How can a smart person be so stupid about weight loss?
Chris_2013
Posts: 107 Member
Really the only part of my life that isn't nailed down. So in control of my career, family life, personal finance, and pretty much everything else. So why can't I get permanent control over my weight? Why do I continue to yo-yo year after year? Back on track now for maybe the 20th time in my adult life. Lost 90 lbs between Feb and September 2016 only to gain back 70 lbs by the end of summer 2017. I think I am a pretty intelligent guy. A self-made multi-millionaire with happy marriage and two amazing kids but damn I am stupid as hell when it comes to managing my weight!!!! I feel SOOOOOOO good when losing weight. Confidence and energy are way up. Happier, more active. Then let it all slide for what? A giant plate of pasta that I enjoy for 10 minutes? Sugary treats I pop in my mouth without thinking and really with no enjoyment? Why does food numb my brain? Why do I get 75% of the way to my goal and then fail, repeatedly? I'm down 10 lbs in the last 3 weeks but how will it be any different this time?
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Replies
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It works best of you treat it as a permanent lifestyle change.8
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When you lose weight, are you cutting a lot of things out of your diet that you then add back in when you reach your goal weight, or when you "give up" at 75%? A giant plate of pasta shouldn't be able to ruin anything, nor should sugary treats, in moderation. It's important to build habits that let you maintain your goal weight instead of regain, and that might be where you need to focus. Figure out the maintenance calories for your goal weight, then see where you can make sustainable changes to your diet to cut your calorie intake down to that goal maintenance. Give the changes time to set in, and give yourself permission to mess up from time to time. The weight will come off a lot more slowly than if you only eat white foods or whatever crash diet the kids are doing these days, but you might find that it doesn't come back, and I think that's the real win. Good luck!12
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Sounds like you need to forgive yourself, friend.
You need to forgive yourself now, for the past times, and forgive yourself every time you slip up. Drink lots of water the next day, and get back on track. On plate of pasta won't put 90lbs back on. Nor will a sugary treat, not even if you eat both in the same day.8 -
When I slack off my running and up my beer intake I am right there with you.0
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I wish I could tell you a definitive answer or offer any advice. But all I can say is that I understand that struggle. I know the right choices. I know what eating healthy means. Hell, I even like healthy foods. But it has always been a back and forth game for me. Dang you addictive processed foods... I haven't figured out how to keep long term motivation yet... I'm hoping to some day. Good luck on your journey. You're not alone!6
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Sounds like your goal oriented and like to get the the job done efficiently, and that is what you do with your weight loss.
You go for the win. 90 lbs in 7 months!
Yup, you get the weight off fast, probably too fast. The weight loss is your goal, with no plan for maintenance built into it.
Take a step back, plan a slower more sustainable method of losing that has a way to maintain built in.
2 lbs a week until you hit 50 to lose, 1.5 until you have 30, then 1lbs a week until the last 10-15.
Work in the food you like, candy and pasta are fine, just keep them within your calorie goal.
Not sure what your business is, but I can bet thee is a 5 year plan built for development and growth, otherwise you wouldn't be successful. Transfer some of those methodologies over to your weight loss plan for long term sustainability.
Cheers, h.24 -
Because neurochemistry tells you that overeating is a great idea and bypasses your brain. You have to strongly believe that you can override it with your brain because it is so powerful. It's a continuous mindfulness.4
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Make a deal with yourself.
Every time you get off track for more than one day (or X times per week, etc.), you will donate $500 to an organization/charity that you absolutely despise. Even better if you can tell somebody about it so they can help to keep you honest.
Sounds ridiculous but studies have shown these kind of internal bargains/commitments to be very effective in changing behavior.3 -
maybe don't let it get to a 70 lb gain before reigning in the eating...I usually reign it in when my clothes get tight...you can buy bigger clothes, or you can just push away from the table...if you stay within a single size, then you won't have so much to lose all at once...
