How To Start Off Wrong (from member experiences)
Replies
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My list:
1) Cheat meals - undoing an entire week of dieting in an hour.
2) The slippery slope of perfectionism, aka "black or white" thinking.
By which I mean:
Going a few hundred calories over quota and thinking, "Well, the day's no longer perfectly compliant, so I'll just shoot for break even ... which entitles me to another 300 calories", which leads to eating 3 of 7 cookies in the pantry, and then "it's no longer a diet day, so I guess I'll have the last 4 cookies", which leads to "Now I'm over maintenance, I'll just restart tomorrow," which leads to eating everything in the house, which goes past midnight, which leads to waking up the next day thinking that that day too is shot because it already started badly at 12:01 am, which leads to ... 2 years later, starting all over from a much higher weight.
Lesson I learned: If it's either diet perfection or insane binging, the diet is already dead. Gotta learn to be happy with "did fairly well today". A B+ day is still a B+ not an F.
3) Trying to make up for overeating with excessive exercise, instead of addressing my weight issues at the source: the food that goes into my mouth.
4) Making too big a deal about food even while successfully dieting - such as, spending hours or chunks of hours planning out and talking about the next meal - thus never breaking that obese person habit of thinking/planning/dreaming/wanting/craving/needing food constantly. Even while successfully dieting, spending the whole day thinking about the next meal, very understandable given the often-a-little-hungry nature of dieting, contains the seeds of a future diet breakdown.
5) Keeping garbage foods in the house because "I've got everything under control; I've proven myself, so why shouldn't I have a bag of chocolate fudge cookies for when I want ONE cookie". Works great until it doesn't work. Replace with grapes LOL
And finally ...
6) Thinking I was "cured" of obesity behavior because I'd lost a bunch of weight. The opposite is the truth - I am an obese person by nature and if I weighed 140 pounds I'd still be one. Learning that was a huge epiphany for me. You don't suddenly get to some weight and then voila, you're a different person and don't need to log/count/self-monitor/exercise/eat carefully anymore. It's like an alcoholic who hasn't had a drink in a year thinking he isn't an alcoholic anymore so he can just go into a bar and just get a Diet Coke. All my best laid plans about counting calories, eating right, blah blah, can come unwound in 5 minutes if I forget that just having lost weight does not mean I am immune to obesity. Sit me down in an Italian restaurant, put a bottle of wine and an extra large pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni in front of me, and guess what, it's like I was never on a diet - I can revert to my true self in seconds. Constant vigilance is needed and will always be needed, forever.
exactly that!0 -
Listening to people who enabled you to use a health issue as an excuse. I have hypothyroidism and for years I heard why try to lose weight it will never happen you have thyroid problems.
No confident enough to say NO when someone else insists that you have that sweet treat. Well after all it’s only one and you are insulting me and my fine baking skills if you don’t eat one( all the while you are thinking I just had a sweet treat)
Mindset. We need to get rid of all the excuses, the I can’t today, and the enablers. We need to focus on Yes I can. Yes I will. And admit bad days come but they also go. Every day is a new day for new choices.
We need to stop beating ourselves up to the point we get depressed and in a bad mental state.
This was hard for me in 2016 when I met goal. Here I am this year and back at it again. This time I’m more confident. That being said my biggest struggle is the enablers ( thankfully they don’t live in my house)8 -
I find it really interesting, the posts about the psychology of obesity - i.e. that people overeat due to various existential issues in their lives, emptiness, lack of control, needing to assert control, etc.
Lost in all that is a subset of people I feel I belong to - people who don't have existential issues in their lives. I mean, I'm pretty happy, content, relaxed, I'm where I want to be on this giant orb. I wasn't overeating to fill holes in my life or to assert control or because of feelings of helplessness or anything like that. I just massively prefer beef fajitas with extra queso and a side of guac with extra tortillas, to grilled tilapia with steamed broccoli. Having an apple at night is OK - no problem with that - but what I really want are big sacks of chocolate chip cookies. Because they taste so good. Maybe I'm lying to myself but I don't think there's any psychology driving that craving. They just taste good, and I want them. Lots of them. And they're readily available, within walking distance. At a hundred stores within a 5 minute drive. Or on a thousands stores on the Internet. We are surrounded 24x7 by things that are absolutely delicious and calorically mega-dense. That has been true for only the last roughly 50 years of our 4 million year history as a species - it's kinda new, and some of us have a problem dealing with it.
