The complexity of weight loss

I think discipline is a funny thing. I agree with "some have it some don't" as Gallow said but I also agree that folks can have it in certain areas and not others as lemur said.

Where the 2 meet in regards to weight (or anything really) is that person has to really want to change. Something has to "trigger" the will to change be it health, embarrassment (can't fit in airplane seat, etc) or the simple desire to better oneself.

Some need handholding and some like brutal honesty. I think that's why I like mfp there is brutal honesty from some folks and coddling from others so no matter where we fall in that spectrum we can find the help we want.

The deal is how bad do we want the help? Enough to hear brutal honesty when we want coddling or vs versa and push through it?

I think I've shared my very first post here was pretty embarrassing but I knew I had to "push" through and learn from feedback regardless the "form" it came in.

All that to say I think discipline comes from a deep desire to change things or a sheer will to change things. These may come at different times for different folks and for others not at all.

jgnatca wrote: »

The idea that change only happens if people "really want it" is anecdotal. There is some evidence that with small motivations people unconsciously change their habits.

Like what?

Annie_01 wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Annie_01 wrote: »

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

I suspect that if we had to condense it down to a single factor for nost successes, it would be discipline, either innate, or learned. The fact is that until people learn to control their emotional and psychological responses to food, they are a ridiculous cycle of "fell off the wagon", "I hate myself", and "I'm back".

The only real problem with this, is that I have yet to find a surefire way to instill said discipline into others. Frankly, I'm starting to think that it's something that some have, but most don't. You can't trigger what isn't there to begin with.

I think most everyone is capable of having discipline. I am just not sure that everyone wants to be disciplined.

Since joining the community section of MFP I have been constantly amazed at how many people want someone else to tell them what to do.

Questions such as...

What should I eat for breakfast?

How much should I eat?

How many jumping jacks should I do?

etc

etc

There was a thread once asking how many calories in an egg. I just wanted to scream...LOOK IT UP!

IMO Before people can learn discipline they have to take responsibility for themselves. Quit depending on someone else to do it for them or to make it easier for them.

If someone truly needs help I have all of the patience in the world...I have little patience for those that are just too lazy to do the work.

This has been the thing that most amazed me at MFP.

My failing is kind of the opposite -- I think of it as a sign of weakness to ask for help (not saying that's good, it's a weakness in itself). To me, it would have been a failure to ask my doctor how to lose weight and I basically just avoided the topic as best I could until I was ready to figure it out for myself. I find someone else telling me what to do tends to be counterproductive. I can't imagine asking someone on the internet to tell me what to do, especially when it's either based on personal stuff or information I could easily figure out.

That said, I did find some of the information I happened on at MFP quite useful. That includes some of the discussion of TDEE (I'd found it on my own but found the discussion on MFP useful), the arguments for flexible dieting and paying attention to macros (same), and the thread on proper logging (again, probably would have figured it out, and was losing without being that accurate, but understanding how to log more carefully and find the best entries made it an easier process).

Clearly, though, people differ.

On Gallowmere's comment, it seems to me that the same person can have discipline in a particular area at times of his or her life and not in others. I know a number of people who quit drinking (as I did), and sometimes they talk about others who have not as if those people are making a different choice than they themselves did, and I always think "it's the choice you were making at one time in your life and who knows what they will decide later." Same with weight -- there was a time I didn't care enough to do what needed to be done and then I time I did. When people act helpless or without discipline I often do think it's not the right time for them, but I don't think they are without discipline or hopeless. (When I was fat I was often extremely disciplined about other things, much more so than now in some cases.)

I have no point here, just musing.

Would I have been better off if professionals had reached out to me when fat? I am not sure it would have done any good as I didn't have the right frame of mind, and when I did have the right frame of mind I sought for and found the right information for myself and was open to figuring out a plan and strategy that worked for me personally, based on my knowledge of myself. But I'm good at planning. I kind of think that's not a special skill but something everyone should need and if we coddle them they won't develop it, but could be I'm being unfair here, I dunno. (I'm actually open to changing my mind, somewhat, but I also think that we more often than not don't expect enough of people and should encourage them to demand more of themselves, whatever that means.)

