Friends that don't listen
 

Much to my dismay my friend has decided to take the HCG diet. I don't see how eating 500 calories a day is going to last in the long run, and it's also not healthy. I tried to talk to her about diet and exercise and she became angry and said that "diet and exercise doesn't work" so I dropped it. I understand her frustration but I definitely don't bust my butt almost every night for nothing. It takes work and it makes me sad that she will compromise her health to be thin. Super fast weight loss NEVER lasts in my experience...I wish she would listen but her mind is made up. I tried.

I guess it's none of my business how someone else chooses to lose weight.

/semi rant

It's always hard to know that something is bad for them, but not being able to do anything for them anyhow :(

The scenario that is most likely to happen is that she won't be able to keep that diet for a long time, and will end up seeing that it is not the true miracle.

You tried your best, but if the other person is not willing to listen, there is nothing much you can do about it :( You've been a good friend and you tried, and you'll probably still be a good friend when she'll come around disapointed about this 500 calories diet too. *hugs*

I have a friend who has tried lots of quick fix weight loss programs, with no lasting success. She's seen me lose almost 90 pounds over the past 14 months but still she won't try old-fashioned calorie counting, choosing instead to spend money on crap that doesn't work. I understand the allure of fast results but I find it hard to be supportive when she tries yet another of these "diets." But I try!

Good luck with your friend.

You'd think our friend's seeing us successfully lose weight by diet and exercise would make them want to follow suit. That's what stumps me the most..

It takes a lifetime for people to realise that losing weight and staying healthy is really a brand new way of living. In order to maintain and lose it means this is going to take a very long time. I often hear my friends saying that once they finish a diet they will start eating "normally". I have told them that you never eat "normally" (in the sense of what was normal before starting to diet) ever again. Yes I do have my occasional slice of pizza or chocolate bar but this is now done following a very planned way of living.

They don't seem to realise that at all.

Especially that bolded part. I don't think people realize normal. One of my neices has a child that is morbidly obese, she's 120 pounds and I think 7 now, but she could be 6. She has a chronic inflammatory condition that is worsened according to what I've read and what the dietitian said that is inflamed by caffeine and sugar. They don't want her to eat "differently" than other kids so she's got her McDonald's fix daily, soda and Red Bull are her main drinks (they don't drink water on my husband's side of the family AT ALL), and unfortunately the meds she's on cause her to have GI effects too. I remember asking why they think this is NORMAL eating because most people in the world do not eat fast food and pizza daily (they now add veggies to their meat lover's pizza to make it healthier I was told). It's really sad, but in the end there is NOTHING you can say to people who do NOT want to change. Now this girl is young and it's not her choice what she eats, but the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents won't even try (they all live together at my inlaws--FIL supports them financially and MIL is the shopper). It is sad, but I really don't think you can do anything or say anything other than "well I wouldn't do that." I've had 3 friends using hCG diet. One is still on it and she's already in a healthy weight range, but the other 2 start and stop it all the time...gaining and relosing the same 20 pounds over and over. Just because my one friend does okay doesn't mean I would do it, but she's super type A and she controls every ounce she eats LOL.

My doctor told me years ago that exercise does not work! Never understood that since most doctors encourage you to exercise. That has stuck with me all these years and for me it is right. If I exercise and don't watch what I eat i will not lose weight, just doesn't happen. But I look at it different now and I don't exercise to lose weight...I eat right to lose weight and the exercise is a bonus. I exercise for my health.

But a 500 calorie day is just crazy! I have learned that while I can't lose weight by exercising I also can't lose weight by not eating. You HAVE to eat to lose weight. What happens after she loses the weight and starts eating regular food? She is going to gain! Hopefully you can get this across to her eventually.

That goes for anyone. For me it's 50/50 to lose weight, I have to do both diet and exercise but anyone can out eat an exercise program. I also work out because I don't want to be a fluffy thin, I want to be a firm thin.

Exercise alone doesn't work for most people, but I wouldn't say it doesn't work. It absolutely does work.

