The notion that trying to lose weight is pointless and harmful

pink_mint · March 2020

I'm sorry that I keep starting new threads. I'm just still trying to get a handle on my current mindset. Thanks for bearing with me.

There's this notion in the body positivity/ intuitive eating community that weight loss is completely futile. That the more you try, the more weight you will eventually regain. They site some studies and claim that the 3 or so percent of people who actually maintain their weight loss have to do so through obsessive means. They say that basically any and all weight loss efforts will backfire. And because this actually is not an unusual experience of many dieters, and was close to my own experience, this idea has sort of haunted me.

So after over 3 years of doing keto to lose weight I sort of just snapped one day. I knew I couldn't eat little to no carbs the whole rest of my life. This isn't about keto per se.

After I started eating carbs and piling on weight, reading and following body positivity accounts and blogs etc was really refreshing in some ways. A lot of it helped me untie my disordered ideas about food and body image from my worth as a person. But then sometimes it seemed to go a little off the rails.

This idea that intentional weight loss is never a good idea always bothered me and I had to sort of ease off of reading and following their accounts. But I always wondered if they're right about that and if so to what extent.

Any thoughts?

JellyyBeanz · March 2020

I’ve found a lot of “health” weight loss advocates are really just disguising disordered eating habits as part of a healthy lifestyle. This is an unpopular idea but diets such as keto are completely absurd unless recommended by a doctor as a treatment for a specific ailment. Eliminating any food groups or doing something like “OMAD” or “fasting” is just a fancy word for starving yourself. The best thing we can do for ourselves is improve our relationship with food so that we are eating food that gives us the nutrients we need and doesn’t make us feel miserable. Weight loss isn’t a bad thing to want but trying to live on 1200 calories of chicken breasts, kale and butter isn’t sustainable and if you force yourself to eat that way you will regain.

snowflake954 · March 2020

I guess I don't understand your mindset at all. Have you educated yourself on how CICO works? That's all you need with whatever you want to eat. Choosing a certain type of diet--keto can work just fine if you can do that for the rest of your life. As you found out--YOU can't. Study what you like to eat and then work with that. Get your daily calorie goal and just try not to go over--everyday. Get a digital food scale and weigh and measure everything. That's it. Good luck.

By the way, when you hit your goal and need to go into maintenance there are some very good threads with information on how to be successful .

lemurcat2 · March 2020

I think if you have a tendency toward restrict and binge cycles or going from one extreme to another or simply feeling like a frustrated weight loss failure (which you should not -- try to think of past regains as a learning experience), it may be helpful to focus on things other than the scale, where you know you are doing healthy things and can control them. I read a book called Losing It by Laura Fraser years ago, which was kind of a critique and expose of the diet industry, and she was very against diet culture and focusing obsessively on a perfect weight and the scale, but somehow that book really motivated me into wanting to have a healthier lifestyle and eat better and get to a healthy weight (which I get the feeling is not how some of the anti diet/HAES folks are now).

For me, I didn't truly understand weight loss at first (although I made it my mission to lose -- this was years ago), but more importantly I decided I could be as healthy as possible no matter what happened with my weight, I reduced the cals in my diet in healthy ways, and I started exercising (and then training for events). I lost weight, as one might expect.

I did regain -- and I did a lot of self-examination about why -- but I kept the weight off for about 5 years before I started to gradually regain and I understand the physical reasons why (my lifestyle changed, I had some issues with depression and addiction and food ended up being a crutch for a while, later I was dealing with other life things and couldn't bring myself to care enough about losing again, although I was confident I could).

When I started again ('14) I quickly discovered MFP and found it very compatible with my own preferences and that it did not require crazy obsessive stuff at all. But given the environment that many of us live in maintenance can be very hard. I think it requires controlling your environment or otherwise taking basic steps to avoid sliding back into bad habits that do require some degree of constant attention, but I don't think that means it is impossible.

The things that make no sense to me about the claims by those who say maintaining losses is impossible is that the BMI of the US as a whole (on average) has increased a lot. It's not like we are all just genetically obese or overweight at the percentages we are. It's clearly lifestyle choices, and those can be changed.

sijomial · March 2020

I very intentionally lost my excess weight at age 53 and got back to the weight I was in my 20's and 30's.