For we in the "no major life issues; just like to binge on food" camp, I'm thinking it boils down to this. Dieting is, in essence, a trade off of short term pleasure for long term gain. We humans are CONSTANTLY having to make this tradeoff. I will buy the cheaper car so I can save money for college/kids/retirement. I will take a local vacation instead of going to France so I can beef up my 401k. I will work out 3x a week for 40 years so I don't turn into one of those 55-60 year olds with bad hips and high BP and diabetes. I will study even though my friends are out partying, so I don't get a bad grade so that I eventually get a good job offer. On and on it goes. It's what separates us from most animals, who cannot conceive of not eating all the treats for some future gain - they simply eat what's in front of them. We have a 3 mm thick neocortex of higher-order thinking that makes self-discipline possible, doing constant battle with approximately 86 billion neurons all screaming "I WANT IT NOW". And a lot of the time, in most areas of life, we do a decent job of investing in our own future, because we were designed to.
But then you get to food, and here's the problem as I see it. A large, delicious piece of chocolate cake has around 600 calories. That's about 1/6 of a pound of fat. Which isn't really much in the grand scheme of things. But it tastes so f'ing good. It tastes better than a 1/6th of a pound of fat feels bad. The end-goal, so distant, of being at whatever weight we want to be, is so far off - it's really a slog to push toward that distant goal day after day after day. So what we have is an imbalance: an extremely high short-term pleasure/reward and a goal that can be distant and start to seem abstract as the diet wears on and on - years, for some people. Dieting means pushing through this lopsided equation every single day. Some of us succeed, some don't, some succeed but then are so worn out from fighting the impulses that the weight all comes back. Regardless of outcome, it seems to me that is the issue in play: one's ability, sometimes wavering, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, to sacrifice short term pleasure for long term gain.
I don't think you need to be empty, hopeless, anxious, despondent, or anything else to become obese. You just have to be someone who's had difficulty giving up short-term rewards for a long-term goal. Hopefully you find a system or approach that makes it easier to do so, and that's where diets come in. No wonder it's a 10's of billion dollar industry. You can be a perfectly normal, well adjusted person and still end up 100 or 150 pounds overweight. Easily.35 -
janejellyroll wrote: »These run the range from age 16-mid 30s (when I finally began calorie counting)
1. "Kickstart" with an all liquid diet
2. Any kind of plan that encouraged the thinking that the day was "ruined" if I had the wrong foods or ate at the wrong time
3. Less than 1,000 calories a day
4. Eliminating caffeine just because I thought it would keep me from losing weight
5. Raw veganism
6. Extremely low fat diet
7. Exercise as punishment
8. IF to manage weight while ignoring calories consumed or how it fit my preferences/lifestyle
9. Slimfast
10. "Smoking is an appetite suppressant, right?"
So many of these were on my list..and to add to #2, Thinking my whole diet plan was "ruined" if I ate something "bad", so I may as well just quit because I "screwed up".3 -
dragon_girl26 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »These run the range from age 16-mid 30s (when I finally began calorie counting)
1. "Kickstart" with an all liquid diet
2. Any kind of plan that encouraged the thinking that the day was "ruined" if I had the wrong foods or ate at the wrong time
3. Less than 1,000 calories a day
4. Eliminating caffeine just because I thought it would keep me from losing weight
5. Raw veganism
6. Extremely low fat diet
7. Exercise as punishment
8. IF to manage weight while ignoring calories consumed or how it fit my preferences/lifestyle
9. Slimfast
10. "Smoking is an appetite suppressant, right?"
So many of these were on my list..and to add to #2, Thinking my whole diet plan was "ruined" if I ate something "bad", so I may as well just quit because I "screwed up".