I do feel like maintenance is an illusion for me...I'm constantly either getting snug in my clothes or trying to slim out of being snug in my clothes, I haven't found a way to stay a truly consistent weight...maybe it's a kind of magic only some people have???4 -
Oh man are you preaching to the choir! I feel EXACTLY the same way. I've been dieting since I was 13 - over 20 years. I know exactly what to do. I can get myself on track for a time, have success. But pasta. And wine. I know the answer is permanent lifestyle change - but I get so hung up on things like "everyone eats Chinese takeout, why can't I?!" I'm down 11 in 6 weeks and my dad has been encouraging me to make this the time to just do it. Get the burden of it off your back - do it this time then just maintain. Here is to hoping this smart lawyer can actually stick to it as well.2
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I'm new to all this, but all I can share is what's worked for me (finally). This time around I looked at diet and exercise as a lifestyle change. I don't eat processed food, other than a very occasional snack. I go to the gym 5-6 days a week. I try to eat mainly veggies and protein. The first few weeks I had to retrain my brain. "You don't eat junk now" instead of "you don't eat junk for a little while". The gym is part of my routine and I don't allow myself to make excuses. Even if I'm not into it that day, I'll at least go for a little while.
Good luck!! And don't be so hard on yourself. You can do it!1 -
Chris_2013 wrote: »Really the only part of my life that isn't nailed down. So in control of my career, family life, personal finance, and pretty much everything else. So why can't I get permanent control over my weight? Why do I continue to yo-yo year after year? Back on track now for maybe the 20th time in my adult life. Lost 90 lbs between Feb and September 2016 only to gain back 70 lbs by the end of summer 2017. I think I am a pretty intelligent guy. A self-made multi-millionaire with happy marriage and two amazing kids but damn I am stupid as hell when it comes to managing my weight!!!! I feel SOOOOOOO good when losing weight. Confidence and energy are way up. Happier, more active. Then let it all slide for what? A giant plate of pasta that I enjoy for 10 minutes? Sugary treats I pop in my mouth without thinking and really with no enjoyment? Why does food numb my brain? Why do I get 75% of the way to my goal and then fail, repeatedly? I'm down 10 lbs in the last 3 weeks but how will it be any different this time?
Your body is resisting that new body weight and you're letting it! Dont be hard on yourself at all, just be aware. Look for signs or times when you would slip up in the past. If you need help keep posting here and dont beat yourself up over it!3 -
Sounds like the quick achievement mindset. You achieve a weight loss goal, then move on. Old habits produce old body. Maintenance is not really considered an achievement by many, however, it is probably the most important part of the plan for your body.
Sugar and fat are calorie dense, highly available, and seductive not just to the senses but also to instinct.
Get your weight down and hold it down. Maintain your eating habits until that's what actually happens - they become habits. Then you'll need to check yourself regularly to make sure you're staying honest.3 -
Because just like the aspects you mentioned, weight needs ongoing management. You didn't get a job, consider it goal achieved, then stopped showing up to work. You also did not put your life on hold, ignore your family life, let your health go, or stopped doing the things you enjoy in order to get a job you hate and don't plan to continue doing. That's weight management for you. You need to keep an eye on it for good, like you do with your finances. You need to make it work and balance it well with the other aspects of your life and your own sanity, you also need to make sure it's something you'll want to continue doing, like you do with your job. A large plate of pasta does not ruin a diet just like one argument does not ruin a marriage
You need to learn how to make your diet work WITH your life and not as a program on the side. 10 lbs in 3 weeks indicates that you are restricting your calories a lot. Feeling bad about pasta and sugary treats means that your diet is far removed from your usual diet. The best way forward is to make your weight loss diet as close to your usual diet as possible while still within calories. Want a huge bowl of pasta? Sure, but not as often, and without feeling guilty. Or add lots of vegetables to it and not too much fat so you get to eat a huge bowl of pasta more often without taking a huge hit to the calories. My own mantra for anything I decide to do with my diet is: will this make dieting easier? Do I see myself doing this 10 years from now?21 -
Because you don't control your weight, you can't think yourself thin. (But you can learn to think like a thin person.) Your weight goes up and down according to the amount of calories you put in (and take out), and food intake is hardwired to be an almost automatic response to hunger (we have to eat). But a lot of the food we are surrounded by today is too easy to eat, and there's just too much of it, so we get food cues incessantly. Having to use rational decision for something that (in an "ideal" world) "should" be left mostly to impulse, is hard, and taking several hundred eating decisions every day, is exhausting. Our food is more calorie dense than ever, and without any social limitations on when and how much to eat anymore, on the contrary, eating being encouraged by everybody, any social sitaution has become an eating opportunity, it's no small wonder that we are getting bigger.
You are not stupid. You can use your brain to structure your environment and your schedule and your attitudes so that taking good decisions gets easier, and taking bad decisions, gets harder.