Since then I've maintained fairly easily. It's not a huge investment in time and a million miles away from "obsessive means". I weigh daily (5 seconds commitment!) to monitor my weight trend and eat sensibly and mindfully of what I actually need. I don't even have to invest a few minutes a day to log my food although you will find many successful maintainers on MyFitnessPal who do intend to log indefinitely. What's that - perhaps 5 minutes effort to stay a healthy weight? Not obsessive, just investing a little time for a huge positive benefit.

No I can't personally eat intuitively successfully but that's just setting an unreasonable benchmark to try and shore up a poor argument - I don't have to eat intuitively to be happy with my diet (noun) and my life.

I would suggest staying away from people with such low ambitions that they refuse even to try and try to drag others down by calling it "futile". To me the worst failure of all is the failure to try. Life is full of choices, some we get right, some we get wrong but can learn from them.

To give up making positive choices strikes me as very sad - and it's even worse to try and discourage others. If they have decided to accept being a failure then they should keep that to themselves and not try to drag down others.

PS - diet for weight loss doesn't have to be as restrictive or as miserable as you seem to think. Suggest you first learn how to maintain your weight. Once you have that skill nibbling off some calories in a myriad different ways is all it takes to lose. If "piling on weight" is your default that should be your focus to fix IMHO.

pink_mint · March 2020

Thanks for the replies, all.

To be clear, what I described is not my mindset. It's just something that I think about and I guess it troubles me. If I fully believed that trying to lose weight was pointless I wouldn't be here. MFP is vilified in some corners of the anti-diet, HAES, intuitive eating community.

I have learned about calories in/ calories out and that's what every method come down to anyway. The mental and emotional part of getting to a good energy intake/output balance is the hard part.

Weight loss certainly can be miserable. Disordered eating certainly does develop. I think that's where the criticism comes in. There are some who say having a healthy relationship with food is worth the high BMI. I understand what they're saying to an extent.

But I've decided to give it a good shot, losing then maintaining a healthy weight in a way where I can enjoy life while I'm doing it. I have faith it's possible.

Lietchi · March 2020

I think some people use certain ideas as an excuse to not even try to lose weight. "It's pointless, it's impossible, it's harmful," etc.

I had a few of those excuses myself before I started on MFP.
If you tackle your weight loss endeavor in the right way, it isn't pointless or harmful. I've actually found it way easier than I ever could have imagined.

Lillymoo01 · March 2020

pink_mint wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, all.

To be clear, what I described is not my mindset. It's just something that I think about and I guess it troubles me. If I fully believed that trying to lose weight was pointless I wouldn't be here. MFP is vilified in some corners of the anti-diet, HAES, intuitive eating community.

I have learned about calories in/ calories out and that's what every method come down to anyway. The mental and emotional part of getting to a good energy intake/output balance is the hard part.

Weight loss certainly can be miserable. Disordered eating certainly does develop. I think that's where the criticism comes in. There are some who say having a healthy relationship with food is worth the high BMI. I understand what they're saying to an extent.

MFP is a tool to help with weight loss, just as keto, IF, mindful eating etc are all tools. Like any tool, it can be helpful when used correctly, or it can lead to obsessions and an unhealthy relationship with food. If you want to be part of that small percentage that loses weight and keeps it off, you need to find out what works best and is most sustainable for you. There is no right or wrong here.

Psst it sounds like this body positivity group is just trying to find excuses for staying at a weight that is unhealthy. You should love yourself, regardless of your body type but that does not mean you should not make changes to achieve better health and fitness if that is what you want.