Yep, that was me for so long. Telling myself I'd have no cookies (or whatever), have a single cookie, and then eat the rest of the bag because I'd already destroyed my entire diet.0 -
Others have alluded to this, but listening to and friending those that constantly fail or fall of the wagon or believe in myths (like it's all genetic or "I'm suffering from starvation mode") is the surest way to fail.
I guess I'm lucky in I picked people that I wanted to have success like in my online accountability buddies. People that logged religiously, people that worked out consistently.
The only "failure" I've had is stopping logging food too soon the first time -- I logged religiously for over two years into maintenance.
I'm very much a believer in personal accountability, though. That's an important step in weight loss.5 -
I am going to be a bad mod and mildly bash the MFP system:
For me, the NEAT system MFP is based off of really doesn't work well for me. I end up hyper-fixated on calories and exercise burns and end up missing my goal (or just throwing it out the window) when its a constantly moving target. A TDEE system works way better for my brain, especially if I go the extra step and prelog a bit, I guess I need the consistency and to make myself let go of the numbers a bit. I do love MFP for the logging capabilities and forums, but I don't really use it "as intended" anymore.12 -
4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »I am going to be a bad mod and mildly bash the MFP system:
For me, the NEAT system MFP is based off of really doesn't work well for me. I end up hyper-fixated on calories and exercise burns and end up missing my goal (or just throwing it out the window) when its a constantly moving target. A TDEE system works way better for my brain, especially if I go the extra step and prelog a bit, I guess I need the consistency and to make myself let go of the numbers a bit. I do love MFP for the logging capabilities and forums, but I don't really use it "as intended" anymore.
I think you bring up something else that I've gotten wrong in the past: Assuming that because something worked for someone else, it will work for me and that if it doesn't, that means I'm messed up.
For me, NEAT was a revolution in how I approached my energy needs and I always recommend that new users at least consider it . . . but that doesn't mean it is going to be the solution that everyone needs or enjoys.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how successful NEAT is for others, you know it doesn't work for you. I spent a lot of time trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole and thinking I was broken because the stuff that worked for other people (IF, low carbohydrate, raw veganism) didn't work for me.
All we can really do is keep an open mind to trying new things, but know how to identify when something isn't working and we need to try something else. To me, the most important part of weight management is that process of learning what strategies are essential for us, which are useful, which don't help at all, and which are actually harmful to us personally.7 -
I used to take it personally that my body can't eat the amount of food that I want to eat and stay at a healthy size. I would start a diet or program and quietly resent it the whole time. It was partly because I had no education on nutrition or weight. I really thought that thin people were just luckier than I am and could eat anything they wanted and stay thin. I knew I was overeating, but I thought that everyone else did too and that I was just cursed by nature or something. My entire view of weight and my body was based on a feeling of helplessness. For someone who appreciates science and reason, it was brought to my attention by a friend that I was letting something that was purely biological have control over my life. I decided to empower myself with knowledge about nutrition and fitness. I even got a certification as an ACE personal trainer, though I never had a chance to train professionally. Now I look at food and exercise as maintenance on the biological machine that is my body. I now understand that it isn't personal or a curse and I'm not helpless. I have the information and ability to change my body for the better.
Not to say that I don't have emotions attached to food. I do and I enjoy and indulge. I just no longer shame myself and let myself spin out when I eat more than I intended. I just mark it down and keep trying to hit my targets tomorrow and the next days. One of the best pieces of advice I can give is that consistency over time is the most important factor in success in fitness and weight loss. A few slices of cake here and there won't be catastrophic anymore because you know tomorrow you will be back to your usual life. I think I enjoy things like cake or ice cream more now because I feel in control when I enjoy it. When I was heavier, I would hate myself with every bite.12 -
4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »I am going to be a bad mod and mildly bash the MFP system:
For me, the NEAT system MFP is based off of really doesn't work well for me. I end up hyper-fixated on calories and exercise burns and end up missing my goal (or just throwing it out the window) when its a constantly moving target. A TDEE system works way better for my brain, especially if I go the extra step and prelog a bit, I guess I need the consistency and to make myself let go of the numbers a bit. I do love MFP for the logging capabilities and forums, but I don't really use it "as intended" anymore.
