Quote:
Originally Posted by ParadiseFalls
I, too, agree with kaplods that it's something that isn't good and needs to change. However, if I'm following a healthy plan and sticking to it, I don't see the problem using something to help out.
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I don't see a problem with using safe products to assist in weight loss, even if it's a psychological assist. My husband uses a green tea supplement and he swears by it. I suspect it's psychological, though I do drink quite a bit of green tea hoping it might help somewhat. And I eat as much spicy food as I can, not only because I love it, but because of it's possible metabolic boost), the problem is with "needing" rapid weight loss (regardless of the method to acheive it).
It's a dangerous myth, but it's a common one, and if you believe that you "need" to start a weight loss plan with a big jump start and that you need steady, rapid weight loss to stay motivated, it becomes true.
I don't care if you're using all natural whole-food diet to accomplish the rapid weight loss, if you only are motivated by rapid weight loss, you may be dooming yourself to failure, because no matter WHAT your weight loss method, it is going to slow down eventually. Even starvation diets (as in no food at all), slow down eventually.
I would argue that virtually everyone who goes off a diet, does so because the effort is perceived to be greater than the payoff. One starts to see slow weight loss as failed weight loss. A small loss or a no-loss week begins to seems "as bad" as gaining. And if it feels "as bad" as gaining, it makes quitting very tempting.
It's the classic, traditional weight loss cycle. "Everyone does it."
And that's the real problem. We're "taught" to do weight loss in a way that is not sustainable. We're "taught" to see small and slow weight loss as demotivating, as failure. When I was a WW member, I would often receive consolation rather than congratulations from the weight recorder if I lost less than 3 lbs. I know I weighed more than 300 lbs, but damn it, 2 lbs was still a good weight loss, but I didn't see it, because I was taught to expect 5 lbs.
We see it here on 3FC every day - someone concerned that they're failing because they "only" lost 12 lbs in three weeks and they once lost faster (or they saw someone lose faster on The Biggest Loser).
The myth of fast weight loss being "necessary" for motivation is killing people who are giving up when they can't get what they believe they "need."
If I had seen slow weight loss as acceptable - and if the people around me would have seen it as acceptable and taught me to see it as acceptable, I probably would have succeeded on my first diet in kindergarten.
But even in kindergarten, I saw how dieting "was done" by my mother, my grandmother and their friends, by the people on tv, and at 8 years old, I saw it in the women I met at Weight Watcher's meetings...
I heard thousands of women say in my lifetime "slow weight loss is demotivating." It was virtually never stated as an opinion, or a mindset, it was stated as a universal fact that everyone accepted as true.
It took me 4 decades to learn that it isn't fact, it's an opinion that has become self-fulfilling prophecy to the point that most diets fail. Most diets fail, it is my sincere belief, because people are seeing failure where there is phenomenal success.
Every time someone writes or says "I ONLY lost 3 lbs this week" I feel like my head is going to explode. You almost never hear "I lost an incredible 3 lbs this week," even though a loss of 3 lbs (even for someone over 300 lbs) IS incredible - most people who want to lose weight don't do it, especially no consistently, so why is it seen as "only."
Look at popular magazines, they're getting crazier and crazier "Lose 30 lbs in 10 days... the cover advertises, and the story features one person who was able to lose that, but their starting weight might be 500 lbs, but the advertisement on the cover doesn't say "Lose 30 lbs in 10 days - if you're 19 and weigh 500 lbs and have never been on a diet before." It just reads "lose 30 lbs in 10 days," as if anyone COULD do it, if they just tried hard enough.
I know, it's a peeve of mine, so I'm getting on a soapbox here, it just really eats at me, because I think almost everyone who attempted weight loss, could succeed the FIRST time, if we weren't taught to have such insane expectations for weight loss.
If slow weight loss was seen as every bit as legitimate and wonderful as fast weight loss, there'd be no reason for anyone, ever to give up.
