight - that's the whole point, and if it is perception bias, than all of science works on perception bias by picking a variable to test when you generate a hypothesis. If they survey and find it isn't a common habit in their subjects, they report that too.
Most human health studies are similar to a certain extent because keeping humans under controlled conditions is exceptionally expensive. It also could be inhuman to force people to do certain things knowing they might have negative health outcomes, but surveying people already doing them is acceptable.
And I'd disagree with your concept of the term anecdotal. To begin with, anecdotes are poor evidence, but they're still evidence. The data collected by NWCR isn't anecdotal - they know their population is selective, that's intentional, and they actually numerically track the data. That makes it not anecdotal.0 -
I'm a believer in HAES. It doesn't work for me, but hey, few things do.
I don't care what size people are as long as they are happy with themselves. More power to them. I'm doing what I feel is best for me. As long as they are doing the same, so be it. 0 -
stachesquatch wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »
They state that “Popular belief would have you convinced that being fat – like living in poverty – is a choice,” and “But just like we don’t have much choice about our economic status, we don’t have much choice about our body types either.”
Auuugh! yeah... This quote from them frustrates me to no end! Everything thing that I am is the result of the choices I've made in life. Everything! There was a time in my life were I had absolutely nothing. I remember the night where I lost my first car. It was upside down in a ditch and I was standing by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night wondering who I could even call for help. I didn't have many friends. I didn't have $100 left to my name. I didn't have a job. I didn't even have a car anymore. I didn't have hope. I made a choice that night. I decided to be the person that I wanted to be. I chose to make actions which would better my economic status. Granted I managed to do all kinds of stupid things with money along the way, but, I chose to learn from my mistakes. I do not live in poverty because I chose not to.
Losing weight is the same way. I chose to lose weight. It was a choice. I was raised obese. I have been obese my whole life. My family is obese. I love them as they are, but I choose a different path. I was over 410 lb by the time I was 26. At 277lb, I'm still obese! I am lighter now than I've ever been as an adult though. I think I weighed more when I was 16 than now. It was a choice and it was a choice brought into adulthood because I accepted that it wasn't my choice. I accepted that it was "genetics" and "just how I was raised." It was my choice to continue living "how I was raised". But I chose to live differently and to lose weight.
I've also had my share of injuries. My left knee is destroyed. Spent a couple years struggling to walk from that. I have nerve damage on my right side from a muscle injury that crushed the sciatic nerve and never quite healed right, so now get phantom pains down my right leg when I over exert myself. I spent a year practically a cripple dealing with this. I chose to work through it all though. I chose to continue making something of myself. I chose to continue losing weight. I chose to overcome the injuries and learn to dance, so well that I teach for fun.
That is the great gift of being human. We get to choose to be who we are in life. Anyone who says different only aims to repress you, to drag you down, perhaps to control you. You get to choose your life. Choose the best life you can.
Ugh... Ok I'm off my soap box.
Thanks for sharing your story. I too came from a background of poverty and obesity. Born in the deep south to two 16 year old high school drop outs, I decided long ago that I was going to do everything I could to pull myself out. I got a scholarship to college, and then later worked my butt off to get accepted to law school. I had to go into debt to pay for it, and while those loans are definitely a huge burden, I'm so lucky that the ability to continue my education was made available to me through government programs and encouraging professors. So while I do deserve some credit for breaking the poverty cycle, I could not have done it without help.
The same thing goes for weight loss. I did all of the work to lose the weight, but people posting on this forum really helped make it possible for me. So yes, we shouldn't judge people for being obese or living in poverty, but we should never say to them that they can't do anything about it. We should do what we can to help people lift themselves up and rise above their circumstances.0 -
mrtastybutt wrote: »I'm a believer in HAES. It doesn't work for me, but hey, few things do. I don't care what size people are as long as they are happy with themselves. More power to them. I'm doing what I feel is best for me. As long as they are doing the same, so be it.