As a premium member, I get my choice of NEAT or TDEE (in MFP-ese, I can choose to have or not to have the exercise calories added to my food calorie quota for the day). I started with NEAT but switched to TDEE and never looked back. I much prefer having a consistent daily calorie target to work towards. It's always the same, I know what tomorrow's quota will be, and I can plan my meals accordingly. However, I do get that NEAT+exercise works very well for many people, and I did that for months.4 -
4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »I am going to be a bad mod and mildly bash the MFP system:
For me, the NEAT system MFP is based off of really doesn't work well for me. I end up hyper-fixated on calories and exercise burns and end up missing my goal (or just throwing it out the window) when its a constantly moving target. A TDEE system works way better for my brain, especially if I go the extra step and prelog a bit, I guess I need the consistency and to make myself let go of the numbers a bit. I do love MFP for the logging capabilities and forums, but I don't really use it "as intended" anymore.
I hate the NEAT system. I am using it currently because at the moment it is a better way to manage myself.
For most of my weight loss - most of 2 years and in excess of 250 pounds - I have used my spreadsheet to determine TDEE and updated MFP as needed.
I miss TDEE and the consistent calorie count. It was SO much easier and I rarely had remnant calories that had to be eaten unless I made a logging error that created a positive balance. With my activity level being higher now and my fat stores being lower I can't get away with banking as much as I could before. There was a time I never cared if I left 400 more calories uneaten until the next day. Now single day steep deficits can leave me wiped out. I have to be so careful because I do not eat too close to bed for fear of acid reflux.
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I find it really interesting, the posts about the psychology of obesity - i.e. that people overeat due to various existential issues in their lives, emptiness, lack of control, needing to assert control, etc.
Lost in all that is a subset of people I feel I belong to - people who don't have existential issues in their lives. I mean, I'm pretty happy, content, relaxed, I'm where I want to be on this giant orb. I wasn't overeating to fill holes in my life or to assert control or because of feelings of helplessness or anything like that.
(much good analysis snipped by reply-er, for length)
I don't think you need to be empty, hopeless, anxious, despondent, or anything else to become obese. You just have to be someone who's had difficulty giving up short-term rewards for a long-term goal. Hopefully you find a system or approach that makes it easier to do so, and that's where diets come in. No wonder it's a 10's of billion dollar industry. You can be a perfectly normal, well adjusted person and still end up 100 or 150 pounds overweight. Easily.
@lgfrie, though we differ dramatically in other ways, this is how I feel, too. Not emotionally fraught in any signficant way when it comes to food, just find that it's pleasurable, and will overeat. The "be nice to future self" idea is part of my current buy-in to maintaining.
One thing I tnink is weird: So often, people here say things like "you have a budget for your money, why wouldn't you have one for your calories"? I can do fine with "intuitive spending" (have almost never had any kind of formal budget, and disaster has never occurred - quite the reverse, despite not being remotely wealthy). But "intuitive eating"? That's a train wreck, for me. If I don't have a calorie budget, I *will* gain weight, to a low-obese level (based on history), where I pretty much stabilize.4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »I am going to be a bad mod and mildly bash the MFP system:
For me, the NEAT system MFP is based off of really doesn't work well for me. I end up hyper-fixated on calories and exercise burns and end up missing my goal (or just throwing it out the window) when its a constantly moving target. A TDEE system works way better for my brain, especially if I go the extra step and prelog a bit, I guess I need the consistency and to make myself let go of the numbers a bit. I do love MFP for the logging capabilities and forums, but I don't really use it "as intended" anymore.
I can see how that works, for some people.
Me, I loveLoveLOVE the NEAT system. I think it's part of what made weight loss this time manageable and sensible for me.
