To start eating junk and feeling like crap and putting on weight? No thanks! Time will pass no matter what I do. I can commit to being healthy and lose some weight, even if it's a slow process... or I can throw up my hands because it's not happening fast enough, and pack it back on!
All I know, is that in 3 years it won't matter if I found the magical miracle diet cure and lost 100 lbs in one week... if I've somehow managed to pack it all back on afterwards. What will matter is that I have changed my life and habits to a degree that maintaining a healthy weight is not something I have to struggle with, it just happens .
That's right! The weight can come on an doff but I have accepted that the desire has never changed. Yes we can regain the weight or never lose any more, but for many reasons (health, lookin hotter, just accomplishing it-whatever it is) we will always want it. Right now I am doing the weight loss process slowly but consistently, because I want those habits to be easier with time.
So true. It's a lifelong committment and with the statistics showing something like 95% of dieters will relapse and put on all the weight back on sometime later, what's the alternative?
It will be hard going and you need to be in control for the rest of your life. No easing off, no quitting and no saying, "well, I'll get back on the wagon tomorrow" because tomorrow might never come until you wake up one day and all the weight's back on again.
Pretty grim?? Yeah, we can TRY looking for the positives but somedays it WILL be harder to see the positives than the negatives.
Doing all this to be healthy?? No, dieting at your starting weight is not a "doing this to be healthy" thing. It's dieting to look good in your eyes as a thin person. At your starting weight, being healthy means exercising rather than dieting. I know because I've got similar stats like you.
I hope I don't come across as a naysayer but we're very much in the same boat like so many others here and elsewhere.
Are you talking to me? Really? I hope I'm not understanding this the way you meant it.
Maybe this is encouraging-from the NYtimes-
”That 95 percent figure has become clinical lore,” said Dr. Thomas Wadden, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. There is no basis for it, he said, ”but it’s part of the mythology of obesity.”
Dr. Kelly D. Brownell, the director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, said the number was first suggested in a 1959 clinical study of only 100 people. The finding was repeated so often that it came to be regarded as fact, he said.
[It was] clear that the 95 percent failure rate was so poorly founded. The figure comes not from any kind of random sampling, but from a study of 100 patients treated for obesity at a nutrition clinic at New York Hospital in the 1950′s. In 1959, its authors, Dr. Albert Stunkard and Mavis McLaren-Hume, published a paper in which they concluded, ”Most obese persons will not stay in treatment, most will not lose weight, and of those who do lose weight, most will regain it.”
That conclusion, Dr. Brownell of Yale said, has since become the most frequently quoted statement in obesity literature.
Dr. Stunkard, who is now a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, said the study was ”perfectly respectable” for that period. ”The paper made a big impact because everybody thought obesity was pretty easy to treat,” he said. ”This showed that, for whatever reason, it wasn’t.”
But the study has little relevance to the current understanding of how to control weight, said Dr. Stunkard, who specializes in the treatment of obesity and eating disorders. The 100 patients in the study were ”just given a diet and sent on their way,” he said.
”That was state of the art in 1959,” he added. ”I’ve been sort of surprised that people keep citing it; I know we do better these days.”
The intervening years have brought significant changes to the treatment of obesity, the most important of which, Dr. Stunkard said, has been the introduction of behavior modification techniques.
Since the 1959 study, though, the statistic has been reinforced by most other clinical studies, which also showed people with discouraging results.
”Unless we can prove they’re typical, the data cannot be generalized,” Dr. Brownell said. ”The people we see in clinics tend to be more overweight and have more psychological problems. They are more likely by a factor of two to have binge-eating problems.”
The true failure rate could be much better, or much worse, he said. ”The fact is that we just don’t know.”
Excerpted from Why “95% Of Dieters Fail” | A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss
OP, I'll admit that I have a bit of a hard time relating to someone whose starting point is already a healthy weight for their height. But, the thing that motivates me to keep going might be useful just the same - it's pride in how I feel about myself, my health and my body.
Some people who start where I did are relatively happy with themselves. I wasn't one of those people. I was miserable, and I hated myself and the way I looked and felt most days. But almost from the very start of my weight loss journey I felt better about myself; not because I looked any different after losing 10 or 20 lbs (at my starting weight, 20 lbs was a drop in the bucket), but because I was doing something good for myself. I felt an enormous amount of pride in being successful at sticking to my eating and exercise plan, and seeing the results in my energy level, my improved fitness, and on the scale. And how I feel today in comparison to how I felt when I began... there's just no putting it into words. I am a different person, in so many respects.
When I have a planned splurge or off-plan day for a special occasion, I feel no guilt whatsoever - that's part of enjoying life, and I love good food, good drinks, and good times with friends and family too much to skip out on enjoying those occasions. But when I go off-plan for no good reason, i.e. eat junky foods devoid of nutritional benefit or skip the exercise because I just don't feel like it, I do feel badly. Being good to my body and taking care of it makes me feel SO much better - both physically and emotionally - than a few cookies makes me feel.
At your weight, my advice would be to focus on how you FEEL, physically and mentally, rather than focusing on the number on the scale. Eat mostly things that are good fuel for your body, exercise regularly for the health benefits and to improve your strength and stamina, and set some goals and take pride in seeing yourself accomplish them. If you do those things, the weight will take care of itself.
Last edited by chickadee32; 04-29-2012 at 07:58 PM.
.
