How To Start Off Wrong (from member experiences)
Replies
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Skipped legs
Didn't eat properly (thought lifting weights would be enough)
Not following a proper training program
Those were my main faults2 -
teresadannar wrote: »
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.
This is where I'm at, even after a year, maybe not hours, maybe not constant, but yes, this hits a chord.
How do you move past it?
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. My wife and I (we've been dieting together for 14 months) decided, first, to stop talking about food so much, and later, to really try not to talk about food at all LOL Other than the bare minimum, like "what do we want for dinner tonight"? That's really helped.
But the main thing we did was to stop treating every meal like some big "OHH MY GOD WE GET TO EAT AGAIN!!! WE'RE STARRRRVVVVIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG" event where we spend hours discussing, preparing, and cooking the food like we were two starving people in a dessert who just happened upon an oasis. At least a few times a week, we have very quick, prepared foods, like mac and cheese out of a box, just to get our focus off fine cuisine and off making the meal the centerpiece of the day. That actually has worked pretty well. I can spend allllllll day debating the fine points of Beef Bourgoinoin vs Lasagne for dinner, but really how excited can you get and how much time can you spend thinking about whether you're going to have a little cardboard box of mac and cheese vs a pre-made burrito? Both suck, either will fill up your stomach, and you're done eating in 5-10 minutes and that's the end of that. Doing that a few times a week has helped both of us stop looking forward to dinner as some major event in our lives, and I think that's helped. We are both amateur chefs and it was quite painful to let go of dinner as the spiritual cornerstone of our day, but doing so made a difference.
Like I said, no easy answer, but at least for me, it's been really important not just to eat less but to stop having my life so dominated by food - because I know where that leads, if not today, then eventually.
Please don't take this as disagreemnt, because it's not.
It's interesting to me how very different all of us are, in what works.
For me, I think I do spend more time thinking about food now, and started doing so while losing weight, and that's been a positive and pleasurable thing, for me.
I mentioned my inner hedonist a few posts back. While obese (and exaggerating slightly, perhaps 😆), I had been shoveling foods into my mouth pretty indiscrimately, if it's available, eat it, and eat alllll of it. Since my husband died (which had been some years back at that point), I'd greatly cut back on cooking, relying more on quick foods, some frozen dinners and such. (I'd decided that, as a cook, I seemed to need some audience appreciation, to bother.)
When I decided my hedonist needed a calorie budget, so future Ann could also have a good life, that changed the equation. I started seeking out truly tasty ingredients (calorie-efficient and nutrition-efficient ones 😉), wanting to try new foods to find more of them, researching recipes, going to farmers markets, and generally spending much more time, happily thinking about food, and then spending more time on preparing things from scratch. My inner hedonist became the audience, in a sense.
I don't feel obsessed by food, but I think I do spend more time thinking/planning/prepping it than I used to, as a pleasure-increasing strategy. Obese me leaned more toward unthinking, indiscrimate volume as a satisfier. Thin me wants all the yummy and nutrition, as the new satisfier. I play calorie/nutrition Tetris, for treats, even.
Different people, different paths. So interesting!
The more I read other people's stories and post - especially ones that are vividly written, as yours are - the more I think that understanding our own inclinations and personality is a key to making weight management work - personalization. 🙂
Thanks for the insight into your process!
I’m like Ann. I spend more time planning and thinking about food. I’m more focused on making my food choices intentionally to satisfy my calorie AND taste goals. Before, my eating was way too often based on the single goal of ”calories. NOW.” which lead to eating large quantities of less-than-great foods. Focusing more has lead to increased mindfulness, which in turn leads to higher satisfaction. It’s still a learning curve, but at least I’m on the curve and not at the bottom looking up.8 -
teresadannar wrote: »
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.
This is where I'm at, even after a year, maybe not hours, maybe not constant, but yes, this hits a chord.
How do you move past it?