I'm in favor of fat acceptance, but I find HAES to be horrible for lying to people, both in how some members present themselves, and in making claims that obesity has no impact on human health, or that weight is not something that a person can change. It is the difference between adults that choose to smoker, and the tobacco industry claiming smoking doesn't cause cancer - one's a person choice, hopefully aware of the potential outcome, one is deceiving other people about their health.0 -
mrtastybutt wrote: »I'm a believer in HAES. It doesn't work for me, but hey, few things do. I don't care what size people are as long as they are happy with themselves. More power to them. I'm doing what I feel is best for me. As long as they are doing the same, so be it.
I'm in favor of fat acceptance, but I find HAES to be horrible for lying to people, both in how some members present themselves, and in making claims that obesity has no impact on human health, or that weight is not something that a person can change. It is the difference between adults that choose to smoker, and the tobacco industry claiming smoking doesn't cause cancer - one's a person choice, hopefully aware of the potential outcome, one is deceiving other people about their health.
Well stated!0 -
mrtastybutt wrote: »I'm a believer in HAES. It doesn't work for me, but hey, few things do. I don't care what size people are as long as they are happy with themselves. More power to them. I'm doing what I feel is best for me. As long as they are doing the same, so be it.
I'm in favor of fat acceptance, but I find HAES to be horrible for lying to people, both in how some members present themselves, and in making claims that obesity has no impact on human health, or that weight is not something that a person can change. It is the difference between adults that choose to smoker, and the tobacco industry claiming smoking doesn't cause cancer - one's a person choice, hopefully aware of the potential outcome, one is deceiving other people about their health.
Well put.0 -
mrtastybutt wrote: »I'm a believer in HAES. It doesn't work for me, but hey, few things do. I don't care what size people are as long as they are happy with themselves. More power to them. I'm doing what I feel is best for me. As long as they are doing the same, so be it.
I'm in favor of fat acceptance, but I find HAES to be horrible for lying to people, both in how some members present themselves, and in making claims that obesity has no impact on human health, or that weight is not something that a person can change. It is the difference between adults that choose to smoker, and the tobacco industry claiming smoking doesn't cause cancer - one's a person choice, hopefully aware of the potential outcome, one is deceiving other people about their health.
0 -
kshama2001 wrote: »mrtastybutt wrote: »I'm a believer in HAES. It doesn't work for me, but hey, few things do. I don't care what size people are as long as they are happy with themselves. More power to them. I'm doing what I feel is best for me. As long as they are doing the same, so be it.
I'm in favor of fat acceptance, but I find HAES to be horrible for lying to people, both in how some members present themselves, and in making claims that obesity has no impact on human health, or that weight is not something that a person can change. It is the difference between adults that choose to smoker, and the tobacco industry claiming smoking doesn't cause cancer - one's a person choice, hopefully aware of the potential outcome, one is deceiving other people about their health.
I see your like and raise you a
0 -
You know what bugs me? This idea that obesity is some kind of feminist statement, that being overweight is a rebellion against the patriarchy, and makes women more feminist. I read this disdain for thin women, that they're just spineless girls looking for male approval (never mind the "men love curves only dogs like bones" bs that will come from the same people), and are enemies of feminism.
I'm a rabid feminist. And I'm strong and fast and fit and that gives me power. I'm teaching my daughters that they can use their bodies for action, the same as boys, that they're not damsels who sit on the sidelines. I'm teaching them self control and self awareness and practicing what I preach, and I plan to live a long healthy life and get stuff done.
Haes is bull. If the h was happiness, sure, everyone deserves to be happy, but health is not an opinion and just because blood work for the bare minimum markers of health came back fine while you're in your mid 20s does not change the fact that obesity is unhealthy, will lower both quality and quantity of life, and shouldn't be celebrated (which is not the same as saying obese people shouldn't be celebrated, if individually someone merits celebration, their size is irrelevant in that instance).
Fa has a place. But its connection to feminism is tenuous, but it's taking over so many areas of feminism, or at least Internet feminism, that, while it will never stop me being a feminist, it certainly makes me less likely to be active in it0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
They catalog behaviors that are common to the people that maintain their loss. Like I said, it isn't meant to be a-b testing. Of course they're selecting behaviors they think might impact weight - that's the whole point, and if it is perception bias, than all of science works on perception bias by picking a variable to test when you generate a hypothesis. If they survey and find it isn't a common habit in their subjects, they report that too.