My exercise is seasonally variable, and (in Winter especially), I go through phases where I don't work out much at all, comparatively speaking. It completely works well for me to add exercise separately. I can maintain or lose pretty easily, with or without exercise, and I really appreciate how the NEAT system makes it easy and straightforward. I'm pretty sure I could maintain or lose in general on a TDEE system if I had to, but it would be annoying as a practical matter, and much more stressful - there would be more/wilder fluctuations and guessing, for me . . . and my fluctuations are pretty big already, from combining calorie banking with occasional indulgent eating.2 -
1. Assuming there was one perfect diet, and it had to be the most popular or trendy one.
2. Committing myself to diets that I didn't really want to do because either everyone else was doing it, promised quick amazing results, or a combo of the two. I didn't want to miss out on possible success!
3. Committing myself to diets to gain outside approval (hey look I'm doing x diet. That's proves I'm good and worthy and really taking control of things! )
4. Jumping between diets multiple times in a week or combining them.
5. The binge before rach diet change
6. Overeating and overestimating exercise calories
7. Over exercise to repair or earn a binge
8. Ignoring hunger cues and going strictly by the numbers. Eating extra because what the heck I have the calories.
9. Not looking at my own record of success and sticking with what worked for me.
10. Not seeking help or advocating for ED treatment earlier. Now that I'm in treatment I'm advocating for my desire to learn to eat normally again and stop further weight gain. I'm not willing to continue gaining through recovery. I'm already on the edge of obese and I'm worried about my physical health as well as the depression and anxiety it is causing. I'm working with an RD on this end.7 -
Really interesting thread.
For me the problem was believing all of that rubbish about intuitive eating. Like it was a moral failing that I didn't just know how to just eat healthy foods and be the right weight. For me I've been obese since I was about 9 and had significant patches of anorexic behaviour during my teenage years so I don't have normal hunger or satiation responses. People who haven't been through that just don't get it. You see a lot on here where people are getting back to a healthy weight. For me (and I'm sure others) when I first reached normal weight it was the first time in my memory I'd ever been there. I had to learn how to eat from a completely different base. It lead me to regain when I became pregnant and stopped logging because I had been finding logging so easy surely that meant I was now an intuitive eater.
The feeling at the beginning that I should be able to just intuitively eat and that I clearly just didn't understand food if I didn't (for the record my diet has been very healthy whilst I still put weight on) lead to binges and restrictions.
Another thing was that I believed that if I solved my emotional worries I'd find everything easy. Actually being happier was a huge thing and helped me to have the energy to motivate etc. However it didn't solve the fact that it takes a huge amount of food for me to feel too full. It doesn't solve the fact that I can eat tiny amounts and not really feel very hungry. I need to count calories to both eat enough and to not eat too much. But that's OK.7 -
Geneveremfp wrote: »
Another thing was that I believed that if I solved my emotional worries I'd find everything easy. Actually being happier was a huge thing and helped me to have the energy to motivate etc. However it didn't solve the fact that it takes a huge amount of food for me to feel too full. It doesn't solve the fact that I can eat tiny amounts and not really feel very hungry. I need to count calories to both eat enough and to not eat too much. But that's OK.
Yes, I have learned that certain mental states do make me want to turn to food for comfort (specifically mild anxiety). And I am certainly prone to disordered eating in certain circumstances (specifically with a poorly designed diet plan or other forms of excessive restriction). But even when things are 100% peachy keen in my life, I just love food, specifically eating large amounts of it. I'm one of those people who can be having a great day and I want to celebrate it with food. When I remember great days in the past, I can usually remember what I ate. When my family is planning get-togethers, I'm usually the one volunteering to help coordinate the food. What you write (and what @Igfrie wrote above) really resonates.
When my anxiety is under control, it's certainly easier to do all the things that make weight management easier (planning meals appropriately, getting enough sleep, getting regular activity). But my desire to over-eat will still be there because to me it just *feels* nice. I've had to learn how to consistently prioritize my longer term goals over that shorter term goal of "mmm, all the cookies."5 -
Geneveremfp wrote: »Really interesting thread.