Eh. I see a lot of people around here who follow diets that make me cringe, and I am aware my diet is likely to make them cringe. We all do what we feel is best for ourselves.

How do people become functioning adults and believe diet and exercise don't work?

Because it's hard for them.

As a side note, one of the things that I had to learn on this journey (and I really do hate the word, but I can't think of what else to explain what I've been doing now for 3 years) is that losing weight isn't just about eating less calories and exercising more.

(I exercised before I started losing weight.)

It's really about changing your mindset around food and staying healthy and maintaining your weight. Weighing a specific number doesn't really mean anything by itself. It's the impact it might have on your body because you lost weight or pick up exercising or started eating vegetables that is really the significant change.

And all of that is really hard.

People told me if I exercised and ate well, I would lose weight. Didn't happen. I did exercise. I did eat well (too well!).

I had to learn to take care of my body. Eating what others ate didn't translate "right" for my body. It made me gain or maintain the weight I had. Exercising didn't make me lose weight at all. I had to really think and figure out what it meant to "take care of my body" and then put that into action. And that's really the hard part -- figuring out what works for your body and sticking to it and actually making the time and energy to do it every day for the rest of your life.

HCG, like other crazy fad diets, promises magic in a drop or an injection. It tells people that they don't have to worry about anything, the HCG will take care of it.

My friend did HCG. 500 calories. Extreme, low carb restriction. It worked for her because she doesn't like food anyway. Restricting it made it easier for her because didn't have to think about what she was going to eat and she was skinny already -- she just wanted to lose more weight to go from a size 6 to a size 4 (she wanted to lose 15ish pounds).

She did lose the weight. But she also has to restrict even post-HCG, she eats, MAYBE, 1000 calories per day, low carb. Her sister did it too, but she had a lot more weight to lose. She did lose it. Then she gained some of it back. So, she's doing HCG again. It's a never ending cycle.

It's not sustainable. It's hard to do HCG. The drops/injections don't do anything -- it's all psychological. And most people don't learn how to eat healthy afterwards for something that will last them their lifetime. Even my friend who was "successful" at it... she doesn't eat "normal". And she still has to restrict and exercise, like she did before HCG.

It's such a scam.

If she's set her mind to it, you'll probably be hard pressed to change it... especially once she starts seeing results. I had a friend lose 55 lbs on that diet, and it was fast! Everyone was very impressed. It was the smallest I'd ever seen her. She understood that such a radical diet was not a long term plan, but I don't think she recognized it as potentially dangerous. Her plan was to use weight watchers to keep it off, which worked for a few months before she picked her old habits back up. She's now bigger than before. I don't have a lot of room to talk because I lost 65 the slow and steady way and have regained most if it myself. The point is that to be successful you have to get into (and stay in) the mindset that this is for life. Anyone who's looking for a quick fix, probably doesn't have that mindset.

Because dieting and exercising the way we're taught to do it DOESN'T work.

It's very difficult to believe, and even more difficult to truly "get" that most of the expert options, and most of the "common wisdom" is just plainly, absolutely WRONG for many of us.

When a person had struggles to lose weight even on a drastic calorie reduction, they get desperate and either try desperate measures (like the 500 calorie diet) or they give up completely.

We've been taught a lot of b.s. and nonsense when it comes to weight loss and exercise, and our own experiences also lead us to make some pretty odd and erroneous conclusions about weight loss. We're even encouraged by the diet industry to see weight loss success as complicated and magical (you must follow their program to succeed, one false move, one tiny mis-step and the program will fail. Eat a single bite off plan and you've sabotaged your success).

We're taught that weight loss of less than a pound per week is failure, or at least incredibly slow success.... even though 90 - 95% of people who WANT to lose weight aren't losing .5 lb a week. So if you're doing better than 95% of our peers, why do we still feel like we're failing and falling short. If most people don't lose even .5 lb per week as an average, then why don't we consider .5 lbs a week as amazing, and even rapid weight loss.