I don't think there's an easy answer to this. My wife and I (we've been dieting together for 14 months) decided, first, to stop talking about food so much, and later, to really try not to talk about food at all LOL Other than the bare minimum, like "what do we want for dinner tonight"? That's really helped.
But the main thing we did was to stop treating every meal like some big "OHH MY GOD WE GET TO EAT AGAIN!!! WE'RE STARRRRVVVVIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG" event where we spend hours discussing, preparing, and cooking the food like we were two starving people in a dessert who just happened upon an oasis. At least a few times a week, we have very quick, prepared foods, like mac and cheese out of a box, just to get our focus off fine cuisine and off making the meal the centerpiece of the day. That actually has worked pretty well. I can spend allllllll day debating the fine points of Beef Bourgoinoin vs Lasagne for dinner, but really how excited can you get and how much time can you spend thinking about whether you're going to have a little cardboard box of mac and cheese vs a pre-made burrito? Both suck, either will fill up your stomach, and you're done eating in 5-10 minutes and that's the end of that. Doing that a few times a week has helped both of us stop looking forward to dinner as some major event in our lives, and I think that's helped. We are both amateur chefs and it was quite painful to let go of dinner as the spiritual cornerstone of our day, but doing so made a difference.
Like I said, no easy answer, but at least for me, it's been really important not just to eat less but to stop having my life so dominated by food - because I know where that leads, if not today, then eventually.
Please don't take this as disagreemnt, because it's not.
It's interesting to me how very different all of us are, in what works.
For me, I think I do spend more time thinking about food now, and started doing so while losing weight, and that's been a positive and pleasurable thing, for me.
I mentioned my inner hedonist a few posts back. While obese (and exaggerating slightly, perhaps 😆), I had been shoveling foods into my mouth pretty indiscrimately, if it's available, eat it, and eat alllll of it. Since my husband died (which had been some years back at that point), I'd greatly cut back on cooking, relying more on quick foods, some frozen dinners and such. (I'd decided that, as a cook, I seemed to need some audience appreciation, to bother.)
When I decided my hedonist needed a calorie budget, so future Ann could also have a good life, that changed the equation. I started seeking out truly tasty ingredients (calorie-efficient and nutrition-efficient ones 😉), wanting to try new foods to find more of them, researching recipes, going to farmers markets, and generally spending much more time, happily thinking about food, and then spending more time on preparing things from scratch. My inner hedonist became the audience, in a sense.
I don't feel obsessed by food, but I think I do spend more time thinking/planning/prepping it than I used to, as a pleasure-increasing strategy. Obese me leaned more toward unthinking, indiscrimate volume as a satisfier. Thin me wants all the yummy and nutrition, as the new satisfier. I play calorie/nutrition Tetris, for treats, even.
Different people, different paths. So interesting!
The more I read other people's stories and post - especially ones that are vividly written, as yours are - the more I think that understanding our own inclinations and personality is a key to making weight management work - personalization. 🙂
Thanks for the insight into your process!
I don't take that as disagreement, just a different perspective, and like you, I find different perspectives on dieting interesting.
For me, and my wife, getting into a mindset of "It's just food" has helped somewhat. For instance, we noticed when we'd go out with thin/fit friends for dinner, their main foci were: the conversation, the restaurant, news in other peoples' lives, whatever. For us, it was: studying that menu in depth (probably preceded by an hour of self-study of the online menu beforehand) and ordering alllll the good stuff and eating it and getting desert and and and. Our thin friends just don't seem all that interested in food; it's something they do at scheduled meal times so they're not hungry anymore. But for us, and our beefier friends and family, food is a passionate, all-absorbing thing - the very reason to go out to dinner with people, the thing we wait for all day, sometimes patiently sometimes ravenously. And so we've tried to adopt an attitude that "It's just food". It isn't magic or a superpower or an elixir for immortality; it's just food. We keep telling ourselves that. The hope is that someday we'll believe it. We want to be those people out at dinner who are the ones who are there for the conversation and don't care all that much what ends up on the plates, because it isn't this dominating force, this absolute most essential, crucial thing in our lives. It's a work in progress. We know that our deep love of food occasionally explodes in binge behavior that some of our friends NEVER have because they just don't care that much about it - it's way way down the hierarchy of things that interest them. We're aspiring to be like that. Note: "aspiring" not "actually there".