beulah81 · March 2020

I think I understand where you're coming from. I have at one point followed some body positivity / intuitive eating ideas. When you listen to proponents of that lifestyle it sounds very plausible and actually enticing. Eat when hungry, stop when satisfied and your body will settle at the weight that it's happy at. I've tried many, many times to make that work for me and it never EVER worked in the end. Without going into details, my eating became more disordered when I followed my intuition. Questions and thoughts like these constantly ran through my mind : Am I hungry? How about now? I can't believe I can be satisfied with such a small amount? Wow, I didn't realize my body was so hungry that I ate this much, that's okay it will all balance out in the end I'll be less hungry tomorrow!Yeah, my clothes is getting tighter but I guess my body was never meant to be on the thinner side.
Insanity!! My eating always became more disordered when my mindset was like that.
What I do now is this , I combine intuitive eating with calorie counting. I eat what I like within my caloric budget(I have weekly/sometimes bi-weekly calorie goal), I do not follow any latest and greatest diet. If I want to eat something I make room in my calorie budget and eat it. I made peace with that I am completely okay with budgeting my food just like I budget my money. I do not associate counting calories as something negative.
P.S. A little background on me....My BMI was over 34.6 at the age of 16. In my 20s I got down to BMI of 27-28 by eating "healthy" and moving more. I bounced around(I gave birth to 4 children from the ages of 21 and 30) that range for over a decade. At around 35 I decided I wanted to be lighter and more comfortable in my body. I didn't want my ankles to hurt at the end of the day, I wanted to be an energetic mom and an adventurous travelling companion to my family. Long story short, I am 38 years old, I am at my goal weight. My BMI ranges from 19-20(I am very small framed). I lost a big chunk of my weight through many unsustainable methods and eventually got introduced to CICO and decided it is the only way for me to stay at my desirable range.

pink_mint · March 2020

@beulah81 thanks so much. Yes, I think you can really relate.

What you've settled on is pretty much what I'm trying to do now. The things I've learned from intuitive eating plus CICO. It's really nice to be able to budget in chocolate cake and a heap of broccoli in the same day.

Here's to hoping it works well. I'm so happy it's worked for you.

We're all so different. I guess some of us are prone to getting a lot of "issues" with food. Because of some things in my past and growing up years, I'm easily drawn into black-and-white thinking with food. In some ways it was good to hear "screw dieting". But there's more to it than that.

Strudders67 · March 2020

Like beulah81, I make room for things that i want - cook a little less pasta for dinner than planned, pick out smaller potatoes, have fish instead of pork chop etc or I take the longer walk home or spend longer in the gym to 'earn' more calories to offset the cake that I didn't pre-log but decided to have. In general, I still eat pretty much what I ate before, but less of it. I can do this for the rest of my life.

And 1200 calories doesn't have to be chicken and kale every day. I had 5 ginger nut biscuits for breakfast (not a regular occurrence!), a small avocado on 2 slices of wholewheat bread for lunch and home-made moussaka plus some green beans for dinner. I've also had a couple of cups of tea with milk. My carbs finished on 103, which is fine, and my total calories for the day was 1218. I'm a bit lower on protein than I'd prefer, but my intake on Thursday, Friday and yesterday more than made up for that.

As for losing weight being futile, sure, I'd love to hear and think "screw dieting", but I'd say that reversing my diabetes was far from futile and I'd like to stay this way as the alternative isn't pretty. Having lost a reasonable amount of weight (two years on, I'm now very very close to my goal) I'm also putting less pressure on my knees, ankles etc. so I'm less likely to need surgery when I'm older.

AnnPT77 · March 2020

I think there will be some in every camp who (1) have extreme views about their own camp, (2) have extreme views about other camps with different views, (3) see things in very black and white terms, (4) believe that everyone else (on the inside) is just like them in many aspects of outlook and psychology but repressing their true feelings (or lying) if they say otherwise, and (5) more. I'm not saying everyone in any camp is any of those, or that most people in any camp are all of those, or whatever. I'm saying those are things that occur in some ways, in some people, some of the time.

There's a side of "diet culture" (for lack of a better term) that's pretty toxic, that fosters the "your human value is measured by your bodyweight and appearance" idea (to cartoon oversimplify it). That hurts some people, in profound ways. There's a side of "HAES culture" that fosters "weight loss is impossible and there's something wrong with you - or you are a hapless victim - if you even want to do it" thinking (again, cartoon oversimplification). That hurts some people, in profound ways. Sometimes, some people are hurt by both those things: Ugh.

To me, the extremes (and the cartoons/stereotypes about them, really) are just examples of not very nuanced, insightful thinking. They're not, to be a little judge-y -er, even very mature ways of thinking, IMO.

To get anywhere, I think we need to do the hard work of looking at ourselves and our lives, deciding what strengths we have, what goals we have, what tools we have to reach those goals; thinking about where we might need to either augment our personal toolkit (such as via professional help, but not exclusively that), or moderate our goals in some way. (<== not just about weight management). And more.

