How does making a weight loss chart satisfy your soul?
Does reading a diet book or researching weight loss without following through on the information make you feel relaxed, calm, secure, confident?
When you were eating 5,000 calories, did you feel loved and valued, emotionally satisfied, or something else?
Does daydreaming about being thin make a person feel that they are worthy of being cared about?
Does not encouraging others around you to do things so that you don't have to be embarrassed or uncomfortable make you feel more selfish or more good about who you are, like you're fulfilling your potential and helping others to fulfill theirs?
Just because you aren't spending time on other people, does that mean you're truly spending time giving yourself what you long for, deep down?
If you weren't spending time taking care of others, what were you doing? Were you REALLY "taking care" of yourself, or was it more a matter of existing?
If your behavior related to simply not caring if you were fat, then were you really, truly putting yourself first? If not, then what were you doing?
I think that some people do take care of others and use food to try to make up for the lack of care for themselves. A distraction or guilt or feelings of worthlessness or any number of motivations. But that doesn't have to be the only reason people get fat.
Unfortunately, I think some of us can sometimes end up feeling like a weight loss chart satisfies our soul, or reading a diet book or researching weight loss without following through on the information makes us feel relaxed, calm, secure, confident.
Obviously, it's not really true. But denial, the power of resisting change, and the subconscious can do crazy things. We think we feel satisfied or relaxed or loved because we so want to feel that way without having to change things.
Just posing the questions, however, shines light on the denial.
I have had a hard time putting a finger on what I wanted to say, and this isn't eloquent, but - here goes...
I think, for me it is more about my "head" values than my time.
I DO think that I put others first and that DID keep me from losing weight. It wasn't as much about the actual day-do-day actions and whether I had time to put myself first - each and every day I DID have the time.
It is more about what priorities I set. At first it was my family, then it was family AND career. Taking care of me wasn't even on the radar most days. Now, COULD I have taken time to exercise and eat right - of course! But, without my head being there - it wasn't going to happen. I had to change my priorities (brain activity). THEN I could change my actions.
I'm there, but honestly - my family and my work are affected. When I take time to exercise, DH gets stuck with making dinner. When I leave work on time, some things just don't get done.
So, I do think there is some truth to this argument - not from an analytical perspective, but from a psychological one.
There is another way to look at it that a lot of us might identify with. Last weekend I came home from running errands and was hungry. I needed to get some veggies in so grabbed the bag of celery, snapped off a stalk and started eating it while standing up and putting dishes away. It suddenly hit me what I was doing. If I was trying to help my sister/daughter/mother with weightloss, I would have taken time to cut the celery into sticks & arrange it on a plate with the FF ranch so that it looked appealing, and had them sit down to eat it. But because it was just for me and I was busy, why bother?! I didn't conciously think that when I began eating, but it's just a habit to not treat ourselves the way we would treat others. It IS important to take care of me,to make time to pack appealing nutritous lunches, to do those extra little things that can make a big difference in our weight loss success. Since that day, I'm trying to be nicer to "me" and hoping that this will help me finally succeed in my life-long battle with this weight.
I do think there are many people out there for whom this applies - if it hadn't rung true for many, it wouldn't be such a popular idea.
It did not apply to me. I actually live a fairly self-centered existence. Not in a bad way, but in the way that most of my time is spent on me. I'm single, no significant other, no kids, parents in good health, self-employed, but taking a bit of a break from that. The only living things depending on me are my two dogs and the plants in the yard. I've got nothing but time for me. And yet I still managed to fill all that free time with self-destructive behavior.
I agree with Kaplods, if the answer to obesity were simple, it would have been solved long ago.
As for it being a reason for some, why is that hard to believe?
I feel like borrowing your "Really?"
Like a lot of other people who have already posted on this thread, I have a lot of reasons to believe that obesity is not being driven by one factor, but by an interaction of many factors (context/environment, hormones, childhood/upbringing, social pressures, learned helplessness, lack of knowledge, etc.) But I totally agree with Julie here... why is it hard to believe that this could be a factor for some (and I would argue, many) people, even though it doesn't appear to be one for you?
It IS important to take care of me,to make time to pack appealing nutritous lunches, to do those extra little things that can make a big difference in our weight loss success. Since that day, I'm trying to be nicer to "me" and hoping that this will help me finally succeed in my life-long battle with this weight.
I really liked this.
really like your post as well, Ufi.
though it seems seriously off kilter way of thinking to me now, I used to feel like if I couldn't eat anything I wanted, in any amount I wanted, I was depriving myself. Exercise felt like a punishment. I didn't have kids to take care of either. Food just meant lots of things to me that it shouldn't have.
It can get complicated, losing weight: habits, ways of thinking, biology, sociology, yikes. Takes real concentration and focus.
In my case, taking care of others doesn't fit into the popular equation of women as caregivers. I've got no children & no pets & no plants. But there was definitely an element of self-abnegation in it.
I spent a lot of time "taking care of business." I worked late almost every night. If you came to me at 5 PM with something you really needed done -- no problem. I'd stay till 7 PM to finish it. I would be perfectionistic about it, too. If I had to go home & log back on from my laptop at 9 PM, I would do that, too.
I did not say no often enough. I did not guard my personal life as I ought to. A company is just an entity. It is not grateful for all one's efforts. It just uses you up in the course of business. So, in my case, taking care of others meant taking care of the company & thus of coworkers, even if not of children or elderly parents. I mean, I didn't bring in cookies for coworkers or listen sympathetically while they recounted their struggles with their love lives or their kids (though I have done that a little bit, too), but I was helping them get their work out when they had a soccer game to attend or something.