Yes, most people can lose more than .5 lbs per week their first few weeks, and a few are even able to sustain even larger losses, longer... but eventually just about everyone's weight loss slows down to a trickle (either because of their physiology or because of the difficulty in maintaing the habits perfectly), and we don't really see that as normal (not really, because we see folks here and elsehwere crying out "what am I doing wrong, my weight loss has slowed to a trickle," as if we didn't already know (and sadly some of us don't) that the slowing is absolutely, 100% normal.

We're taught to have unrealistic expectations for weight loss. We're taught to judge ourselves and others harshly if they have trouble losing or can't lose quickly. We see the amazing success stories, but never the average ones (there's never a women's magazine cover story title that says "How I lost 10 lbs over the course of a year and a half" or "How I lost 105 lbs in over six years, but still have another 150 lbs to go, that I hope to get off over the next five to ten years."

It just doesn't happen. We don't want to hear those stories, even though they're just as much success stories than the "How I lost 100 lbs in six months," ones. But we're not taught to see that as success, instead we're told that if we're losing that way (even though it's far faster and better than the average) that we must not be motivated enough and that we're probably doomed to fail.

It isn't just the idiots, not just the lazy, crazy, and stupid among us who have false and even ridiculous beliefs about weight loss. We all do, because we've been taught them, either indirectly or by watching the way weight loss is done and portrayed in this culture. We encourage false beliefs about weight loss, to such an insane degree that no belief becomes too strange to sound believable, even to the most logical and well-educated among us; and even the experts aren't exempt.

I think it really speaks to how desperate people are to lose weight. You follow the advice, it doesn't work, so you fall into the trap of fad diets.

Just as I tell people who run to me begging me to speak to their overweight children: you can't force anyone to change their lifestyle—they have to do it on their own.

We all know diet and exercise works, but the problem is that it's not JUST diet and exercise that causes someone to lose weight. You have to change almost everything—and yes I mean everything—in order to lose weight. One's mind is the most important tool in this process and it's also the worst enemy.

It's painful to see someone you care about do something so unhealthy but speaking to them may not do much at all if they are truly set on losing weight this way.

Regarding the hCG protocol, I'd say don't knock it unless you have read the source material and understand it. I'm a long term loser and maintainer and lost over 50 pounds on it, healthfully, and maintained the loss well. It helped immensely with some hormonal dysfunction I was experiencing and as an appropriately used medical treatment, it's excellent. There's a lot of gimmicks and misinformation about it, most of all that it is a diet (false!), and that leads to obfuscating of how it actually works.

I had a fair number of people think I didn't listen to them, either, only to prove to them through my own trial, observation, and results that I was in fact better informed about my own health than they were, and they were advising me 'out of their butts', as it were. While your friend may very well be doing the protocol incorrectly and experience negative side effects from it, assuming someone is being stubborn or ignorant simply because they come to a different conclusion and choose differently than you, is quite a narrow perspective!

I disagree with her that diet and exercise does not work, but taking a therapeutic approach to dysfunctions in one's body that cause obesity, rather than just treating the symptoms and hoping the underlying issues magically resolve themselves, doesn't make one crazy. Doing the protocol and sticking to the maintenance rules is indeed a wonderful, healing, permanent solution for a fair number of people (including me, who approached with great skepticism and rigorously documented all my rounds).

Sincerely,
The educated, quite sane, well-informed, experienced dieter, who also made the same choice as your friend and whose health improved greatly because of it.

:dunno:

I consider this one of the most dangerous myths about weight loss - perhaps THE most dangerous myth about weight loss.

People believe that they must change almost everything, and so if they feel they can't change everything (especially all in one fell swoop) they decide they can't succeed and so they don't even try. Or they try, but when they slip, even in a small way, they decide that they can't change, or that they're not ready to change, and therefore are doomed to failure, so they might as well give up. Believing that a complete lifestyle overhaul is necessary and that "everything" must change is so overwhelming that it often seems impossible.

I whole-heartedly believed this myth most of my life, and when I would slip into old habits, I would conclude that I was sabotaging myself and must not want or be ready for weight loss (and I didn't come up with this nonsense on my own, "everyone" from my mother to my doctor to barely-acquaintences and all the weight loss authors were saying this, implying that if you're not perfect you're not ready for change).