In that context, of thinking and working hard at understanding ourselves and who we really want to be, the movements and their extremes are just noise, not worth giving much mindshare.

In reality, movements are not monoliths. They're aggregations of individuals, who think and behave in quite diverse ways, even within the movement. Sure, there are written manifestos, and people who wave those at others, but the reality on the ground is more nuanced IMO.

Even with individuals in my life, I'm going to adopt different postures toward different people. I have one friend who's more at the "dieting is inherently destructive" end of the scale. I see that there's no approach I can make that will change her mind, so I don't try. She believes that no one should even talk about weight loss or dieting, because it's triggering for people who have poor relationship with food. I don't trumpet calorie counting as revealed truth to anyone (though I'll talk about it with friends who are genuinely interested, in as open and honest pros/cons way as I can manage). At the same time as not trumpeting, I'm not going to hide the fact that I've intentionally lost weight (and maintained the loss for several years now), if it's relevant in conversation. We don't have the right to wipe out others' views and histories, on any side of this. Respect is possible.

Sometimes, one of us may need to follow some movement as if it were a religion, for a bit, to get where we personally need to go. That's going to have to be OK, too. (I think we see a "new believer" effect here quite often here in the forums, the people on XYZ eating approach who've found "the way" and don't want to listen to any other view. Subjectively, I feel like most of those people either get offended and leave, maybe find "their people" in a subgroup; or moderate their thinking over time and become more flexible in their views (for others, if not for themselves); . . . or they don't succeed with their rigid life changes, feel like a failure, and quit. That last is sad, to me.)

Eek, I'm already rambling. Just gonna quit, now.

:drinker:

brenn24179 · March 2020

I could not do keto, too restrictive but I do eat 100 carbs or less and watch my calorie intake and it has worked well for me. I agree it does have to be something you can live with.

joyanna2016 · March 2020

What is HAES?

AnnPT77 · March 2020

joyanna2016 wrote: »

What is HAES?

Health at Every Size.

NovusDies · March 2020

I would challenge anyone who thinks weight loss is futile to tell me that to my face. I have lost over 200 pounds that were in many ways disabling me as well as setting the stage for an early death. I have gained freedom and my negative health conditions have either been reversed completely, mitigated, or halted in place.

Whether or not a person needs to lose weight requires some qualification. I am technically still obese but I am just over the line. My major health risks are behind me so now losing additional weight is not as serious as it was when I began 2 years ago. If it wasn't for my knees my chief motivation would be more about vanity and finishing what I started. However, getting lighter will help me keep my original knees longer. I was not in a major hurry to lose more but with my gym closing I might as well resume for now.

I imagine there are many other obese people who closer to overweight and still in pretty low risk but there are others that high enough to be in harm's way.

RunsWithBees · March 2020

“They” are wrong. I am proof. I am not special, you can do it too! Don’t make this harder on yourself than it needs to be. Just eat less and move more. That’s what I did. Lost my excess weight because I was beginning to show symptoms of obesity related diseases. I have reversed those and promised myself I will never go back. I’ve kept it off for over 6 years and I intend to do everything in my power to keep my promise, I know I can because I’m the only one that can. Just like you are the only one that determines what you do to achieve your goal, none of what those “experts” say has any power over you, only you do. Don’t cut out any foods you enjoy, just eat less of them and move more. You can do this, you really can.

rheddmobile · March 2020

I went from morbidly obese to normal BMI, which I have maintained for three years now. My bloodwork, despite my being diabetic, is now within normal range. I went from being a person who had difficultly walking to the mailbox to someone who last year ran an ultramarathon and frequently wins awards within my age group at smaller local races. I can now deadlift and squat my bodyweight.

So, I guess the next question is, do I have to practice obsessive behaviors in order to maintain my weight loss? And I guess that depends on what you consider obsessive. Old me would have considered it absurd that new me spends an average of two hours a day being active. (Not necessarily purposeful exercise, this includes walking and dancing.) Old me would be shocked at a life that never includes giant Coke Icees, whole boxes of grasshopper cookies, and half a large pizza eaten at one sitting. Certainly my mom, who has been obese most of her life and raised me to regard giant portions as normal, thinks my behavior is obsessive.