If you follow a weightloss plan where weightloss is the only motivation, you are going to fail. As you already know, food tastes good and makes you feel good. What you may not know, is that deeming certain foods (especially those we particularly like) bad or unhealthy, increases our cravings for them. When (not if) we give in, we feel weak, and shameful, and we don't enjoy the experience, we try hard to forget it ever happened.
So I suggest you think about some ways to eat responsibly while still getting pleasure out of what you eat.4 -
Off topic but what kind of job do you have that made you millions? (Unless you don't feel comfortable sharing haha just wondering)1
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I watched a documentary onNetflix recently called Fed Up and it discusses processes food, sugar intake, and childhood obesity. Really fascinating and enlightening (without a vegan or juicing bias). The best advice I could give you would be to slowdown the weight loss, change your attitude from “I can’t have it” to “I don’t want it” and read up on nutrition. The reason I mentioned the documentary is because it very succinctly explains what sugar does to our bodies and why we crave it, processed foods, and massive amounts of carbs that converts to glucose. You’re smart, ask yourself why you eat when and what you eat. Change the the attitude you have with food.4
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I watched a documentary onNetflix recently called Fed Up and it discusses processes food, sugar intake, and childhood obesity. Really fascinating and enlightening (without a vegan or juicing bias). The best advice I could give you would be to slowdown the weight loss, change your attitude from “I can’t have it” to “I don’t want it” and read up on nutrition. The reason I mentioned the documentary is because it very succinctly explains what sugar does to our bodies and why we crave it, processed foods, and massive amounts of carbs that converts to glucose. You’re smart, ask yourself why you eat when and what you eat. Change the the attitude you have with food.
I was recently reading a scientific review that tackles eating and food reward. Not a documentary (they tend to sensationalize and take things out of context). Deprivation and hunger tend to increase the attractiveness of food, especially high energy food. Not being able to eat pasta and sugary treats made his diet unsustainable, I don't think recommending more deprivation is going to make things better. I lost what I lost eating massive amounts of carbs and it has been a slow and steady but pleasant process. I'm pretty sure I would have failed to keep up the momentum if I found myself needing to stop eating carbs and sugar.6 -
Thanks for these replies folks, some helpful stuff. Going to read them all again.1
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Sounds like the quick achievement mindset. You achieve a weight loss goal, then move on. Old habits produce old body. Maintenance is not really considered an achievement by many, however, it is probably the most important part of the plan for your body.
Sugar and fat are calorie dense, highly available, and seductive not just to the senses but also to instinct.
Get your weight down and hold it down. Maintain your eating habits until that's what actually happens - they become habits. Then you'll need to check yourself regularly to make sure you're staying honest.
This hits home, I do have an achievement mindset and once there (or close to it) move on and fail with maintenance. Need to focus on making that a goal this time and set a longer timeframe so maintenance becomes more of a habit.1 -
It's all about changing your mentality.
When you reach your goal weight do you tell yourself:
"Ah! Finally finished my diet!"
or
"Time to bump up my calorie allotment to Maintenance and continue logging and weighing myself regularly."
Maintaining your goal weight is NOT easy, and should be treated the same as losing weight. You need to stay diligent, because if you stop logging, stop caring, stop weighing yourself... the weight WILL creep back up. It's a life-long commitment.2 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »Because just like the aspects you mentioned, weight needs ongoing management. You didn't get a job, consider it goal achieved, then stopped showing up to work. You also did not put your life on hold, ignore your family life, let your health go, or stopped doing the things you enjoy in order to get a job you hate and don't plan to continue doing. That's weight management for you. You need to keep an eye on it for good, like you do with your finances. You need to make it work and balance it well with the other aspects of your life and your own sanity, you also need to make sure it's something you'll want to continue doing, like you do with your job. A large plate of pasta does not ruin a diet just like one argument does not ruin a marriage
You need to learn how to make your diet work WITH your life and not as a program on the side. 10 lbs in 3 weeks indicates that you are restricting your calories a lot. Feeling bad about pasta and sugary treats means that your diet is far removed from your usual diet. The best way forward is to make your weight loss diet as close to your usual diet as possible while still within calories. Want a huge bowl of pasta? Sure, but not as often, and without feeling guilty. Or add lots of vegetables to it and not too much fat so you get to eat a huge bowl of pasta more often without taking a huge hit to the calories. My own mantra for anything I decide to do with my diet is: will this make dieting easier? Do I see myself doing this 10 years from now?
Sigh... nail hits head. I should read this once a week for a while. Thanks.