And I think it's one of the main reasons I failed over and over and over again. It wasn't that I wasn't ready for change, it was that changeing too much was so overwhelming that I felt like a failure (because "everyone" knew you had to change everything about yourself to lose weight successfully).

It's pure hogwash. You can make small changes, and small changes can make HUGE differences. You don't have to be perfect, and you don't even have to be hypervigilant, you just have to make consistent changes.

I had to change my mottor from "anything worth doing is worth doing well," to "anything worth doing is worth doing half-a$$ed, because it's better than not doing it at all. If you only have the energy to do it half-assed, then do it half-assed."

I've lost 105 lbs by making small, gradual changes. Yes, I've lost it slower than I've ever lost weight before, but I've also lost more weight than I've ever before, and have maintained my losing streak without regains for far more often than ever before, and I've lost the weight more comfortably and easily than I ever would have imagined possible. No stress, no frustration, no panic. I'm NEVER tempted to quit, because there's nothing to quit. I've made the changes so slowly that they don't even feel like changes, they just feel like living my normal, mostly the same life.

Sure, the person I am today is much different than the person I was when I started, but I didn't have to make as many changes as we're taught to believe we have to make. I didn't have to change everything, and I didn't have to do it all at once.

This has been an epiphany for me, because in the past I did try to lose weight by changing everything. I stopped dating because dates wanted to take me out to eat. I stopped going out with friends, because eating and drinking interferred with the weight loss. My job and/or schooling suffered when I was dieting, because I made so many changes that I couldn't concentrate on anything but weight loss. I gave up my normal hobbies. I changed everything and when I didn't recognize my life, I felt depressed and disillusioned. I made weight loss so unpleasant that giving up made more sense than sticking with the misery.

I think the main reason 95% of diets fail, is because we're taught that only rapid and life-overhauling methods of weight loss are legitimate, so only the people who can succeed "cold turkey" succed. Very few people even consider trying weight loss the way I've done it, because that's too slow and too demotivating, because we're taught to expect complete transformation and anything else is failure.

We set ourselves and others up to fail by expecting drastic and sudden lifestyle overhauls, virtually overnight AND when someone isn't able to sustain such drastic change, we say they're not ready to change, or that they don't really want to change, or all sorts of criticisms that boil down to laziness, craziness, selfishness or stupidity.

You don't have to change everything, and everything you do have to change, doesn't have to be changed at once or in large ways. You don't have to change everything, you just have to change some things, and you don't have to make huge changes, you can make comfortable ones (and when they become so comfortable that they're second nature, then change something else).

I wish we accepted slow, small, and moderate changes more, because I think more people would succeed if they didn't see small changes as failures.

My former coworker stands 4'10 and her hip width around was 62 inches. She was over 220 pounds. In her mid-50s, so everything's slowing down. She had a lot of knee pain and back pain. She also had a frozen shoulder. Exercise was really, really, really hard for her. Just getting up from her desk to walk to the bathroom was painful.

She started on the hCG diet last January. She got the drops for the States and she followed the plan precisely. Between January and June she lost 54 pounds (though she didn't look THAT much smaller because she hadn't exercised to tighten up the skin). She went off the "diet" around July, and as of today (over a year later) she has not regained the weight.

I'm not saying it will work or that it's healthy for everyone, but she was an extreme case. The loss of 50 pounds off her small frame have helped her be more active, which has likely contributed to the maintenance of that weight loss. She's slowly eating healthier, but you are right - it did not teach her how to eat healthier.

I wouldn't advise the hCG diet unless it was, like her, a dire situation and then only under doctor guidance.