But a random slim, healthy person of my age (I’m 51) pulled off the street would not find my present behaviors obsessive. Normal healthy adults of healthy BMI typically don’t eat whole boxes of cookies at one sitting, they rarely eat pizza and when they do they don’t eat a whole large pizza all to themselves, and they lead active lives. There aren’t magic people who magically stay slim despite eating like hogs and then cursed obese people who get fat despite eating nothing but salad. What there mostly are are fat people lying to themselves about their own choices, and people who are not fat mostly behaving in moderate ways. Studies have found that obese people who claim to have slow metabolisms and to be unable to lose weight without excessive restriction typically have normal or even higher than usual metabolisms. And most telling, obese people who are given food with radioactive trackers are found to eat as much as three times as much as they record eating.

Being healthy at every size isn’t a thing. It may be that someone can find evidence that some rare individuals are healthy despite having large percentages of fat. Who cares? Are you personally one of those rare people? Some plus sized models look great despite being obese. Do you personally think you look great? I didn’t, I looked terrible when I was obese. And I was unhealthy. And I didn’t do fun things because I was unhealthy.

PAV8888 · March 2020

Obsessive is interesting.

Please note that I don't claim to have done all/most of the below, but I certainly know people who have and the general behaviours certainly model my own pre and post 2014

Is it obsessive to sit in your couch watching TV from 5pm to 12pm? Every day? after sitting on your butt from 8am till 4pm?

Is it obsessive to play PSx or XBOXz or ??? From 8am to 2am on Saturday and Sunday?

Is it obsessive to binge watch Game of Thrones, Startrek, Sex in the City, Friends, ?????, non stop for one, two, three, five+ days during a vacation, or as soon as you're home?

Is it obsessive to read a book start to finish without leaving your bed other than for bathroom or chips and soda?

Is it obsessive to consider a family bag of tortilla chips your normal snack and only eat salad with "a little bit" of olive oil, so now it is ok to have a pint of Haagen-Dazs since you only had salad for dinner?

Is it obsessive to run? Run every day? Run a marathon? Run an ultramarathon? Become a triathlete?

Is it obsessive to consider whether you feel like eating something? To allow your feelings to be influenced by the caloric value and satiety and nutritional attributes of your choices? To keep track of what you're eating, similarly to how you may keep track of your money if you're what is considered to be "financially prudent"?

Is it obsessive to stay shut in at home and have a panic attack if you do not know the calories of the food you might be eating or feel that you must attone for overeating by exercising off the calories? But what about going out for a walk after dinner?

The same behaviour can be obsessive or not depending on your inner dialogue.

The same behaviour looks different to you depending where you are.

All I know is that after a good 30 years of being overweight and obese I found myself limiting what I was doing, I found myself not doing things I thought I might have enjoyed doing under other circumstances, BECAUSE of my physical constraints.

I haven't watched TV since mid 2014. That time bracket has now become MFP and outdoor activities.

I don't feel much pain, or too obsessed by my choices. I am not sitting up at night missing my TV!

I do think that larger Caloric restrictions can trigger obsessive behaviour. So they have to be watched.

Not sure why I went into the obsession slant (I think a post above maybe?)

The doomed to fail argument reflects the low probability of long term success. In my opinion partially because people expect this either to be a limited time engagement or an instant make over.

There are three options when it comes to low probability of success ventures.

Don't try
Do what most people do
Try to avoid what most people do.

Most people try to lose as fast as possible by changing everything and hitching their horse to a golden way of eating and exercising.

Something breaks and the unsustainable effort is given up.

Or you succeed but lack of safeguards together with previous superhuman efforts leave you unable/unwilling to continue to fight for maintenance and you don't manage to settle into it. (Yes, it is my contention that after a large loss you will have to spend a long amount of time settling into maintenance, so making things easier on yourself whenever you can is a good strategy!)

I didn't even start with the goal of losing weight. Just small incremental improvements and moving the goal posts forward.

My first goal was to have no day with less than 5k steps over a calendar month (just above sedentary as I found out much later). Took me a full 3 months to get there. And I already had a dog!