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How about a negative incentive? I heard a Freakonomics episode wherein someone was trying to quit smoking but could never stick to it. To keep him accountable, he made an agreement with his spouse that if he failed to quit smoking he had to donate $5k to Oprah. I guess the guy really hated Oprah so it worked for him! So how about if you don't reach your goal this time, we'll all hold you accountable and you have to make a donation to Nickelback, or Dr. Oz
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You're not stupid. What you are is someone who sees weight loss as the end game. It's not. The end game (in my opinion) is the time and energy to enjoy your wife and kids, your successful business. You need to make dietary changes you can stick with forever. You can eat anything you want. You just can't eat everything you want. So stop thinking of "diet" as a dirty word that means deprivation and start thinking of "diet" as what a person eats. Eat the pasta, eat the cookie someone brought in to work. Just don't eat all of the pasta or cookies. If you have a day you overindulge, it's not the end of the world. Today, start over. If you can make up the calories by the end of the week, (while still eating enough for good nutrition) ok. If not, write it off and move on. If you made a bad decision in your business, you did the best you could to correct it, but eventually you just moved on, right? You didn't continue to beat yourself up about the time you did x. Everyone here needs support to lose and/or maintain their weight. Most of us has lost weight more than once. This time is going to be the last time for me, because I'm making sustainable changes. It can be the last time for you, too. Good luck!1
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amusedmonkey wrote: »Because just like the aspects you mentioned, weight needs ongoing management. You didn't get a job, consider it goal achieved, then stopped showing up to work. You also did not put your life on hold, ignore your family life, let your health go, or stopped doing the things you enjoy in order to get a job you hate and don't plan to continue doing. That's weight management for you. You need to keep an eye on it for good, like you do with your finances. You need to make it work and balance it well with the other aspects of your life and your own sanity, you also need to make sure it's something you'll want to continue doing, like you do with your job. A large plate of pasta does not ruin a diet just like one argument does not ruin a marriage
You need to learn how to make your diet work WITH your life and not as a program on the side. 10 lbs in 3 weeks indicates that you are restricting your calories a lot. Feeling bad about pasta and sugary treats means that your diet is far removed from your usual diet. The best way forward is to make your weight loss diet as close to your usual diet as possible while still within calories. Want a huge bowl of pasta? Sure, but not as often, and without feeling guilty. Or add lots of vegetables to it and not too much fat so you get to eat a huge bowl of pasta more often without taking a huge hit to the calories. My own mantra for anything I decide to do with my diet is: will this make dieting easier? Do I see myself doing this 10 years from now?
This is one of the best posts I have ever read on this forum.
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I love this post...cause thats how i feel about my husband. He is the very same. You're a smart, goal oriented guy who has figured out what most people can't..how to get wealthy.
apply those prinicples you used in gaining financial security to losing weight. did you make all your money then go on a spending spree and blow it all? nope. you get my point. good luck .1 -
Are you really a multimillionaire tho0
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Hi, I'm smart too. I'm no multi-millionaire though. But you must know that even smart people make poor choices. I strongly recommend Habit by Duhigg. If you see this as a habit change and find new ways to reward yourself, this could be the time you get control of your weight!0
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I felt the same way, year after year, after year. I tried so many different diets and always fell off, this is the longest I've gone without falling off. I went into it this time, not looking at it as a diet but a life style change. Even if I hit my goal weight, I can't stop and go back to how I was eating before or I will put it all back on which is why it's a life style change. I make sure to not feel deprived and it's amazing at how many options are out there for lower calories. I found a blueberry juice that tastes sooooo sweet but it's only 10 calories in 1 cup so when I have a sugar craving, I have a glass with lots of ice and do not use a straw because it makes it last longer and the sugar craving is gone. I love pasta but the calories are crazy, I found a Japanese noodle which only has 60 calories in a large serving
that covers the delish pasta cravings. It's just finding what foods you love but in a lower calorie option and eating that instead of the high calorie foods. I find that rather then having a cheat day or week, I have a cheat meal and it's great. That covers when you go out to a restaurant or out for dinner. You are stronger then you think, don't let food win 2 -
I don’t think there is a good answer. This just might be the thing that proves to be a lifelong struggle. I’ve never seen an answer to this that satisfied my logical side. I’ve always struggled and I figure I will always struggle (as many of us do)... at least now I have the tools to correct myself. I’d just say, if you get off track don’t allow it to become 70 lbs... I gained 50 in about 5 years and I kept justifying it instead of getting control.0
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