I feel like that's child abuse................ I honestly do. I feel that a child that is that young is being abused in a round about way when they don't get healthy foods and move into morbidly obese. I know it's not physically hitting or being verbally abusive. But this kid will have physical and psychological problems that could easily be solved by diet and exercise on the parents part.
This kid isn't really a consenting adult able to understand and have the ability to make her own choices, and to become that big at that age is damaging in so many ways. It really makes me sad, I know people think fast food is cheaper, but as a broke college student obsessed with numbers it is NOT cheaper. Cheaper to make a sandwich on whole wheat with some lettuce and turkey then it is to get a $6 big mac. I guess if you go for the dollar menu it can balance out.
If you're really that strapped for cash and can't get the basic ingredients for salads, fruits, veggies, chicken you cook etc... then there are shelters and food banks that PROVIDE this. Yes it takes work and can be a pain (trust me I know) but it's your kid. Don't they deserve better?
And water is always cheaper than soda, I never got by people that are so broke complain about the price of food but load up on sodas.

I think kids that are older or once you hit an age where you understand what calories are etc, it's more of the persons choice to be bigger. It's my fault I got to where I am and I know how I got here. But I also can make the choice to fix it or ignore it and am aware of the consequences of doing so. A kid though can't make the choice to be healthier and more than likely doesn't even understand the basics. Calorie counting, etc isn't as easy to comprehend. When I was young I though as long as I ate less than 1000 calories I could have whatever. Even if it was just ice cream all day. It takes a while to comprehend nutrition. Even nutritionists argue. Some say eggs are SO BAD for you, others say they are SO GOOD for you. There is always a new study, there is always a new diet, there is always a random warning about consuming this or that. Kids don't pay attention and some don't have the resources to pay attention let alone the ability to make this change.

I really get annoyed with parents with OBESE kids because of McDonalds and not caring.

/rant

You're joking here right? Honestly I'm shocked that you would post something like this. Study after study has been done and all but one have the exact same result.

The HCG diet works because you're heavily restricting calories and eating primarily protein. The "protocol" of using HCG to speed fat loss does nothing. You can get a large placebo effect because ... you can always get a large placebo effect when people believe. If you think you're not going to be hungry you won't be hungry for a while. The funniest part is most people are taking HCG orally. Actual HCG must be injected. If it is taken orally the HCG protein is digested by enzymes that break it up into amino acids and it is no longer HCG. Regardless - all the studies done were with injected HCG and the simple fact is it does jack squat for fat loss.

Whether one gains weight after the HCG diet depends on whether they resume eating as before or they change how they eat. Just like every other "diet".

HCG diet is a PSMF. The current theory is that a PSMF can help reset one's set point. Maybe it does - sounds like it did with you. If someone is going to do a PSMF they should first consult with their doctor and the one I would reccomend is Rapid Fat Loss.

All you HCG bashers should go head over to the Ideal Protein section of this forum and start bashing there.

HCG is a PSMF based around 500 calories a day.

IP diet is a PSMF based around 600-700 calories a day.

Both programs do not educate their dieters and make up "Facts" to help people be convinced they are spending their money wisely.

The only thing that makes the IP diet any better is that it has phases where you are increasing calories but at the end of the day you still end up with people who don't know why they lost weight.

HCG dieters think it is the magic drops

IP dieters think it is the magic of ketosis

Go ahead ... head on over to the IP section and start educating them. I dare ya! :D

(This post will be deleted in 3 ... 2 .... 1 .... *POOF*)

Nowhere did I say one had to dive into a lifestyle change.

Considering where I came from, I think I would be the last person to advocate that everything needs to change at once—it doesn't. I don't believe it's hogwash at all to say that you have to change your life in order to actually change something about it. It's tough to get up and go to the gym voluntarily if you're not used to it! You have to get into that habit of mind; changing your previous way of thinking and doing things (and probably have to shift your schedule around). It's hard to eat healthy if you're not used to it; it's especially hard to do when you're surrounded by a culture that pushes food at you everywhere you turn. You have to change how you think about and view food in order to get into that habit of mind. You'll also have to be confident enough to defend those choices

It took me years and years to get to this point. I first joined a gym eight years ago and it was the scariest thing I did because I had no idea what I was doing. That became a habit and I slowly over the years learned about healthier foods. The last "burst" of weight loss only came last year when I watched my portions (going from 182 to 112).