But I totally get people who get into the prep of healthy food as part of their dieting experience. My problem is that my idea of cooking is cracking open my dog-eared copy of Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking, with multiple butter sticks in hand, and diving in LOL The things I like to cook have a calorie density much closer to a bottle of olive oil than anything that grows on land. If I had a feel for and enjoyed healthy cooking, I'd probably be more into it as part of the diet project.10 -
People kept telling me nonsense and I believed them.
"You put mayo on your sandwich? Better stop."
"You drink soda? Might as well be doing cocaine!"
"You're fat cuz you eat chips."
"Bread makes you fat. So does cheese."
"Some people are just fat because genetics."
So I'd cut bread, cheese, mayo, soda and joy out of my diet and force down foods I hate, and I wouldn't lose weight because I was still eating like I was three people, and then I'd snap from not eating what I love and binge. And then I'd feel resentful because skinny people can have a tablespoon of mayo on a sandwich, why can't I? It must be genetics.
Step one in successfully losing weight, for me, was to stop listening to people for a bit and start learning the science.21 -
My big one right now that has landed me worse off than ever is assuming I could intuitive eat. I was always a calorie counter, including food scales, and I have found after a year of denial that I’m okay counting calories for most of my life.10
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My biggest mistake was waiting 20+ years to start losing weight.
Once I started, my second biggest mistake was not truly believing I could do it, at first.
Thankfully, now I'm a believer.
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My biggest issue for many years was always thinking that either I'm on a diet, so can't eat anything I love, or I'm not on a diet, which means I can now eat all those foods I deprived myself of to lose weight. I have discipline, so losing weight was mostly fairly easy, except when I did things like try to lose weight as fast as possible via 900 calorie extreme diets, but keeping it off was impossible. MFP has been helpful because of the prevailing attitude that you can eat what you enjoy and still lose weight, as long as it is within your calorie budget. I still have a tendency to say, screw the calories, I'm going to eat whatever I want, even though I'm already over. However, I've learned to just start over again at the next meal and not feel like I've blown it so might as well continue the binge.9
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janejellyroll wrote: »AliciaHollywood wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »AliciaHollywood wrote: »Doing 3-5 day water only fasts. Did absolutely nothing! EXCEPT it did make my stomach “shrink” so I was eating less after that and was extremely mindful of what I ate, eating ONLY super nutritious foods. But now I realize I can just stick to low cal super nutritious foods without a 5 day fast!
I’m shocked that you put eating healthy food as a negative! I really enjoy eating healthy food, it makes me feel good about myself and I enjoy the taste better than all the crap a lot of people eat. Once you train yourself to eat only nutritious food, you will no longer have weight problems. I’ve never been above the lower end of ”normal” weight because of that. I’m only here to lose extra vanity pounds to get to the lowest safe weight for my height because they’ve proven that thin people who eat healthy with nutrition packed foods live longer and are less likely to get other diseases like diabetes, heart problems and even cancer (unless genetic.) There is NOTHING WRONG WITH EATING HEALTHY! This is what people should strive for!
For many of us, the problem isn't the objective experience of eating healthy foods, it's the assigning all foods into categories of either "good" or "bad" and feeling guilty if we eat (or even want to eat) foods in the latter category.
Nobody is saying there is anything wrong with eating healthy. The issue is feeling guilt, stress, and unhappiness when you fail to live up to how you think you "should" eat. And I will say it is personally very unhelpful and even destructive to classify what many people eat as "crap" or consider eating something that I need to "train" myself to do in order to achieve my goals (that is to say, I'm glad it's helpful for you, but it's an approach that is absolutely toxic to me).