I understand the problem about asking for help...it is a last resort for me. All of my life people always assumed that I had my act together...that I could handle about anything. I was the stable one. So when I got to the point that I needed help...I didn't know how to ask for it...did want people to think that I couldn't any longer hold my act together. I have gotten better but I am still not very good at asking for help when I need it. I let pride, fear and at times shame hold me back...at times to my detriment.

I think I put off doing something about my weight because I didn't want to admit even to myself that I had allowed myself to get to that point. Again...pride, fear and shame. I was also tired of struggling...I just didn't have the energy nor did I care enough about myself at the time to have the discipline to do anything about it. I think this happens to a lot of people...life has beat them up and there is just nothing left of them to tackle one more thing. It is easier to focus on what other people need instead of ourselves.

I would almost bet that if anyone had reached out to me about what I was doing to myself I would have turned around and buried myself even deeper. After all...I had let pride, fear and shame take over.

If all that I had to of fixed was CICO...ELMM...or any of those other acronyms I would have been okay...all the other garbage in my life had consumed me. I had to leave the pity party behind before I could take those first steps.

I have read some posts where someone is saying losing weight is easy...all it is about is CICO. Saying that to someone that is 50-100-200lbs overweight in my mind is trivializing. In theory yes...sounds easy...in reality it is hard.

For me learning about CICO was an absolute lightbulb moment. I now know how to keep it off which was always the missing link for me. I had just shy of 100 lbs to lose (down 36) and I was so happy to learn about CICO that I cried. Sounds ridiculous but its true.

I was missing important info.

So I guess thats the complexity, we are all different - for you it sounds trivializing but for me it was my "AH HA" moment.

Having said that, I can see how it can be trivializing for folks in different circumstances.

leanjogreen18 wrote: »

Annie_01 wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Annie_01 wrote: »

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

I suspect that if we had to condense it down to a single factor for nost successes, it would be discipline, either innate, or learned. The fact is that until people learn to control their emotional and psychological responses to food, they are a ridiculous cycle of "fell off the wagon", "I hate myself", and "I'm back".

The only real problem with this, is that I have yet to find a surefire way to instill said discipline into others. Frankly, I'm starting to think that it's something that some have, but most don't. You can't trigger what isn't there to begin with.

I think most everyone is capable of having discipline. I am just not sure that everyone wants to be disciplined.

Since joining the community section of MFP I have been constantly amazed at how many people want someone else to tell them what to do.

Questions such as...

What should I eat for breakfast?

How much should I eat?

How many jumping jacks should I do?

etc

etc

There was a thread once asking how many calories in an egg. I just wanted to scream...LOOK IT UP!

IMO Before people can learn discipline they have to take responsibility for themselves. Quit depending on someone else to do it for them or to make it easier for them.

If someone truly needs help I have all of the patience in the world...I have little patience for those that are just too lazy to do the work.

This has been the thing that most amazed me at MFP.

My failing is kind of the opposite -- I think of it as a sign of weakness to ask for help (not saying that's good, it's a weakness in itself). To me, it would have been a failure to ask my doctor how to lose weight and I basically just avoided the topic as best I could until I was ready to figure it out for myself. I find someone else telling me what to do tends to be counterproductive. I can't imagine asking someone on the internet to tell me what to do, especially when it's either based on personal stuff or information I could easily figure out.

That said, I did find some of the information I happened on at MFP quite useful. That includes some of the discussion of TDEE (I'd found it on my own but found the discussion on MFP useful), the arguments for flexible dieting and paying attention to macros (same), and the thread on proper logging (again, probably would have figured it out, and was losing without being that accurate, but understanding how to log more carefully and find the best entries made it an easier process).

Clearly, though, people differ.