It wasn't as difficult as it could be to transition into a healthier lifestyle because exercise was a habit already. Eating smaller portions of healthier foods wasn't all that bad because I was eating healthy foods already. Learning to defend my lifestyle wasn't all that difficult because over the years I learned to go from a shy pushover to a quiet, yet assertive and confident person.

I've already said in other posts that there's no way I could have done this at another point in my life. I struggled to lose the rest of my weight only to fail before I even got a running start because I simply wasn't ready to do it.

Is it bad though to not be ready though? There are other things in life that we tell people to not do if they're not ready. If all they can manage to do is start walking then that's awesome!. If they just cut out some junk food here and there, then that's awesome. It's a process to change everything and it'll take some people longer than others.

My life is different. I did change "everything." I didn't do it all at the same time, but through small changes I still got here.

***DING DING DING***

Add to this that there is a huge amount of conflicting information even from "reputable" sources ... it's a cluster ...

It's such a simple topic ... yet so complicated and overwhelming to the average person. The fundamentals make up 90+% of the results one will get but the fudamentals are not sexy and don't make anyone any money...

You're a fantastic success story and you're right of course that ultimately you do have to take on a new lifestyle and while you might not have to change everything you will ultimately have to make major and substantial changes. That said ... I think your original post could easily be interpreted the wrong way leading to Kaplod's response.

John, I am happy to shoot you an email with a rebuttal to the studies, which were poorly controlled for crucial variables in the protocol, as well as an unaltered copy of the original manuscript, if you want to read the source material without any gimmicky spin (it is a PDF scan).

There are no magic drops, no magic at all. The endocrine system isn't some mythical creation that has no bearing on our bodies or how they function. And in much the same way, hCG isn't some random substance without any physiological effects on other hormones in the body. In certain doses, with particular physiological triggers, its mechanism relating leptin is both real and well documented.

As you have acknowledged, I'm no ignorant dietary quack who is looking for a quick fix or prone to crash dieting and logical fallacies regarding the body. Nor would I cavalierly suggest a medical prescriptive protocol for weight loss to most individuals, especially as it relates to augmenting the hormonal balance of the body for a healing effect on the metabolism. It isn't simple, it isn't magic, and it isn't unfounded quackery - but it IS terribly abused by the diet industry, done poorly by most doctors and nearly all patients, and is no magic bullet. Specificity and rigorous application are what make it successful, and it can be. But not as long as it is relegated to the same category as a starvation diet (it's not, I documented this extensively and tested it on myself in multiple rounds) or an easy, quick fix to weight issues (it is one of the strictest and most challenging ways of eating I have encountered and altering variables of it can have serious physiological consequences. This requires much education, precision, and dedication).

Given my personal credibility on this site, and my own skepticism in evaluating the initial diet, I would posit that if I'm vouching for it as a skeptic turned convert and clearly not off my rocker in other areas, perhaps a more critical evaluation of the protocol might be helpful to those wishing to advise others on its' appropriate use and execution.

Long way of saying - I'm clearly not a nut, it's asinine to judge this protocol by the failures of adherence by certain users and the money manipulation of it by the diet industry. That doesnt mean the original doesn't work, if the implementation violates the prescription.

If HCG sped up fat loss we had some magical properties I am certain it would be known. I think you're credible but even credible intelligent people can be wrong especially when they want to believe.

I will admit I haven't read the studies one by one but on it's face it is rediculous that no one can replicate the original study ... all 24 studies screwed up? Really?

On top of that - the only way HCG could speed up fat loss is by speeding up one's metabolism unless you're suggesting that it can defy the laws of thermodynamics? I mean the bottom line is that our bodies run on energy - and when energy is short we burn fat to make up the difference.

You want post a link to the PDF than go ahead ... I'll read it with an open mind.

Karisitru I totally agree with you. Unfortunately at this time the state doesn't. I hope in the future it changes. I doubt this generation it will though.