Most human health studies are similar to a certain extent because keeping humans under controlled conditions is exceptionally expensive. It also could be inhuman to force people to do certain things knowing they might have negative health outcomes, but surveying people already doing them is acceptable.
And I'd disagree with your concept of the term anecdotal. To begin with, anecdotes are poor evidence, but they're still evidence. The data collected by NWCR isn't anecdotal - they know their population is selective, that's intentional, and they actually numerically track the data. That makes it not anecdotal.
She's kinda right though that the statistics are a bit useless as a directional guide for what you should do. Without the comparison to the other group, you don't know if the percentages are actually to be viewed as positive or not. As she said, if 78% of maintainers eat breakfast, cool. Is that more or less than the average? That's the thing a person would want to know if they looked at such a registry. If it's less, the person would rather not eat breakfast because obviously (correlation != causation be damned), it means that not eating breakfast increases your chances of success.0 -
stevencloser wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
They catalog behaviors that are common to the people that maintain their loss. Like I said, it isn't meant to be a-b testing. Of course they're selecting behaviors they think might impact weight - that's the whole point, and if it is perception bias, than all of science works on perception bias by picking a variable to test when you generate a hypothesis. If they survey and find it isn't a common habit in their subjects, they report that too.
Most human health studies are similar to a certain extent because keeping humans under controlled conditions is exceptionally expensive. It also could be inhuman to force people to do certain things knowing they might have negative health outcomes, but surveying people already doing them is acceptable.
And I'd disagree with your concept of the term anecdotal. To begin with, anecdotes are poor evidence, but they're still evidence. The data collected by NWCR isn't anecdotal - they know their population is selective, that's intentional, and they actually numerically track the data. That makes it not anecdotal.
She's kinda right though that the statistics are a bit useless as a directional guide for what you should do. Without the comparison to the other group, you don't know if the percentages are actually to be viewed as positive or not. As she said, if 78% of maintainers eat breakfast, cool. Is that more or less than the average? That's the thing a person would want to know if they looked at such a registry. If it's less, the person would rather not eat breakfast because obviously (correlation != causation be damned), it means that not eating breakfast increases your chances of success.
True in some respects, but again it is more of a study in commonality that may indicate what directions we should take in future research. For instance, could it be that people who don't eat breakfast often eat more later in the day and have higher caloric intake, so this 78% is actually a useful indicator for future research. Now breakfast is probably just a coincidence or because it's a commonly held belief, but other factors could be either causal factors or closely related to causal factors. Perhaps it's more a series of underlying traits, which is very likely since we are talking a mostly behavioural issue, so we could use this to try to explore what those underlying traits really are. This type of research is very common in data mining and is very useful.
From what I've read of the the published reports from the study they never imply causality of these factors and frankly they probably aren't. It's more likely that these are expressions of traits that are the actually causes and that these factors are mechanisms for sustained weight loss e.g. recording food and activity levels probably indicate an understanding of CICO and resolve to monitor it and making adjustments where required. What it does show in toto; however, is that it's not futile to lose weight and that you can maintain at a lower weight.0 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
You don't need a comparison group when you are just looking at particular behaviours of a particular group in and of itself. Unless they are trying to say that those who don't do this are more likely to regain, which they don't, they don't need to extrapolate to outside the group. The behaviours they note have a great commonality among the participants, but not all, so this indicated that these behaviours are likely factors that contribute to success. Does this mean that those who exhibit some or all of those behaviours won't regain? Well that's for a comparison study, but this data is useful as a starting point for future study. This isn't non-sense, you just don't like it, that's fine, but it doesn't invalidate the study.
If you have any peer reviewed studies that indicate that the conclusions maybe incorrect please feel free to link because I would certainly like to see all of the evidence.
So any behaviors that have a great commonality among the successful group (regardless of whether they are just as common or more common in the unsuccessful group) is likely to contribute to success? Just keep breathing, sleeping, and eating to keep your weight off then, I guess.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
You don't need a comparison group when you are just looking at particular behaviours of a particular group in and of itself. Unless they are trying to say that those who don't do this are more likely to regain, which they don't, they don't need to extrapolate to outside the group. The behaviours they note have a great commonality among the participants, but not all, so this indicated that these behaviours are likely factors that contribute to success. Does this mean that those who exhibit some or all of those behaviours won't regain? Well that's for a comparison study, but this data is useful as a starting point for future study. This isn't non-sense, you just don't like it, that's fine, but it doesn't invalidate the study.