Knowing what I know now, I would suggest, strongly that you should be viewing this as a five year self improvement commitment, reviewable and renewable every year for five more

Don't try shortcuts, hit @NovusDies 's group, and take your time. Prepare to keep going for at least 3 years after maintenance.

Is this obsessive and too much?

It is work. Work I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy. Immensely.

Being obese was also work. Carefully picking my chair so that I wouldn't break it and fall on my butt, again. Work that I was no longer enjoying after breaking one too many chairs.

Danp · March 2020

I think 97% of people fail because they try to fix decades of weight gain in 6 months
I think 97% of people fail because they've been lied to and sold a convenient lie about how to really go about managing their weight
I think 97% of people fail because they go from eating 5000cal of foods they love and want to eating 1200cals of 'health' foods they think they should force themselves to eat overnight
I think 97% of people fail because they decide they need to lose weight and immediately hit the pavement or the gym
I think 97% of people fail because they make knee-jerk changes that can't be maintained longer than a few months
I think 97% of people fail because they think they need to punish themselves in order to 'earn' their weight loss and can only stand being miserable for so long
I think 97% of people fail because they look for every possible external factor they can find to absolve themselves of blame for where they are and refuse to take responsibility for their situation robbing them of the power to do something about it
I think 97% of people fail because they rely long term on motivation and will power.

But mostly, I think 97% of people fail because they're trying to 'fix' rather than 'change'.

As for the whole HAES thing. I think that's just insidious, harmful and just plain wrong. Weather it's someone obese from over consuming calories or someone underweight and starving themselves, telling someone that they're 'Healthy at any size' is just straight up irresponsible and factually wrong.

Do I think overweight/underweight people should be bullied, ridiculed, belittled and harassed? Of course not! But I also don't think it should be celebrated or encouraged.

I think the biggest problem with the body positivity movement, or at least the biggest problem I have with it is that it is detrimental to people who want to and are trying to fix their weight problem. It provides them with a convenient lie they can tell themselves so they can fail without taking responsibility. It gives them a whole bunch of 'outs' so they can give up or not try without the inconvenience of guilt or personal responsibility. It's an anaesthetic that makes failing or not trying hurt less but it also dulls and hampers the very thing that's needed to make the changes required.

amusedmonkey · March 2020

pink_mint wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, all.

To be clear, what I described is not my mindset. It's just something that I think about and I guess it troubles me. If I fully believed that trying to lose weight was pointless I wouldn't be here. MFP is vilified in some corners of the anti-diet, HAES, intuitive eating community.

I have learned about calories in/ calories out and that's what every method come down to anyway. The mental and emotional part of getting to a good energy intake/output balance is the hard part.

Weight loss certainly can be miserable. Disordered eating certainly does develop. I think that's where the criticism comes in. There are some who say having a healthy relationship with food is worth the high BMI. I understand what they're saying to an extent.

But I've decided to give it a good shot, losing then maintaining a healthy weight in a way where I can enjoy life while I'm doing it. I have faith it's possible.

That's because their experience is limited to restrictive dieting circles and approaches. They're pulling generalizations out of a limited pool of cases that supports their case. They're wearing blinders to all the posts that encourage a moderate mindset: a healthy relationship with food while working on your management and coping skills to be at a normal BMI, or at least at the lowest sustainable higher BMI. Disordered eating patterns are usually called out and the poster is encouraged to adopt a mentally healthier approach or seek help.

I have lost a very large amount of weight and I'm currently maintaining it. I have not crash dieted at all and it took me nearly 7 years of slowly and comfortably developing the exact skills I need to maintain the weight I want. I haven't changed much about what I eat, but I had to change how I eat it.

Learning what contributed the most to my daily calories allowed me to look at it objectively and think if it's really worth spending that many calories on those items or if I could be just as happy spending fewer calories. I was able, with time, to learn the easiest and most sustainable calorie management skills for me as an individual. When I choose to skip a meal or have a lower calorie meal in certain situations, I don't experience any feelings that can be described as disordered. I'm looking forward to a high calorie meal that I love, I'm not "punishing myself", I enjoy the meal fully and feel content with zero guilt. I can choose to eat any food, with no restrictions, if I feel it's worth it.