On the topic of "changing everything" my point was that whether we mean to or not, we tend to perpetuate the misbelief that everything has to be done drastically and at once. While lip service is sometimes payed to gradual changes, virtually no one actually encourages slow and gradual changes AND intermediate steps are seen as being of virtually no benefit at all.

It becomes extremely easy for people to assume that if they can't change it all, the might as well not try to change anything.

I think more people would be "ready" if they didn't assume that they had to do everything at once, OR if they understood that even small changes have benefits.

Weight loss is seen as a black and white issue of extremes... you're either fully immersed into dozens of simultaneous changes, or you're doing nothing at all... and we tell people it's because they're weak, lazy, crazy, selfish and stupid.

Weight loss and healthy habits are not something we encourage people to take slowly, because even what we consider "slow" isn't really slow. One pound per week weight loss is actually considered "slow" to most people. How can something that 90% or more of people fail at doing be considered slow weight loss? Shouldn't the very fact that most people don't accomplish it, make it rapid weight loss?

We don't even know what normal is, because we're not allowed to see normal (the people who are "failing" don't talk about it, and don't know that they're often doing better than everyone else who is trying).

It actually enrages me that all of the times I quit because I thought I was failing, I wasn't failing, I was experiencing amazing success but no one was giving me credit for that amazing success, they were labeling it failure. I didn't decide on my own that I was failing when the weight loss slowed and/or stalled... others were telling me I was failing. They and I were wrong. Stalling wasn't failing, it was "successful not gaining."

We encourage people to believe that they have to completely overhaul their life to experience any benefit. We don't talk about the benefits of partial success, as if our culture doesn't believe there are any. You're either doing everything you possibly can, or your not ready. And then when people change everything, and the results still don't meet the cultural definition of success, they feel hopeless and useless.

If we told people they didn't have to change everything, they just had to change something, more people would be ready to start. They wouldn't have to wait until they had the time, energy, knowledge, and commitment to change it all. They could change only what they were ready for, and they could stop changing whenever they wanted to.

That's not what we tell people though. The cultural norm is "all or nothing," and we exagerate the need to "change everything."

I would never have given up in the past, if I didn't know that I didn't have to change everything (neither all at once, or ever) and if I had known how well I actually was doing.

I have a masters degree in Psychology but I didn't know what I didn't know. I knew (consciously) that 95% of morbidly obese dieters fail, but I didn't know what real, average, normal success looked like.

I trusted "common wisdom" that one pound a week or less was considered "slow" weight loss. So I thought most people lose more than one pound a week (oh boy was I wrong), so of course I thought when my weight loss slowed to less than a pound a week, I was failing. I was losing slower than normal...

I struggled for years, never knowing that all those times when I quit because I wasn't seeing any success, I wasn't seeing success because I'd never been taught what success looks like. I was judging myself based on what we teach is success, and so we only consider the top 1% successful. Everyone else we judge to be failures.

My doctor opened my eyes when I was complaining that I "should be able to lose at least 2 lbs a week like a normal person," and he reminded me (of what I consciously knew) that normal isn't losing 1 lb a month like I was doing. Normal is losing nothing. Normal is losing a little and gaining more.

Partial success isn't considred success. If a person has gained weight their entire life and diets and doesn't lose an ounce, most people would consider their efforts a fail. What they may fail to notice is this is a person who has been steadily gaining their whole life, even putting a stop to the gaining is an awesome acheivement worthy of celebration, but do we ever congratulate someone for "not gaining."

Not only do we NOT celebrate the small changes, we actually punish them by suggesting that the person "just isn't ready for weight loss," without acknowledging the huge step they did make of just stopping the gain.

Or someone who's never eaten a vegetable in their life, who doesn't lose a pound but starts eating a balanced diet. We don't call that any kind of success.

It's as if we wanted our child to learn to play an instrument but refuse to give any praise until the child could play professional orchestra level. I guarantee the child will never get to the professional level if the small accomplishments aren't nurtured.

And we don't nurture small changes when it comes to diet and exercise, we only judge folks unworthy and unready and leave the impression that if you can't be perfect, you might as well not even try.