For me the problem was believing all of that rubbish about intuitive eating. Like it was a moral failing that I didn't just know how to just eat healthy foods and be the right weight. For me I've been obese since I was about 9 and had significant patches of anorexic behaviour during my teenage years so I don't have normal hunger or satiation responses. People who haven't been through that just don't get it. You see a lot on here where people are getting back to a healthy weight. For me (and I'm sure others) when I first reached normal weight it was the first time in my memory I'd ever been there. I had to learn how to eat from a completely different base. It lead me to regain when I became pregnant and stopped logging because I had been finding logging so easy surely that meant I was now an intuitive eater.
The feeling at the beginning that I should be able to just intuitively eat and that I clearly just didn't understand food if I didn't (for the record my diet has been very healthy whilst I still put weight on) lead to binges and restrictions.
Another thing was that I believed that if I solved my emotional worries I'd find everything easy. Actually being happier was a huge thing and helped me to have the energy to motivate etc. However it didn't solve the fact that it takes a huge amount of food for me to feel too full. It doesn't solve the fact that I can eat tiny amounts and not really feel very hungry. I need to count calories to both eat enough and to not eat too much. But that's OK.
Something I was told about IE was that it did not guarantee weight loss or a desired weight. Pretty much IE is you eat without judgement or restrictions according to hunger and satiety signals (which take time to regulate), and your weight will sort out at its natural set point. Along my journey those set points were much higher than I desired, which implies some level of reduction in intake is necessary for me to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.1 -
New_Heavens_Earth wrote: »Something I was told about IE was that it did not guarantee weight loss or a desired weight. Pretty much IE is you eat without judgement or restrictions according to hunger and satiety signals (which take time to regulate), and your weight will sort out at its natural set point. Along my journey those set points were much higher than I desired, which implies some level of reduction in intake is necessary for me to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
I had the very worst dieting experience of my entire life with Intuitive Eating, the "don't count calories, just listen to your body" thing. I not only gained weight while doing IE, but gained much more weight when I stopped doing it. It was an unmitigated disaster.
I try to be as non-judgmental as possible about diet strategies. I mean, the low carb thing seems pointless to me unless you have blood sugar issues or dislike carbs, but who am I to judge? Lots and lots of people lose weight doing low carb, keto, grapefruit diets, Meditteranean, Weight Watchers, whatever. In the end, these are all just tools to help you exert control over your urge to eat. Every diet out there works for someone. Calorie counting works best for many but in the end it's just another way to get you not to put that next donut in your mouth, right?
BUT ... I really find it hard to be non-judgmental about intuitive eating. At least insofar as it's hoisted onto obese people as a panacea (not having been Normal BMI in 35 years I can't speak to IE's usefulness for fit people). So anyway, here we have obese people. People who, by definition, have not been able to eat the right amount of food - for whatever reason, anxiety, depression, bad habits, low self esteem, or because food tastes really really good LOL Whatever the reason, an obese person is a person who has not been - possibly for their entire lives - "full" or "satisfied" with a maintenance level of calories; if they were, they wouldn't be obese. I know that in my case, "fully satisfied" for a full day, as in "I don't want any more food, and even if it was sitting in front of me, I probably wouldn't eat any more of it" requires around 3,500-4,000 calories. I am NEVER fully satisfied either at my diet quota or at my maintenance calories. I tolerate it, feel reasonably sated a decent amount of the time, hungry some other times, and that's the best I can do. It's hard for me to imagine, though possible, that other obese people feel differently. The whole nature of obesity is that obese people are people who haven't been satisfied at maintenance calories; otherwise they wouldn't be obese.
Why would anything think an obese person with a lifetime of overeating can just "listen to his body"? When I listen to my body here's what it says: FEED ME, NOW. It says that often, and sometimes loudly. For me, dieting is the process of learning to ignore what it's saying and developing the mental habits and toolkit to cotinue doing so. My goal is to ignore my annoyingly cloying, ravenous, food-greedy inner voice so I can get to and remain a healthy weight.