If you have any peer reviewed studies that indicate that the conclusions maybe incorrect please feel free to link because I would certainly like to see all of the evidence.
So any behaviors that have a great commonality among the successful group (regardless of whether they are just as common or more common in the unsuccessful group) is likely to contribute to success? Just keep breathing, sleeping, and eating to keep your weight off then, I guess.
That is a silly argument and you are aware that it is.0 -
stevencloser wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
They catalog behaviors that are common to the people that maintain their loss. Like I said, it isn't meant to be a-b testing. Of course they're selecting behaviors they think might impact weight - that's the whole point, and if it is perception bias, than all of science works on perception bias by picking a variable to test when you generate a hypothesis. If they survey and find it isn't a common habit in their subjects, they report that too.
Most human health studies are similar to a certain extent because keeping humans under controlled conditions is exceptionally expensive. It also could be inhuman to force people to do certain things knowing they might have negative health outcomes, but surveying people already doing them is acceptable.
And I'd disagree with your concept of the term anecdotal. To begin with, anecdotes are poor evidence, but they're still evidence. The data collected by NWCR isn't anecdotal - they know their population is selective, that's intentional, and they actually numerically track the data. That makes it not anecdotal.
She's kinda right though that the statistics are a bit useless as a directional guide for what you should do. Without the comparison to the other group, you don't know if the percentages are actually to be viewed as positive or not. As she said, if 78% of maintainers eat breakfast, cool. Is that more or less than the average? That's the thing a person would want to know if they looked at such a registry. If it's less, the person would rather not eat breakfast because obviously (correlation != causation be damned), it means that not eating breakfast increases your chances of success.
It depends on how you want to view the meaning of the statistics. It might be that the frequency of how often they do something doesn't matter. Studies that are based on the surveys usually also involve surveying other people, such as a general population, get a comparison.
The thought would be, anything that is commonly done by them would probably not hinder and possibly be helpful when it comes to losing weight.
For example, say 78% eat breakfast, but that 90% of people that fail diets eat breakfast, does that mean the 12% split means not eating breakfast is better? Not necessarily, say the normal human population is 50% breakfast. It means the 78% is still above random chance, so there would be the need to drill for if there is a secondary thing that breaks it, or perhaps at the point it would be worth doing an intervention study.
Though, I'm afraid I'd be poor at arguing it as I know other studies that say adding breakfast as intervention actually leads to weight gain on average - the fact is that highly organized and regimented people at breakfast, and that is probably the predictor of dietary success.0 -
Wheelhouse15 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
They catalog behaviors that are common to the people that maintain their loss. Like I said, it isn't meant to be a-b testing. Of course they're selecting behaviors they think might impact weight - that's the whole point, and if it is perception bias, than all of science works on perception bias by picking a variable to test when you generate a hypothesis. If they survey and find it isn't a common habit in their subjects, they report that too.
Most human health studies are similar to a certain extent because keeping humans under controlled conditions is exceptionally expensive. It also could be inhuman to force people to do certain things knowing they might have negative health outcomes, but surveying people already doing them is acceptable.
And I'd disagree with your concept of the term anecdotal. To begin with, anecdotes are poor evidence, but they're still evidence. The data collected by NWCR isn't anecdotal - they know their population is selective, that's intentional, and they actually numerically track the data. That makes it not anecdotal.
She's kinda right though that the statistics are a bit useless as a directional guide for what you should do. Without the comparison to the other group, you don't know if the percentages are actually to be viewed as positive or not. As she said, if 78% of maintainers eat breakfast, cool. Is that more or less than the average? That's the thing a person would want to know if they looked at such a registry. If it's less, the person would rather not eat breakfast because obviously (correlation != causation be damned), it means that not eating breakfast increases your chances of success.