If you've never been outside of a normal weight range, it may be useful for you to spend some time listening to those of us who haven't been and appreciate what life might look like from that perspective.
When you say "This is what people should strive for!", please appreciate that striving for this literally led me to binge and purge and letting go of it has led me to several years of successful weight management while eating tons of nutrient-dense foods.
I guess you’re right. The mentality of wanting to put food you know is unhealthy into your body is foreign to me as is smoking cigarettes. I think there are other psychological reasons behind it. It’s not really about food but something else deeper. Filling a hole, a sense of comfort, relief from stress, using it as a main source of joy, distraction, eating unhealthy food because other people around you are, perhaps even unconsciously wanting to be overweight to protect oneself from unwanted sexual attention... Overeating, I believe, has as many psychological issues involved as anorexia and both can be equally dangerous and may require the help of a therapist. If you feel guilty about overeating and then purge, I think therapy or hypnotherapy is a good idea. Instead of feeling bad about what you ate, you should figure out WHY you ate it. What immediate benefit did it give you? Why did you need that benefit at that time? And you CAN train your brain to naturally crave and desire healthy food and be disgusted with dangerously unhealthy food. And I occasionally do binge, but on things like granola or home made low fat/low fat frozen yogurt (with added flaxseed meal, sunflower seeds and chia seeds) but I don’t even feel guilty because although I overdid calories, at least they weren’t unhealthy calories (except the sugar in granola, I try to get low sugar granola!) Or I get TraderJoes organic popcorn kernels and pop in the microwave with no oil, then just dribble on a little healthy extra virgin olive oil with garlic and a dash of Himalayan pink salt and other spices. You can binge on a lot of things that aren’t unhealthy and actually provide many nutrients!
If you go over your calories with these foods once in a while, at least they are providing healthy nutrients for your body and hopefully you wouldn’t purge!
For me, I truly enjoy eating healthy food because I research nutrition and know all the benefits these nutrients can provide. I don’t want to age prematurely. I want healthy skin and hair. I’m vain lol. I want a strong immune system. I also take extra supplements. For me it just feels good to know I’m taking care of my body as best as I can. I admit, I HATE exercise, I have some personal block against that, so it’s much easier for me to eat less than exercise. But every time I eat a piece of fruit, I really savor it, I love the taste and it feels so good to know that it is giving me health. I love veggies too! Nature is amazing. It created these things that grow on a tree or in the ground that give me all the nutrients I need so I can survive and protects me from free radicals, pollutants, and diseases! And I love spices! I add healthy spices to foods to make them even more delicious and healthy. I cut up pieces of an apple and sprinkle on cinnamon and ginger. Yum! I look at food as delicious medicine, which it ultimately is!
I’m not saying that I NEVER eat unhealthy food, I do like the occasional pizza (extra thin crust with veggie toppings) or Thai food (spicy shrimp Pad Thai) but take half home for the next day. I’ll try a taste or two of a really interesting appetizer or special dessert at a catered event. I do drink socially, but not alone, mostly white wine or tequila, but I do like the occasional sweet drink (Baileys & Malibu!) and LOVE champagne. I know alcohol isn’t good for you, but I do keep it in moderation and never drink alone. That’s usually what makes me gain weight, food & alcohol at parties. But even then, I pay attention to what I’m eating/drinking and if I gain 5 lbs or more, I immediately try to correct it before it goes too far. But I know at catered events how to fill my plate so it’s as healthy as possible. The thing is, if I know something is really unhealthy, it literally grosses me out. I won’t even drink Diet Coke, not because of calories, but because it’s putting poison in my body. 100% fruit juice has more calories but is supplying nutrients (but still should be consumed in moderation due to high sugar.) I read all labels in the supermarket and won’t eat anything with chemicals or high fructose corn syrup. Why put poison in my body? That’s how I look at it I guess. Fried food disgusts me, I can’t even look at it without wanting to throw up. But fresh organic fruit? It just looks beautiful to me. It tastes amazing to me. And has the benefit of all those nutrients! And I do believe people can train their brains to crave healthy food and be disgusted by unhealthy food just the way people can quit smoking. Hypnotherapy can help too for both issues. Once you can divide foods into either foods that will sustain your body and provide disease fighting nutrients or foods that can literally kill you, it becomes pretty easy...