Small changes matter, and we need to know how hard even small change is. We need to know "normal" efforts really look like, so that when our progress seems torturously slow, we realize we're using expectations that aren't based in reality. We're judging ourselves for falling behind when we're really in the lead.

I guess I never even thought about it when I believed that "normal" was losing 1 to 2 lbs a week. But I started paying attention in my TOPS group and every week started taking note of the average weight loss for the group. Our average weight loss every week is significantly less than half a pound per person (and that's not counting the weeks, usually holiday weeks, where more people gain than lose).

But instead of the folks who don't lose a full pound (no matter their age or starting weight) are always sad and depressed about it. And almost no one celebrates "not gaining."

This time has been different for me, because I am not waiting until I'm ready to change everything. And I no longer believe that changing everything, even as an ultimate goal is productive. Instead, I focus on small changes and don't even imagine where those changes will eventually lead. I only make the changes that I think I can commit to regardless of whether or not I lose any weight at all. I'm committing to the change because it is manageable and I know it will have benefits and when that change is comfortable I'll consider making more. Maybe I'll make more changes, maybe I won't make any more changes, but the steps I've made are just as valuable whether or not I move any higher.

And that's what we don't teach very well. We're trying. You do see the magazine articles and research quotes that say "even losing 10% of your body weight can have significant health improvements." That's great and all, but we don't focus on the benefits of even smaller changes.

As a culture we only focus on the end results, not on the benefits of the journey along the way. That has to change or people who can't see the end result, will give up or won't even start.

We need to change the weight loss focus from "ideal weight" to "progress as far as you can, and if you can't progress further then that's better than backsliding."

But we don't say that. We still consider weight loss a battle you either win or lose. If we accepted more shades of gray, I think more people would succeed.

Part of it is that no one really understand what "normal" weight loss really looks like. We believe we're failing when we're actually doing better than most. We need to know what success really looks like.

I would never have quit any of my weight loss journeys in the past if I had truly understood that I was succeeding, not failing. It's really tragic, because I'm now feeling more successful than I ever have in my life (I've lost more weight and kept it off longer and made more permanent changes) and yet it's at a rate of loss that is slower than any of my previous failures. At the point of my previous failures, I was losing faster than any of the weight has come off this time.

In many respects I've "failed off 105 lbs." And it wasn't just me calling myself a failure. Weight Watchers scale monitors tsk-tsking or asking "what went wrong" when I had a stall or even a small loss on the scale (as if losing a quarter pound was some kind of crime).

Our attitudes about weight loss and health are self-destructive and culturally pervasive. People don't know what success looks like, and they've been taught to see success as failure, so they give up because they're "failing" by our cultural definition of success, and they have no idea that they're actually doing better than most. We quit thinking we're lagging far behind everyone else, even though we're actually in the lead if we've lost and kept off any weight at all.

We have to redefine success and learn to SEE it or most people will continue to quit assuming themselves failures, because that's what we've been taught to see.

I've been a compulsive overeater since I was a young child, so almost 50 years. I got thin in college but spent the next 30 years going up and down (but mostly up) the scale. I kept thinking that, to be a thin person, I had to fix my psychological issues somehow, so I wouldn't need food to make me feel better. That was far too daunting a task, though, so I just stopped trying.

A year ago, I decided to lose weight. Not to fix myself, but to just lose weight. And I've done that. I didn't change all that much about myself; I just eat less and exercise more. I still don't eat enough vegetables, I still eat too many carbs, I still have trouble sleeping because of obsessive thoughts and anxiety, I'm still angry about all sorts of stupid sh**. But I weigh a lot less and I feel a lot better, both physically and emotionally.

So, this is a long way of saying that I agree with kaplods that some of us fail because we're made to believe that we have to be perfect to succeed. That being said, I also agree with sontaikle that losing weight is not just a physical challenge, it's a mental challenge as well. For me, that challenge was to stop equating my crazy eating with being crazy. Once I realized that I can be neurotic and a healthy weight, my life got a lot easier.