True in some respects, but again it is more of a study in commonality that may indicate what directions we should take in future research. For instance, could it be that people who don't eat breakfast often eat more later in the day and have higher caloric intake, so this 78% is actually a useful indicator for future research. Now breakfast is probably just a coincidence or because it's a commonly held belief, but other factors could be either causal factors or closely related to causal factors. Perhaps it's more a series of underlying traits, which is very likely since we are talking a mostly behavioural issue, so we could use this to try to explore what those underlying traits really are. This type of research is very common in data mining and is very useful.
From what I've read of the the published reports from the study they never imply causality of these factors and frankly they probably aren't. It's more likely that these are expressions of traits that are the actually causes and that these factors are mechanisms for sustained weight loss e.g. recording food and activity levels probably indicate an understanding of CICO and resolve to monitor it and making adjustments where required. What it does show in toto; however, is that it's not futile to lose weight and that you can maintain at a lower weight.
Nothing that I saw when I went to their site or looked at the application packet they mailed, and nothing I've ever seen in third-party use of their materials suggests that the surveys are only for the purpose of indicating future areas of research and not to be used as practical advice for how to maintain weight loss. Admittedly, it's not entirely their fault how third parties use their materials, but given that "news" stories always present it as "here's what works to keep you from regaining weight," they should take notice and make the point that in fact their research in no way demonstrates that any of these behaviors correlates more to maintaining weight loss than to regaining, because they've never studied the behavior of regainers.
I'm not talking about "causality." They haven't even demonstrated correlation in a true sense.0 -
lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »stevencloser wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
They catalog behaviors that are common to the people that maintain their loss. Like I said, it isn't meant to be a-b testing. Of course they're selecting behaviors they think might impact weight - that's the whole point, and if it is perception bias, than all of science works on perception bias by picking a variable to test when you generate a hypothesis. If they survey and find it isn't a common habit in their subjects, they report that too.
Most human health studies are similar to a certain extent because keeping humans under controlled conditions is exceptionally expensive. It also could be inhuman to force people to do certain things knowing they might have negative health outcomes, but surveying people already doing them is acceptable.
And I'd disagree with your concept of the term anecdotal. To begin with, anecdotes are poor evidence, but they're still evidence. The data collected by NWCR isn't anecdotal - they know their population is selective, that's intentional, and they actually numerically track the data. That makes it not anecdotal.
She's kinda right though that the statistics are a bit useless as a directional guide for what you should do. Without the comparison to the other group, you don't know if the percentages are actually to be viewed as positive or not. As she said, if 78% of maintainers eat breakfast, cool. Is that more or less than the average? That's the thing a person would want to know if they looked at such a registry. If it's less, the person would rather not eat breakfast because obviously (correlation != causation be damned), it means that not eating breakfast increases your chances of success.
True in some respects, but again it is more of a study in commonality that may indicate what directions we should take in future research. For instance, could it be that people who don't eat breakfast often eat more later in the day and have higher caloric intake, so this 78% is actually a useful indicator for future research. Now breakfast is probably just a coincidence or because it's a commonly held belief, but other factors could be either causal factors or closely related to causal factors. Perhaps it's more a series of underlying traits, which is very likely since we are talking a mostly behavioural issue, so we could use this to try to explore what those underlying traits really are. This type of research is very common in data mining and is very useful.
From what I've read of the the published reports from the study they never imply causality of these factors and frankly they probably aren't. It's more likely that these are expressions of traits that are the actually causes and that these factors are mechanisms for sustained weight loss e.g. recording food and activity levels probably indicate an understanding of CICO and resolve to monitor it and making adjustments where required. What it does show in toto; however, is that it's not futile to lose weight and that you can maintain at a lower weight.
Nothing that I saw when I went to their site or looked at the application packet they mailed, and nothing I've ever seen in third-party use of their materials suggests that the surveys are only for the purpose of indicating future areas of research and not to be used as practical advice for how to maintain weight loss. Admittedly, it's not entirely their fault how third parties use their materials, but given that "news" stories always present it as "here's what works to keep you from regaining weight," they should take notice and make the point that in fact their research in no way demonstrates that any of these behaviors correlates more to maintaining weight loss than to regaining, because they've never studied the behavior of regainers.