To relieve the stress & to "treat myself" for all the hours I was putting in, I ate pretty much whatever I wanted, in whatever quantities I wanted.
But a bigger part of the problem was a sort of obliviousness on my part. I always say that I lived "from the neck up." I forgot I had a body & I didn't seem to know how to care for it. I kept it very clean -- I think most fat women I know are cleaner & well-groomed than the thin ones, as a form of overcompensation. But in other ways, I treated it worse than I treated the lapptop I worked on or the antique furniture in my apartment. I was very ignorant about its workings & about the consequences of my choices. I had this very delicate thing entrusted to my care, but I never bothered to read the manual or to educate myself about it. I just took it for granted. And fretted because it wasn't as pretty as others. As if prettiness & thinness was just mysteriously **given** to other people, without any effort on their part, and since I clearly wasn't one of the elect, there wasn't anything I could do about it. I guess I had a sort of Calvinistic notion of predestination of fitness & attractiveness. And I decided that since I couldn't be pretty, I would be smart & useful & hard-working instead.
I really like the post of COUNTING DOWN. I agree. I had time before it was more about the priorities I set--not necessarily the time involved to do those things.
I am doing the things for ME that I didn't do before. Putting my nutrition, exercise and sleep at the VERY top of my priority list--no matter what--works for me. All else has to follow that. Otherwise, it just doesn't happen. It really is the best advice I could give anyone regarding weightloss.
Not everyone is fat because they overeat. And unfortunately, if you really look at life when folks are faced with crisis it is often easier to sacrifice caring for themselves over "neglecting" others.
I think all of us being here proves that there is no simple answer to why we get fat and we are certainly proof that it is not easy getting healthy and losing excess fat. It takes effort and committment. And sometimes - a lot of encouragement, sometimes from strangers.
I disagree. Barring medical issues, why else would one be "fat" (using your word here) if they're not overeating? I really think the very bottom line for being overweight is - is consuming more calories then you need - overeating.
Of course there are tons of different circumstances that lead us to - overeat. And granted, they are not as simple as "the bottom line". But again, barring medical issues - it always comes down to ingesting more calories then we burn.
I agree with rockinrobin. Of course, there are medical issues that can cause weight gain, such as thyroid conditions and hormone conditions, plus use of cortisone or derivatives. The list can go on. But for people without these issues, it really is a matter of eating more than one burns with activity.
I used to think that I didn't eat more than other people, but surprise surprise, once I actually started tracking what I ate, and found out just how high in calories some foods are, I had to give up that story.
But I also agree with borntobefine that getting healthy and losing excess fat is hard work, no matter what the reason for gaining.
Medical issues or not, I think that one can argue that a person who is overweight, is by definition overeating (even if they are only eating 1200 calories, if they're overweight that means that those 1200 calories are more than they "need.")
That doesn't mean that even morbidly obese are eating tons and tons of food. The difference between meeting and exceeding caloric needs can be very small. Finding ways to burn more and eat less can be complicated.
I never believed in metabolism differences when I was younger. I KNEW why I was fat, I ate too much, way too much. A lot more than anyone I knew. What was harder to find out was why I was so extremely hungry all of the time. Mindful eating or eating "only when hungry," was useless advice to me, because I was always hungry - physically hungry often even when my stomach was obviously full. Dieting was torture, because no matter how hard I tried, all I could think about was how hungry I was. To lose weight, I had to abandon almost everything else.
For me, finding the contributors to my weight, did help me find tools to fight. I (eventually, when I found clues as to where to look) found that hormonal hunger and carbohydrates were large factors. Changing to a birth control that minimized hormonal drops, and to lower carb eating made dramatic changes in my ability to control hunger and lose weight. Too bad, my metabolism now is much lower and I am eating much less. What I need to eat to lose one pound, would have once allowed me to lose 8 or more in the past. I can look at it as being cursed now, but I see it more as not realizing how lucky I was. I do, of course, wonder what my life and weight would have been if I had found the hormonal and carb connection when I was in my twenties (I knew the hormonal connection, but never had a doctor willing to endorse using bc to eliminate periods).
It may seem like there is a fine line between identifying factors contributing to weight loss and making excuses, but really there is a very simple distinction. The first makes weight loss easier (helps you develop tools and techniques to succeed) and the second inhibits weight loss efforts.
In essence "excuse" is in the mind of the beholder.
When I thought my "only" problem was eating too much, and moving too little, but didn't look to any of the factors that made moving more/eating less more difficult, my only tool was "willpower," which ensured that I spent more time and effort "white-knuckling" it, instead of trying to find ways to make the job easier.
It's like if you were told that you just weren't trying hard enough to jump over a wall, so you keep trying to put more and more effort into the jump, while ignoring an assortment of climing tools a few feet away.
For me it really is simple..... I got fat because I LOVE food; I still do. The difference today is that I don't eat a pint of Ben & Jerry's I eat one of the 3.6 oz. cups. I eat a cup of frozen grapes not a cup of cashews (only have 6-8 of those). I have a Special Dark Kiss not a king size candy bar. Most days I eat clean but if I want something that most consider "bad" I have it. Last weekend Mack and I shared a small DQ Blizzard and I was completely satisfied and I was down for my WI Monday.
I decided this time I would not exclude ANYTHING from my diet I am truly learning how to control what and how much I eat and this is a plan I can live with for life.