I know that you're responding to a particular poster's comments, when you talk about the psychology of obesity or overeating. But if you've never been overweight, and have not made a long academic study of the psychology of obesity, It might be a bit of over-reach to speculate about it.
There are many ways people try to gain a sense of control, in an universe that doesn't let us control much. Overeating is one way, sure. But overeating isn't the only way people act that out psychologically, and not everyone who overeats does so for that reason. Are you familiar with the term "orthorexia" for example?
BTW, I'm curious: What do you consider unhealthy about shrimp pad Thai? Noodles? Sodium? The bit of sugar in many recipes for it?
In an obesogenic enviroment (where I am convinced many of us now live), I would argue that many of us are trying to gain control over food OR actively evading thoughts about trying to gain control over it (to me, the unhealthier approach).
These methods, IMO, are only dysfunctional if they are harming our health, damaging our relationships, or preventing us from functioning well (in other words, if they're pathological in some way).
I don't deny that I'm trying to gain a sense of control over food (said control being well established now and most days are pretty much on auto-pilot due to years of effective strategy development).
When I decide to not bring home crackers from the grocery store because I don't do a good job regulating my consumption of them, that's a form of control.
When I pre-roast a bunch of vegetables on Sunday evening to get a jump start on meal prep for the week, that's a form of control.
When I scope out the menu prior to going out to eat to pre-determine what I'm going to order, that's a form of control.
When I say no to a glass of fruit juice because I know that eight ounces will just make me want to drink more and more, that's a form of control.
I am not upset or bothered by the obvious observation that I'm using strategies to control and regulate my relationship with food -- I would argue that many of us have to learn to do this to having a fighting chance in this particular culture. What concerns me is the suggestion that tactics like this are inferior to other tactics that involve a different set of regulations/restrictions (which might work well for other people but would not work well for me). I think weight management is very individual and when someone says that they know something will be a trigger for them, we should generally trust them.
I hope you don't think I disagree with anything you wrote, Jane, because I don't.
In the post to which I replied, there was quite a laundry list of reasons people might overeat. I mentioned the control issue because I see it as a psychological thread that could pull a person in many different directions, if taken to an obsessive level - overeating, anorexia, orthorexia, possibly others.
Of course we control what we eat in various non-obsessive ways, as well . . . and that's psychologically healthy behavior. It's hard to tell whether something is psychologically healthy vs. obsessive, without the ability to look inside someone's thinking. (And healthy vs. obsessive is only one of many possible analytic axes besides, in a context where control motivations are only one element.)
I'm not a professional psychologist, either. 😉 Rank amateur. 😉
Not at all, I was just (as I tend to do) springboarding off your thoughtful comments.2 -
1. Not realizing the #1 skill in loosing bodyfat is patience.
2. Not paying attention to recovery, especially from nutrition. I was cutting calories and working hard at cardio. But, I would get depleted of all energy and turn into a zombie. I learned to fuel myself with carbs when it was required. And give myself ample rest when required. I really paid the price for these 2 mistakes and am still getting better at it.
3. Online calculators and blogs are only general references, generally they really don't apply.
I'm sure there are many more beginner mistakes, but off the top of my head that's what stands out.
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Guestimating food portions/calories.
Log all food except the sneaky snacks at night.
Stop logging altogether once I was at target weight.
Intermittent fasting3 -
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.
4 -
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".)
1 -
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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