I'll stick with calorie counting.7 -
New_Heavens_Earth wrote: »Something I was told about IE was that it did not guarantee weight loss or a desired weight. Pretty much IE is you eat without judgement or restrictions according to hunger and satiety signals (which take time to regulate), and your weight will sort out at its natural set point. Along my journey those set points were much higher than I desired, which implies some level of reduction in intake is necessary for me to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
I had the very worst dieting experience of my entire life with Intuitive Eating, the "don't count calories, just listen to your body" thing. I not only gained weight while doing IE, but gained much more weight when I stopped doing it. It was an unmitigated disaster.
I try to be as non-judgmental as possible about diet strategies. I mean, the low carb thing seems pointless to me unless you have blood sugar issues or dislike carbs, but who am I to judge? Lots and lots of people lose weight doing low carb, keto, grapefruit diets, Meditteranean, Weight Watchers, whatever. In the end, these are all just tools to help you exert control over your urge to eat. Every diet out there works for someone. Calorie counting works best for many but in the end it's just another way to get you not to put that next donut in your mouth, right?
BUT ... I really find it hard to be non-judgmental about intuitive eating. At least insofar as it's hoisted onto obese people as a panacea (not having been Normal BMI in 35 years I can't speak to IE's usefulness for fit people). So anyway, here we have obese people. People who, by definition, have not been able to eat the right amount of food - for whatever reason, anxiety, depression, bad habits, low self esteem, or because food tastes really really good LOL Whatever the reason, an obese person is a person who has not been - possibly for their entire lives - "full" or "satisfied" with a maintenance level of calories; if they were, they wouldn't be obese. I know that in my case, "fully satisfied" for a full day, as in "I don't want any more food, and even if it was sitting in front of me, I probably wouldn't eat any more of it" requires around 3,500-4,000 calories. I am NEVER fully satisfied either at my diet quota or at my maintenance calories. I tolerate it, feel reasonably sated a decent amount of the time, hungry some other times, and that's the best I can do. It's hard for me to imagine, though possible, that other obese people feel differently. The whole nature of obesity is that obese people are people who haven't been satisfied at maintenance calories; otherwise they wouldn't be obese.
Why would anything think an obese person with a lifetime of overeating can just "listen to his body"? When I listen to my body here's what it says: FEED ME, NOW. It says that often, and sometimes loudly. For me, dieting is the process of learning to ignore what it's saying and developing the mental habits and toolkit to cotinue doing so. My goal is to ignore my annoyingly cloying, ravenous, food-greedy inner voice so I can get to and remain a healthy weight.
I'll stick with calorie counting.
This is me in a nutshell... I eat because food tastes good, so more is better! My intuitive eating (listening to my body signals) puts me somewhere between 265 and 275 on the scale... only problem is that I'm 5'8" so that weight really, really doesn't work for me. The only way I can keep this in check is to count and be very aware of what and how much I am eating.
To take this back to the original topic:
1. Lack of patience
2. Lack of consistency
3. Lack of direction
Those are the 3 biggest mistakes that I made in starting the journey.2 -
Diet:
1. I totally underestimated how important moderation is.
2. I didn't read nutrition labels.
3. I didn't track what I ate on MFP
4. I didn't start by figuring out my RMR, and just used the standard:
2000 calories - whatever = Weight loss
5. I overloaded on proteins, thinking my body would absorb everything from a 6-oz steak in one sitting.
6. I'd start off meals with bread at a restaurant, when I was hungry. Sugar-spike!
7. I didn't realize there's a proper way to eat your food. The timing, and the order of it.
8. Didn't realize I could get fit from just bodyweight exercises and resistance bands till quarantine.
9. Didn't realize walking everywhere witha heavy backpack was actually making me stronger.
10. Didnt realize I could be under 200lbs again (I'm 5'11".)
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1. Going back and forth between torture and free-for-all with food.
2. Thinking there must be some totally deprivation -free way to lose weight.
3. Keto. It "worked" but it is just not sustainable. I cannot live the rest of my entire life like that and as soon as I reintroduced carbs I blew up.
4. Intuitive eating. My "set point" must be morbidly obese because intuitive eating was simply a means to rapid and out of control weight gain.
5. Believing there was some secret trick to weight loss. Like solving a Rubiks cube.
6. Thinking there's just something wrong with me physically and I might as well not bother.
7. Impatience.2
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