On Gallowmere's comment, it seems to me that the same person can have discipline in a particular area at times of his or her life and not in others. I know a number of people who quit drinking (as I did), and sometimes they talk about others who have not as if those people are making a different choice than they themselves did, and I always think "it's the choice you were making at one time in your life and who knows what they will decide later." Same with weight -- there was a time I didn't care enough to do what needed to be done and then I time I did. When people act helpless or without discipline I often do think it's not the right time for them, but I don't think they are without discipline or hopeless. (When I was fat I was often extremely disciplined about other things, much more so than now in some cases.)

I have no point here, just musing.

Would I have been better off if professionals had reached out to me when fat? I am not sure it would have done any good as I didn't have the right frame of mind, and when I did have the right frame of mind I sought for and found the right information for myself and was open to figuring out a plan and strategy that worked for me personally, based on my knowledge of myself. But I'm good at planning. I kind of think that's not a special skill but something everyone should need and if we coddle them they won't develop it, but could be I'm being unfair here, I dunno. (I'm actually open to changing my mind, somewhat, but I also think that we more often than not don't expect enough of people and should encourage them to demand more of themselves, whatever that means.)

I understand the problem about asking for help...it is a last resort for me. All of my life people always assumed that I had my act together...that I could handle about anything. I was the stable one. So when I got to the point that I needed help...I didn't know how to ask for it...did want people to think that I couldn't any longer hold my act together. I have gotten better but I am still not very good at asking for help when I need it. I let pride, fear and at times shame hold me back...at times to my detriment.

I think I put off doing something about my weight because I didn't want to admit even to myself that I had allowed myself to get to that point. Again...pride, fear and shame. I was also tired of struggling...I just didn't have the energy nor did I care enough about myself at the time to have the discipline to do anything about it. I think this happens to a lot of people...life has beat them up and there is just nothing left of them to tackle one more thing. It is easier to focus on what other people need instead of ourselves.

I would almost bet that if anyone had reached out to me about what I was doing to myself I would have turned around and buried myself even deeper. After all...I had let pride, fear and shame take over.

If all that I had to of fixed was CICO...ELMM...or any of those other acronyms I would have been okay...all the other garbage in my life had consumed me. I had to leave the pity party behind before I could take those first steps.

I have read some posts where someone is saying losing weight is easy...all it is about is CICO. Saying that to someone that is 50-100-200lbs overweight in my mind is trivializing. In theory yes...sounds easy...in reality it is hard.

For me learning about CICO was an absolute lightbulb moment. I now know how to keep it off which was always the missing link for me. I had just shy of 100 lbs to lose (down 36) and I was so happy to learn about CICO that I cried. Sounds ridiculous but its true.

I was missing important info.

So I guess thats the complexity, we are all different - for you it sounds trivializing but for me it was my "AH HA" moment.

Having said that, I can see how it can be trivializing for folks in different circumstances.

I'm pretty much with you, except that to me weight loss is simple or it's just CICO doesn't sound trivializing. It sounds helpful. (Simple is not easy, though, as people often say correctly. But to me understand it is simple makes it easiER.) I've talked about this before, but I lost weight twice in my life. The first time (in my early to mid 30s) I lost 60-70 lbs (60 when I weighed, but I am sure I was at least 10 lbs more when I started). I had never lost weight before, I felt out of control, I had no idea how to do it and--most of all--I felt like it wouldn't really work for me. Nevertheless, I hit an "I'm disgusted with myself and absolutely have to change) point and decided that I had figured out how to do many hard things, I could figure out how to eat properly and get into shape. Significantly, what I told myself (since I didn't believe I had control over my weight) was that OF COURSE I had control over HOW I ate and whether I exercised, and so I would eat as healthfully as possible and exercise regularly (and gradually increasing until I was getting really fit) and at least even if I was fat, I'd be healthy.

Sounds like HAES a bit, maybe, right? (Not that I'd heard of it and don't know if it existed yet.) Also sounds like the people who say "but I'm eating healthy and exercising!" Why wasn't I one of them? I think I had a couple of differences -- I learned how weight loss worked and even thought I couldn't believe it would work for me, I implemented it, I controlled my eating, as well as doing the other things. And, I was rigorously honest with myself -- I didn't think I'd eaten that much, but I went through my diet and figured out that I had been, and how, and I cut calories from what I'd been doing.

