Slipfree, I am starting in two weeks also and can feel the pressure mounting. I do not have any great snack ideas as I love my nuts. You could try pb on celery or string cheese. We can support each other in onederland. I remember how happy I was to see that again.
Hawaii69: I love all of your activities. You sound like you are enjoying maintenance with low carb veges and protein. I have been enjoying the extra time in my days to get more exercise in. This will come to a halt in two weeks and I am going to have to figure out how to work more time in.
Westwillow: In Refuse to Regain, she comments that the most successful maintainers often eat the same thing over and over again. I do repeat many of my meals! You are doing well being a pound down after a fun day.
Here is an interesting article on addiction to approval and weight, not written by me.
Looking at comments on yesterday's blog, it was striking to me how many women said that their own addiction to the approval of others diminished very significantly as they got older, and that only with age have they been able to focus on weight loss and weight loss maintenance!
Here's my comment in response to XXXX.
"Totally agree that most of us women only shed addiction to the approval of others with age . . . but why is that, when guys seem so much less afflicted from a younger age? And why are women so much more likely than men to struggle with weight: any connection? And how can women be encouraged to resist the approval addiction earlier??
Inquiring minds want to know!!!"
And of course if addiction to the approval of others, with all its linkage to weight gain, is something that women can and do seem to shed with age, that got me thinking again about that ol' Susie Orbach meme, "Fat is a Feminist Issue."
So what are the numbers? Any evidence that age is linked to weight loss for women? Thanks to our At Goal and Maintaining: Transition to Maintenance stats and graphs guru 4A-HEALTHY-BMI, we've got some pretty interesting research available!!
https://docs.google.com/
document/d/1AkUBsUACT7rZ5G
sdF7jT9YcD1Xa80VFGiJ5JeUkur8A/pub
Overwhelmingly here at Spark it's women who are the successful maintainers: 82%. Only 5.7% are men. (Yup, doesn't add to 100%: there's a gap there of "unidentified"!) And, I suspect, that sizeable gender gap is probably related to the impression I have that there are simply way fewer male Spark People members in the first place.
Why would that be? I'm speculating, but it appears that by and large fewer men than women struggle with obesity. That might be because fewer men get heavy (at least from comfort eating) or because weight loss tends to be easier for men, or because fewer men are treated with ostracism and disdain if they do get heavy, so they feel less compulsion to lose weight and have less need of the Spark People support community. (Why would that be? Well for one thing, obesity seems to have fewer economic consequences in the workplace for men than women, and fewer social consequences as well. More speculation about this below.)
If we look at maintainers by decade, reminding ourselves that 82% of all maintainers are women, we see that only 4.1% are in their 20s and 7.5% in their 30s. Almost 46% of successful maintainers are in their 50s, 60s and 70s. And that's, I suspect, because women in their 20s and 30s are still much more addicted to the approval of others. And once over 50, less so.
So: what compels younger women to be so much more afflicted by external approval -- that insidious dependence upon external approval that leads to comfort eating?
Possibly because we have to be. My theory about that: there is still a huge residual element of economic reality affecting women disproportionately to men.
Even though it's now the case that more women than men graduate from college and university, women still earn about 78 cents for every $1 a man makes with comparable education and responsibility.
But women and only women still get pregnant and give birth and lactate and provide the majority of child care for infants, which inevitably affects women's career paths. The cost of competent daycare is astronomical, especially for infants and preschoolers. Few women can afford daycare on their salaries alone; they need their husbands' contributions financially.
And all of this has to meant that younger women are still much more economically vulnerable than men, in part because women's standard of living would drop so dramatically, not just for themselves but for their children too, if they were to split from their spouses while their children are young.
Addiction to the approval of others? Even if they are not consciously aware of it, it seems to me that younger women are much more economically pressured than men. The result? They HAVE to be much more sensitively attuned to sustaining the approval of their employers, their spouses, and even their family and friends.
Women are time crunched between the demands of home and work. They are spending pretty much any surplus money they can find (after daycare) on soccer and dance lessons and trips to Disney World for their kids. Junk food is cheap. And comfort eating may be the only affordable indulgence that is readily available to women in the intensive mothering years. Even though junk food results in weight gain that plunges many younger women into total and frantic despair . . . given the ridiculous and relentless social requirements to look like a Yummy Mummy and sustain dating level "hotness" to hold onto those (economically and socially necessary) husbands and . . . all of that.
Then we get older. We earn more money. We become more secure in our careers. Our children require less constant care and less expensive daycare. Or if we are not working outside the home, we become more aware of the protections of contemporary divorce laws in most jurisdictions which do provide for spousal support and child support and sharing of family property upon marriage breakdown. [In my divorce work, I can't help but notice the very high per centage of splits initiated by women . . . ]
Now we are much better positioned to shed the addiction to the approval of others. Because we are economically less vulnerable. Because we can.
Now we can shed the comfort eating. Now we can shed the pounds. Now we can maintain weight loss.
Complicated, isn't it? And of course marriage and children comprises by no means the only set of factors in play affecting mostly women.
There are lots more.
Including demands primarily imposed upon women to provide elder care, often while the children's issues are still compelling and overwhelming.
And the very high incidence of female sexual molestation and assault. Which too often encourages women (if implicitly or explicitly blamed, as if it could be their own attractiveness causes such criminal behaviours) to self protect with excess weight.
And within the workplace, for those few women who might actually achieve leadership roles, the withholding of approval should their leadership style occasionally be commanding or directive. Rather than nurturing and tentative and requesting. As is appropriate for women. In a manner not required of men. Which takes more time. And may be less effective when urgent action is required.
All of which (plus myriad other factors) can and do trigger crises for women with respect to the approval of others, and comfort eating, and obesity, and the social ostracism attached primarily to women of size.
Because so long as women are socialized to submit to the tyranny of the approval of others, we'll keep right on providing those submissive services.
It's much riskier for women to assert themselves. To say no. Firmly. Unpleasantly, if necessary. To make time to plan meals that are in accordance with our own nutritional needs. To make time for exercise for ourselves.
It's easier to continue focusing all our energies on sustaining the approval of others. For prolonged periods of women's lives, it may even be necessary to focus on the approval of others.
Siebold was right: addiction to the approval of others is the toughest addiction of all. And addiction to the approval of others is closely linked to weight issues for many of us, particularly women.
It takes huge mental toughness to break the addiction to the approval of others . . . and eternal vigilance to prevent its recurrence!!
[If you may be wondering about this reference to mental toughness and Siebold, check out Steve Siebold's free 21 day program,
www.fatlosers.com . You'll either love it or you'll hate it . . . pretty much guaranteed!]
**Here is my comment. I admire you younger women here so much who are maintaining. When I raised my kids, I ignored my health and focused on pleasing others.
I also think that males do have obesity problems, just as much as women..however, they do not like to join health groups and talk about emotions..as much. That is why they are not in the maintainers' stats.
The economic issue of women being underpaid still continues despite the improvement over the years.