I'm not talking about "causality." They haven't even demonstrated correlation in a true sense.
I wonder if you are assuming that they just choice these factors like breakfast and exercise at random? This is far from the truth. These are not researchers with no grounding in their subject and if you look at the factors they address in this study, such as breakfast and physical activities, these are behaviours that have a negative correlation with the rise in obesity. Breakfast eating is less common and physical activity is lower as obesity rises. This is also true in other cultures where breakfast is still eaten and physical activity is at higher levels. Now if you were a researcher that was interested in why some people might be able to maintain wouldn't you ask yourself if those people that maintain are also eating breakfast more and exercising more?
If you find evidence of that in a selected population wouldn't you want to publish those findings so that other researchers could use them in their studies and design research to directly test those finding? This research has merit when they find overwhelmingly that people in these groups are highly likely to share common behaviours that are known, or at least logically believed, to be factors in weight maintenance.0 -
You know what bugs me? This idea that obesity is some kind of feminist statement, that being overweight is a rebellion against the patriarchy, and makes women more feminist. I read this disdain for thin women, that they're just spineless girls looking for male approval (never mind the "men love curves only dogs like bones" bs that will come from the same people), and are enemies of feminism.
I'm a rabid feminist. And I'm strong and fast and fit and that gives me power. I'm teaching my daughters that they can use their bodies for action, the same as boys, that they're not damsels who sit on the sidelines. I'm teaching them self control and self awareness and practicing what I preach, and I plan to live a long healthy life and get stuff done.
Haes is bull. If the h was happiness, sure, everyone deserves to be happy, but health is not an opinion and just because blood work for the bare minimum markers of health came back fine while you're in your mid 20s does not change the fact that obesity is unhealthy, will lower both quality and quantity of life, and shouldn't be celebrated (which is not the same as saying obese people shouldn't be celebrated, if individually someone merits celebration, their size is irrelevant in that instance).
FA has a place. But its connection to feminism is tenuous, but it's taking over so many areas of feminism, or at least Internet feminism, that, while it will never stop me being a feminist, it certainly makes me less likely to be active in it
0 -
Once again the Onion comes through:
http://www.theonion.com/article/women-now-empowered-by-everything-a-woman-does-1398Perhaps most remarkably, the mere act of weight gain is now regarded as a feminist act. Though some women express reservations about the negative impact of obesity on one's health, overweight women display a level of assertiveness, or "sassitude," that thinner women lack.
"Women who proclaim themselves 'large and in charge' refuse to be bound by traditional notions of beauty and health," said Carla Willets, a Vassar College women's-studies professor. "They love themselves for who they are, something no 'normal-sized' woman could possibly do."
"Of course, women can be empowered by losing weight, too," Willets added. "Pretty much any change in weight—up or down—is empowering."0 -
stevencloser wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »lynn_glenmont wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »missblondi2u wrote: »Wheelhouse15 wrote: »Yes, but there are too many here to be a bone fide anomaly was my sarcastic point. I believe that to be an anomaly requires that you are past the third, at the least, standard deviation but it's certainly much more people who can maintain weight loss.
There may be enough successful people on this site to not be anomalies for this population, but when you consider them against the world at large, or even just the people who try to lose weight in the world at large, they can be considered anomalies, imo. I fully intend to be one of those anomalies.
To me at least, anomaly implies that something is peculiar or unexpected. I guess in the general population of people who try to lose weight, failure is more "normal" than success, but it's not a peculiar or unexpected outcome.
The main reason why I don't buy us as an anomaly is because we are just a continuation of the process that most give up on. We just aren't any different in biology than the vast majority that lose weight and regain and then often yo-yo and many who maintain successfully are former yo-yo dieters to boot. I strongly believe that instead of labeling long term maintainers as anomalies they should try to figure out what the differences are and use those findings as encouragement for others. This is basically the whole point of the National Weight Control Registry.
Actually, the National Weight Control Registry, as best as I can determine, is statistical nonsense because they only look at the behaviors of people who maintain their weight loss. They don't compare those behaviors to people who don't maintain their weight loss. They might as well say breathing helps you keep weight off as attributing it to regular weigh-ins and exercise, because they have no idea if people who don't maintain their weight loss are weighing in and exercising any more or less than those who do.