It worked, and--although changing the way I ate and cooking and eating "healthy" were ways that helped me control my eating and made it pleasurable, what was most important was that I knew WHY it worked and that it did work.

Quite a bit later (after I'd kept it off for more than 5 years) my life went to hell in a number of ways and I stopped caring and stopped being active and gained back a bunch, more than a bunch, ended up at my highest weight ever. (Significantly, this was not because I stopped eating "healthy" and in fact I continued not being much interested in most of the stuff people blame for Americans being fat.) Once I started moving past/dealing with the other stuff in my life, I realized I was going to have to lose the weight again, and I give credit to understanding "eat less move more" and knowing how to do it in a logical, CICO sort of way (it wasn't that I had to do any particular food choice or diet that had worked before and that I thought was magic for me) that even when fat I never got hugely down on myself (as I'd been when feeling out of control the first time) and never really felt out of control -- I thought I knew what I needed to do this time and just needed to be ready, and I had an understanding of why I wasn't yet.

When I was, it was pretty easy (not immediately easy, I had a few false starts, but ultimately). Importantly, I understood what I needed to work on -- what was hard about it -- was not finding the magic formula that would allow my body not to hold onto weight, but dealing with the behavioral elements (including some of the things that made cutting calories hard, like that I was using food to create energy due to being constantly sleep deprived). I actually did some things different this time (I tried cutting carbs and increasing protein -- my first weight loss way of eating had been much more focused on adding high quality carbs, although the diets I was starting from were different, as I changed from a "I don't have time to cook much" diet the first time and just cut calories the second, as I already was mostly making healthy food choices, especially for meals). I then played around with a variety of things the second time, and logged, which I hadn't done before, and used logging as motivation (I'm a spreadsheet kind of person).

Point is, to me the "weight loss is easy" thing really was encouragement, not the opposite. It was "cool, I just have to now figure out how to do what I know will work." I didn't see it as minimizing the fact that behavioral changes could be hard or saying that it was easy to deal with stuff like emotional eating. But thinking of it as "just eat less than you burn" can be focused on in a really logical way that helps stopf awful counterproductive stuff like "I messed up and wasn't perfect, now I'm an awful person and should just give up."

AnvilHead wrote: »

Annie_01 wrote: »

lemurcat12 wrote: »

Annie_01 wrote: »

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

I suspect that if we had to condense it down to a single factor for nost successes, it would be discipline, either innate, or learned. The fact is that until people learn to control their emotional and psychological responses to food, they are a ridiculous cycle of "fell off the wagon", "I hate myself", and "I'm back".

The only real problem with this, is that I have yet to find a surefire way to instill said discipline into others. Frankly, I'm starting to think that it's something that some have, but most don't. You can't trigger what isn't there to begin with.

I think most everyone is capable of having discipline. I am just not sure that everyone wants to be disciplined.

Since joining the community section of MFP I have been constantly amazed at how many people want someone else to tell them what to do.

Questions such as...

What should I eat for breakfast?

How much should I eat?

How many jumping jacks should I do?

etc

etc

There was a thread once asking how many calories in an egg. I just wanted to scream...LOOK IT UP!

IMO Before people can learn discipline they have to take responsibility for themselves. Quit depending on someone else to do it for them or to make it easier for them.

If someone truly needs help I have all of the patience in the world...I have little patience for those that are just too lazy to do the work.

This has been the thing that most amazed me at MFP.

My failing is kind of the opposite -- I think of it as a sign of weakness to ask for help (not saying that's good, it's a weakness in itself). To me, it would have been a failure to ask my doctor how to lose weight and I basically just avoided the topic as best I could until I was ready to figure it out for myself. I find someone else telling me what to do tends to be counterproductive. I can't imagine asking someone on the internet to tell me what to do, especially when it's either based on personal stuff or information I could easily figure out.

That said, I did find some of the information I happened on at MFP quite useful. That includes some of the discussion of TDEE (I'd found it on my own but found the discussion on MFP useful), the arguments for flexible dieting and paying attention to macros (same), and the thread on proper logging (again, probably would have figured it out, and was losing without being that accurate, but understanding how to log more carefully and find the best entries made it an easier process).

