Thought(s) to Ponder? Friday 9/20/19
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imastar2
Posts: 5,966 Member
Do you ever give much thought to how much mental energy goes into losing weight? I was just thinking that to lose weight it takes an All Out or the new term now a days is All In thought process to move that scale. If your obese like I am and need to lose 150 lbs + it's all out war against the opposition. I've often thought that I would cold turkey stop like I did cigarettes 51 years ago and alcohol 33 years ago if I didnt need food to live.
I watch the post however from you skinny guys and gals and notice hey you have your struggles trying to maintain or lose just 5 lbs and find it difficult sometimes to do.
Anyway I was just pondering those thoughts and it's my thought to ponder today. 🙂
I watch the post however from you skinny guys and gals and notice hey you have your struggles trying to maintain or lose just 5 lbs and find it difficult sometimes to do.
Anyway I was just pondering those thoughts and it's my thought to ponder today. 🙂
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Replies
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I certainly spent decades not willing to devote the mental energy that was necessary to make the changes necessary to lost weight. And when I finally was able to free up the mental processing to do so, I'm sure some would say I was obsessed. Even when I finally got back to a normal weight in 2003, it still required a lot of mental energy to stay there. When mental energy needed to be devoted to my masters and then doctoral studies, about 40 pounds crept back on until I started WW at Work in June 2011. It would have been more than 40 pounds, but I had finally developed a daily exercise habit back in 2001 that has persisted!
This time I've finally developed other ingrained habits that help me stay at a relatively consistent weight even when other things are competing for brain processing power.
But I'd still like to get back down to where I was the first couple years of making lifetime. I just struggle with finding the mental energy to lose those 5 pounds.1 -
I am going though having mental energy for a while trying just to get the weight loss rollin. Did WW. and lost 110 lbs. in 2005 all to gain 60 lbs. back al the program changes threw me in frnzy so I gave up on them after trying the new programs. I started to lose and just slipped again.1
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I do think that real weight-loss (more than a couple of weeks) requires a fair amount of initial mental energy. That mental energy has to be appropriately focused, though. While one *could* simply grind it out through mental effort, the reality is, you really need to focus on changing food-related aspects of your life if you want to have a long-term sustainable loss.
As an example, we know that you can't simply decide "I'm going to skip desserts for a couple of weeks," and expect to have a long-term weight loss.
Instead, you have to change your food "identity." You have to work to become someone who eats in a healthy manner. That might require a lot of initial work to figure out what a "healthy manner" is. You may have to calculate calories in recipes. You may have to spend time on-line trying to figure out how many calories a Subway sub is. You may have to spend money buying a food scale and some good measuring cups for home. You may have to cycle through a bunch of "light" salad dressings until you find one you like. Etc., etc., etc.
But...once you get all of this figured out, and you take the big step of deciding to be a different person (at least in relationship to food), over the long term it gets easier and easier. The different features become part of your identity, and become habits (or, perhaps more accurately, they reflect who you are).
OK, maybe this was a bit too philosophical for a Monday morning, but there it is.3 -
My wife is by no means skinny just short. She probably weighs about 110 or maybe even 115 LBS and likely shrunk to slightly under 5 feet. It is definitely easier for me to lose up to 50 LB and do an OK job maintaining than it would be for her to lose 5 or 10 LBS and maintain. I think she did lose 5 LBs once and upped her activity too for awhile. This brought her A1C blood glucose levels into a more normal range but she just loves to bake cookies etc. Not easy.
I too would like to be a few pounds lighter but so far not willing to make those changes.1