Think of it as working with a limited money budget. If that expensive dress is worth it, you'll happily spend less on things that don't feel as important to you. Do you think managing your finances is disordered? There is a big difference between successful management to comfortably live within your means and disordered obsession.

ETA:
I'm actually maintaining an overweight BMI by choice. Reasonable people are maintaining weights that they can reasonably sustain. Not everyone is striving for unrealistic for them results as they would have you believe. The only difference between intuitive eating extremists at a high BMI and those who strive for a sustainable lower BMI is that the latter group does not throw its hands up in the air and deem themselves helpless. They understand that, just like anything else, there is a learning curve and skills to work on to achieve a sustainable balance. The set of skills I managed to develop made a 140 lb difference without affecting my mental health, and they made a huge difference to my physical health (much lower blood sugar and blood pressure).

seafusion · March 2020

Ive been doing the keto diet for nearly 4 years and was down to 52kg from 58kg. I started working out 6 weeks ago doing hiit and weights and now im a fat 63kgs. I even have a fat jelly belly gut. Its so disheartening and makes me lose motivation. Thinking about giving up on working out altogether.

lgfrie · March 2020

Supposedly, it's 15 % that lose the weight and maintain it, not 3 %. If it were 3 %, well, that'd be a very challenging notion for anyone launching a weight loss effort. But at the more commonly accepted 15 %, you have a 1 in 6 chance of losing the weight and keeping it off. In any new venture, weight loss or otherwise, not everyone's going to end up in the winner's circle. One in six is actually pretty good odds compared to some other things in life, like starting a business. There are many successful business owners, even though the failure rate is 90+ %. We'd be living in caves if everyone was afraid to start a business due to most of them failing. The odds of getting a novel published are one in thousands, but there are plenty of novelists. And so on. You can't just hide from things because they might not work out. That isn't living.

A lot of diets are predestined for failure and kinda -- hate to be judgmental about it but I'll just say it -- stupid. As in: Starve yourself on 1000 calories. Give up a lifetime of gorging on hamburgers and pizza overnight to nibble on bland salads and such. Lose weight as fast as you possibly can. Punish yourself for past eating sins by eating foods you don't like that'll supposedly make you thin, and supplement them with unpleasant things like cider vinegar and chalky diet shakes. Eliminate pasta and bread because they have carbs. Eliminate treats because they're "fattening". Eliminate healthy fats because they're fat. Keep track of anything except the one thing that matters - calories; count points, or macros, or stars in the sky, but never calories, because counting calories is bad. And so on and so forth.

Figure 3/4 of all dieters are stuck on those stupid diets that can't possibly be maintained over time, because they're unpleasant and constitute little more than self-punishment for getting obese. So do the math. 75 of 100 dieters are the Walking Diet Dead; they just don't know it, or they know and do it anyway. Of the remaining 25, who do it right, gradually and gently losing weight, counting calories strictly, eating familiar foods they like in reasonable portions, plodding along and taking a break now and then, 15 dieters - the magic 15 % out of the original hundred, who lose the weight and keep it off - constitute 60 %.

So, do it right and you have a 60 % chance of losing the weight and keeping it off.

Yes, these numbers are completely ridiculous and absurd. They are as absurd as "only 3 % / 15 % / x % lose the weight and keep it off".

Of course it does not matter what the other 97 or 85 people in your cohort of 100 did, whether they starved themselves on kale and gained all the weight back, or not. It only matters what YOU do. And any person can adopt a mild, gradual, sensible diet, lose weight, and learn new habits to give themselves the best possible chance of not gaining it back. There are people from all walks of life, all shapes and sizes, all backgrounds, who lose weight and maintain. Anyone can be part of that group, with some determination and discipline and a willingness to keep fine-tuning to get it right. 10 months into my diet, I am still fine-tuning my relaxed days and off meals to get the right balance of things to make it all work; it's a work in progress, and probably always will be.

So buck up, get on the horse, eat a reasonable, non-punitive number of calories consisting of foods you love, and watch the scale go down. Keep things moderate so that you don't rebel by ending up face down in an extra-cheese pizza, and plod along, learning new habits and leaving the old obese ones behind. It can be done, of course, and has been done by many millions. You are not a statistic, you are one person and any one person can do this.

The notion that trying to lose weight is pointless and harmful

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