Clearly, though, people differ.

On Gallowmere's comment, it seems to me that the same person can have discipline in a particular area at times of his or her life and not in others. I know a number of people who quit drinking (as I did), and sometimes they talk about others who have not as if those people are making a different choice than they themselves did, and I always think "it's the choice you were making at one time in your life and who knows what they will decide later." Same with weight -- there was a time I didn't care enough to do what needed to be done and then I time I did. When people act helpless or without discipline I often do think it's not the right time for them, but I don't think they are without discipline or hopeless. (When I was fat I was often extremely disciplined about other things, much more so than now in some cases.)

I have no point here, just musing.

Would I have been better off if professionals had reached out to me when fat? I am not sure it would have done any good as I didn't have the right frame of mind, and when I did have the right frame of mind I sought for and found the right information for myself and was open to figuring out a plan and strategy that worked for me personally, based on my knowledge of myself. But I'm good at planning. I kind of think that's not a special skill but something everyone should need and if we coddle them they won't develop it, but could be I'm being unfair here, I dunno. (I'm actually open to changing my mind, somewhat, but I also think that we more often than not don't expect enough of people and should encourage them to demand more of themselves, whatever that means.)

I understand the problem about asking for help...it is a last resort for me. All of my life people always assumed that I had my act together...that I could handle about anything. I was the stable one. So when I got to the point that I needed help...I didn't know how to ask for it...did want people to think that I couldn't any longer hold my act together. I have gotten better but I am still not very good at asking for help when I need it. I let pride, fear and at times shame hold me back...at times to my detriment.

I think I put off doing something about my weight because I didn't want to admit even to myself that I had allowed myself to get to that point. Again...pride, fear and shame. I was also tired of struggling...I just didn't have the energy nor did I care enough about myself at the time to have the discipline to do anything about it. I think this happens to a lot of people...life has beat them up and there is just nothing left of them to tackle one more thing. It is easier to focus on what other people need instead of ourselves.

I would almost bet that if anyone had reached out to me about what I was doing to myself I would have turned around and buried myself even deeper. After all...I had let pride, fear and shame take over.

If all that I had to of fixed was CICO...ELMM...or any of those other acronyms I would have been okay...all the other garbage in my life had consumed me. I had to leave the pity party behind before I could take those first steps.

I have read some posts where someone is saying losing weight is easy...all it is about is CICO. Saying that to someone that is 50-100-200lbs overweight in my mind is trivializing. In theory yes...sounds easy...in reality it is hard.

I'd find that far more beneficial and encouraging than being overloaded with a bunch of gobbledygook (much of which is trivial or outright false) saying that it's virtually impossible to lose weight because of genetics, hormones, habits, macro ratios, sugars, artificial sweeteners, carbs, meal timing, etc., etc. To me, that sends the message, "just give up and stay fat because it's much too hard anyway and you probably won't be able to do it, so why bother?"

I would add to this that I agree that it's the kindest and most helpful response.

I think I sometimes come across as touchy in my response to certain kinds of advice to the very fat (which seems to mean someone with 50-100 lbs to lose often, or for me, with a healthy goal weight of 120, someone at 170 or 200 or 220 -- it's an overwhelming amount to lose, but not a weight that is that hard to imagine today for many of us). That's because the assumption seems to be that if someone has managed to reach 50 or 100 lbs overweight one must have deep-seated problems with food or know nothing about how to eat properly or have no idea how to control one's eating. The assumption so often is that said person needs to be tutored in not eating junk food (because of course anyone that fat can't be eating nutritious choices, at all) and should focus first on cutting sugar or dealing with an "addiction" (because there's no other way to get so fat) or many such -- IMO, insulting -- approaches. NOT saying you are making these assumptions, Annie (I know you don't) or that anyone else is, but often it seems the subtext.