It's the main reason I didn't bother signing up when I looked into it after meeting their requirement (maintaining a 30 pound weight loss for one year). Now I'm more than two years into maintaining a 30+ pound weight loss. The only one of the behaviors they cite that I practice is weighing myself once a week. Well, I suppose I eat breakfast every day, in the sense that I always break my fast somehow, and I almost always log my first meal as "breakfast," but not in the sense that I get up and have hot or cold cereal or eggs or something of that sort in the first hour or so that I'm awake, before I leave the house.There is variety in how NWCR members keep the weight off. Most report continuing to maintain a low calorie, low fat diet and doing high levels of activity.
78% eat breakfast every day.
75% weigh themselves at least once a week.
62% watch less than 10 hours of TV per week.
90% exercise, on average, about 1 hour per day.
On average I get about a half hour exercise a day. I probably watch about 20 hours of TV (counting Netflix, Amazon, etc.) a week, if not more. I certainly don't eat low fat, and since I've been maintaining, I don't know how I could be described as eating low calorie.
A. It isn't statistical non-sense. The whole point is to study people who have maintained weight loss and look for patterns that are associated with success. They aren't trying to perform A-B testing. You don't need to investigate ways to fail at anything, people can choose to fail at any endeavor at any time.
B. You're saying the statistics don't reflect how you do things, and so you refuse to participate in the statistics. That's a bit of a catch-22 isn't it?
A. There's perception bias in the behaviors they choose to observe as more prevalent among those who have maintained weight loss, when they don't compare to see if those behaviors are actually more prevalent among those who maintain weight loss than they are among those who regain. What if it turned out that 90% of those who regain eat breakfast every day, while only 78% of those who maintain their loss eat breakfast every day? Then eat breakfast every day actually turns out to be more highly correlated with regain than with maintaining loss. They don't know whether it's true or not, because they're not asking. They're just deciding before they ask any questions what behaviors they think will help with maintaining loss, and asking just those who have maintained whether they do that. It doesn't prove anything about whether those behaviors are actually positively associated with maintaining a loss.
B. No, I'm saying the way they study the maintenance of weight loss is silly and doesn't prove anything, so I refuse to waste my time participating in their gathering of meaningless anecdotal "data."
They catalog behaviors that are common to the people that maintain their loss. Like I said, it isn't meant to be a-b testing. Of course they're selecting behaviors they think might impact weight - that's the whole point, and if it is perception bias, than all of science works on perception bias by picking a variable to test when you generate a hypothesis. If they survey and find it isn't a common habit in their subjects, they report that too.
Most human health studies are similar to a certain extent because keeping humans under controlled conditions is exceptionally expensive. It also could be inhuman to force people to do certain things knowing they might have negative health outcomes, but surveying people already doing them is acceptable.
And I'd disagree with your concept of the term anecdotal. To begin with, anecdotes are poor evidence, but they're still evidence. The data collected by NWCR isn't anecdotal - they know their population is selective, that's intentional, and they actually numerically track the data. That makes it not anecdotal.
She's kinda right though that the statistics are a bit useless as a directional guide for what you should do. Without the comparison to the other group, you don't know if the percentages are actually to be viewed as positive or not. As she said, if 78% of maintainers eat breakfast, cool. Is that more or less than the average? That's the thing a person would want to know if they looked at such a registry. If it's less, the person would rather not eat breakfast because obviously (correlation != causation be damned), it means that not eating breakfast increases your chances of success.
BTW I did a little more digging and some of the research being listed on the site is actually paired research with a control group such as this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21030947 and this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17925475 so there are matched studies are going on. Many of the studies also look at subgroup comparisons as well to determine what differences the factors such as exercise and daily weighing make within the registry participants e.g. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24385447.
I would say that the NWCR certainly has it's place, after all, all research must find it's place in the overall puzzle and this is offers a wealth of data for those who would like to use it as well as a ready made pool of potential subjects for other research. That's why I would like to see anyone who has some interest in offering their experiences join so that it increases the richness and validity of the pool.0
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