I do think the difficulty in being 50+ lbs overweight (especially as it gets closer to wanting to lose 100) is that it feels so overwhelming, like it will take forever, like putting it off one more day won't matter at all. But dealing with this issue is a separate strategy problem (that I, of course, have thoughts on!) and not one that conflicts with CICO or eat less/move more as an approach at all. I think knowing it is so simple and doesn't require some dramatic "diet" way of eating, but a diet that's basically a long-term approach, and that you can change the way you eat over time (so long as you are still eating less than you burn) is helpful and hopeful. In other words, absolutely simplifying it and saying "and how you make this work is going to depend on you, but I have strategies if there are specific things you think will be a struggle" is FAR more helpful than confusing the person with nonsense about different foods and timing and GI and GL and eating before or after workouts and all the millions of dieting complexities that people get obsessed with and fight over and which often mean an excuse to put off getting started as you have to understand the exact plan that you will need to follow and then when it's too difficult or not for you, a reason to give up. Ugh, deep breath!

Saying weight loss is about eating less than you burn (and moving more will help you burn more) is so much easier. And then if you struggle with how to implement that, there are specific questions and answers and problems to identify.

Azdak wrote: »

For all of it's shortcomings, the fact is that the VAST majority of the population in the US would benefit from "eat less, move more".

This.

^^
Starts slow clap

NorthCascades wrote: »

Gallowmere1984 wrote: »

jgnatca wrote: »

Hey, @Gallowmere1984 In my line of work it is important to get to the root cause of any failure. Applying the wrong fix just leaves the problem unsolved longer.

Consider the fate of the honeybee. It turns out that the cause of their decline is multi-factored. Fixing (or blaming) just one of the causes will not be enough to restore their numbers.

Similarly if the cause of the rise of obesity is multi-factored, fixing (or blaming) just one or two factors won't be enough to reverse the trend.

If the cause is multi factored, how exactly can an obese person make a legal claim for their obesity? In fact my former obesity was a barrier to insurability. I also found many weight loss aids to be uninsured as well. I felt I was in a catch-22 for a long time.

I was more referring to all of the stuff on the bottom right that is killing the demand for physical exertion. I have a friend who works for a local municipality. They just sank millions into demolishing, regrading, and modifying a bunch of sidewalk and landscape, due to fatties and the elderly injuring themselves and subsequently suing the city.

I don't think what you just described can be summed up as "lawsuits preventing physical exertion." The lawsuits resulted from the exertion, not the other way around.

How were people injuring themselves by using a sidewalk? That's ... um ... somewhat unusual and I think we need more details before anyone can pass judgement. If something was wrong with the sidewalk somehow and people were getting injured as a result, that's probably what dampened demand for walking. Kind of like how I lost my desire to ride a bike right after I got hit by a car while riding my bike - can you blame me? People don't want to get injured!

It essentially started as a "fix broken sidewalks" set of projects. I am all for these for a few reasons, as yes, many areas had fallen into a ridiculous state of disrepair. A lot of it stemmed from poor planning 50 years ago: trees being planted next to sidewalks, and the roots subsequently shoving up slabs, breaking things, etc.

After a couple of years, the city noticed that they were still being hit with lawsuits at about the same rate. Somehow, as they removed the obstacles and broken areas, people started managing to trip on "problem areas" that were more and more trivial and ridiculous.

It was eventually decided upon that several hundred miles worth of sidewalk needed to be completed overhauled, even though there was nothing wrong with them, structurally speaking. Grades have been reduced, inspectors have been forced to look for "trip hazards" that would barely be felt by someone in a wheelchair, etc.

Oh, did I mention that this effort has only been focused on the "rich whitey" parts of the city? We still have plenty of areas where the original severe structural problems still exist and aren't being addressed. They just so happen to be in the areas where people can't afford to keep lawyers on retainer.

CSARdiver wrote: »

No.

Even untreated hypothyroidism only impacts BMR by ~5%. This means that a person at maintenance eating 1200 cals/day would then be limited to 1140 cals/day.

Please cite your source, everything I can find says that it can impact the BMR by 5-20% although I cannot find a specific scientific source ATM, still searching.